statism watch

Flashback: UK: New biometric security checks could include brain scans, heart rhythm fingerprinting | Homeland Security seeks Bladerunner-style lie detector | Researchers use brain scans to read people’s memories | UK security whitepaper urges ‘end of privacy’ | Bestiality, suicide questions OK for job applicants, Halifax concludes | ‘Pre-crime’ detector shows promise | India’s use of brain scans in courts dismays critics

Chris Gourlay, The Sunday Times
November 2, 2009

Scientists have discovered how to “read” minds by scanning brain activity and reproducing images of what people are seeing — or even remembering.

Researchers have been able to convert into crude video footage the brain activity stimulated by what a person is watching or recalling.

The breakthrough raises the prospect of significant benefits, such as allowing people who are unable to move or speak to communicate via visualisation of their thoughts; recording people’s dreams; or allowing police to identify criminals by recalling the memories of a witness.

However, it could also herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that envisaged in the Hollywood film Minority Report, in which an individual’s private thoughts can be readily accessed by the authorities.

Jack Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto, two neurologists from the University of California, Berkeley, last year managed to correlate activity in the brain’s visual cortex with static images seen by the person. Last week they went one step further by revealing that it is possible to “decode” signals generated in the brain by moving scenes.

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Flashback: UK Business Secretary sets date for blocking filesharers’ internet connections | The bait and switch: EU now to endorse internet disconnection for ‘piracy’ | UK: 70% oppose internet ban for filesharers, poll shows | Security boss calls for end to net anonymity | UN Urges International Action on Cyber Security Threat | Judge in Pirate Bay Appeal Removed for Bias | MP Charlie Angus on copyright: industry lobby pulling for ‘dead business model’ | UK Government to consider internet disconnection policy, restrictions | The dawn of Internet censorship in Germany | Pirate Bay Retrial Denied | Stockholm Court: Pirate Bay Judge ‘Unbiased’ | Next up for France: police keyloggers and Web censorship | France passes ‘three strikes’ Internet surveillance law | Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial after judge confirms ties to copyright groups | Jail terms for Pirate Bay founders, appeal in works | Cybersecurity law would give feds unprecedented net control | Do We Need a New Internet? | Protests in Australia over proposal to block Web sites | Microsoft patents web moderator robots, forbidden phrases to be memory-holed | Berners-Lee W3C Consortium to ‘Authorize’ Website Content? | Law Professor tells tech conference: plans to shut down Internet already on deck | Canada Considering “Three Strikes and You’re Out” ISP Policy

Rachel Shields, The Independent
November 1, 2009

Crackdown on music piracy could further harm ailing industry

People who illegally download music from the internet also spend more money on music than anyone else, according to a new study. The survey, published today, found that those who admit illegally downloading music spent an average of £77 a year on music – £33 more than those who claim that they never download music dishonestly.

The findings suggest that plans by the Secretary of State for Business, Peter Mandelson, to crack down on illegal downloaders by threatening to cut their internet connections with a “three strikes and you’re out” rule could harm the music industry by punishing its core customers.

An estimated seven million UK users download files illegally every year. The record industry’s trade association, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), believes this copyright infringement will cost the industry £200m this year.

The poll, which surveyed 1,000 16- to 50-year-olds with internet access, found that one in 10 people admit to downloading music illegally.

“The latest approach from the Government will not help prop up an ailing music industry. Politicians and music companies need to recognise that the nature of music consumption has changed, and consumers are demanding lower prices and easier access,” said Peter Bradwell, from the think-tank Demos, which commissioned the new poll conducted by Ipsos Mori.

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Weather modification is actually quite an old technology – and it has military applications as well. See below.

Flashback: Rutgers Professor Warns Geoengineering Could “Create Disasters,” Global Famine | China wages war on Olympic weather | Man-made clouds to change the sky | Technology Exists to Redirect Hurricanes, Naval Physicist Says | Weather War? | NASA Funds Sci-Fi Weather Control Technology | Much of Britain sprayed in secret germ warfare tests

Agency France-Presse
November 1, 2009

Chinese meteorologists covered Beijing in snow Sunday after seeding clouds to bring winter weather to the capital in an effort to combat a lingering drought, state media reported.

