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ID cards on track for 2009 as procurement begins

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

Procurement process finally gets underway but questions remain over the technical “nuts and bolts” of the project

By James Murray

The government has confirmed that it remains on track to deliver the first ID cards by 2009 after it finally began the procurement process for the £5.5bn project.

After months of delays, which had led to speculation that the controversial project would be further downgraded following the decision last year to ditch some of the biometric data originally planned for the card, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has published a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union inviting expressions of interest from potential suppliers.

The move paves the way for a Framework Agreement, which will see the IPS settle on a list of pre-qualified suppliers and contract terms for the ID card project and related Home Office initiatives to enhance passport security.

The IPS said it was seeking suppliers with “the ability to deliver large, complex, secure systems; to manage these systems to deliver reliable performance day after day; [and] to respond flexibly as requirements and priorities evolve” .

IPS chief executive James Hall said that the procurement strategy had been developed following lengthy consultation with potential suppliers. “Feedback from the supplier community has shaped our approach to procurement and will ensure we have a competitive process that enables innovative solutions and value for money,” he said. “I am confident that the supplier community will step up to the mark in helping us construct this key national asset.”

A spokesman for IT trade body Intellect welcomed the move, claiming the start of the procurement process should bring to an end damaging speculation about contract size and terms and deliver “greater clarity to the market”.

“We expect there will be significant interest from companies of all sizes in this procurement and we hope that all involved in the scheme continue to engage with the industry to ensure the successful delivery of this programme,” the spokesman added.

However, any businesses hoping that the start of the procurement process would herald the release of more information on how they could exploit the ID card project are likely to be disappointed, according to Simon Davies, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics’ Department of Information Systems and a staunch critic of the government’s ID card programme.

“The procurement document leaves a great deal of scope for alteration and doesn’t tell us a great deal about the nuts and bolts of the project,” Davies observed. “It could be argued that this is right and proper as it should be more of a feasibility assessment at this stage, but the impression is that the people running the project still don’t exactly know what the real world applications will be.”

Davies added that until more details are disclosed on the technology’s functionality and how businesses and public sector agencies can interface with the register, IT chiefs will find it impossible to ascertain how their organisations can make use of the ID cards.

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MICROCHIPPING CHILDREN FOR THEIR ‘SAFETY’

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

By Tom Shelley

Last month’s ‘appeal’ to identify technologies that could prevent child abduction has moved forward rapidly

In a letter published last month, prompted by the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, design engineer Peter Fitzsimmons challenged Eureka readers to come up with a device to track lost children. Several readers have written with suggestions – two RFID-based ideas, one of which is in production, are highlighted here.
At the same time, two competing satellite-based systems – one British, one French – have also been launched recently.
Maidstone-based Blue Tree Services launched its OurKids child tracking system in the UK and Ireland earlier this year. The device comes in two parts: children wear the Blueranger unit, supplied with a belt similar to a money belt or with a pocket that can be attached to any item. Parents track their child’s movements through BlueMap software either on the internet or via a hand-held PDA. The latter shows its location as well as that of the monitored units.
The portable units use GPS and the cell phone network to send positioning information – accurate within 4m – to secure servers. These then relay information, which shows the unit location within the UK or Europe.
The company says: “Although it has been possible for people to carry alarms for some time, these were either linked to a physical location or allowed for only single location requests. With OurKids, continuous tracking avoids the problems associated with not having a ‘position fix’ at critical moments – there is always a ‘breadcrumb trail’.”
The units incorporate a movement sensor, which detects whether it is being worn –and not left in backpack at a friend’s house – or if it has suffered a shock such as a fall.
Parents can also set up boundaries through GPS mapping. The system alerts them if the child moves beyond a predetermined area. Height can also be set as a parameter – perhaps to ensure the child isn’t taking part in a dangerous Quidditch match? Other features include an emergency alarm, which lets children tell parents if they are in trouble.
Managing director Mike Smuts said: “We have seen a huge demand for this product from across all sectors of society. This is a robust and easy to wear product. It’s good to know that parents can allow their children a little more freedom and at the same time manage their independence.”
French firm Car Telematics has a long waiting list for its Kiditel device according to the BBC. It will be released in the UK soon, and can be put in a pocket or bag. The GPS tracking device beams satellite images of a child’s location to the home computer. It has an SOS button, which sends an SMS and position coordinates to a predefined mobile number if the child is in trouble. A parent can call the child back to find out what the problem is.
Development director Franck Spinelli told the BBC that the Kiditel was popular with parents of young children.
Neither of these devices would prevent a kidnapping, and there would be nothing to stop the abductor disposing of the device once found on the child. However, both systems could give police vital information on the child’s whereabouts before he or she went missing.
Reader Paul Clarke proposed an RFID solution, which could overcome these difficulties. Citing the current level of integration of CCTV systems, he says: “If there was a similar initiative to link the RFID systems used by shops to catch shoplifters, it would be possible to search for an RFID tag that could be surgically implanted under a child’s skin or inserted into the fabric of their clothing.
“Potentially this could be an international initiative that would mean that if an abductor attempted to take a chipped child into a store that subscribed to the service, store detectives would be notified and by cross-referencing with CCTV footage one could determine the identity of the individual [abducting a child].”
Surgically implanting an RFID chip under a child’s skin seems a little Orwellian, though putting it into the fabric of clothes seems more acceptable. Are parents likely to go to such extremes to ensure kids are safe, or is it a step too far?
However, as reader Roger Bamford pointed out, one US firm has already designed a human-implantable RFID chip. VeriChip has developed a passive RFID microchip, inserted under the skin by injection, which contains a unique 16-digit identifier. The number on the chip – which can be read with a proprietary scanner – could be used to access medical records, or determine whether someone has the authority to enter a secure area, the company says.
Verichip has also designed wearable active RFID chips, designed for use within care homes or hospital wards. The chips sound an alarm if patients – for instance, those with Alzheimer’s – leave a designated area. It can even lock an exit as a patient approaches it. The chips can also be used to prevent the abduction of newborns by raising the alarm if the baby is removed from the ward.

