Fascism thrives on the dumbing down of society. Disinformation, misinformation, and censorship are the key ingredients. To start things off watch these censored videos that you in the USA have never seen on your media. The rest of this post contains info and links to the biggest news stories censored in the USA in 2007 following these videos .... Warning Graphic Violence Censored (part 1) Censored (part 2) Censored (part 3) Censored (part 4) Censored (part 5) Censored (part 6) Censored (part 7) Censored (part 8) Censored (part 9) 9/11 Video Clips Dan Rather Would Rather Not Show You Ignored E-4B Aired Six Years Later By CNN, Censored 9/11/01 *Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media Throughout the year a large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to as “network neutrality,” the issue has become a tug of war with cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet service providers on the other. Yet despite important legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines until 2006. *Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran According to journalist Jason Leopold, sources at former Cheney company Halliburton allege that Halliburton sold key components for a nuclear reactor to an Iranian oil development company. Leopold says his Halliburton sources have intimate knowledge of the business dealings of both Halliburton and Oriental Oil Kish, one of Iran’s largest private oil companies. *Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger Oceanic problems once found on a local scale are now pandemic. Data from oceanography, marine biology, meteorology, fishery science, and glaciology reveal that the seas are changing in ominous ways. A vortex of cause and effect wrought by global environmental dilemmas is changing the ocean from a watery horizon with assorted regional troubles to a global system in alarming distress. *Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US The number of hungry and homeless people in U.S. cities continued to grow despite claims of an improved economy. Increased demand for vital services rose as needs of the most destitute went unmet, according to the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors Report, which has documented increasing need since its 1982 inception. *High-Tech Genocide in Congo The world’s most neglected emergency, according to the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, is the ongoing tragedy of the Congo, where six to seven million have died since 1996 as a consequence of invasions and wars sponsored by western powers trying to gain control of the region’s mineral wealth. At stake is control of natural resources that are sought by U.S. corporations - diamonds, tin, copper, gold, and more significantly, coltan and niobium, two minerals necessary for production of cell phones and other high-tech electronics; and cobalt, an element essential to nuclear, chemical, aerospace, and defense industries. *Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy Special Counsel Scott Bloch, appointed by President Bush in 2004, is overseeing the virtual elimination of federal whistleblower rights in the U.S. government. *US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released documents of forty-four autopsies held in Afghanistan and Iraq. Twenty-one of those deaths were listed as homicides. The documents show that detainees died during and after interrogations by Navy SEALs, Military Intelligence, and Other Government Agency (OGA). *Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act The Department of Defense has been granted exemption from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Congress passed the 2006 Defense Authorization Act which renders Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) “operational files” fully immune to FOIA requests, the main mechanism by which watchdog groups, journalists and individuals can access federal documents. Of particular concern to critics of the Defense Authorization Act is the DIA’s new right to thwart access to files that may reveal human rights violations tied to ongoing “counterterrorism” efforts. *The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision that called for tearing down the Wall and compensating affected communities, construction of the Wall has accelerated. The route of the barrier runs deep into Palestinian territory, aiding the annexation of Israeli settlements and the breaking of Palestinian territorial continuity. The World Bank’s vision of “economic development,” however, evades any discussion of the Wall’s illegality. *Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians There is widespread speculation that President Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent within his own party as well as within the military itself, will begin pulling American troops out of Iraq in 2006. A key element of the drawdown plans not mentioned in the President’s public statements, or in mainstream media for that matter, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. *Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed Several recent studies confirm fears that genetically modified (GM) foods damage human health. These studies were released as the World Trade Organization (WTO) moved toward upholding the ruling that the European Union has violated international trade rules by stopping importation of GM foods. *Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines The Bush administration plans to resume production of antipersonnel landmine systems in a move that is at odds with both the international community and previous U.S. policy, according to the leading human rights organization, Human Rights Watch (HRW). *New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup New studies from both sides of the Atlantic reveal that Roundup, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, poses serious human health threats. More than 75 percent of genetically modified (GM) crops are engineered to tolerate the absorption of Roundup - it eliminates all plants that are not GM. Monsanto Inc., the major engineer of GM crops, is also the producer of Roundup. Thus, while Roundup was formulated as a weapon against weeds, it has become a prevalent ingredient in most of our food crops. *Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps in the United States. *Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) research program is increasingly relying on corporate joint ventures, according to agency documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The American Chemical