The unusually early snow blanketed the capital from Sunday morning and kept falling for half the day, helped by temperatures as low as minus 2 Celsius (29 Fahrenheit) and strong winds from the north, Xinhua news agency reported.

Besides falling in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the northern province of Hebei, the eastern port city of Tianjin also got its first snow of the autumn, the report said.

“We wont miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought,” the report quoted Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, as saying.

Chinese meteorologists have for years sought to make rain by injecting special chemicals into clouds.

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Flashback: Goldman Sachs breaks record with $16.7bn bonus pot | More US Bank Failures and The Coming Deposit Insurance Bailout | Arrest Over Software Illuminates Wall St. Secret | The Lords of Time: Goldman Sachs and low-latency trading | Record quarterly profits and bonuses: Goldman Sachs makes out like a bandit on taxpayer’s dime | Goldman-Sachs: Pilfered trading code could be used to ‘manipulate markets’ | Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs | Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine | 10 U.S. banks to repay U.S. bailout money | Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress | Barclays, Lloyd’s, RBS join Goldman-Sachs in the black | Goldman-Sachs to repay TARP loan, resume private operations, bonuses, at “earliest time” possible | Which Banks Will Rule? | Wall Street’s Big Takeover | Behind the panic: Financial warfare over the future of global bank power | Goldman-Sachs Alumni Hold Reins of Financial System | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda

Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers
November 1, 2009

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman’s failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion,” said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who’s proposed a massive overhaul of the nation’s banks. “This is fraud and should be prosecuted.”

John Coffee, a Columbia University law professor who served on an advisory committee to the New York Stock Exchange, said that investment banks have wide latitude to manage their assets, and so the legality of Goldman’s maneuvers depends on what its executives knew at the time.

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Flashback: Afghan leader’s corrupt brother paid by CIA, U.S. officials say | Afghanistan Drug Raid Snares Border Police Commander | Afghanistan’s Hidden Heroin Addicts | Canadian troops could soon target Afghan drug trade: top soldier | Reports reveal concerns over drug use among Canadian military | NATO to let troops fight Afghan drug lords | Karzai’s kin linked to heroin trafficking | Afghani Narco-state Continues to Blossom under Puppet President

PressTV.ir
November 1, 2009

The Afghan minister of counter narcotics says foreign troops are earning money from drug production in Afghanistan.

General Khodaidad Khodaidad said the majority of drugs are stockpiled in two provinces controlled by troops from the US, the UK, and Canada, IRNA reported on Saturday.

He went on to say that NATO forces are taxing the production of opium in the regions under their control.

Afghanistan is the world’s biggest supplier of opium.

Drug production in the Central Asian country has increased dramatically since the US-led invasion eight years ago.

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That right there, is what you might call a cynical destabilization campaign on the backs of the people who can least afford to be caught up in it. As this journal has been at some pains to point out in the past, ‘free trade’ does not involve reams of regulation, international courts, quasi-judicial processes, and intergovernmental panels. It involves – getting out of the way of the people that wish to trade. The same principle applies to questions of labour and immigration. Why are these natural movements saddled with restrictions? The answer is twofold – the artificial historic trade restrictions that have resulted in the buildup of wealth and economic privilege like a dam, denying economic flows to external states, and the historically recent phenomenon of welfare statism that buttresses internal support for the system. The suggestion, to simplify things, is that it’s like an irrigation project gone awry, where wealthy states have diverted flows leaving downstream communities parched, and building water levels up to a level that would be catastrophic were the dam to burst. So we can’t let the dam blow all at once, and since we’re a welfare state, if too many people are invited up to the public pool, we fear the amount of water in the public pool would fall below some threshold level. And, unfortunately, the distribution of water is controlled by central regulators on both sides of the dam, increasing the risk of corruption and scarcity. Neither the Canadian public nor the impoverished peoples downstream are to blame for this situation. So the question is – what is the best way to get out of corner we’ve painted ourselves into? Clearly the solution is not for agribusiness to refuse to pay Canadian labourers a living wage since it’s more convenient to import workers from afar and keep them under conditions that veer dangerously close to indentured servitude. The root of the problem is the international monetary system and its destruction of the middle class’s purchasing power. Fix that, root out corruption, extend natural human rights to all nationals, disassemble barriers to innovation, and then perhaps again we might have a nation able to welcome people that wish to build better lives for their families with more than the promise of a state handout or a slave-wage job where your employer holds your healthcard and the power to invite you back based on whether you know your place and are willing to work 72 hour weeks.

