U.S. to Insist That Travel Industry Get Fingerprints

By Spencer S. Hsu and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 22, 2008; Page A08

The U.S. government today will order commercial airlines and cruise lines to prepare to collect digital fingerprints of all foreigners before they depart the country under a security initiative that the industry has condemned as costly and burdensome.

The proposal does not say where airlines must collect fingerprints — at airport check-in counters, departure gates or kiosks somewhere in between. But the government estimates the undertaking will cost airlines $2.3 billion over 10 years, a U.S. homeland security official said.

The overall economic impact on companies, passengers and the government is expected to exceed $3.5 billion, industry lobbyists said, at a time when carriers are struggling with safety concerns, high fuel costs and passenger complaints.

Formal announcement of the plan to track the departure of foreign visitors, as part of the Homeland Security Department’s US-VISIT program, comes after an extended battle between the security agency and airlines.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff linked the effort to enforcing the nation’s immigration laws recently, saying airlines were obstructing the measure for commercial reasons.

“If we don’t have US-VISIT air exit by this time next year, it will only be because the airline industry killed it,” Chertoff said recently. “We have to decide who is going to win this fight. Is it going to be the airline industry, or is it going to be the people who believe we should know who leaves the country by air?”

Doug Lavin, regional vice president for the International Air Transport Association, which represents major U.S. and international carriers, said the government, not airlines, should collect fingerprints. “This is ludicrous,” Lavin said. “We can’t afford anything in the billions to support a program that should be a government program.”

Fingerprinting an estimated 33 million departing foreign passengers a year will result in “delayed departures, missed connections here and around the world,” Lavin said.

Launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, US-VISIT is intended to automate the processing of visitors entering and exiting the country, using fingerprints and digital photographs to help find criminals, potential terrorists and people who overstay visas and join the nation’s illegal immigrant population.

While the program has succeeded in recording nearly 100 million people entering the country since 2004, the DHS has struggled to implement the exit portion. Frustrated at the department’s slow pace, Congress last year set a June 2009 deadline for DHS to collect fingerprints from departing air passengers in a law to implement recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Otherwise, Congress said, the government cannot expand the Visa Waiver Program, under which residents of 27 friendly countries can visit the United States without a visa. Inclusion is a priority for nations including South Korea and Greece, and the tourism industry has also targeted South America for expansion.

The proposal will be open for a 60-day comment period. DHS could decide after that time where fingerprinting must be conducted, or it could leave the decision up to airlines, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the proposal has not been formally announced.

[…]

Washington Post

We all know that US-VISIT is a completely useless and bogus waste of time that violates millions of people.

We also know that the USVISIT ‘exit system’ is not in place.

USVISIT is a costly boondoggle. The penny has dropped about this, and Uncle Sham does not want to spend any more money on it.

Instead of building the infrastructure of the exit systems themselves, they are going to shift the burden on making it work to the airlines.

Like it says in this post, the exit system is currently VOLUNTARY. That is clearly insane, almost as insane as the USVISIT itself.

Pocket Satan Chertoff now says that, “If we don’t have US-VISIT air exit by this time next year, it will only be because the airline industry killed it,”. Once again, we have a government putting ‘border security’ (which this clearly is not, it is Security Theatre not real security) in the hands of private companies, and, quite absurdly, claiming that if the system is not in place, it is the fault of those companies, not the government. This is exactly what the UK government has done with fingerprinting at Heathrow Terminal 5.

If USVISIT is so very important, a key part of the US ‘security strategy’, and if the ‘terrorist threat’ was real, then to leave its complete implementation to the will of private companies is insane, and blatantly negligent.

The fact is that the living bag of bones Chertoff knows very well that USVISIT is a failure, that it has cost over $1.3 billion, apprehended only “1,200 criminals and immigration violators” and that any further money spend on this immoral, useless, wasteful, disgraceful, awful, satanic, abominable, monstrous, insane and stupid project would be indefensible, even to the expert and frictionless lie machine of ‘Homeland Security’.

Our only hope is that the airlines grow a backbone and stand up for the rights of their customers. Certainly, BA will be very reluctant to go along with this, after having been stung by their Terminal 5 fingerprinting fiasco, which is set to cost them some money, never mind the embarrassment.

The biometric fad, the most recent in a long line of snake oil solutions to non existent problems, is going to be consigned to the dustbin of technology history, along with 8 track tapes and other obsolete contraptions that seem absurd today. This fad is going to dies faster as more people wake up to what these tools really mean, and how corrosive they are to human society.

The East Germans know all about this.

And so do you.

One can only hope that the economic collapse of the USA will make it impossible for them to maintain this foolishness as their empire implodes and there is no money to run these insane programs. File under the spinoffs and benefits of Imperial collapse.

February 27, 2008
(presse@ccc.de)
Today, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, the country’s highest court, flatly rejected North Rhine-Westphalia’s Constitutional Protection Act, which is designed to permit the so-called online search of computers and other IT systems.