Council (ACC) is now EPA’s leading research partner and the EPA is diverting funds from basic health and environmental research towards research that addresses regulatory concerns of corporate funders. *Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court Ecuador and Mexico have refused to sign bilateral immunity agreements (BIA) with the U.S., in ratification of the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty. Despite the Bush administration’s threat to withhold economic aid, both countries confirmed allegiance to the ICC, the international body established to try individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. *Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda According to a report from journalist, Greg Palast, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was indeed about the oil. However, it wasn’t to destroy OPEC, as claimed by neoconservatives in the administration, but to take part in it. *Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story Research into the events of September 11 by Brigham Young University physics professor, Steven E. Jones, concludes that the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according to laws of physics. Jones is calling for an independent, international scientific investigation “guided not by politicized notions and constraints but rather by observations and calculations.” *Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever New developments in satellite imaging technology reveal that the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed twice as quickly as previously estimated due to the surreptitious practice of selective logging. *Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on bottled water in the belief—often mistaken—that it is better for us than what flows from our taps. Worldwide, bottled water consumption surged to 41 billion gallons in 2004, up 57 percent since 1999. *Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers Barrick Gold, a powerful multinational gold mining company, planned to melt three Andean glaciers in order to access gold deposits through open pit mining. The water from the glaciers would have been held for refreezing in the following winters. *Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed More than $8 billion in Homeland Security funds has been doled out to states since the September 11, 2001 attacks, but the public has little chance of knowing how this money is being spent. *US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe Lobbyists funded by the U.S. oil industry have launched a campaign in Europe aimed at derailing efforts to tackle greenhouse gas pollution and climate change. *Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year Vice President Dick Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over $8 million in 2005, an increase of more than 3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to rake in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit government contracts. *US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region Five hundred U.S. troops arrived in Paraguay with planes, weapons, and ammunition in July 2005, shortly after the Paraguayan Senate granted U.S. troops immunity from national and International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction. Neighboring countries and human rights organizations are concerned that the massive air base at Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay is potential real estate for the U.S. military. Stumble It!

Blog Directory Because of the large Archive of this blog (over 450 posts), here is a pictured link directory of the most popular posts, making it easy for you to identify the topics that interest you. Included is a one of a kind sidebar where topics are grouped by category. Just Click below ... *Top Posts Stumble It!

A Symbionic Relationship Current economic projections suggest that by 2050 the hierarchy of the largest economies would have China as the largest, followed by the USA, India, Japan, Brazil and Russia. Such historic shift of power is not likely to be smooth for a variety of reasons. First, and foremost, is the complex, symbiotic relationship between the Chinese economy and American prosperity and indebtedness. A large fraction of the American trade deficit is with China. This is now becoming a political issue in the US, but since the Chinese purchase of American bonds is keeping the interest rates in America low, the recent American demand for a revaluation of the yuan is largely shadow boxing. Nevertheless China and the United States remain economic competitors. The Chinese appetite for commodities is driving up world prices. In Mapping the Global Future, an assessment of the world's prospects in 2020, the US government's National Intelligence Council says China is expected to boost its energy consumption by 150 per cent. The Chinese feel vulnerable since America controls the sea lanes from the Middle East. Consequently, the Chinese are building up their naval power to defend these sea lanes and also entering into exploration agreements with Central Asian and South American countries. In my own view, the mutual economic and business linkages will ensure that there would not be a military conflict between the US and China. China Delivers US $10 Billion Deal: Hush $$$ For Critics? US - China Trade SC Debate: Duncan Hunter on Trade and China US-China Trade Policy: Is China Winning The Money War? CNBC The Hukou System China's real dangers are internal. The main challenge is the idea of Western individualism which goes against the Chinese tradition related to order and harmony in society. The failed Taiping rebellion of the mid-19th century, the communist revolution of Mao Tsetung, and the Tiananmen protests were attempts to find Chinese answers to this Western challenge. Looking from outside, the centralisation of power by the Communist Party, and absence of institutions that provide outlet to vent frustrations of the public, appear future vulnerabilities. But Chinese leaders haven't yet found a new paradigm that would be in harmony with its own history as well as the needs of the times. Meanwhile, certain problems are festering, such as its hukou (household registration) system of two Chinas in which more than one-sixth of the population is denied the rights that others have. Under the hukou system, people must live and work in the place where they are permanently registered, which is normally their place of birth. Households are designated as rural or urban. Urban workers are permitted to change jobs and they are