statism watch

Protection of Iceland’s sovereignty by ‘sacrificing’ ties with the IMF is likely a good thing, given the IMF’s parasitic nature and history of corruption. Maybe they’ll really wake up and abolish that central bank as well.

Flashback: Icelandic parliament rolls over, votes for EU membership | Iceland to be fast-tracked into the EU | Iceland’s government collapses | In Iceland, the heat is on | Police fire pepper spray at Iceland protesters | Icelanders storm central bank in protest | Iceland inflation soars to 17.1% | 5 injured during protest in Iceland over economic meltdown

Jeff Gray, The Globe and Mail
January 5, 2009

Country’s people have tough choice to make in referendum — agree to repay the money, or say no and risk cementing the country’s status as an international deadbeat

Until Tuesday, Olafur Grimsson’s role as president of Iceland was largely ceremonial. Suddenly, it’s worth billions.

In a twist to the island nation’s much-watched struggle to cope with its massive debt, Mr. Grimsson blocked a $5-billion (U.S.) deal to pay Britain and the Netherlands for losses suffered by depositors in one of Iceland’s banks.

The move drew outrage around the world, and handed the country’s people a tough choice to make in a referendum — agree to repay the money, or say no and risk cementing the country’s status as an international deadbeat.

Icelanders, resentful at paying for their banks’ failings amid a crumbling economy, are widely expected to deliver a resounding “No.” One recent opinion poll suggests 70 per cent of the country’s 320,000 people would oppose the settlement.

Such an outcome could imperil an International Monetary Fund bailout for Iceland, delay the next phase of $2.6-billion in loans from the country’s Nordic neighbours, and harm talks to bring Iceland into the European Union.

It would also leave Iceland as an economic, not just a geographic, island, Britain warned.

“The Icelandic people … would effectively be saying that Iceland does not want to be part of the international financial system,” Britain’s Financial Services Minister Paul Myners said.

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Naked body scans implemented, check. So here’s one of the next phases of the high tech control grid, and it won’t take that long before we see this sort of thing massively expanding here also, now that we’ve displayed our willingness to submit to the creeping vanguards of tyranny. Look, the US has already announced that if they suspect you of an offence at the border, they’ll take your DNA. Your new CSIS head wants biometrics to go in – among other things that means fingerprinting, nation. And here we are – trusting, peaceful, with no idea of what’s coming down the road. This is how freedom dies. You are the target, you, the taxpayers – not the executors of staged terror events. It’s you the state wants to control.

Flashback: UK Police routinely arresting people to get DNA, inquiry claims | UK: Terror ’suspects’ could remain on DNA database for life, innocents get 6 years | UK: Home Office climbs down over keeping DNA records on innocent | UK: Police ‘must purge innocent DNA’ | UK: Police ‘arrest innocent youths for their DNA’, officer claims | UK: Fury as Commons denied vote on DNA database | UK: DNA details of 1.1m children on database | Controversial US measure would require DNA sampling at arrest | Police to demand blood, urine at roadside stops | Newborn Blood-Storage Law Stirs Fears of DNA Warehouse | Man spends 18 hours in police cell and has his DNA taken for ‘dropping an apple core’ | Widen DNA dragnet: Police Chief Blair

Alan Travis, The Guardian
January 5, 2010

Spokesman seeks to defend controversial database before Commons home affairs select committee

Only 33,000 of the 4.9m crimes the police recorded last year were solved as a result of a match on the national DNA database, police admitted today . [Ed. Note: That's six tenths of one percent.]

However, Chief Constable Chris Sims, the Association of Chief Police Officers’ spokesman on the DNA database, told MPs it had played a much more significant part in the detection of serious and specific offences. He said DNA matches had played a crucial role in solving up to 40% of detected burglaries.

Sims, the West Midlands chief constable, was defending the rapid growth of the police DNA database in England and Wales, and the continued retention of DNA profiles of innocent people who have been arrested but never convicted of an offence.

He was giving evidence to an inquiry by the Commons home affairs select committee inquiry into the DNA database, which is the largest in Europe. Sims admitted there wide variations in the approaches of the 43 chief constables across England and Wales to requests from innocent people for the removal of their DNA profiles.

Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, challenged senior police officers over the “negligible” rate of DNA detections, saying this amounted to only 0.67% of recorded crime.

He also raised concerns that the government’s latest crime and security bill, which will put the deletion from the database of DNA of innocent people on a statutory basis, may not reach the statute book this side of the general election.

