Associated Press 09:30 AM May, 11, 2006

WASHINGTON — The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers security clearance.

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax Wednesday to Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York saying it was closing its inquiry because without clearance it could not examine department lawyers’ role in the program.

“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.

Jarrett wrote that beginning in January his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday.

“Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation,” […]

I’m not making this up. Clearly all bets are off, and next, the gloves have to come off.

By Jim Mullins
Posted May 12 2006
We are now witnessing another fear-inducing barrage of propaganda mirroring the exaggeration and deception that led to the ongoing debacle in Iraq. This time the target is Iran, with the same underlying but unspoken rationale: continuing control of worldwide trade of oil in U.S. dollars and its production in pliant and friendly hands.

Saddam’s unforgivable sin was to persuade the U.N. to allow him to sell oil for euros in the Oil for Food program, bringing him a huge windfall as the dollar fell and the euro advanced. When the U.S. invaded Baghdad, it secured the oil ministry and moved quickly to convert oil sales back to the dollar.

Iran has gone further, announcing the opening next week of the Iran Oil Bourse, a worldwide exchange, trading in euros and breaking the U.S. monopoly. (When President Nixon abandoned the gold standard and converted to a fiat currency backed by the good faith and credit of the U.S., OPEC agreed to continue oil transactions in dollars only.) This will result in a flood of dollars, now held in the world’s central banks, coming back to the U.S. and hitting the wall of our massive trade deficit and without the trade surplus we once enjoyed — a dismal prospect in that we have allowed our industrial production to decline while borrowing from foreign countries to offset the deficit.

The International Monetary Fund has warned the U.S. that its trade deficit — grown from $114 billion in 1995 to $805 billion — is unsustainable. Its economic counselor, Raghuram Rajan, describes its position as “just simple economics.”

Another issue lies in Iran’s geographic advantage in transporting oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea area. An oil pipeline through Iran to the Arabian Sea for tanker shipment, or the proposed gas pipeline through Iran and Pakistan to India, makes far more sense in every respect than the U.S.-favored route through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

President Bush’s offer to provide nuclear technology to India in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and U.S. law was a transparent ploy to get it to abandon the Iranian pipeline.

Cash-strapped Pakistan would lose both access to the natural gas and $700 million in yearly royalties. Pakistani President Musharraf is in a bind, for most Pakistanis chafe at his support for U.S. policies and have a long history of friendship with Iran. Both Pakistani and Indian oil ministers have indicated that they will sign a tripartite agreement in June that will seal the Iranian pipeline project.

We might remember that in July 2001, before 9-11, the Bush administration negotiated with the Taliban to allow the pipeline through Afghanistan, had not declared Afghanistan a terrorist state and dismissed al-Qaida as a nuisance.

Brazil has decided to enrich its uranium and denied the IAEA inspections other than of the uranium going in the centrifuge process and the end product. Brazil brags about its self-sufficiency in oil yet feels a need for nuclear energy to augment its electricity production. Iran is in exactly the same position but denied the ability to have nuclear-generated electricity — a right that doesn’t violate the nonproliferation treaty or international law.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, has revealed that in 2003 Iran made an offer through the Swiss Embassy to our representative in Iran. It was signed by all Iranian top officials. It offered to negotiate the nuclear issue and Iran’s alleged support for terrorism as a response to Powell’s public demand. Powell was left hanging in the wind and the administration berated the Swiss Embassy for sending it.

This is what passes for diplomacy in the White House.

The House has just passed a resolution, the so-called Iran Freedom Support Act, that declares it is the policy of the United States to deny Iran the ability to support acts of international terrorism by limiting the development of Iran’s ability to explore for, extract, refine or transport by pipeline petroleum resources.” (emphasis added)

Apparently “free trade, open markets and globalization” are just empty phrases when U.S. monopolies on oil purchase and sales or pipeline routes are involved. China, India, Russia and perennial bogeyman Venezuela have expressed interest in euro trade in oil. Astute Americans are running up the price of gold.

Is anyone listening?