The Karlsruhe judges made it clear with their decision that the society has a legitimate interest in the confidentiality and integrity of the IT systems it increasingly depends on and that freedom of thought also exists if ideas are stored on to a computer. The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has been demanding this right to digital privacy for over 25 years. The protection of the digital self not only affects computers but also telephones and other networked devices. “We can only hope that the politicians who only know the internet from print-outs don’t need another quarter of a century until they have taken this new fundamental right on board”, Dirk Engling, the CCC’s spokesman, commented.

The constitutional court judges point out in their oral reasons for the judgement that the systematic tapping of communication data and the creation of personality profiles are serious violations of basic rights. “We assume that this judgement will also apply to the constitutional review of the Data Retention Act”, Dirk Engling said. Several constitutional complaints have been filed against the data retention that came to effect in January.

“The judges have given the lawmakers a slap in the face for allowing all kinds of information systems to be spied on, in contravention of basic rights”, Dirk Engling continued. “Spying on hard disks will only be possible within strictly defined limits. The Federal Constitutional Court has provided humanity’s virtual self with a digital protective shield.”

Analysing the data seized will also have to be based on the criteria relating to the new basic right. The investigation authorities’ procedures when collecting evidence by digital means must now be immediately put to the test. The searching of hard disks by private companies, which has recently become commonplace, is therefore clearly unconstitutional. The judges also determined that informational self-protection through encryption is a right that may only be abrogated under very strict conditions.

The Chaos Computer Club once again came to Karlsruhe for the delivery of the judgement with the black, red and gold “Federal Trojan”, which is the symbol of resistance against online searches. The Green Party, which recently attracted negative attention by waving through former interior minister Otto Schily’s “spying laws” and endorsing the ban on hacker tools, tried to demonstrate their newly found love for digital civil rights with a vigil in front of the court. This civil rights friendly position will hopefully be maintained if the Greens get back into government.

The lawyers will turn their attention to interpreting the judgement in the next few weeks and draw the relevant conclusions. “Although the Federal Trojan was positively slaughtered, important other decisions on basic rights are imminent. However, we don’t expect Wolfgang Schäuble (the Federal Interior Minister) or Dieter Wiefelspütz (the German Social Democratic Party’s expert on domestic policy) to suddenly take our constitution seriously. The new basic right will only come to life if it is aggressively defended and exercised.”

http://www.ccc.de/updates/2008/trojaner-notschlachten?language=en

You KNOW what it says, in every way, since you read BLOGDIAL.
The original.
The post I snarfed it from.
Linked from Lew Rockwell.
One Real American’s take.

I’ve just listened to Faultline’s ‘Colder Closer’ side 2. Forgotten how much I like it.

Reminds me of buying a Pole LP and listening to it for months at 33, loving it…. Then one day a ‘friend’ tells me ‘shouldn’t it be on 45?’ Never the same, I tells ya.

And then seeing Pan Sonic at Highbury Garage, supporting Suicide. I knew nothing about them, stood enjoying my pint, waiting. My jaw dropped. The man next to me fell over. What great noises. We have had some fun.

From there, the memories are too numerous to share, but I share them. I am a lucky man.

Anyway, it means Ilpo Vaisenenenenenen… whatever… Liima versions over 2 10″s are next up.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité, French for “Liberty, equality, fraternity (brotherhood)”, is the motto of the French Republic, and is a typical example of a tripartite motto. Although it finds its origins in the French Revolution, it was then only one motto among others and was not really institutionnalized until the Third Republic at the end of the 19th century. Debates concerning the compatibility and order of the three terms began as soon as the French Revolution.

We can now strike off the first word for sure:

PARIS (Reuters) – French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of “inciting racial hatred” over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was “destroying our country and imposing its acts”.

Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.

She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000.

Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding: “I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot.”

Bardot did not attend the trial because she said she was physically unable to. The verdict is expected in several weeks.

French anti-racist groups complained last year about comments Bardot made about the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy that was later published by her foundation.

Muslims traditionally mark Eid al-Adha by slaughtering a sheep or another animal to commemorate the prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son on God’s orders.

France is home to 5 million Muslims, Europe’s largest Muslim community, making up 8 percent of France’s population.

“I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts,” the star of ‘And God created woman’ and ‘Contempt’ said.

Bardot has previously said France is being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims and published a book attacking gays, immigrants and the unemployed, in which she also lamented the “Islamisation of France”.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1584799120080415

There is no liberty in a country where you cannot think, say and publish what you want.

This is the country that gave us Voltaire, (insert list of great French writers and philosophers), but which now prosecutes people for uttering opinions.

And I can guarantee you that many French people will be cheering in the privacy of their own minds, these words of Brigitte Bardot; but wether or not her words are popular is not the point. All human beings have the right to free speech in countries that claim they are free countries. If a country does not allow free speech, then that country is not a free country. Full stop.

Listen to Ezra Lavant explanining to an ignorant pig exactly what free speech means. You should watch all the parts of this.

The lie of ‘hate speech’ is a disease that is spreading all over the civilized world. There is no such thing as ‘hate speech‘; there is only speech, and you have the right to it. This is non negotiable, and Ezra Levant sums it up perfectly. Brigitte Bardot has the right to hate, she has the right to express that hate, and in a free country, no one should be able to muzzle her or stifle her or question her.

A RUTHLESS rapist found victims by getting a job as a care worker and trawling a council’s database for vulnerable young girls.