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The privacy concerns have not been addressed. You’ve simply been offered a compromise and told privacy isn’t a concern, to get enough of you to stand down and not protest this treatment. The ‘underwear bomber’ was transparently a staged event to provide the pretext for these machines. (Enter StatismWatch’s thread on that farce here.) If you submit to this now, a virtual strip search, you’ll submit to anything. And there hasn’t even been any coverage of the studies suggesting exposure to this energy could be harmful! The moral stance is to resist and refuse.

Flashback: UK: New scanners break child porn laws | US implements travel profiling: Tougher air screening for ’security-risk’ countries | UK: Full-body scanners being ordered for airports, says Gordon Brown | Group slams Chertoff on conflict of interest in scanner promotion | The ‘Israelification’ of airports: High security, little bother | Underwear Bomber Renews Calls for ‘Naked Scanners’ | Federal Privacy Commissioner raises alarm over terror security measures | Privacy watchdog OKs ‘naked’ airport scanners | Security may soon test ‘virtual strip search’ at large Canadian aiports | US Border Guards to Expand Use of X-Ray Body Scanners | Homeland Security seeks Bladerunner-style lie detector | Greyhound introduces security screening of passengers, bans fruit, carry-ons | Germany rejects full-body scans at airports | Interpol wants facial recognition database to catch suspects | ‘Pre-crime’ detector shows promise | Eye scans, fingerprints to control NZ borders | Air passengers to undergo ‘virtual strip search’ | US Homeland Security Keen on ‘Novel’ Israeli Airport Security Technology | Israel startup uses behavioral science to identify terrorists | Airport scanner a ‘virtual strip search’

CBC News
January 5, 2010

Dozens of body scanners will be installed in Canadian airports to comply with new U.S. security protocols, the federal government confirmed Tuesday.

Rob Merrifield, minister of state for transport, said 44 scanners ordered on Tuesday will be used on passengers selected for secondary screening at Canadian airports.

CBC News has confirmed that the machines, which can scan through clothing, be installed in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.

The system, tested over the last year in British Columbia at the Kelowna Airport, allows a screening officer to see whether someone is carrying plastic explosives or other dangerous items.

The plan to use the technology has stirred controversy because the scanner produces a three-dimensional outline of a person’s naked body. [Ed. Note: And you can see everything.]

Privacy concerns addressed

Chantal Bernier, the assistant privacy commissioner, said in October the national air-security agency had successfully answered her office’s questions about the project. Under the plan approved by the privacy chief, the officer would view the image in a separate room and never see the actual traveller.

Only people singled out for extra screening would be scanned, and they would have the option of getting a physical search instead.

Merrifield and Transport Minister John Baird said after an individual has successfully passed through the scanning, the information and images will not be stored, transmitted or printed in keeping with Canada’s privacy laws. [Ed. Note: For now. And then there's those employees with access to the data while it is on the system...]

The scanners cost $250,000 each, including parts and training. The first 12 scanners ordered will arrive next week, said Baird, with the remaining 32 coming over the next six to 10 weeks.

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That’s dirty pool, but granted, another wiley extra-parliamentary move on the part of the Cons to tip the playing field in their favour. So is that the stench of a spring election in the air?

Flashback: PM suspends Parliament | Proroguing Parliament not ruled out: Harper | MPs from all four parties ink secret deal on cash | Lax rules on political financing No. 1 global corruption threat: report | Decision to prorogue parliament sets ‘very dangerous’ precedent: constitutional expert | Author wins award for work identifying categories of state corruption | Tories admit to using regional funds for federal campaign last election | Tories announced $8.8B in spending before election call | Another Conservative candidate attacks ‘in-out’ ad scheme | Donations of money, property and services continue to corrupt Canadian politics

The Canadian Press
January 5, 2010

Elections Canada is reviewing the implications of a court ruling that effectively raises the campaign spending limits for the major federal political parties.

The New Year’s Eve judgment by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice sided with the Conservative Party – and agreed the party must be allowed to repay taxpayers $591,000 in GST rebates from the 2004 and 2006 federal elections.

The Conservatives voluntarily called themselves out more than a year ago on what they described as a case of “rebate double-dipping.” Justice Herman Wilton-Siegel concurred.

“I conclude that general election expenses must be presented net of any GST rebate to the extent required by (generally accepted accounting principles),” he wrote in his judgment.

Wilton-Siegel ruled that Parliament never intended to treat the GST rebate for non-profit organizations – including political parties – as a “subsidy.”

Rather, he wrote, the rebate is “simply a mechanism for administering the stipulated rate of tax” for such groups. The practical impact, the judge noted, will be to increase the amount parties can spend in future elections.

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