Flashback: UK: Pilot project for DNA, isotope analysis of immigrants ‘deeply flawed’ | Who counts as ‘human’?

Sandro Contenta, Laurie Monsebraaten, Toronto Star
November 1, 2009

Controversial federal program brings in foreigners for temporary jobs, but leaves them ripe for abuse

Foreigners in Canada on temporary work permits are being pushed into Toronto’s underground economy by the recession and a controversial federal program that leaves them vulnerable to abuse, a Star investigation has found.

They include people like Tony, a 29-year-old Honduran, who left his Alberta farm job after complaining of long hours and lower-than-promised wages. He rode a bus to Toronto in mid-September with two fellow Hondurans from the same farm. He now works illegally renovating homes, and his friends work illegally cleaning schools.

“I want to be someone, to do something with my life – that’s why I’m here,” says Tony, who fears being deported.

Also citing employer abuse is a Salvadoran couple fired from their Halifax hotel jobs when the woman got pregnant. They moved here to look for work in September.

In another case, 20 Filipinos arrived in Vancouver last May after each had paid a recruiter $5,000 plus airfare. But the factory where they were to work had burned down a month earlier. No one bothered to tell them, or to notify the government to cancel their work permits. At least two of them are now working illegally in Toronto.

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It would be nice to believe so.

Allan Fotheringham, Toronto Star
November 1, 2009

Visit by Charles brings obsolete connection back into political focus

Check the bling, plebes! I’m so old-school gangsta.

Finally. Finally. Finally.

At last. Next month we are going to have some help, in the visit of Prince Charles and his second wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, some useful aid in this strange little relationship with our head-of-state who lives in a castle across a large ocean.

Charles is not terribly interested in Canada – he has not been here for eight years. But I think it will, by its end, be maybe the most useful and educational experience in our decision with someone who apparently (supposedly) will become King of Canada.

In the 1980s, this scribbler was stationed for five years in Washington. It is, in fact, an artificial capital in that – unlike natural capitals such as London, Paris or Rome that represent their essential populace makeup – the majority of the population is black, far outnumbering the white folk who are the politicians, the government workers, the lobbyists.

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And he’ll stamp his little feet, too.

Flashback: French troops were killed after Italy hushed up ‘bribes’ to Taleban | Italian dictator Mussolini was British WWI agent | Italian businessman claims he provided women for parties held by Berlusconi | Anti-G8 demonstrators clash with police in Italy | Author wins award for work identifying categories of state corruption | Ex-Italian President: Provocateur Riots Then “Beat The Shit Out Of Protesters” | Italian Judge: Blogs are Illegal | Troops patrolling Italian cities alongside police | Berlusconi puts 2,500 troops on streets of Italian cities to patrol alongside police | Ex-Italian President: Intel Agencies Know 9/11 An Inside Job

Richard Rogers, The Observer
November 1, 2009

The law granting him immunity from prosecution has been lifted but Berlusconi insists forthcoming trials will not oust him

The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has insisted he will stay in office even if he is convicted in one of the trials in which he is a defendant.

After a summer of sex scandals and legal wrangling, Berlusconi faces two trials, following a decision by the country’s top court to lift his immunity from prosecution and allow proceedings against him to resume.

In one case, due to start on 16 November, he is accused of tax fraud and false accounting in the management of his media companies. In a separate trial, whose next hearing is due on 27 November, Berlusconi is charged with paying a $600,000 (£363,121) bribe to British lawyer David Mills to withhold incriminating details of his business dealings.