Simeon Kellman, 43, used computer records to identify teenagers who had just come out of the foster care system.

Then he forced his way into their homes and attacked them. Kellman has just been jailed for eight years for the vicious rape of an 18-year-old, who was blindfolded and bound.

But police fear he preyed on up to 20 girls. And yesterday they urged other victims to come forward.

Father-of-two Kellman began his vile campaign after landing a care worker job with Greenwich Council in South East London. Cops say he made a “substantial” number of computer searches on profiles of former foster children.

A police source said: “<b>He must have been like a kid in a sweet shop</b>”.

“The lack of security at the council was breathtaking. Kellman was able to log on and cherry-pick kids coming out of the care system.

“He got their new home addresses and went round pretending to be a friend, then attacked them.”

Woolwich Crown Court heard last week how Kellman bundled the 18-year-old into a cupboard after he raped her at her flat.

He told her: “Don’t tell anyone or I’ll come back and you will be in trouble.”

He cunningly changed his clothes between arriving and leaving to make CCTV identification difficult.

The hysterical girl eventually freed herself and alerted her ex-foster mum.

Any other victims or anyone with information should call the police’s Sapphire unit on 020 8284 9818.

The Sun

And so, does anyone think that ContactPoint will be any different from this ‘Council’s Database’?

Is there anyone left in the UK who is THAT STUPID (who is not in Neu Labour).

Thanks to a tip from Alun, I watched the film ‘The lives of Others‘ last night.

This is a brilliant and very important film. People often cite the STASI and its tactics and corrosive effects on East German society as a way of warning people of the sort of place Britain will become should it continue down the road of the insane mass surveillance that it has embarked upon. The lives of Others portrays in a most compelling and gut wrenching way what the STASI really means.

In the light of Poole Council’s nauseating surveillance of a British family, this is a film that everyone, every decent person in Britain, should see, as an example and warning of what is here and what is coming.

The parallels to East Germany and today’s Britain are clear. Britain is turning into a place where the horizon of surveillance is now under our feet, and the next stage, acting on it German style, is beginning to approach.

For my part, the idea of these people carrying out these operations in the past made me sick, as it always does. Watching fat pig government employees violate and wield unlimited power over people should make all good people feel queasy.

The main lesson of this film however is that the decent people did nothing. They carried on as best they could, trying to live as normal a life as possible, putting up with every outrage like prisoners suffering from one of those psychological disorders that affect mammals habituated to incarceration. They were frightened to the point that it was impossible for them to even speak. And then….

It all just ended.

Its rather like the three prisoners in THX-1138 walking out of the white space, being astonished that nothing stopped them. The power of the state is an illusion in this way. All of those East Germans could have simply stood up and walked away at any time. The only thing that was stopping them was their belief that the system was real, when in fact, it was not.

I note with dismay, that the names of the councilors and actors who carried out the surveillance were not names and photographed by the newspapers who feigned outrage. It is almost as if they were frightened of some unspoken consequences of doing the obvious; shaming these people so that they are made to suffer humiliation when they violate the rights of others. As it stands now, we do not know who these people are, what they look like or anything about them; they cannot therefore be shunned and vilified by decent people. This is part of the problem. It is this self protecting system of keeping quiet that emboldens these monsters.

Here are some links:
http://www.enjoy-surveillance.org/

I’m Not Being Mean, You’re Just Retarded, Sir

Our state collects more data than the Stasi ever did. We need to fight back

To trust in the good intentions of our rulers is to put liberty at risk. I’d go to jail rather than accept this kind of ID card

Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday January 31, 2008
The Guardian

This has got to stop. Britain’s snooper state is getting completely out of hand. We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society, and we must wake up. When the Stasi started spying on me, as I moved around East Germany 30 years ago, I travelled on the assumption that I was coming from one of the freest countries in the world to one of the least free. I don’t think I was wrong then, but I would certainly be wrong now. Today, the people of East Germany are much less spied upon than the people of Britain. The human rights group Privacy International rates Britain as an “endemic surveillance society”, along with China and Russia, whereas Germany scores much better.

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2249473,00.html

It isn’t too late to turn everything around. This is how it starts:

Do you get me?

This is a comment on an article that appeared in The Telegraph about the highly offensive spying of Poole council on an innocent family, who were judged to be guilty before proven innocent:

Just ponder for a moment. Ten short years ago, nobody in the world would have thought that the once proud British people could, by self infliction, descend to a debt ridden proletariat, with possession and use of the instruments and trappings of a quasi Stalinist dictatorship, in the incompetent, arrogant hands of what are supposed to be servants of the public.