www.verichipcorp.com/

www.bluetreeservices.co.uk

www.kiditel.com/en/

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Eerie CCTV

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

By Patrick Goss

I’ve got a confession to make; whenever I see a security camera I feel inexplicably guilty. So it was with some concern that I read reports that the US government expects to be installing CCTV that will be able to flag up those acting suspiciously automatically.

Apparently, facial analysis software is becoming so accurate that the first cameras that can ‘recognise’ those people acting guilty or suspiciously and flag them up.

I already object to CCTV on an intellectual level. As I have written in the past, I feel that we are moving inexorably towards the kind of dystopian world described by George Orwell in 1984. And the United Kingdom in particular has been quick to embrace the notion that cameras deter crime.

Taking that up a notch to having machines determine if someone is acting in a suspicious way is, as far as I’m concerned, moving into genuinely scary territory.

My first concern is what exactly the repercussions of this are; when you are flagged as ‘acting suspiciously’ I would imagine that, at first at least, you are merely brought to the attention of an operator who can monitor what you are doing.

But at what point is it going to become okay to stop and search those people that a machine has flagged up? How do you differentiate between say, someone who is conducting an illicit affair (and presumably acting shiftily) and a terrorist?

Sociology students learn early on that people being observed modify their behaviours, and in a society with increasing numbers of armed police and raised security levels, many people are not going about their daily business in the carefree, innocent fashion that they perhaps would

It all comes down to the most pressing question of the 21st century so far. Is it okay to impinge on the civil liberties of the many to try to prevent the rise of terrorism?

Of course, the accuracy of the software is another worry. Would it be that tough to train people to act nonchalantly enough to cheat the computers? I think it’s fair to say that becoming reliant on machines to ‘read’ peoples motivations is opening up the potential for scaling back police presence and that in itself is a dangerous route to go down.

If the software does prove even a minor success then you are left with the problem that a machine picking out the guilty creates a massively dangerous precedent in terms of the potential to abuse the system. For a start, using the machine as justification, any person could potentially be flagged up for ‘acting suspiciously’ and find their privacy in question.

Databases of suspicious behaviour could be set up, and does someone who has ‘acted suspiciously’ in the past then find their future movements tracked as well – even if the machine was in error in the first case? Will we be informed if we have been tracked by these cameras or will we remain oblivious to the fact that our life is being recorded because a camera decided some facial tick was worthy of note?

I actually have a hard time accepting that the lesser evil of facial recognition software is truly necessary – although the inevitability of its widespread inception is becoming more and more evident.

Again the reliance on a system of comparing people to a ‘watch-list’ of suspects does not allow for those who have managed to fly under the radar – not to mention the problematic situation of monitoring those that have never been convicted, or in many cases even accused, of a crime.

Comparing people against a criminal database is one thing, but it is a very short hop to tracking everybody all of the time and building up an increasingly detailed database about each and every one of us.