[…]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/

You bet.

by Mike Whitney

http://www.opednews.com

If one day the world’s largest oil producers demanded euros for their barrels, “it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike.” Bill O’Grady, A.G. Edwards commodities analyst

“Everybody knows the real reason for American belligerence is not the Iranian nuclear program, but the decision to launch an oil bourse where oil will be traded in euros instead of US dollars….The oil market will break the dominance of the dollar and lead to a decline of global American hegemony.” Igor Panarin, Russian political scientist

Overnight the story of Iran’s proposed oil bourse has slipped into the mainstream press exposing the real reasons behind Washington’s ongoing hostility towards Tehran. Up to this point, analysts have brushed aside the importance of the upcoming oil-exchange as a Leftist-Internet conspiracy theory unworthy of further consideration. Now, the Associated Press has clarified the issue showing that an Iran oil bourse “could lead central bankers around the world to convert some of their dollar reserves into euros, possibly causing a decline in the dollar’s value”.

Currently, the world is drowning in dollars, even a small movement could trigger a massive recession in the United States. There’s nothing remotely “conspiratorial” about this. It is simply a matter of supply and demand. If the oil bourse creates less demand for the dollar, the value of the dollar will sink accordingly; pushing energy, housing, food and other prices higher.

Oil has been linked to the dollar since the 1970s when OPEC agreed to denominate it exclusively in dollars. This provided the US a virtual monopoly which has allowed it to run huge account deficits without fear of crippling interest rate hikes. As Bill O’ Grady of A.G.Edwards said, “If OPEC decided they didn’t want dollars anymore, it would be the end of American hegemony by signaling the end to the dollar as the sole reserve currency.”

“If the dollar lost its status as the world’s reserve currency, that would force the United States to fund it massive account deficit by running a trade surplus, which would increase inflationary pressures.” (Associated Press)

There’s no prospect of the US running a trade surplus anytime soon. Bush has savaged the manufacturing sector outsourcing over 3 million jobs and shutting down plants across the country. His short-sighted “free trade” policies and enormous tax cuts for the rich ensure that Americans will be left to face skyrocketing energy costs and a hyper-inflationary greenback. There’s no way we can retool fast enough to “manufacture our way” out of the quagmire of red ink.

Currently, the national debt is a whopping $8.4 trillion with an equally harrowing $800 billion trade deficit. (7% of GDP) The ever-increasing demand for the greenback in the oil trade is the only thing that has kept the dollar from freefalling to earth. Even a small conversion to euros will erode the dollar’s value and could precipitate a sell-off.

Presently, oil is sold exclusively on the London Petroleum Exchange and the New York Mercantile Exchange both owned by American investors. If the bourse opens, central banks around the world will reduce their stockpiles of dollars to maintain a portion of their currency in euros. This is the logical step for Europe which buys 70% of Iran’s oil. It is also the reasonable choice for Russia which sells two-thirds of its oil to Europe but (amazingly) continues to denominate those transactions in dollars.

Washington has succeeded in maintaining its monopoly by propping up the many corrupt and repressive regimes in the Gulf States. The prudent choice for Saudi Arabia would be to move away from the debt-ridden dollar and enhance its earnings with the stronger euro. Regrettably, Uncle Sam has a gun to their head. They understand that such a transition would invite the same response that Saddam got 6 months after he converted to euros and was removed through “shock and awe”.

Regardless, of the outcome, the profligate spending, budget-busting tax cuts, and the shocking increase in the money supply (the Fed has doubled the money supply in one decade) has the greenback headed for the dumpster. Already, China and Japan (who hold an accumulated $1.7 trillion in US securities and currency) are gradually moving away from the dollar towards the euro (although the Fed has blocked the public from knowing the extent of the damage by abandoning the M-3 publication of inflows) The European Central Bank (ECB) and Japan’s central bank are frantically trying to conceal the probability of a dollar collapse by issuing carefully worded statements to allay public fears while they to prepare for an “orderly” retreat.

But, it won’t be “orderly”. The dollar has lost 5% against the euro since April and is quickly headed south. The Iran bourse could be the final jolt that pushes the greenback over the edge. This is the bitter lesson for those who choose to ignore economic fundamentals and build their house on sand. Paul Volcker anticipated this scenario in a speech last year when he said that account imbalances were as great as he had ever seen and predicted “a 75% chance of a dollar crash in the next 5 years”.