“I still have faith in the existence of serious magistrates who hand down serious verdicts, based on facts,” said Berlusconi, according to excerpts of a forthcoming book that were released yesterday. “If there were a conviction in trials like these, we would be facing such a big subversion of the truth that I would feel even more duty bound to stay in my post to defend democracy and the rule of law.”

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Flashback: EU agrees to pay developing countries ‘climate aid’ to pass Copenhagen | Copenhagen’s Plans for a New ‘Government’ are Scary | Copenhagen, carbon, and the global corporate agenda | Lord Nicholas Stern: The world’s future is being decided this weekend | Thatcher science adviser: Copenhagen goal is world government | UN plans ’shock therapy’ for world leaders at Copenhagen summit | German Scientists Call for ‘World Climate Bank’ | G8 Summit: Rich nations to pay green tab | US Congress Passes the 1,200-page Climate Bill that it was not allowed to read | Climate Cops To Fine “Wasteful” Homeowners & Businesses | Obama targets US public with call for climate action | Obama to stake reputation on fast-tracked climate bill | Ontario unveils cap-and-trade legislation | Economic stabilization may rely on carbon economy, economist says | Climate panel presses for federal cap-and-trade system | NRTEE Carbon Market Panel is ‘Round Table on Socialist Planning’ | Obama, Gore, tied to Chicago carbon exchange | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | Time to emulate Roosevelt’s New Deal and create green jobs | EU calls for global carbon trading system to fight climate change

Richard Black, BBC News
November 1, 2009

Dried mud, a potent indicator of climate change.

The week’s session is the final chance for negotiators to hammer out a text before December’s Copenhagen summit

In recent weeks, UN officials have declared there is no chance of agreeing all elements of a new legally-binding UN treaty before the end of the year.

But they are still hoping to agree [on] major elements of a treaty to supplant the Kyoto Protocol.

The main areas where big divisions remain include:

• the extent to which developed countries should cut their greenhouse gas emissions
• how much money rich nations should contribute to help poorer ones reduce their emissions and adapt to climate impacts
• how far developing countries will go in constraining the rise in their greenhouse gas emissions

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Hail King Karzai!

Flashback: Afghan probe voids thousands of Karzai votes | Afghan election appears headed to a second round | I was ordered to cover up President Karzai election fraud, sacked UN envoy says | EU observers say a third of Karzai’s votes might be suspect due to fraud | Afghan vote called ‘mockery’ | Accusations over Afghan vote rigging | Has Karzai overstayed his welcome? | Britain and US prepared to open talks with the Taliban | Afghan President Karzai registers for re-election, picks warlord as running mate | Afghanistan needs 4,000 extra soldiers for elections: NATO | Canadian troops could soon target Afghan drug trade: top soldier | Reports reveal concerns over drug use among Canadian military | Afghan government sacks Kandahar governor | US faces downward spiral in Afghan war, says leaked intelligence report | NATO to let troops fight Afghan drug lords | Karzai’s kin linked to heroin trafficking | Afghani Narco-state Continues to Blossom under Puppet President

CBC News
November 1, 2009

President Hamid Karzai’s challenger has withdrawn from next weekend’s run-off election — effectively handing the incumbent a victory — but Abdullah Abdullah stopped short of calling on his supporters to boycott the vote.

The country’s former foreign minister announced his decision on Sunday, saying Karzai turned down his proposals to prevent fraud in the run-off, scheduled for Nov. 7 in the wake of widespread claims of fraud during initial balloting in August.

“As far as I’m concerned, the decision I have reached is not to participate,” Abdullah later told reporters. “I have strong, strong reservations about the credibility of the process.”

Abdullah had complained that Karzai turned down his demands for changes in the Independent Election Commission and other measures that Abdullah said would prevent massive fraud in the second round of balloting.

Abdullah stopped short of calling for an electoral boycott and urged his followers “not to go to the streets, not to demonstrate.”

Azizullah Lodin, the head of the Karzai-appointed commission, said he would have to confer with constitutional lawyers before deciding later Sunday whether the run-off would proceed without Abdullah.

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