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Africa ignored

Friday, November 7th, 2008


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No2ID steal home secretary’s fingerprint

Friday, November 7th, 2008


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The DNA database and you

Friday, November 7th, 2008

How big is it? How many get off it? Your questions answered…

By David Mery

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Timeline: How National ID cards have become a reality

Friday, November 7th, 2008

By Asavin Wattanajantra

23 January 2008: Leaked documents reveal the Conservative Party’s plan to push back the ID card roll-out three years, until after the next election. The news comes after various high-profile data breaches at government departments.

25 January 2008: BAE and Accenture, two leading systems integrators, pull out from the shortlist of bidders for the ID cards contract. Six other companies remain in the running for the contract.

6 March 2008: The Home Office announces delays to the timeline of the ID card plan, with participation for all UK citizens not being necessary for another two years. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also explains that the bulk of the population will already have new ID cards before they become mandatory.

8 May 2008 The National Identity Card Scheme has risen by 37 per cent according to a report. It says that costs for the decade from October 2007 will rise from £245 million to £335 million.

23 May 2008 Framework contracts for the ID card scheme are signed with CSC, EDS, Fujitsu, IBM and Thales. The firms will still battle out for the contracts on offer, but the framework speeds up the procurement process.

1 August 2008: The UK National Identity Scheme awards its first contract to French defence systems engineering firm Thales, which signs a four-year contract worth over £18 million.

25 September 2008 Starting November 25, the new identity cards will be issued to ‘foreign nationals’. Pictures are also revealed, showing that the ID cards are the same size as a credit card and contains basic details as well as an electronic chip holding biometric data.

6 November 2008: The ID card roll-out continues with Manchester and London City airport workers, who will be issued biometric cards containing finger print data during a 19-month period.

The previous ID card timeline which shows events in 2007 is available here.

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David Rovics: Some Thoughts On Obama

Friday, November 7th, 2008

By David Rovics | Friends around the world keep asking me questions. Are you excited? What do you think of Obama? Others are simply congratulating me. And I must say, it was a thrilling moment.

As a teenager, in 1984, I volunteered for the Mondale/Ferraro campaign, mostly pushing bumper stickers. An anti-nuclear group was doing this, in the belief that Mondale would be less likely to cause Armageddon. I grew up in an overwhelmingly white, Republican town. I was a news junky from an early age, though, and politically active in one way or another. Of the Democratic candidates my favorite was Jesse Jackson, but looking around me I reasoned he had a slim chance of getting elected.

As an adult, living in urban areas all over the US, I saw little to dispel this illusion. There were more African-Americans getting elected to political office, but usually we were talking about mayors of majority-Black cities or Congresswomen from hotbeds of progressivism like Berkeley. But here I was, hanging out with my toddler, listening to my favorite local band, the Pagan Jug Band, sitting in a pub in Portland, hearing that Barack Obama has been elected President.

My initial reaction was that of Jesse’s. I got a lump in my throat, and tears came to my eyes, thinking about the insanity of all the suffering that has gone down for so many centuries, the homes, dreams, and bodies broken by slavery and racism. And in fact until very recently, on the news broadcasts when they would mention the number of Black people in the Congress, in order to be factually accurate they always had to include the caveat, “since Reconstruction.” More than that is rarely said about this ten-year period of Union Army occupation that allowed something approximating democracy, and even serious land redistribution, to exist in the South, before the Union withdrew and the South was plunged into at least a century of Apartheid rule.

Whether South or North, the prisons are filled with mostly dark-skinned people from places where you can graduate from high school without having learned how to read, where you can get asthma from breathing the air, where the police shoot first and ask questions later. They’re in prison, but Barack Obama’s not, he’s on the TV giving a humble victory speech, quoting Lincoln. And this crowd of mostly young white people around me at the pub are all cheering at the TV screen, shouting his name, laughing, crying, and drinking. I’m pretty sure they all voted for him. Or if some of them were slacking too much to get around to it, they would have voted for him.