Volcker is right, but economic advisor, Peter Grandich summarized it even better when he opined, “The only one who doesn’t know the US dollar is dead is the US dollar.”

Prepare for the requiem. […]

Opednews

My emphasis, right in the middle.

Can you say ’20AC‘? Not a single bullet need be fired. No marching, no shouting…

And you can bring their house DOWN.

Stable. Horse. Bolted.
Pandora. Box. Opened.

WASHINGTON–Democratic and Republican politicians on Thursday both promised to enact new federal laws by the end of the year that would restrict some commercial uses of Social Security numbers, which are often implicated in identity fraud cases.

“Whether Social Security numbers should be sold by Internet data brokers to anyone willing to pay, indistinguishable from sports scores or stock quotes… to me, that’s a no-brainer,” Texas Republican Joe Barton, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, said at a hearing. Such a practice should not be allowed, he said, “period, end of debate.”

In both the House and the Senate, there are at least three pieces of pending legislation that propose different approaches to restricting the use and sale of SSNs. Politicians have expressed astonishment at what they see as a rising identity fraud problem, frequently pointing to a 2003 Federal Trade Commission survey that estimated nearly 10 million consumers are hit by such intrusions each year.

One bill, sponsored by Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, would require the FTC to make new rules limiting the sale and purchase of those identifiers, with exceptions for law enforcement, public health, certain emergency situations and selected research projects.

Another measure, sponsored by Florida Republican Clay Shaw, would restrict the display of SSNs on credit reports and on various government-issued documents and identification tags. It would also make it illegal in certain cases for anyone to refuse to do business with people who decline to supply their SSNs.

Testifying at Thursday’s hearing, FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz stopped short of endorsing either bill, but he readily acknowledged that the identifiers “are overused, and they are underprotected.”

“Users of Social Security numbers should migrate toward using less-sensitive identifiers whenever possible,” he said, adding that companies also need to do more to protect the data they possess.

The SSN hasn’t always had such broad applications. Back in 1935, Congress first directed the Social Security Administration to develop an accounting system to track payments to the fund. Out of that mandate came a unique identifier that has ultimately found applications in everything from issuing food stamps to tracking down money launderers.

One use of particular concern to the privacy community is the vast databases compiled by commercial “data brokers” about the American population that financial institutions can use to verify identities. One such company, ChoicePoint, grabbed headlines last year after a breach of its database came to light. That incident and other high-profile breaches unleashed a number of proposals in Congress, some of which target what some deem unregulated data brokers.

The controversy over the connection between SSNs and identity fraud is hardly new, and a number of states have already enacted restrictions in that area. Several federal laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA, also include restrictions on use and disclosure of the identifiers.

As they pursue new laws, politicians said they’re facing a difficult “balancing act” between rooting out abuses of Social Security numbers and protecting uses that tax collectors, the financial sector and law enforcement officials, among others, claim are invaluable.

Numerous industries have found a number of “beneficial uses” for SSNs, said Oliver Ireland, who testified on behalf of the Financial Services Coordinating Council. That group represents trade associations for the banking, securities, and insurance industries.

The numbers, for instance, “are critical for fraud detection,” Ireland said in prepared testimony.

Also on Thursday, a California Senate committee approved an identity fraud bill that would improve state residents’ ability to freeze their own credit reports when mischief is suspected. […]

News . Com

So.

In a country where no one has the equivalent of an SSN, NeuLabour in its infinte wisdom wants to roll one out, so that every bad thing that happens with SSNs in the USA can be replicated here.

Only the most stupid or totally ignorant person thinks that the NIR and ID Card are a good thing. By not introducing this nonsense to the UK, the British will be far more protected from ID fraud than almost any other country. The British will be able to control and manage their identities,  minimise the repair time caused by fraudsters and generally have a much more free society.

Dear Friend,

Yesterday the nation learned that American telephone companies are helping the government amass what one source called “the largest database ever assembled,” compiling call information on millions of consumers and businesses served by Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth. Take action now!

Scrambling to defend his program, President Bush told reporters “we’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” but that’s simply not true.

This illegal spying is not only directed toward terror suspects or international calls, as the Bush administration has frequently claimed. With the help of these phone companies, the government is tracking the calls and communications of millions of ordinary Americans. And that’s just plain wrong.