Which brings us back to the old chestnut of ‘Why do I need to worry about his kind of thing if I haven’t done anything wrong?’ This is at the heart of the entire privacy debate and remains a vital discussion.

For me, the prospect of detailed government databases of our details and the minutiae of our life is a concern because those records remain regardless of whoever is in power.

Does my religion make much of a difference at the current time? No. But what if a government arrived in the future that DID consider religious views outside of their own beliefs to be a crime? By agreeing to lose privacy in the name of terrorism prevention, you are signing a chit of trust not just for this government, but every government going forward.

And that, for me, is a level of trust I just don’t have.

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The Anti-Empire Report

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

Separation of oil and state
On several occasions I’ve been presented with the argument that contrary to widespread opinion in the anti-war movement and on the left, oil was not really a factor in the the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. The argument’s key, perhaps sole, point is that the oil companies did not push for the war.

Responding to only this particular point: firstly, the executives of multinational corporations are not in the habit of making public statements concerning vital issues of American foreign policy, either for or against. And we don’t know what the oil company executives said in private to high Washington officials, although we do know that such executives have a lot more access to such officials than you or I, like at Cheney’s secret gatherings. More importantly, we have to distinguish between oil as a fuel and oil as a political weapon.

A reading of the policy papers issued by the neo-conservatives since the demise of the Soviet Union makes it clear that these people will not tolerate any other country or group of countries challenging the global hegemony of the world’s only superpower. A sample — In 1992 they wrote: “We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”[1] And in 2002, in the White House “National Security Strategy” paper: “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States. … America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed. … We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed. … We cannot let our enemies strike first. … To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”

As the world has been learning in great sorrow, the neo-conservative world-dominators are not just (policy) paper tigers.

Japan and the European Union easily fall into the categories of potential competitors or potential adversaries, economically speaking. They both are crucially dependent upon oil imports. To one extent or another so is most of the world. The Bush administration doesn’t need the approval of the oil companies to pursue its grandiose agenda of world domination, using the vast Iraqi oil reserves as one more of its weapons.

For those who would like to believe that there’s a limit to the neo-cons’ imperial arrogance, that even the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Wolfowitz, Rice, and the rest of the gang would never treat Europe as anything like an enemy, I suggest a look at a recent article by the former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, which appeared in the Financial Times of London. In it, the Cheney intimate and current senior fellow at the neo-con citadel, American Enterprise Institute, berates British prime minister Gordon Brown for implying that the UK could have a “special relationship” with both the United States and the European Union (which Bolton refers to as “the European porridge”). Like a hurt lover, Bolton exclaims that Britain has been brought to “a clear decision point. … What London needs to know is that its answer will have consequences.” The article is entitled: “Britain Cannot Have Two Best Friends”.

Bolton goes on to ask: “Why does a ‘union’ with a common foreign and security policy, and with the prospect of a real ‘foreign minister’ have two permanent seats on the UN Security Council and often as many as three non-permanent seats out of a total of 15 council members? France and Britain may not relish the prospect of giving up their unique status, but what is it that makes them different — as members of the ‘Union’ — from Luxembourg or Malta? One Union, one seat. Mr Brown cannot have it both ways (nor will President Nicolas Sarkozy).”

The Empire has not yet made Europe an ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) like Iran, but, Bolton declares, “If Mr Bush decides that the only way to stop Iran is to use military force, where will Mr Brown come down? Supporting the US or allowing Iran to goose-step towards nuclear weapons?”[2]

Washington’s exquisite imperial mentality, its stated determination to “act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed”, sees “potential adversaries” in China and Russia as well of course. The United States — with hypocrisy breathtaking even for the Bush administration — regularly castigates China for its expanding military budget; and tries to surround Russia with military bases, missile shields, and countries with ties to Washington and NATO.

Moreover, the United States has been competing with Russia for the vast oil and gas reserves of the land-locked Caspian Sea area since the 1990s. The building and protection of pipelines in Afghanistan was in all likelihood a major factor in the US invasion and occupation of that country. And in this case we know that the American oil company UNOCAL met with Taliban officials in Texas and in Afghanistan before 9-11 to discuss the pipelines.[3]
A license to lie that never expires
I touched upon this a year ago, but our much-esteemed leader and his equally-esteemed acolytes continue to use the same argument in order to deflect attention from their deformed child, the War On Terror — the argument being that since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, US counterterrorism policy has worked. How do they know? Because there haven’t been any terrorist attacks in the United States in the six years since that infamous day.