provided with state housing and pensions. Rural workers need government permission to seek work in designated urban areas. In their jobs, rural workers are required to enter into bonded contracts which they can break only if they pay the employer a large amount of money. Employers prefer to recruit young, single women, who are housed in cement-block dormitories; the fear of the registration laws ensures that the women spend most of their time in the factory complex. In effect, the hukou system perpetuates two Chinas, where the rural sixth has become the underclass in relation to the urban population. The urban folks are like the silk-industry bourgeoisie, and the women of the peasant families are like the workforce for cocoon production. Absent legal safeguards for the rural people, local governments have recruited gangsters, known in Chinese as 'the black society,' to collect extortionary taxes. According to a recent World Bank report, China's rural poor have suffered a six per cent decline in living standards since Beijing's accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. From the Taiping rebellion to the Tiananmen Massacre The mix of foreign ideas, bureaucratic control, greed, and corruption has led to several social explosions from time to time. Given that the Communist Party in China allows no opposition to it, could there be periods of breakdown of order? A historical breakdown of monumental proportions was the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864). One of the bloodiest conflicts in history, it was a struggle between the forces of Imperial China and those inspired by the Christian convert Hong Xiuquan. It is estimated that this war cost more than 20 million civilian and military lives. Both the Chinese Nationalists and the Communists, two groups that later ruled the nation, claimed to have been inspired by it. The British East India Company started to import opium to China in early 19th century. Warren Delano, maternal grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was an important figure in this business. The Chinese resisted the importation of opium, but the Western powers insisted on carrying it out in the name of free trade and this led to the Opium Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860. The treaties of Nanjing and Tianjin, which legalised the opium trade, also legitimised missionary activities throughout China. This story had an American connection in the name of Issachar J Roberts, a Baptist minister, who was Hong's religious teacher. Believing that he was the Son of God and the younger brother of Jesus, Hong announced that his mission on earth was to rid China of evil influences of Manchus, Taoists, Buddhists, and Confucians. In the late 1840s, Hong reorganised his movement into a military organisation. In 1851, after repulsing an attack by the Imperial forces, he declared that a new Kingdom of Heavenly Peace had been established; he himself was the Heavenly King and the era of the Taiping (Great Peace) had begun. The rebellion got off to an impressive start. Its soldiers raced northward through the central Yangtse valley to Nanjing. However, they were repulsed in Beijing. For the next ten years, the Taipings warred continuously to maintain their territory. But, slowly, the Kingdom began to unravel and in June, 1864, Hong poisoned himself. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were squelched before they became an unstoppable force. Although sparked by students mourning the death of a liberal Party leader, they were a consequence of the inability of the Communist party to resolve its differences in an orderly manner. It was the struggle between reformers and conservatives being played out in the streets in which the demonstrators called for greater democracy, and an end to official corruption. As the protests spread nationwide, the hardliners got the upper hand and Beijing was placed under martial law. Tiananmen Square was not cleared, and on May 30 students erected the 'Goddess of Democracy' statue to the cheers of a large crowd. On June 4, on the orders of the party elders, troops and tanks cleared Tiananmen Square. Hundreds (some say, nearly 3,000) of unarmed protestors were killed. The Chinese government has refused to give out the number of dead and wounded. The Taipings wanted to create an ideal theocratic state, whereas the Tiananmen protestors wanted an ideal liberal state. The liberal State model would solve the problems of hukou and hasten the creation of a civil State, but its goals are different from that of the Communist Party, which remains provincial in many respects. The Use of Nationalism It is the reluctance to face up to these tasks of bringing democracy within, that Chinese leaders have used hegemonic nationalism related especially to Taiwan for its internal political purposes. The same reason leads to a selective use of history. Recently, there were state sponsored demonstrations against Japanese atrocities in the Second World War, yet China is purging its own textbooks of its own war in the late 1980s in Vietnam, and whitewashing the events of the Tiananmen Square protests. The Chinese economy also has to carry the burden of an aging population that is proportionately greater than in other large countries. The demographic problem of China will get worse in the next decade. The way China has catapulted itself onto the Monopoly board of global capitalism has caught most Western leaders on the hop. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid looking back at their pursuers, top U.S. and European Union businesspeople are wondering, "Who are those guys?" After all, how much do we know about the China National Petroleum Corp., which yesterday bid $4.18 billion for PetroKazakhstan, a Canadian oil company with big reserves in Central Asia? Or Haier, which earlier this year tried to nab U.S. white-goods company Maytag? Or Lenovo, which bought IBM's PC business? How do you pronounce corporate acronyms like CNOOC (the China National Offshore Oil Corp., which recently tried to purchase Unocal), SAIC (the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., which fought Nanjing Automotive Corp. for Britain's Rover), or TCL (the TV company that bought France's Thomson Electronics)? China has been a global trade presence since well before Marco Polo trekked there, but, as the recent flurry of successful and attempted acquisitions of major Western brands suggests, its influence has surged of late. If you like the German spectator sport of schadenfreude, one delicious consequence of this is watching