statism watch

Deborah Smith, Sydney Morning Herald
March 10, 2009

AUSTRALIANS have been refused insurance protection because of their genetic make-up, researchers have shown in the first study in the world to provide proof of genetic discrimination.

Most cases were found to relate to life insurance. In one instance, a man with a faulty gene linked to a greater risk of breast and prostate cancer was denied income protection and trauma insurance that would have let him claim if he developed other forms of cancer.

The findings have led to renewed calls by experts for policies to ensure the appropriate use of genetic test results by the insurance industry.

The director of the Centre for Genetics Education at Royal North Shore Hospital, Kristine Barlow-Stewart, said the research also showed consumers needed to be better informed about their rights.

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BBC News
March 10, 2009

Your economies must die so that we may rise! *Not actual quote.

The world economy is likely to shrink for the first time in decades this year, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s prediction is gloomier than that the IMF’s current official forecast of 0.5% growth.

He added that trade was falling at an alarming rate and business and consumer confidence had collapsed.

He was speaking at a conference in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, to discuss how Africa should respond to the crisis.

“The IMF expects global growth to slow below zero this year, the worst performance in most of our lifetimes,” Mr Strauss-Kahn said.

The World Bank, the IMF’s sister institution, on Monday said it also expects the world economy to shrink in 2009.

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What happened to all the sunny optimism? Must be time to stampede the herd towards a global banking infrastructure as we approach the G20 meeting. Remember when Alan Greenspan’s slightest facial tic could spike the market? So what, exactly, is Bernanke doing if not deliberately destroying confidence?

BBC News
March 10, 2009

US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke says the world is suffering from the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

Mr Bernanke argues that the roots of the current global economic downturn stem from global imbalances in trade and flows of capital in the late 1990s.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, he argues that the US and its trading partners did not do enough to redress these imbalances.

He also says future economic recovery depends on financial stability.

‘Chronic’ imbalances

Mr Bernanke says the imbalances “reflect a chronic lack of saving relative to investment in the US and some other industrial countries, combined with an extraordinary increase in saving relative to investment in many emerging markets.”

As a result, saving flowed into developed economies for more than a decade, despite low interest rates, he argues.

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Flashback: UK security whitepaper urges ‘end of privacy’ | RCMP to helm a Canadian “cyber-security strategy” | Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier — Congress Reacts

Kim Zetter, Wired.com
March 10, 2009

The government’s national cybersecurity efforts would be in “grave peril” if they were dominated by the intelligence community, said Amit Yoran, former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division.

Yoran told a House subcommittee on Tuesday that although the Department of Homeland Security, which currently oversees the government’s cybersecurity efforts, has demonstrated “inefficiency and leadership failure” in those efforts, moving the cyber mission to the National Security Agency “would be ill-advised” due to the agency’s lack of transparency.

Two weeks ago, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair told the House intelligence committee that the NSA should take over government cybersecurity duties, because the agency has the smarts and the skills for the job.

But Yoran, who served at one time as CEO of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, said a cyber program overseen by the NSA would be over-classified and lack adequate oversight and review, which is needed to gain the trust of the public and private-sector partners who will be needed to secure the nation’s infrastructure.

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In other words, this is for hands free surveillance, and has nothing to do with accountability. Just look at the name: Axon. What is an axon? Axons are the ‘primary transmission lines of a nervous system’. Each device, thus, representing a single fibre in a system analogous to a neural network -  feeding into an identity database.

Flashback: UK police maintain databank on thousands of protesters

Aaron Rowe, Wired.com
March 10, 2009

Officers: Are you sick and tired of excessive force lawsuits? Well cheer up. Taser has a plan to give your police department its own CYA reality TV show.

The less-lethal weapons company has launched a wearable computer, called Axon, that will let cops record every minute of their day and upload it to a secure website. From there, they can share their favorite memories with friends, family, and jurors.