You have corrupt politicians, with their fingers consistently in the till, above the law, and ears ever deaf to the electorate which put them where they are. A current chancellor who lacks the fiscal competence to add up his wage slip, because he never had one before he got this job as a convenient stooge for the previous carrier of the budget box. A plethora of ‘employment’ Ministers, who have proved to be anything but employment ministers for the intrinsic population, crying ‘skills shortage, skills shortage,’ like demented parrots, justifying the cry for the bird seed of the ever cheaper labour of mass unskilled immigration, to sustain their bankrupt policies. An ‘elf Minister, presiding over the third largest ‘employment’ factory in the world, with a large proportion of the ‘employees’ putting their wages above patient care. An anti English Egyptian born ‘Kulture Minister’ performing like a latter day Beria, systematically eradicating the history and soul of everything a country, once in the vanguard of what freedom stood for. A Home Secretary divided by two, because the job is now too big for a single NULabour politician to cope with, with an avalanche of foreign laws imposed on the British, without referendum promised in two elections. A part time defence secretary, and a military with no kit, because the armed forces never did figure in Labour, other than as an accountants cost saving exercise. This trough fed entourage crowned with an unelected Prime Minister, who fiddles his TV License, and whose revealed former capabilities, with ten years of ‘growth,’ but nothing in the bank, are now staring everybody over there, squarely in the wallet. But by far and away the biggest crime of all, was the calculated erosion of educational standards for the masses, to the point where a sixteen year old state sink school ‘graduate,’ could not compete against the abilities of a nine year old from the former colony of Singapore. Education, Education, Education? More like Educashun, Educashun, Educashun, with a ‘so what’ ‘Minister’ most aptly demonstrating the zenith of NULabour teachings. If Britain continues down this path, it is guaranteed accelerated descent into a third world satellite banana republic of the EUSSR.

With this ‘leadership’ at the helm, it is little wonder that the sub Stalins of local government have got the green light to misuse anti terrorism legislation, to intrude on every aspect of your lives. You already have Zampolits of the rubbish police, chipping your dustbins. Now you have the state machine commissars tailing three year olds, presumably in a flasher mack driving a Russian Fiat copy. I assure you, that to the rest of the free world you have become a very sick joke. It would be comical if it were not tragic. You are now a United Kingdom in name alone. It is hoped that if you ever get the chance of another election, and your Ministers have not worked sufficient overtime to convert it to the Zimbabwe variety, you will remember when NULabour again makes promises in a manifesto, that, to avoid their obligations to the people, they went to the time and trouble of a court case to have it legally declared to be not worth the paper it was printed on. Be careful which library books you read, the fact that you are still reading books, instead of dosing your brain with state Television soap, may attract the unwelcome attention of a Kulture Zampolit.

Posted by Michael Barningham on April 11, 2008 12:25 PM

Judging by the comments to this article, we are quickly approaching the tipping point in the UK, where everyone will, seemingly, spontaneously cry, “enough is enough” and the whole system will be explosively reconfigured so that it looks more like the Real Britian^™ that we all knew and loved.

As the fiat currencies collapse, people will turn to new, unassailable currencies like the Guernsey Pound and the Totnes Pound

In response to the massive interest generated by the distribution of 300 Totnes pounds Transition Town Totnes (TTT) are issuing 5000 Totnes Pounds, supported by Schumacher College and Totnes and District Chamber of Commerce.

The new issue of the Totnes Pound will be launched at the Schumacher College Open Evening on 20 June. Wolfgang Sachs, acclaimed German researcher and writer on the environment and development will be presenting at the Open Evening as part of a series of lecturers by teachers on the Schumacher College course ‘The New Economics: From growth to well-being’.

The first ‘edition’ of the Totnes Pounds, endorsed by Anthony Steen MP, was put into local circulation to launch the Transition Town Totnes Economics and Livelihoods group on Wednesday 7th March. The Pound was originally inspired through an alternative economics course at Schumacher College.

Eighteen outlets signed up to the Transition Town Totnes Pound pilot. The target for the second phase is 50 outlets. The project team monitored the use of the Pound up until 1st of June, the official end of the pilot, and have decided to begin a new phase of the project, including the issuing of a new note, due to the success of the original circulation.

The organisers aim to engage many more people with the second issue of the Pound and challenge the notion of the role of money and currency in local economic systems. This is part of a wider strategy of TTT and the courses at Schumacher College of encouraging a re-examination of social systems and the practice of new ways of engaging the community in the local economy, reducing our dependence on large-scale national and international production and trade and massive carbon dioxide production.

[…]

http://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/news/the-totnes-pound-is-far-from-spent

read more about it here, and here is another town launching its own currency. Watch this documentary for an explanation about why you will be spending ‘London Pounds’ or ‘Manchester Pounds’ in the near future.

Before I finish this post, let us put to bed the nonsense about ‘reducing carbon dioxide production’. Anyone who studied Photosynthesis in school will know that plants thrive on C0₂. You will also have done the experiment where two nearly identical potted plants are placed in sealed jars, one fed pure C0₂ from a bottle the other fed air from the classroom via a pump. The plant that is fed C0₂ grows at a higher rate than the one being fed classroom air.

Carbon Dioxide helps plant growth. That is a fact. C0₂ is not a ‘threat to the environment’. Dope growers buy it to help them grow better dope. Maybe the environmental loonies should smoke some of this C0₂ enhanced dope; they might talk more sense when they are completely stoned:

Now Available as Optional Equipment
for Experienced Growers.
This unit can be shipped with a C0₂ system
with some huge benefits…

Tank not included

These C0₂ Enrichment Systems feature an accurate, easy to adjust C0₂ flow meter, a preset regulator that never needs adjusting, a solenoid valve and complete instructions. This Hydrofarm C0₂ Injection System attaches to any standard C0₂ tank (available at any welding or beverage supply store) and includes a timer, regulator, solenoid, and a flow gauge. Includes C0₂ tubing with holes, and is pre-mounted to the interior ceiling of your mini-stealth growing chamber. Utilizing the Drip Ring Method a nylon “T” ring is mounted to the ceiling of the growing environment with tubing that disperses C0₂ evenly as it drops evenly down over the garden!