The government shouldn’t track when you call your mother, order pizza, or hold a conference call — and your phone service provider shouldn’t help them without a warrant or Congress’ approval.

Send these companies a message today. Sign our petition at http://action.aclu.org/dontspy and tell them you expect your phone records to be held in the strictest privacy.

We’ll be delivering these petitions directly to AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.

You’ll be hearing more about this consumer campaign in the days and weeks to come. The ACLU and its members will do whatever it takes to rally consumer voices against these abuses of power. There will be much more for us all to do.

This is obviously the wrong thing to do.

The RIGHT thing to do is have a ‘National Day of No Calls’ Where everyone vows not to use the phone except in an emergency for an entire day.

This should continue untill the telephone services install iron clad guarantees that they will not allow access to your call logs. Should they fail to do this, then everyone should move to Qwest, who refused to obey the NSA. Qwest should be financially rewarded for sticking up for their customers.

This is the sort of thing the ACLU should be organizing, not more pathetic and useless petitions, that do nothing but suck up the anger energy of all those whose privacy is being violated.

The ACLU has confimation that the US DHS has been sharing PNR information from EU flights despite assurances it would not do so.

With an NIR linked passport it will become possible for agencies such as the DHS to request NIR (i.e. 2011 Census, etc.) information on ‘suspected individuals’ via their passport details gathered at border controls and this is followed up by an NIR request either directly or via SOCA. Say for instance if you do not stay at the address they requested you provide (maybe because it was a poor hotel, or your hosts take you on a surprise road trip, …).

Nevermind the fact that these people will likely be keeping the data they can glean from passports anyway. So information sufficient to access your NIR entry (in perpetuity) will be in the hands of whichever agency the DHS wants to share it with, beyond the scrutiny and accountability of UK data protection laws. There will be people in these agencies (and DHS) willing to sell such information and the cloak of government secrecy (in the name of security) will help them.

These are just the people you’re asked to trust!!!

Session acoustique de Scritti PolittiGreen packed his guitar and trundled off to lovely Paris in summerlike spring to do an acoustic session at Radio Planet Claire. You can visit the, ehm, rather quaint website and listen to the live stream at the 57 minute mark. Or you can just listen here!

Songs played: Snow In Sun, Robin Hood, Road To No Regret.

green-songs_planet_claire.mp3

http://bibbly-o-tek.com/2006/05/11/session-acoustique-de-scritti-politti/

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA08117.mov

A beautiful rendering of the Huygens probe decent. With Bells and Whistles.

Okay as i mentioned earlier it is perfectly feasible to keep personal taxation at the local level, this would allow a more locally accountable spending of tax revenue etc, etc.
Now what if we increased that decentralisation further and said that individuals could offset direct contributions to local services against their tax. To keep things simple we don’t do this for basic rate tax payers. But for other tax bands you could allow a third-to-a-half of the tax burden to directly fund local services. To prevent fraudulent charities springing up this would be from a list audited (but not prescribed) by local government.

Why bother? Because such an approach could engender a philanthropic mindset amongst the majority of the population, people would be able to determine how their taxes are spent i.e. tax spending becomes more democratic. Service providers will become directly accountable to tax payers who will can legitimately demand to see how their tax money is used – if it is spent well the services are likely to get similar contributions the next year if not the money will likely go elsewhere.
Once you get people into a philanthropic mindset when they have small amounts of money to allocate to services and if this is seen as an opportunity not a burden then I believe they will be more likely to pursue such philanthropy (bolstering services that they may have previously allocated money to) if they become more affluent.

And why would common philanthropy be advantageous – because dispersed spending increases the likelihood of money being spent productively on services, rather than on schemes which bolster the State and its networks of favoured contractors and consultancies.

Well well well; another instance of everything being moved to a centralized database. Note how it says that the paperwork is not proof of you having your MOT, the only proof being held at the computer itself. If that is the case, why issue the certificate at all?