“Our Axon and Evidence.com technology will be a lifeline to protect truth,” says Steve Tuttle, the vice president of communications for Taser.

For years, cops around the world have been accused of being a little too eager to reach out and stun someone. For example, a Denver Post report found that 90 percent of the subjects tased by the police department there were unarmed. Most times, the weapon was used to “force people to obey orders, to shortcut physical confrontations and, in several cases, to avoid having to run after a suspect.” In Sarasota, officers recently tased a naked senior. In Wales, cops even zapped a bunch of sheep.

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Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian
March 10, 2009

New law would punish illegal downloading by cutting off web access

The French government has been accused of “Big Brother tactics” over a proposed anti-piracy law that aims to punish people who repeatedly illegally download music and films by cutting off their internet access for up to a year.

A bill is to be debated in parliament this week which could lead to a new surveillance agency to monitor internet users. With the help of internet service providers and tip-offs from music and film companies, those who illegally download music, films or video games would be identified. They would receive an email warning, followed by a letter, and if caught again would see their internet access cut off for up to a year.

The bill is a pet project of the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has taken advice from music and film industry leaders, who have warned that the country’s creative industries are on their knees as a result of illegal downloading. The president’s wife, the singer Carla Bruni, has long advocated a crackdown on piracy.

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CBC News
March 10, 2009

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and President Barack Obama are meeting at the White House on Tuesday to discuss strengthening ties between the international body and the United States.

Issues on the agenda focus on global security and development, with the current financial crisis and a climate treaty among the top concerns.

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Right on top of things as ever… it appears that the need to leverage the crisis to force his agenda through trumps lying about the extent of the carnage this week.

Les Whittington, Toronto Star
March 10, 2009

OTTAWA – Finance Minister Jim Flaherty today urged the Senate to quickly pass the budget bill to help Canadians cope with the current economic slump.

“This is a time of crisis for Canadians,” he told the Senate finance committee, warning the upper chamber that it must pass his budget before going on vacation next week.

Flaherty warned that the Canadian economy will have a difficult 2009 and that jobs data due later this week will be the latest evidence that it is being hit hard by the global economic slowdown.

“These numbers are not likely to be good,” Flaherty told the committee.

The market expects the data to show the economy shed 52,500 jobs in February after a drop of 129,000 jobs in January.

The key jobs report follows data released last week that showed the economy shrank sharply during the fourth quarter of 2008. Another contraction during the first quarter of 2009 is considered almost a certainty.

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Bill Schiller, Toronto Star
March 10, 2009

Beijing anniversary show puts a happy face on brutal crackdowns

BEIJING – Fifty years ago today, on March 10, 1959, Tibetans supporting the Dalai Lama launched a fateful uprising across the “the high plateau” – an uprising ultimately crushed by the Chinese army of Mao Zedong.

But yesterday, in a hall just steps from Tiananmen Square – and Mao’s glass-encased body – the battle for hearts and minds was still underway.

Viewing an exhibition mounted by the Chinese government to mark what it called the “50th Anniversary of Democratic Reforms in Tibet” – a carefully crafted retelling of the retaking of the territory – 20-year-old college student An Yiyuan was won over.

“They didn’t have freedom back then,” the second-year student from the Beijing Technology and Business University explained, having just seen the show – a dazzling display of words, photos and video. “The Tibetan people are much better off today.

“They’re as happy as we are,” she remarked.

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Flashback: Former US congresswoman, presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney barred from boarding plane to human rights conference | Retired B.C. woman surprised to find herself on international no-fly list | Montreal man changing name to escape U.S. no-fly list

Peter Eisler, USA Today
March 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — The government’s terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, up 32% since 2007.

Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations.

It’s unclear how many individuals those 33,000 records represent — the center often uses multiple entries, or “identities,” for a person to reflect variances in name spellings or other identifying information. The remaining million entries represent about 400,000 individuals, according to the center.

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