Carbon Dioxide Enrichment will dramatically increase the growth of green plants. Green plants use carbon dioxide ( C0₂ ) and water in the presence of light to synthesize organic compounds. The plant then converts these organic compounds into elements that it can use (food). This process is called photosynthesis. If any of these ingredients ( C0₂, water or light ) are at levels below what the plant can use for maximum efficiency, it will only be able to perform at that level and no greater. Adding carbon dioxide to a growing environment that is not receiving proper nutrients or is low on light will not produce the desired results. Similarly, plants that are receiving plenty of sunshine and nutrients will only perform as well as the ambient level of C0₂ will allow. The ambient level of C0₂ in the earth’s atmosphere is generally between 300 and 600 ppm. Most plants receive far more water and energy in the form of sunshine than they can use. Increasing the C0₂ in the growing area will let the plant use the excess water and energy that is stored in the leaves. The result is a substantial increase in the growth rate of any plant that uses chlorophyll in the process of photosynthesis. Enrichment should commence at sunrise or when photoperiod begins and refrain during darkness hours. The average C0₂ level that is recommended is 1000 to 2000 parts per million (PPM).

The included timer can be used to set the intervals that the C0₂ will be released at, and it allows you to turn off C0₂ during the “night” period, when it is not needed.

[…]

http://www.homegrown-hydroponics.com/catalog.html

and further:

A typical C0₂ setup includes (from right to left) a large tank, adjustable pressure reducing regulator and flow meter. C0₂ is tricky to manage, as a result, it is generally not recommended for beginners although the rewards can be up to 40% more mass at harvest time according to recent studies.

As your plants “breathe” C0₂ and “exhale” O2, the balance of these two critical gases begins to shift. In nature, this exchange fits in perfectly as animals “breathe in” O2 and “exhale out” C0₂. Of course, a perfect world this is not. Modern industry and the burning of fossil fuels has somewhat “unbalanced” this effect. However, in your greenhouse or grow room, you will need to help your plants breathe by supplying a constant exchange of fresh air, which by nature contains about 2% C0₂. If you have already employed a thermostat and humidistat in combination with a vent fan, there is a good possibility that these two mechanisms will provide a good exchange of fresh air. However, if your fan is not operating frequently enough, you may be starving your plants of their most important atmospheric gas, C0₂.

Generally speaking, it is best to exchange the entire contents of your growing area about once an hour during daylight hours. To do this efficiently, you can use a fan that either runs continuously at a slow speed, or a fan that runs at high speed in short bursts. To determine the size of the fan that is necessary, simply multiply the length of your growing area by its height and then by its width. This number (use feet as a measurement unit) will be the Cubic Feet of your area. When buying a fan, you will notice that they are sold according to “Cubic Feet per Minute,” or CFM ratings. What this means is the amount of air this particular fan will move in one minute. Therefore, if your greenhouse or growing room is 10 feet x 10 feet x 8 feet, that’s a total of 800 Cubic Feet. You will need an 800 CFM fan to exchange the air in the entire greenhouse in one minute. That’s a big fan and you certainly don’t need to move it all out in just a minute’s time. I would suggest using a 100 CFM fan and running it for 4 minutes every half hour. You can do this with a cycle timer.

[…]

http://www.growhydroponicgarden.com/articles/15/1/Supercharge-Your-Garden-With-C02/Page1.html

My emphasis.

By all means, take a look at all the people who use C0₂ as a tool to enhance plant growth. On an earth that has an increasing amount of C0₂ in the atmosphere, we can expect bigger, faster plant growth and more 0₂ production. C0₂ is not a problem gas, it is absolutely crucial to life on this planet, and the production of it does not need to be regulated.

Every schoolchild knows this.

Does this mean that pollution is OK?, of course not; pollution and waste are real problems. What everyone must not do however, is drink the Kool-Aid and repeat like lemmings that ‘C0₂ is bad’.

Now, back to the Totnes Pound.

This money, and the other monies that are coming, will be inflation free money; they will exist only as a means to facilitate exchange. It is a long and complex subject, and the documentary linked above explains it well. One fact demonstrates how important these currencies will become. Benjamin Franklin said that that the real reason the revolution happened was the Colonial Scrip and, “The refusal of King George to operate an honest colonial money system which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the manipulators was probably the prime cause of the Revolution”.

Amazing!

Vandals keep changing the letter ‘L’ to a ‘C’ on the village’s signs

Residents living in a graffiti-plagued village in Merseyside are being asked to consider changing its name to tackle vandals who alter signs in the village.

Lunt, which dates back to Medieval times, has been repeatedly targeted by vandals who change the “L” to a “C”.

[…]

The transmitter equipment is regularly worn by BBC radio reporters

A BBC radio reporter was held to the ground and searched by police under the Terrorism Act after his transmitter equipment was mistaken for a bomb.