Right, but there weren’t any terrorist attacks in the United States in the six years before Sept. 11, 2001 either, the last one being the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, with no known connection to al Qaeda. The absence of terrorist attacks in the US appears to be the norm, with or without a War on Terror.

More significantly, in the six years since 9-11 the United States has been the target of terrorist attacks on scores of occasions, not even counting anything in Iraq or Afghanistan — attacks on military, diplomatic, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States, in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific, more than a dozen times in Pakistan alone. The attacks include the October 2002 bombings of two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, which killed more than 200 people, almost all of them Americans and citizens of their Australian and British war allies; the following year brought the heavy bombing of the US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations held by the American Embassy; and other horrendous attacks in more recent years on US allies in Madrid and London because of the war.

When the Bush administration argues that the absence of terrorist attacks in the US since 9-11 means that its war on terrorism has created a safer world for Americans … why do I doubt this?
The past is unpredictable
As the call for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq grows louder, those who support the war are rewriting history to paint a scary picture of what happened in Vietnam after the United States military left in March 1973.

They speak of invasions by the North Vietnamese communists, but fail to point out that a two-decades-long civil war had simply continued after the Americans left, minus a good deal of the horror which US bombs and chemical weapons had been causing.

They speak of the “bloodbath” that followed the American withdrawal, a term that implies killing of large numbers of civilians who didn’t support the communists. But this never happened. If it had taken place the anti-communists in the United States who supported the war in Vietnam would have been more than happy to publicize a “commie bloodbath”. It would have made big headlines all over the world. The fact that you can’t find anything of the sort is indicative of the fact that nothing like a bloodbath took place. It would be difficult to otherwise disprove this negative.

“Some 600,000 Vietnamese drowned in the South China Sea attempting to escape.”[4] Has anyone not confined to a right-wing happy farm ever heard of this before?

They mix Vietnam and Cambodia together in the same thought, leaving the impression that the horrors of Pol Pot included Vietnam. This is the conservative National Review Online: “Six weeks later, the last Americans lifted off in helicopters from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, leaving hundreds of panicked South Vietnamese immediately behind and an entire region to the mercy of the communists. The scene was similar in Phnom Penh [Cambodia]. The torture and murder spree that followed left millions of corpses.”[5]

And here’s dear old Fox News, July 26, reporters Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, with their guest, actor Jon Voight. Voight says “Right now, we’re having a lot of people who don’t know a whole lot of things crying for us pulling out of Iraq. This — there was a bloodbath when we pulled out of Vietnam, 2.5 million people in Cambodia and Vietnam — South Vietnam were slaughtered.”

Alan Colmes’ response, in its entirety: “Yes, sir.” Hannity said nothing.  The many devoted listeners of Fox News could only nod their heads sagely.

In actuality, instead of a bloodbath of those who had collaborated with the enemy, the Vietnamese sent them to “re-education” camps, a more civilized treatment than in post-World War Two Europe where many of those who had collaborated with the Germans were publicly paraded, shaven bald, humiliated in other ways, and/or hanged from the nearest tree. But some conservatives today would have you believe that the Vietnamese camps were virtually little Auschwitzes.[6]

Has the conservative view of Vietnam post-US withdrawal already hardened into historical concrete? “The agreed-upon historical record”, to use Gore Vidal’s term?
The way of all flesh, the way of all wars
In 1967 and ‘68 I was writing a column of a type very similar to this report, only it wasn’t online of course; it was for the Washington Free Press, part of the so-called “underground press”. In looking over those old columns recently I found three items whose relevance has not been dimmed by time at all:

(1) [From the Washington Post, 1968]: “It has never been clearer that the Marines are fighting for their own pride, from their own fear and for their buddies who have already died. No American in Hue is fighting for Vietnam, for the Vietnamese, or against Communism.”[7]
    [Make the obvious substitutions and we have: No American in Baghdad is fighting for Iraq, for the Iraqi people, or against terrorism. And how many of today's warriors can look around at what is happening in Iraq and convince themselves that they're fighting for something called freedom and democracy?]