I had just gone there to hear the music, but it turned into a spontaneous Obama party, at that pub and at pubs and sidewalks and streets in cities all across the US, and apparently in other parts of the world as well. I remember being near the front of a march of tens of thousands of people back in 1985 or so, seeing Jesse Jackson at the front of the march with many of his volunteers lining the marchers, all wearing football-style shirts that read “88″ on them, for his next Presidential campaign effort. I remember seeing on the faces and the placards of this mostly white crowd of marchers, an admiration and affection for the man at the front of the march, and I was wishing the whole country could be more like this crowd. And I feel so gratified that all the people talking about the so-called Bradley effect were wrong, that a majority of our eligible voters (not counting those millions of ineligible felons) would really end up voting for Obama.

There was one black-clad young man from Olympia who happened to be at the crowded pub, which was more crowded than I had ever seen it before. He bummed a light from me and started to talk. “This is great, you know, but I just can’t help but think, ‘meanwhile, in Afghanistan…’”

Every party needs a spoiler, and here he was. Too cynical to be entirely swept up in the moment, he was worried about the possibility that Obama might actually follow through with his campaign promises and send more troops to Afghanistan. And then over the past few days, the news gets more and more grim. Rahm Emanuel, a zealous supporter of Israeli Apartheid for Secretary of State. Larry Summers, Clinton’s chief advocate for the World Trade Organization and deregulation of the financial sector, is being suggested as an economic advisor. Joe Biden, who voted for the war in Iraq, is already his VP.

Obama is surrounding himself with folks from Bill Clinton’s administration. I remember those eight years well, I was protesting his policies the whole time. Welfare was reformed and social spending was gutted even more. The prisons became even more crowded with nonviolent drug offenders. The sanctions and ongoing bombing campaign in Iraq that happened on Clinton’s watch killed hundreds of thousands of children, and his Secretary of State said the price was worth it. NAFTA was passed and then the WTO was formed, all with Clinton’s blessings. These trade deals that Clinton and most of his party supported plunged millions of people around the world into poverty and an early death. Yugoslavia and Iraq will glow for thousands of years because of the nuclear waste littering the land that fell during the Clinton years.

Of course, Clinton inherited the mess in Iraq, and Clinton certainly did not invent neoliberal economics, nor did Clinton start the process of the de-industrialization of the US, the growth of Mexican sweatshops, or the support of the death squad regime in Colombia. But he embraced all of that, and much, much more.

On the other hand, in previous generations, things were different. Before the export of America’s manufacturing base, before all the free trade agreements, before real wages in the US lost half their value, the US was run by liberals. Liberals like FDR and Nixon. Nixon? Yes, well, I studied economics a little, and social spending in the US actually continued to increase from the time of FDR to the time of Nixon. It was under Nixon that the EPA, the NEA and other such institutions were born. It was after Nixon that the budget-cutting began in earnest. From FDR to Nixon, whether the administration was Democratic or Republican, social spending increased. Since Nixon, under Democratic and Republican administrations, social spending has decreased.

There have, of course, been variations. FDR enthusiastically bombed Japan into the stone age, killing millions of innocents. Eisenhower was a Republican president, he preferred to bomb Koreans and Vietnamese. Johnson bombed them a lot more, killing millions. Nixon did it, too, of course. All along the way, by and large, there was overwhelming bipartisan support for these policies. Not among the population, but among the elite who rule it.

Several days ago I was exchanging email messages about the state of the world with my good friend Terry Flynn, a professor of economics and the social sciences at Western Connecticut State University. In one email he wrote, “a damn interesting time. The hegemon is rocked. I’m sure we’re witnessing a re-configuration of the global order on par with the post-WW2 period.” I asked what kind of reconfiguration did he see happening, and this was his eloquent reply:

It’s a shift from one hegemonic era to another. The U.S. took over from the U.K. after the war. But our time is up. Don’t know which country or alliance will dominate in the next cycle. The major contenders are China and India. But Russia is working very hard to leverage its massive geopolitical presence, natural resources, and techno-military culture, despite huge demographic deficits in comparison with the former countries. Russia has Europe by the balls due to, e.g., Germany’s utter dependency on Russian natural gas. And it’s far superior to India and China in many important ways. It’s still a fucking wreck in terms of law and economic and social policies. But this whole transition is probably a 20 year affair. I just think that the catastrophic U.S. response to 9/11 and the current financial crisis push the regime change hard against the U.S.