Clearly this is the desired end result of the NIR rollout; only your entry at the NIR will be taken as proof of your identity, presentation of a card will not be enough. The reason that will be given will be as follows:

• Cut down on ID theft and ID fraud
• Provide better information and protection for busineses when they give you service
• Improve the standards and consistency of ID verification
• Enable you to pay your tax automatically

If you want to rent a room to someone and want to be sure that they do not have a criminal record, we suggest that you use the new internet or telephone services. Think that this is a way out extrapolation? The Identity service already touts this as one of the things it will do for you, and it gives the example of a parent wanting to check if a potential nanny has a criminal record or not. They WILL allow you to do this by telephone, because the demand for this service will be so great it will be impossible to put people in charge of handling the requests.

Now, on to the subject of the MOT itself. On the reverse of this leaflet, it says that:

The MOT test is not a substitute for regular servicing, and passing the MOT test does not mean that your vehicle will remain safe for the following twelve months.

So, what on earth is the MOT actually for? It is not a guarantee of safety, it cannot be relied upon by a third party, so why are you compelled to do it every 12 months? It is totally absurd, and another tax, plain and simple.

Other countries do very well without this pointless exam; its just another way to fleece the car driving population.

You should not have to pay for an MOT unless you are getting something in return. That means that it should be voluntary, and that if you do decide to get an MOT, HMG should underwrite your car for faults for a period of time. ‘Not going to happen’ I hear you cry. I agree. Government has no business doing anything like the MOT.

But you know this.

This man:

… is now in charge of UK transport policy. He is “a professional politician, whose rise in Labour ranks has been relentless, from the moment he started to work as a researcher for Gordon Brown in 1990“.

A professional politicain. Uber-Gimp, he will dress in your favoured costume and perform un-nameable feats for your delight as long as it progresses his career.

He has no background in transport, knows nothing of running multi-billion pound turnover enterprises. Yet he now sets UK transport policy.

Uber-Gimp, most importantly, does not have the best interests of the public at heart. For one, he has no heart. And two, he does not believe he serves the public, despite being nominally a public servant. He believes, in fact, that the public are fortunate to have him to run their pathetic little lives for them.

Uber-Gimp believes only he can Make Life Better©.

And his first declaration is: to announce a £10m fund for the development of nationwide road charging schemes.

He hopes new technology will allow drivers to be charged by the mile.

[…]

What new technology, pray tell? Without even unwrapping our crystal ball we see through the swirling mists to a near-future Utopia, where your car is registered via the DVLA to your NIR entry.

In this heavenly, terror-free, fraudless hinterland every journey you make will be logged as your number plate is scanned at every junction.

Imagine the freedom that comes with such luxury! Imagine, some other upwardly-mobile Gimp sat at a console somewhere diligently refusing road access to all the undesirables. Imagine…

Addendum:

“A professional politician is a professionally dishonourable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.”

Uber-Gimp.

H L Mencken said it better.

>> When I use a shop with the “swipe and dock” design card readers (such
>> > > as Tesco) that read your magstripe, chip and ask for a PIN, I despair
>> > > that so many consumers are being taught to accept having their cards
>> > > skimmed in this way.
>> > >
>> > >
> > The PIN is encrypted in the keypad. So do the reports say how it has
> > been recovered?

It is not encrypted in the keypad under the SDA system used in the UK. (There is a more expensive DDA system in which it is encrypted, using the card’s public key, but UK banks prefer not to pay an extra dollar for cards that are capable of public key crypto.)

The effect is that the PIN travels in the clear from the Tesco PIN pad to the swipe-and-dock reader on the side of the checkout girl’s PC. So it can be captured by the PC software, along with the transaction data (which even in the case of a chip[ transaction contains all the information you need to clone a mag stripe card). In consequence I will not use a card at Tesco.

It’s not even necessary to Trojan the keypad (and the Shell terminals were Linux-based, so might have been reflashed rather than had their hardware hacked – we’ll have to wait for the trial to find out).

The first such scam I came across was in Holland where a petrol station attendant got PINs by eyeball and for the card data from a network sniffer. That was in 1994. The same technology will still work fine today.

And I recall that when I predicted all this, a year or two ago, the APACS lady said I was speaking ‘tosh’…

You know, maybe someone should make a formal complaint to the police against APACS for fraud. Fraud is misrepresentation leading to prejudice, and 15 years of persistent lying about ATM system security – to enable their member banks to deny genuine claims from customers who have been the victims of crimes resulting from the banks’ own negligence – must surely fall within that definition.