Five officers forced BBC Radio Stoke’s Max Khan to his knees and held him face down in Stoke-on-Trent on Monday.

He was wearing a backpack with protruding wires and aerials. Staffordshire Police have apologised.

Earlier this year armed police tackled a man in the city after fearing his MP3 player was a gun.

Mr Khan said he was targeted after police were told an “Arabic-looking man was acting suspiciously” outside the Potteries Shopping Centre in Hanley.

[…]

Arrested, caged and DNA tested – for using MP3

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Safe and sound: Darren Nixon recovers from his ordeal

A commuter was arrested at gunpoint and had his DNA and fingerprints taken simply for listening to his MP3 player while waiting for a bus.

Darren Nixon was surrounded by armed police after his music player was mistaken for a gun.

When a passer-by saw the 28-year-old get out his black Philips machine to change tracks, she panicked and dialled 999.

Police tracked Mr Nixon using CCTV. As he got off the bus home from work he was surrounded by a firearms unit, who bundled him into a van.

He was then put in a cell and his fingerprints, DNA and mugshot were taken before he was released.

Although police realised it was a false alarm, Mr Nixon, from Stoke-on-Trent, now has to live with his DNA stored on a national database.

The force will also keep on record that he was arrested on suspicion of a firearms offence.

[…]

From the ridiculous to the Kafkaesque.

Is there still anyone out there clinging to the pathetic excuse that ‘I’ve got nothing to hide, they’ll never come for me.’

‘I’m alright Jack’ works fine until its you on your knees with a gun at your head for ‘looking Arabic’ or brandishing an MP3 player in a public place.

“Innocent until We decide otherwise.”

I just had an eerie experience.

Whilst surfing around, I went to the Paul Smith site, which has a section called ‘music’.

In there, is a link to Tom Ravenscroft.

Tom Ravenscroft is the son of John Peel. He does a show for Channel 4 Radio.

I clicked on the latest show to hear what it is like. When his voice came down the internets, I felt a tingle run down my spine.

Any of you who used to listen to John Peel will know exactly what I am talking about.

What a life!

Schools could be raided by police to crack down on knife crime, Ken Livingstone proposed today.

The Mayor suggested that fingerprinting and DNA profiling could be used to help to identify youngsters who threw away weapons. He also called for tougher sentencing for those involved in stabbings to prevent others going down the same route.

What this actually means is that all pupils in London need to be fingerprinted, DNA swabbed and put into a database so that when they find the one or two bad guys (or girls) with knives, they can be identified.

Ken Livinston is certifiably insane; the true inheritor of Stalin’s mantle, after the living reincarnation of Stalin himself, Gordon Brown.

However, there are likely to be concerns over the civil liberties implications of his proposals for schools.

Right!

Mr Livingstone told LBC radio: “So many kids now are carrying a knife because they think someone else might try and stab them and, of course, very often they end up being stabbed with their own knife.

So many. So we have to rape them all in order to stop them. Ken, you are a scumbag, full stop.

“I think you need a really high-profile crackdown and I’d be quite prepared where we know some schools have a particular problem – as long as the teachers and parents are up for this – you suddenly flood the school with police and you arrest everyone carrying a knife.

As long as the parents are ‘up for this’ its OK to rape children. Riiiiiiiiight.

“I know a lot of them will drop them on the ground but with fingerprints, DNA profiling, we’ll identify most of the people carrying those knives.”

Ken is a police state fantacist, a hideous gargoyle control addict, and a monster. Only his will matters, as we saw with the extension of the Congestion Charge zone, despite 70% of residents saying ‘no’ he went ahead anyway.

He added: “Judges have got to recognise the need for exemplary sentencing to get the message home – carry a knife, you’ll go to prison. You can’t carry a knife then expect to get 20 hours community service.”

Judges are best suited to interpret the law. Ken should get a broom out and sweep the streets of London. He cannot even do that correctly. Many parts of London are no better than pig styes and he is responsible for it.

The Mayor was accused of insensitivity to the families of two teenagers stabbed to death last week when he declared that “if it bleeds, it leads” the news. His aides said he made the comments before he had heard about the murders.

Ken is insensitive to anything but his own perverted desire for absolute power.

Mr Livingstone admitted there would be civil liberties concerns over his proposals on knife crime. There could also be legal issues as police must arrest suspects before taking fingerprints or DNA swabs.

In other words, guilty until proven innocent, yet again.

The total aim of police state boosters like Fascist Ken.

Ken, Brown, Smith and the other mass murdering perverts like to sprinkle the magic sauce of DNA technology on every problem. Now they want to sprinkie it onto children. The fact of the matter is that the problems that create knife crime will not be stopped by taking knives out of the hands of people who need them. These measures are plasters applied to shotgun wounds. But I digress. This ‘plan’ has not been thought out, will be rejected as absurd, and shows Ken Livingston scrambling around for big headlines because he is running scared of Boris Johnson. That is what this is all about, pure and simple.

Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Brian Paddick said the support of local communities was more important, adding: “The way to tackle gun and knife crime is not to demonise young people but to rebuild trust between police and the community.”

[…]

Evening Standard

What-ever.