If Obama wins the election, he might very well be a fine negotiator for the new, diminished role for this country. He can sell it as enlightened internationalism, not the decline of the American Empire. Of course, the patriots here will insist on waving the flag and encouraging the barbarians to bring it on. They won’t go down without a fight. However, the U.S. simply can’t afford to sustain its customary role. And there’s no reason that China will continue to lend money for us to do so.

Anyway, that’s a taste of my thinking on this matter. Oh, by the way, I don’t for one minute expect that the new regime will be any kinder to the working classes. They’ll still be global capitalists with a lust for power. In principle, no better or worse than the present crew. But as our country is diminished we might start talking seriously about peace and environmental degradation, etc. That could be ironic.

The Democrats have gotten more corporate donations than the Republicans in this last election cycle. The corporate elite has mostly decided that the Dems are better for business now. Better to send them in to clean up the mess. Obama is most definitely his own man, and an extremely intelligent, eloquent, youthful, good-looking and well-organized one at that. He has a brilliant background in community organizing and a first-hand familiarity with reality, the realities, for starters, of poverty, racism and US foreign policy — those realities that, among others, so desperately need to be changed. Not only is he his own man, but he’s the man of the people, of so many people, who so enthusiastically have supported his campaign, going door to door as part of his well-oiled campaign machine, giving him hundreds of millions of dollars in small donations, packing stadiums around the country and around the world, and waiting in line for hours to vote for him in the polls.

But he is also the man of the corporations, of the banks, of the insurance industry, who have funded his campaign massively, and are expecting a dividend for their investments. And they’re getting it already, in the form of the appointment of those “liberals” (whatever that means) who supported Clinton’s wars, sanctions and neoliberal economic reforms.

Obama has promised to raise taxes on the rich back to what they were under Clinton. I haven’t carefully studied the numbers, but I believe we are talking about increasing the income tax on anything above $100,000 from 35% to 38%. Nobody is talking about returning it to what it was when the Progressive Income Tax was formed — 90%. He is talking about taking soldiers out of Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan — not bringing them all home and cutting military spending by 90%, in line with international norms, and doing away with this rapacious empire. He is talking about the middle class, and sure, he had to do that to get elected, but when does he ever talk about the poor, the imprisoned millions, the thousands of homeless walking cadavers haunting the streets of every major American city? Every politician talks about building schools, but what about free education through graduate school like they have in most European countries?

No, the scope of debate is far more limited than that. It is a scope defined by that increasingly narrow grey area in between “conservative” and “liberal.” There are distinctions, some of them important. That 3% tax increase will do good things for many people, I hope. Perhaps we won’t start any new wars, I don’t know. Perhaps we’ll withdraw from Iraq, but I’ll bet no reparations for what we’ve done there will be forthcoming. Perhaps there will be no new wars on our civil liberties in the next few years, but I’ll bet the prison population will not get much smaller.

I hope I’m wrong. But if I am to be proven wrong and there are to be serious changes in the welfare of people in the US and around the world, it will only be as a result of a popular uprising of people calling for a real New Deal for the 21st century, an end to the empire, housing, health care and education for all, and so on. Because even if Obama secretly wants all of these things, as so many of us would desperately like to believe, he’s going to need plenty of popular pressure to point to if any of these things are going to become reality. If he really is the socialist wealth redistributor his opponents said he is, he’s going to need massive popular support just to avoid being impeached for treason by those corporate stooges who dominate both parties in the Congress.

And if, on the other hand, he really believes his own campaign promises of meager tax increases for the rich, raising the salaries of teachers a bit, fighting terrorism, passing more free trade agreements, being Israel’s best friend, and so on, then what we have in store is another Democratic administration. Different kind of like Starbucks is different from McDonald’s — they both pay poverty wages and feed you shit, but Starbucks includes health insurance.

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George Bush Plans to Push Through Agenda in Last Days in Office

Friday, November 7th, 2008

President George W Bush is planning to push through a series of potentially unpopular regulation changes in his final weeks in office | By Alex Spillius | IHT.com

Democrats fear the president will try to ram through new rules on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights before December 20, the deadline for changes before the new president is inaugurated a month later. The alterations could take months or years to undo.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has already rushed out new guidelines for the FBI that make domestic surveillance easier, including the use of informants to infiltrate lawful groups and prolonged physical surveillance.