(2) Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, was the man most responsible for “giving, controlling and managing the war news from Vietnam”. One day in July 1965, Sylvester told American journalists that they had a patriotic duty to disseminate only information that made the United States look good. When one of the newsmen exclaimed: “Surely, Arthur, you don’t expect the American press to be handmaidens of government,” Sylvester replied, “That’s exactly what I expect,” adding: “Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. Did you hear that? — stupid.” And when a correspondent for a New York paper began a question, he was interrupted by Sylvester who said: “Aw, come on. What does someone in New York care about the war in Vietnam?”[8]

(3) The US recently completed an operation in the III Corps area of South Vietnam called “Resolved to Win”. Now, a new operation is being planned for the same area. This one is called “Complete Victory”, which should give you an idea of how successful “Resolved to Win” was. I expect that the only operation standing a chance of success will be the one called “Total Withdrawal.”
Libertarians: an eccentric blend of anarchy and runaway capitalism
What is it about libertarians? Their philosophy, in theory and in practice, seems to amount to little more than: “If the government is doing it, it’s oppressive and we’re against it.” Corporations, however, tend to get free passes. Perhaps the most prominent libertarian today is Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who ran as the Libertarian Party’s candidate for president in 1988 and is running now for the same office as a Republican. He’s against the war in Iraq, in no uncertain terms, but if the war were officially being fought by, for, and in the name of a consortium of Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Bechtel, and some other giant American corporations, would he have the same attitude? And one could of course argue that the war is indeed being fought for such a consortium. So is it simply the idea or the image of “a government operation” that bothers him and other libertarians?

Paul recently said: “The government is too bureaucratic, it spends too much money, they waste the money.”[9]

Does the man think that corporations are not bureaucratic? Do libertarians think that any large institution is not overbearingly bureaucratic? Is it not the nature of the beast? Who amongst us has not had the frustrating experience with a corporation trying to correct an erroneous billing or trying to get a faulty product repaired or replaced? Can not a case be made that corporations spend too much (of our) money? What do libertarians think of the exceedingly obscene salaries paid to corporate executives? Or of two dozen varieties of corporate theft and corruption? Did someone mention Enron?

Ron Paul and other libertarians are against social security. Do they believe that it’s better for elderly people to live in a homeless shelter than to be dependent on government “handouts”? That’s exactly what it would come down to with many senior citizens if not for their social security. Most libertarians I’m sure are not racists, but Paul certainly sounds like one. Here are a couple of comments from his newsletter:

“Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action.”

“Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the ‘criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”[10]

Author Ellen Willis has written that “the fundamental fallacy of right libertarianism is that the state is the only source of coercive power.” They don’t recognize “that the corporations that control most economic resources, and therefore most people’s access to the necessities of life, have far more power than government to dictate our behavior and the day-to-day terms of our existence.”[11]
NOTES
[1] “Defense Planning Guidance for the Fiscal Years 1994-1999″, New York Times, March 8, 1992, p.14, emphasis added

[2] Financial Times (London), August 2, 2007

[3] BBC News, December 4, 1997, “Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline”

[4] Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative WorldNetDaily (worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56769), August 6, 2007

[5] Mona Charen, National Review Online, July 20, 2007

[6] Search Google News: <bloodbath iraq vietnam> for more examples

[7] Washington Post, February 20, 1968, article by Lee Lescaze

[8] Congressional Record (House of Representatives), May 12, 1966, pp. 9977-78, reprint of an article by Morley Safer of CBS News

[9] National Public Radio, Morning Edition, August 9, 2007

[10] Atlanta Progressive News, June 3, 2007 (www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/views/0024-views.html)
As far as I can determine, Paul does not deny that these remarks, and others equally racist, appeared in his newsletter, but he claims that a staff member of his is the author of those remarks.

[11] Ellen Willis, Dissent magazine, Fall 1997

William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
       Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at <www.killinghope.org >
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website at “essays”.
      To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to <bblum6@aol.com> with “add” in the subject line. I’d like your name and city in the message, but that’s optional. I ask for your city only in case I’ll be speaking in your area.
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A scary assault on civil liberties

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

By Lance Dickie

As historians tally the incompetence, profligacy and lawless opacity of the Bush administration, a shorthand is already emerging: Katrina, Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, signing statements and epic debt. Each reference speaks volumes.

Another topic may soon head the list: FISA, surveillance or domestic spying. A word or two will settle into the political lexicon to symbolize an assault on civil liberties by an administration with an aggressive disregard for the law. We will be haunted by this for generations.

Congress gave the White House permission to eavesdrop without warrants on international telephone calls and e-mails of American citizens. The Bush administration had sought to tinker with wiretap regulations it was already ignoring, when Congress essentially said, “Oh, what the heck, do what you want.” The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed in 1978, required the executive branch to seek permission of a secret judicial panel to spy on Americans at home and people overseas if the surveillance took place inside the United States. Revisions and new definitions adopted last week remove virtually all restrictions, and, most incredibly, empower the attorney general and director of national intelligence to settle disputes about what is legal and proper.