All of these people are vile, repulsive beasts, and none of them have even the slightest bit of imagination.

Let us help them.

If you want to stop knives entering a school, you expel all of the trouble-making students.

And that is it.

Teachers know intimately who the bad people in their schools are. If they were allowed to run their schools AS schools and not makeshift borstals then this problem would disappear over night.

Q: But what happens when the children that are expelled are out roaming the streets like feral beasts?
A: That is the problem of the negligent parents and the police.

etc etc.

Barak Obama’s first act as president will be to lie under oath.

When he is sworn in at his inauguration ceremony, he will swear, on the Holy Bible, the following oath:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

He will swear that he will, “to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.

When Obama says this, he will be lying.

Thanks to Kurt Nimmo and Raw Story we have a clip that demonstrates Obama’s unctuous frictionless, expert facility to lie. In this video, which is is a segment of a ‘Town Hall’ meeting where audience members get to ask questions, someone comes to the microphone and asks:

AUDIENCE MEMBER
Its been reported that you and your wife are in the globalist ‘CFR’ which is the Council on Foreign Relations. I would like to know if that is true, and I would also like to know where you stand on the North American Union, which has been confirmed recently in the press (Ron Paul actually spoke about it and the Congress has spent some money on it) This North American union involves a union much like the European Union, only with Canada Mexico and the United States, and the possible merging of the money system into a piece called the Amero which would actually strip the United States of some of its sovereignty and perhaps our rights. Where do you stand on that?

OBAMA
Well first of all uh, im not uh, the Council on Foreign Relations, uh I don’t know if I am a official member, I have spoken there before. Uh it basically is just a forum where a bunch of people talk about foreign policy. Uh and, so there’s nothing, uh there’s no official membership…i don’t have a card or a special handshake or anything like that. (LAUGHTER) um, the, in terms of this North America…uh, what did you?…Union! This has been, uh, something i know Ron Paul has been talking about and people have been talking about. I have to say with all due respect that I see no evidence of this actually taking place. I think that this has been something that has been ginned up in certain blogs on the internet……there’s no evidence that that’s taking place (a Union like the European Union).

I don’t think there’s some conspiracy to create uh, this one, you know, continental government between Canada and Mexico, all right?

Next!

What the subsequent questioner should have asked is wether or not Obama would nullify any treaty or agreement signed by Bush under the SPP agreements that are the precursor to the NAU, should he find out that such a plan exists, i.e. he finds that there is evidence of such a plan.

But I digress. Just because he does not know of the evidence, doesn’t mean it does not exist. The point is, do you, Barack Hussein Obama, intend to obey your oath of office and to the best of your ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?

Are you going to PRESERVE the constitution, i.e. absolutely reject anything that dilutes the authority and force of the constitution?

Are you going to PROTECT the constitution from attacks no matter where they emanate from?

Are you going to DEFEND the constitution by striking down all unconstitutional measures, legislation and bodies?

Your position on the theoretical idea, the hypothetical concept, of a North American Union and a converged currency, should be immediate and unambiguous. Your response should have been:

“Such an idea is repugnant to me as it should be to all Americans. When I take my oath of office, I will do what I swear I will do; to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That rules out the possibility of a North American Union or an Amero, and I guarantee that neither of those scenarios will come to pass under my administration, and I further promise to dismantle any groundwork that could potentially produce such a union or currency in the future, should I become aware of it during the course of my Presidency.”

So much for the ‘words from our fantasy presidential candidate’.

Lets now show that Barak Obama actually knows about the CFR, and what it really is all about. The clues to this are in his dismissive description of it and his use of ridicule to attack and discredit the questioner and deflect attention from this subject.

He says that the CFR is, “basically is just a forum where a bunch of people talk about foreign policy” this is a gross understatement of what the CFR is and who its membership is composed of. There is no way that anyone other than a deceiver would describe the CFR membership as, “a bunch of people”. The membership reads like a who’s who of every powerful person on this planet spanning continents and decades. Go read the membership list for yourself
. And what sort of man describes his wife as part of a collective ‘a bunch of people’?. They do not just ‘talk about foreign policy’ they exert influence on foreign policy world wide.

Only the most simple minded of people would assert that they are talking foreign policy ‘just for the fun of it’. These people are steering world events, and that is a fact. We should expect people to gather together and trade ideas and steer events; that is what human beings do, no matter what sphere they are in.

What is wrong with these groups is that government officials swear oaths of loyalty to their countries and their constituents and they should take orders only from the latter and never from anywhere else.

Barak Obama understands what the CFR is, and the influence it has over world affairs. That is why he mentioned specifically that there is no ‘special handshake’. Special handshakes are associated with secret societies like the Masons; shadowy, conspiratorial, unaccountable, operating at the highest levels of society – not at all like the CFR, which is just ‘a bunch of people’. This code language is well understood, and that is why everyone laughed when he used it; he used it to ridicule and smear the questioner, deflect and discredit the serious nature of the question and to reassure his audience that, in fact, he is not one of these mysterious ‘globalists’.

Next Obama does exactly what septuagenerian adulterer Gary Hart does when he is asked about the North American Union at a book signing. He deftly feigns ignorance of it.