Green campaigners fear the Environmental Protection Agency may issue a rule that would weaken provisions of the Clean Air Act, which required utility companies to install modern pollution measures when they expand capacity.

Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, is believed to be planning to extend the right of doctors and nurses to refuse to participate in abortions to a wider range of health care workers. The right to refuse the provision of the birth control pill, emergency contraception and abortion referrals may also be added.

“Every transition is complicated. This is not a parliamentary system. We have no shadow government in place,” said Stephen Hess, a US presidential expert at the non-partisan Brookings Institution in Washington.

Mr Bush has vowed “complete co-operation” with his successor but has made it clear he will pursue his own policy goals during his remaining 75 days in office.

He publicly congratulated President-elect Barack Obama on his victory, saying said he had telephoned the triumphant Democrat to invite him and wife Michelle Obama to the White House “as soon as possible”.

“I told the President-elect he can count on complete co-operation from my administration as he makes the transition to the White House,” the outgoing president said in a three-minute statement in the Rose Garden.

He made no mention of consulting Mr Obama but promised to keep him “fully informed on important decisions”. He stressed that “there’s important work to do in the months ahead.

“The United States government will stay vigilant in meeting its most important responsibility – protecting the American people. And the world can be certain this commitment will remain steadfast under our next commander-in-chief,” Mr Bush said.

Behinds the scenes, the White House pursued efforts to make sure that Obama’s team can “hit the ground running” at a time of global economic crisis and as tens of thousands of US troops fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, aides said.

Mr Bush requested $8.5 million (£5 million) in funding from his 2009 budget for the transition, which will see the president-elect’s team given office space in Washington.

He has also created a transition commission of senior national security and economic aides who will be giving their designated successors briefings or running them through exercises to simulate responses to natural disasters or terrorist attacks.

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Bush: Terrorists May Attack During Transition

Friday, November 7th, 2008

Antiwar.com | unprecedented effort” to help with the transition to an Obama Administration. But as the outgoing and incoming administrations prepare for as-orderly-as-possible a handover of America’s assorted wars and other foreign policy challenges, Bush warns that he sees a golden opportunity for a terrorist attack.

In a speech at the White House, he said “we’re in a struggle against violent extremists determined to attack us, and they would like nothing more than to exploit this period of change to harm the American people.”

The outgoing President urged employees to “conduct yourselves with the decency and professionalism that you have shown throughout my time in office,” while using the remaining 75 days to work on the transition. DHS undersecretary Elaine Duke is reportedly also developing a “transition and succession plan,” while warning that “the terrorists perceive government transitions to be periods of increased vulnerability.”

Obama will also face challenges as the military eyes a $57 billion spending hike for the 2010 military budget. Analyst Loren B. Thompson says “if Obama says no, he will be off to a bad start with the military.”

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Pakistan sets death penalty for “cyber terrorism”

Friday, November 7th, 2008

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Causing death through “cyber terrorism” will be punishable by death in Pakistan, according to a decree issued by President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday.

 

The Prevention of Electronic Crimes law will be applicable to anyone who commits a crime detrimental to national security through the use of a computer or any other electronic device, the government said in the ordinance.

 

“Whoever commits the offence of cyber terrorism and causes death of any person shall be punishable with death or imprisonment for life,” according to a copy of the ordinance, published by the state-run APP news agency.

 

The law will apply to Pakistanis and foreigners whether living in Pakistan or abroad.

 

The ordinance described cyber terrorism as accessing of a computer network or electronic system by someone who then “knowingly engages in or attempts to engage in a terroristic act”.

 

The ordinance listed several definitions of a “terroristic act” including stealing or copying, or attempting to steal or copy, classified information necessary to manufacture any form of chemical, biological or nuclear weapon.

 

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is a front-line state in the U.S.-led campaign against militancy and security forces are fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants, most of whom are based in the northwest, near the Afghan border.

 

The ordinance also set out punishments for other offences including illegal electronic entry into systems of any sensitive installations, electronic fraud, electronic forgery, system damage, unauthorised access to codes and misuse of encryption.

 

Punishments for those crimes ranged from three to 10 years in prison.

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