Attorney general, as in Alberto Gonzales, whose favorite responses to Congress are “I don’t know” and “I do not recall.” Partisan appointees become arbiters of two centuries of constitutional protections against a potentially intrusive, abusive federal government.

These rules and exceptions are set to expire in six months, but expect to be disappointed.

House and Senate members were easy pickings as they worried more about summer vacation than civil liberties. In 2008, they will be squeezed again by a looming election.

I will admit it took me way too long to grasp the implications of the “war on terrorism” invoked by President Bush.

Early on, I was dismayed by the rhetoric of an “axis of evil,” but initially I read no more into the war reference than a speechwriter’s device.

Little did I suspect the president was using his own version of shorthand to declare and embrace unimaginable perquisites of executive authority. None of the rules or laws applied to him, and an acquiescent Republican Congress was never going to confront him.

Voters understood, and tossed out a legislatively inept, lazy, corruption-prone GOP majority.

They could not pass a budget, and they refused to challenge the president over a war of choice built on fear and delusions.

I expected better from Democrats and, so far, have not been impressed.

Confronting terrorists and others who would do harm to this nation and its laws and democratic ideals is a real fight. Taxpayers spend lavishly to provide the resources. It was the Bush administration, not American taxpayers of all political stripes, that failed to properly equip the nation’s military in two war zones.

But I also believe the rough and tumble of ferreting out and stopping terrorism is a specialized kind of crime-fighting, best suited to the skills and tools of law enforcement. Police operate within a set of procedures and regulations, and legal checks and balances adapted to stop crime and protect the rights of the innocent.

Both efforts are always a tense, dynamic work in progress.

Consider the pre-Miranda days. Failure to advise suspects of their rights led to a lot of sloppy results. In the absence of rules, the tendency is to get lazy. That’s a scary thought when dealing with institutions that can deprive citizens of their liberty and lives.

Crime-fighting did not stop because law enforcement had judges and a Constitution looking over its shoulders.

The United States is launched on a path of domestic spying with the rules decided by government clerks. An arrogant, demonstrably incompetent administration is empowered to do what it wants, never having to explain itself or be held accountable by anyone.

The Bush administration cannot get body armor and rifle-cleaning kits to Iraq and Afghanistan, yet it can tap phone calls and rummage through e-mails as it sees fit.

Scarier still, the brash intention or seductive efficiency of operating without oversight will not evaporate with a new crew in the White House.

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Troops denied special Afghan medal

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

The Ministry of Defence was facing severe criticism last night for refusing to award a special honour to soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

By Stephen Adams, Martin Beckford and Duncan Gardham

British troops serving in Helmand province are being denied a dedicated medal to recognise the intensity of the conflict, campaigners said.

War veterans, MPs and families of those who have lost loved ones in the fighting - the heaviest British forces have experienced since the Second World War - have urged the MoD to make a special award for the thousands of soldiers and marines who have put their lives at risk on a daily basis fighting insurgents.

Their calls came as Britain faced up to another grim milestone in the fight against the Taliban - the death of its 70th soldier since the operation began in November 2001, and the seventh fatality since July 7.

Despite the ferocity of the campaign, those who have fought in Helmand still receive exactly the same medal as those who undertook relatively safe peace-keeping duties in the Afghan capital, Kabul, immediately after the Taliban were deposed.

Critics say the situation is now “completely different” and believe the MoD is missing out on an easy way to boost morale at a critical time.

Yesterday, a spokesman for the ministry insisted that the medal which has been awarded to troops who have served in the country for the last six years - and those given for specific acts of bravery - are sufficient to recognise their efforts.

Figures revealed yesterday show how Britain’s front-line troops in Afghanistan now have a one in 36 chance of dying in a six-month tour of the country, compared to a one in 100 chance during a tour of Iraq. In addition, hundreds have been severely injured. MoD figures also show that, up until July 15, 699 troops have needed hospital treatment due to battle wounds or disease since 2001.

Tony Philippson, whose son, Capt James Philippson, was the first British serviceman to die in Helmand province after the deployment last year, said the MoD was reluctant to issue a new medal because it would mean effectively admitting that troops were now engaged in a new war.

Mr Philippson said: “The more they award medals, the more they have to recognise it’s a nasty, dirty war.

“They have been sent into a cauldron and they are under-resourced. Issuing medals recognises the fact we’re in a real war.”