Before we address this, we need to say that it is an absolute impossibility that Gary Hart does not know about The North American Union.

Gary Hart (CFR member) is promoting his new book, ‘Under the Eagle’s wing‘ which is described as:

Description: Aimed at the new administration of 2009, this work provides a sound national security strategy for the new century. “Under the Eagle’s Wing” makes a compelling plea for America’s leaders to embrace a new world order, in which the U.S. and other nations draw strength from a united approach.

By all means, look at the video and watch how he pretends not to know about the NAU. Any author writing about, ‘drawing strength from a united approach’ would certainly know about all competing attempts to bring about a global government. No one is THAT STUPID. Not only does he pretend not to know about it, but he pretends to not have ever heard the phrase ‘North American Union’, asking the audience member to repeat the name to try and reaffirm that he really has not heard of it. He then asks the audience if they have heard of it, trying to isolate the questioner, and then something wonderful happens, they ALL KNOW ABOUT IT, and Hart is made to look like he is out of the loop!

I have to say that this confrontation is one of the best ever by We are Change. No shouting, no aggression, no baseball caps, signs, just a room full of very polite, well dressed people who very gently humiliate and rattle and ultimately destroy a transparent liar.

Obama knows about the NAU, the SPP and everything else that is going on in that area. His behavior demonstrates this. His reluctance to frame the CFR in the correct terms demonstrates his loyalty to it and the agenda of its members. This loyalty is incompatible with the oath that he is going to take. Their agenda is diametrically opposed to the sovereignty of the United States, and his oath binds him over to protect that country from the likes of the CFR and all its partner organizations.

You cannot serve two masters. Obama claims that he is a Christian, and so he should know this.

This man is a slippery liar and actor; another complete nightmare.

Tonight’s vinyl listening was Pauline Oliveros, a piece from 1968, released a few years ago on Table of the Elements; and Head Slash Bausch, by Antje Greie Fuchs. Highly recommended in both cases.

… ’Cause if you don’t, the world will come to an end
And it won’t take long

Ivor Cutler

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV“). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.

First, the new media — particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) — have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world — even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned — call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.

Secondly, Botros’s broadcasts are in Arabic — the language of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature — much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations — and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.

Read the rest of this entry »

On the afternoon of 27th March I received a telephone call, at work, from a ‘journalist’ working for the London Evening Standard. He introduced himself as Joshua Neicho, apparently partly responsible for the Letters section of that newspaper. Joshua told me he had found my details from Teh Internets after reading our postings on Blogdial concerning Heathrow T5 and the implications of design on security issues.

Now, tracking me down via Blogdial isn’t so hard to do. I’m sure Joshua would have preferred to contact Irdial, the first author of those posts, but Irdial isn’t silly enough to leave a simple trail to their private telephone number pasted all over the web.

Anyway, Joshua asked me to provide 200 words on T5, security and architecture within about 4 hours. Since this is a nice Blogdialian topic, I agreed. Fitting this writing into the last few hours of my already crowded work day was a shit, but here’s what I came up with. Not thrilling by Blogdial standards, just a concise resume of the position:

Much attention has been focussed on the architecture and security measures of Heathrow T5, but unfortunately not at the same time. Design and security at T5 are not only intimately linked, but invasive security measures (fingerprinting and photographing every passenger) are necessary precisely because of the architectural design.

BAA and the architects must have agreed on a non-segregated floorplan where passengers for domestic and international flights mix. Obviously, BAA (and HMG, who work closely with BAA on airport security) must have understood the security issues arising from this design. One may conclude that the design was intended to generate exactly this situation – a wonderful opportunity for testing biometric scanning procedures and public compliance on millions of people per year. Not only this, but that BAA, the architects and the government were complicit in the entire process!

Unbelievable? The alternative is that the architects design is flawed, but this went unnoticed by the architects, BAA and HMG until one day during the build itself! ‘Hang on! If we mix up internal and external… oh no! Now we’ll have to fingerprint everyone!’ Can one imagine Lord Rogers making such a big mistake in designing T5? I can’t.

I duly mailed this to Joshua Neicho (Old Etonian; Oxford University) asking to be kept informed of any use, and haven’t heard a peep from him since – something other bloggers have also reported. And blogged. I’m not sure what they teach students at Eton and Oxford, but I’m surprised simple manners isn’t included in the curriculum.

However, this post is to show ‘Why Print Journalism Is A Rotting Corpse’.

On 28th March, when T5 was in chaos on its opening day, here (and linked here) are the two letters chosen for the T5 design/security issue:

One, an analysis of design. The other, a tirade against invasive security. What is wrong with this picture? Forgoing my usual modesty (ahem!), may I just remind you of the first sentence of our unused letter.

Much attention has been focussed on the architecture and security measures of Heathrow T5, but unfortunately not at the same time.

The published viewpoints, editorially chosen by people like Joshua Neicho, are like having your face pressed up to a cinema screen by a long-dead shuffling zombie, swathed in the stench of nepotism, laziness, corruption and self-interest. Not to mention a lack of manners! And for putting up with that disgusting experience all you get to see is the tiny bit of the picture thats right in front of your face, distorted and given a disproportionate importance.

But you’re reading Blogdial.

Best seat in the house!