Ross
[…]

This is yet another reason to not shop at Tesco.

News from non English speaking news sources, translated into English:

http://watchingamerica.com/index.shtml

for free.

ONE of America’s most famous fraudsters arrived in London yesterday to warn Britain about identity theft.

Frank Abagnale, 58, whose life story inspired the Leonardo DiCaprio film Catch Me If You Can, is to advise banks, utility companies and large retailers on how to combat fraud.

His advice to the Government is that identity cards will provide new and greater opportunities for identity theft. And he has told the public: never trust e-mail, buy a “criss-cross” shredder and employ a security company to monitor your bank account 24 hours a day.

Mr Abagnale’s CV includes a five-year spell in which he cashed $2.5 million (£1.3 million) from bad cheques, successfully assumed eight identities and passed himself off as a paediatrician, a lawyer and a pilot for Pan Am.

When he was finally arrested in 1969, Mr Abagnale was wanted by authorities in 26 countries and, after serving sentences in France and Sweden, was returned to the US and jailed for 12 years.

In 1974 he was released on the condition that he worked for the FBI. He has since worked for the US Government for 30 years and built a business advising American banks and companies on fraud prevention. He told The Times yesterday that identity theft, which began in America, was rapidly taking hold in Britain.

“I wrote a book about it in the 1980s,” he said. “There were few victims at that time, about 750,000. In 2000 I wrote another book called The Art of Steal. By then there were ten million victims. Now there is one every four seconds.”

In Britain, according to recent figures released by Cifas, the not-for-profit fraud prevention organisation set up by the credit card industry, identity theft rose by 17 per cent in the first three months of this year.

Besides being permanently suspicious of e-mails, Mr Abagnale said, individuals should regularly monitor their credit file — the information held by the credit reference agencies — to check which organisations have accessed it.

When destroying financial documents they should use a “criss-cross” shredder, which turns them into confetti, rather than one that cuts to strips as they can be reassembled.

In a list of 14 tips Mr Abagnale also urged people to take out “identity theft protection”. PrivacyGuard is one of a number of companies that monitor credit reports, alerting customers by text message if anyone attempts to tamper with or steal their identity.

If a theft is detected the company offers £10,000 of cover, which will also go towards the cost of reclaiming your identity. Three credit bureaus in Britain provide a similar service for between £50 and £70 a year.

Plans to introduce identity cards will be even more problematic because “there will be so much information about someone on one card”, Mr Abagnale said. “It’s more information to steal. You will be dealing with someone in a government office on a low salary. The details are going to be vulnerable. These sorts of cards are very easy to forge.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2171374,00.html

Your treatment of an educated historian is beyond belief. You have persecuted David Irving just for having a thought process that differs from yours, in other words your thought police have struck again.How dare you jail a human for expressing free thought, because as free people, free thought is our right.If you disagree with what David Irving has said then I challenge you to dabate this issue with him, i.e. a confrontation of evidence provided by both side with an independent ‘judge’. Somehow however I think you have not got the guts for that.The free world condems your thought police and your repressive thought laws.

http://www.petitiononline.com/DavidI/petition.html

The pathetic Guardian is baying for some Egyptian Bloggers to be freed from gaol and for everyone to write to the Egyptian Government to make it happen; a ‘lights on’ commenter pointed out that David Irving was in jail just for thinking wrong thoughts, and that everyone should support him also, to the usual scripted written and unwritten howls of ‘he should burn in hell’.

It does’nt work like that. Either all are free to write or none are free. You cannot selectively support freedom of speech. Of course, The Guardian considers brown skinned people, the chinese, South Americans en masse etc as a sort of pet that needs to be protected, wheras Irving is a ‘full human being’ who really ‘should know better’. That is their nature.

They should be pressing for the absurd laws in the UK to be put down. They should be pressing for David Irving to be released immediately. Better that they should solve their own problems before they tell other people how to live.

Lead by example should be the motto, but Britian can scarcely do this anymore as it turns, at the hands of a very criminal few, into the very sort of country people died to prevent it becoming.