Derek Eida, whose son, Capt Alex Eida, was killed in Afghanistan last August, said: “It sounds ridiculous that they won’t award a different medal, this is a completely different deployment and 2002 was a hell of a long time ago.

“It seems totally petty to me, I just can’t understand their logic. It could be bad for morale when people are putting their lives on the line but not being recognised.”

	Campaign medals are awarded to soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan

But the MoD said it had no plans to create a new campaign medal for Afghanistan.

“We have one medal for the Afghanistan theatre and that’s it. We don’t want to get into the problem area of loads of medals for different times of operations,” an official said. “Campaign medals are there for people on operations and there are bravery medals for those who do something brave.”

Nicholas Soames, the former Conservative defence minister, said: “This is typical Ministry of Defence bureaucracy and thoughtlessness.

“Clearly those who were on an earlier policing operation should get medals which reflect that, but those in the combat operation should get a medal of their own. They are separate deployments and this is not a general service operation.”

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative MP for Newark, who is a former infantry commander, said: “I think the ferocity of the current operation in Helmand needs special recognition, and it could be in the form of a medal or a bar or a clasp, something that shows how serious the fighting has been.

“There’s nothing more important to troops than a medal - they are incredibly emotive and they mean the world to soldiers. To have a chest full of medals and to be in a prestigious fighting unit is the business.”

He said during Victorian times a special award known as the Kabul to Kandahar Star was issued just to British troops who had taken part in one particular part of the Second Afghan War.

A horizontal metal bar or clasp, usually attached to the ribbon of a medal, is often awarded to indicate that the wearer has been involved in a particular operation.

The Government has endured criticism for the apparent lack of planning that went into the operation to take on the Taliban in Helmand, which was launched in spring last year.

John Reid, the then defence secretary, famously declared: “We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years’ time without firing one shot.”

However, millions of rounds have since been fired and, while more than a thousand Taliban fighters have been killed, the cost to British troops has been severe.

Maj Gen Patrick Cordingley, the commander of the Desert Rats in the first Gulf War, said: “The situation has changed dramatically and perhaps a bar on the Afghan medal would be more reasonable.”

Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason, another veteran of the first Gulf War, added that there was “a horrendous difference between 2002 and 2007″.

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Anti-terror powers used at climate camp

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

By Nick Martin

The police and Downing Street lined up with BAA today to warn climate change protesters not to disrupt Heathrow Airport.

The camp for climate action is itself still a modest affair, but it is overshadowed by a row about tactics.

It’s home for the next week to hundreds of climate change activists - who are being watched by hundreds of police.

Heathrow’s climate camp is designed to raise awareness of the environmental impact of aviation, and the airport’s expansion plans.

Yet there are fears it could become the base for illegal protests. Downing Street has warned that any disruption would be unacceptable.

Campaigners, meanwhile, have condemned police for using anti-terrorism powers to question those attending.

Protesters began setting up the camp yesterday on a large rectangular piece of wasteland. It’s just a few hundred yards north of Heathrow’s perimeter fence.

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Wolfowitz ‘tried to censor World Bank on climate change’

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

By Andrew Gumbel

The Bush administration has consistently thwarted efforts by the World Bank to include global warming in its calculations when considering whether to approve major investments in industry and infrastructure, according to documents made public through a watchdog yesterday.

On one occasion, the White House’s pointman at the bank, the now disgraced Paul Wolfowitz, personally intervened to remove the words “climate change” from the title of a bank progress report and ordered changes to the text of the report to shift the focus away from global warming.

But the issue predates Mr Wolfowitz’s appointment as president of the bank in June 2005. According to the Government Accountability Project (GAP), which has tracked efforts to censor debate on global warming, environmental specialists at the World Bank tried unsuccessfully to press for consideration of greenhouse- gas emissions in a paper written - but never published - in 2002.

It was politics that prevented the publication of that paper, according to one senior bank insider who spoke to the Los Angeles Times, and politics that has been the principal obstacle to progress since. Only now, with the Bush administration on the ropes politically and the scientific evidence for global warming reaching such critical mass that even President George Bush has been forced to acknowledge its reality, are those same bank officials trying again to put the issue on the agenda. “Our biggest obstacle has been that politically, [climate change] is very controversial,” Kristalina Georgieva, the bank’s strategy and operations director for sustainable development, told the LA Times.

She said that, even under the best of circumstances, it will be at least two years before the bank starts measuring the impact of fossil fuel-related projects on the planet’s health. “We are not moving fast enough,” she added. “It’s not possible to be moving fast enough.”