Petrol giant Shell has suspended chip-and-pin payments in 600 UK petrol stations after more than £1m was siphoned out of customers’ accounts.

Eight people, including one from Guildford, Surrey and another from Portsmouth, Hants, have been arrested in connection with the fraud inquiry.

The Association of Payment Clearing Services (Apacs) said the fraud related to just one petrol chain.

Shell said it hoped to reintroduce chip-and-pin as soon as possible.

Plastic crime
The racket is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police cheque and plastic crime unit.

“These Pin pads are supposed to be tamper resistant, they are supposed to shut down, so that has obviously failed,” said Apacs spokeswoman Sandra Quinn.

She said Apacs was confident the problem was specific to Shell and not a systemic issue.

A Shell spokeswoman said: “Shell’s Chip & PIN solution is fully accredited and complies with all relevant industry standards.

Chip and pin cards are designed to prevent fraud

“We have temporarily suspended chip and pin availability in our UK company-owned service stations.

“This is a precautionary measure to protect the security of our customers’ transactions.
“You can still pay for your fuel, goods or services with your card by swipe and signature.
“We will reintroduce chip and pin as soon as it is possible, following consultation with the terminal manufacturer, card companies and the relevant authorities.”

Shell has nearly 1,000 outlets in the UK, 400 of which are run by franchisees who will continue to use chip-and-pin.

BP is also looking into card fraud at petrol stations in Worcestershire but it is not known if this is connected to chip-and-pin.[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4980190.stm

And of course, the braind dead imbecile ‘journalist’ who wrote this did not relate it to ID cards, which is the logical extrapolation. Let us now, BLOGDIAL style, recast it from the future:

The National Identity Authority has suspended the NIR after more than 1m identities were compromised and personal details were siphoned out of citizen’s accounts.

Eight people, including one from Guildford, Surrey and another from Portsmouth, Hants, have been arrested in connection with the hacking inquiry.

The NIR said the fraud related to a petrol chain, where the NIR terminals had been subjected to a networked hack.

The NIR said it hoped to reintroduce the Identity verification service as soon as possible.

Plastic crime
The racket is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police ID and plastic crime unit.

“These NIR terminals are supposed to be tamper resistant, they are supposed to shut down, so that has obviously failed,” said NIR spokeswoman Sandra Quinn.

She said the National Identity Authority was confident the problem was specific to Shell and not a systemic issue.

A Shell spokeswoman said: “Shell’s NIR solution is fully accredited and complies with all relevant government standards.

ID cards are designed to prevent fraud

“We have temporarily suspended NIR availability to prevent further compromise of personal information.

“This is a precautionary measure to protect the security of our citizens data.
“You can show your card for level three verification of your identity to buy fuel, goods or services with your card by swipe and signature.

“We will reintroduce full NIR service as soon as it is possible, following consultation with the terminal manufacturer, card companies and the system administrators.”

Shell has nearly 1,000 outlets in the UK, 400 of which are run by franchisees.

BP is also looking into NIR hacking at petrol stations in Worcestershire but it is not known if this is connected to the Shell hack.

heh… ‘Shell hack’!!

And there you have it. This WILL happen if the NIR is rolled out, and your data WILL be compromised if you join it.

Do not register for the NIR under any circumstances. There. I said it again.

As I sit in this cage, stressing with prisoners at a very young age thats protesting for freedom.The moon is invisible, with 4 corner walls America is miserable, she has slave them all.

Peace and love, no longer remain the best had corrupted the sanity of man.

Cage down with the key, that is thrown away with fences all around, so we won’t escape.

Capturing my freedom a day at a time that is overwhelmed by this cement, divating the mind.

Still my ambitionis optimistic is what keep me sane, with my mind realistic, that is forever the same.

This constant illumination has agitated the human species, detrimenting and corruping that individuals into picies, of freedom of thought, speech and conscious, is being control divided and conquer.

As I wake up in the morning unable to visual the sunrise I’m commanded to submit, just to stay alive.

As I write weekly letters to my mother I weep into emotion as I stare at her pictures.

Solitude has become the number one domination that compel individuals into a diabolitical segregation.

[…]

Poem by a prisoner suffering the SuperMax system in the USA.