The GAP has uncovered evidence of one striking instance of Bush administration censorship. In 2006, the bank’s vice presidents responded to a request from the Group of Eight industrialised countries and commissioned a draft report entitled Climate Change, Energy and Sustainable Development: Towards an Investment Framework. They endorsed the report, according to the minutes of a meeting obtained by the GAP.

Subsequently, however, Mr Wolfowitz’s office put out a memo asking the team to rework the paper, “shifting from a climate lens mainly to a clean-energy lens”. The edited paper issued a few months later was eventually called Clean Energy and Development: Towards an Investment Framework.

The World Bank has come under fire from environmental groups for a number of decisions, including a recent grant to develop lignite mining and power plants in Kosovo. Lignite - or brown coal - pollutes the air heavily when burnt and is generally regarded as one of the dirtiest fuel sources on the planet.

The investment appears to go against the bank’s own policy, from 2001, whereby it decided to try to phase out oil and gas investments by 2008 and to extend an existing moratorium on investments in coal mining.

The GAP put out a report in March detailing similar problems at other agencies, most notably the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which, among other duties, tracks hurricanes and other extreme weather phenomena. The report cited “objectionable and possibly illegal restrictions on the communication of scientific information to the media” - including censorship of interviews and press releases.

More recently, the GAP has reported the Bush administration’s refusal to consider climate change as it prepares to expand the national air transport system threefold over the next 20 years. A multi-agency group called the Next Generation Air Transportation System has simply ignored global warming in its past two annual reports.

Mr Wolfowitz was forced to step down in June after it emerged that he had given a lucrative sinecure to his girlfriend and offered her excessive pay rises.

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Chemtrails over Morecambe

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

By Albert Shine

I am assuming that the reader is familiar with the difference between ‘Contrails’; that is condensation trails (vapour trails) left behind highflying aircraft, consisting of water vapour that fades away within a few minutes, and what has become known as ‘Chemtrails’ (chemical trails), also from highflying aircraft, that persist across the sky for some considerable time and evolve into wispy longitudinal clouds. With the passage of time the wispy clouds tend to coalesce into an unnatural hazy overcast. Circumstantial empirical observation shows that there is some form of aerosol spraying of artificial chemicals into our atmosphere from considerable numbers of medium and large jet aircraft. The aircraft involved seem to follow flight paths contrived to result in ‘X’s’, grid patterns of parallels or ‘noughts and crosses’. This ‘designer pollution’ has been carried out for about a decade and is an ongoing programme over many parts of the Western World. The origin and purpose of this programme remains unknown to the general population, but coincides with (a) a widespread reduction (by approx 20%) in solar energy reaching the ground, and (b) a huge increase in asthma and other breathing related diseases of almost epidemic proportions. In addition, many folk endure frequent bouts of vaguely flu like symptoms, summer colds etc.

One day in Morecambe

Friday 10th August dawned bright with clear blue skies. By around 8am or so (I did not record the exact time), a number of heavy jet planes had started drawing dense chemtrails across the sky over Morecambe. By 9.30am or so the ‘trailing’ had become very obvious, and I took a few pictures of the sky around my flat from 945am:

The blue of the sky gradually degraded into a misted effect as the aircraft trails spread and coalesced by 10.30am or so:

I estimate there were perhaps over a dozen aircraft involved in the operation, criss-crossing over Morecambe. The spraying operation continued, and I took further photos at 10.45am, by which time, the persisting trails were spreading out and joining up into a murky overcast:

By 11.30am the entire sky had clouded over with a sort of milky haze:

This ‘white-out’ has, so far continued as I write this (3.45pm) and it is quite obvious that the change in the sky has been brought about by the effects of the aerosol spraying of chemicals into our atmosphere. As a contrast, here below is a photo taken at 4pm on7th August (there were no over flights on that day), following is a photo of a natural ‘contrail’ fading at the same rate as the progress of the aircraft across the sky.

Other researchers have tried to get answers from various agencies (RAF, CAA, DoE etc) as to what is going on and why, but the replies so far blandly maintain these are mere ordinary contrails.

It is obvious to all who observe this activity that something is definitely going on, possibly involving a dedicated fleet of airplanes spraying over populated areas. It is up to us all to ‘raise our eyes to heaven’, observe and preferably photograph the evidence and push the relevant authorities, not only for answers, but for an end to this pernicious and possibly poisonous behaviour.

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