presidents, prime ministers, and CEOs from other nations scramble for position in the rapidly rearranging global business turf. Countless commentators have raised questions about the economic and global security implications of this rearrangement, but the murmur about the potential environmental and social consequences has been far more subdued. Take CNOOC. Earlier this month, the company withdrew its $18.5 billion offer to buy Unocal in the wake of a political firestorm in the United States. That firestorm was triggered not by the company's corporate-responsibility record, which would have been a reasonable subject for discussion, but rather by the idea of selling off a U.S. oil company that some regard as a national strategic asset. On that issue, it was Thomas Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times that, "if China wants to overpay for a second-tier U.S. energy company, that's China's business. Anyway, the more starved Americans are for oil, the sooner we will adopt alternatives and get off this drug once and for all." But Friedman made a deeper point, one that's not going away with the CNOOC bid off the table. As he put it, China and America have become economic "Siamese twins." He writes, "We have slipped into a symbiotic relationship with another major power that is neither a free market nor a democracy." That, surely, is the real issue. How can we help bring China, and other emerging economies, up to speed on environmental, human-rights, and anticorruption protections? One major obstacle to doing so is the hypocrisy of many Western approaches to globalization. After years of insisting they were 100 percent committed to free markets and no-holds-barred globalization, political and business leaders in the U.S. and E.U. are having their bluff called by China, Inc. From the East looking West, it's increasingly clear that, in fact, Americans were 100 percent committed to Americanization, Europeans to Europeanization, and so on. It's hardly surprising, then, if some Chinese business leaders view Western concerns about corporate social responsibility and sustainable development as little more than protectionist trade barriers. Still, that hardly makes legitimate concerns about the environment and worker rights disappear. Today's China is awash in contrasts. The newest factories, whether churning out cars or pharmaceuticals, are among the best in the world. At the same time, the country has some of the worst sweatshops and some of the most dangerous working conditions; think of the endless stream of coal-mine disasters that kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Chinese miners every year. The civil society and nongovernmental-organization (NGO) sectors are gradually gaining their feet, but those feet are still tightly bound by government controls that massively constrain NGO evolution and censor what such organizations can say. Instead of expanding civil liberties and liberalizing economic policy simultaneously (as some other governments are doing), China's leaders are trying to increase economic health while maintaining tight political controls -- in the hope, apparently, that wealth will suppress the nascent appetite for democracy. It's hard to say whether this high-stakes gamble will succeed. On the one hand, Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang recently told a closed meeting that 3.76 million Chinese took part in 74,000 mass protests last year alone. On the other, such public activism can hardly be taken for granted; the London Times reported last week that China has created elite police squads in 36 cities to crush protests. What is certain, though, is that anything that enables China to operate without civil-sector watchdogs should make the rest of us uneasy, not just about the nation's growing economic clout, but also about its environmental reach. (Air pollution from the country's great urban-industrial concentrations is now turning up as far afield as Canada. And that's to say nothing of the country's coal-powered carbon-dioxide emissions that will help accelerate global climate change.) In a July 2005 survey by Toronto-based polling company GlobeScan, over 300 sustainability experts worldwide were asked whether they thought China would adopt the "best environmental and energy technologies and practices available." Forty-four percent thought it unlikely, against 28 percent who were confident that China would rise to the occasion. One of the optimists is eco-designer Bill McDonough, whom we bumped into in Beijing, at the Fortune Global Forum this May. As chair of the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development, he believes China will be forced to become a leading incubator of environmental innovation simply because the in-country collision between people's needs and the ability of natural systems to support them is already so acute. As he notes, "The Chinese have to build new housing for 400 million people in 12 years." General Electric Chair and CEO Jeff Immelt also sees China's impending crises as a huge opportunity for sustainability solutions, telling Fortune, "While Europe has been a driver for innovation in cleaner technologies, China promises to be its market." Having met people from CNOOC, PetroChina, and Sinopec, it's clear to us that sustainable development will be a tough sell in China. That said, we share McDonough and Immelt's optimism, not least because of two meetings we had with Vice Minister Pan Yue, deputy director of the State Environment Protection Administration. He and SEPA have stalled dozens of major development projects that ignored environmental laws. The fact that anyone would even try to stop the juggernaut, let alone succeed, is encouraging. We owe people like Pan all the support we can offer. We must use the oft-claimed leverage gained by engaging China as a trade partner to help its leaders and citizens fight for new rights and responsibilities. Otherwise, we risk having our own undermined. China, which sends one-third of its exports to America, accounts for 26% of the U.S. trade gap. Most of its exports to the U.S. are manufactured products, made by workers earning only 4.5% of the average U.S. factory wage. ..." The article continues with: "But the fate of U.S. Workers depends primarily on domestic conditions, not the trade gap. A Brookings Institution study ... found that trade accounts for only about 12% of the nation's manufacturing job losses since 2000. Most of the losses stem from weaker exports ... The main source of the deficit isn't China's ... low wages, or export subsidies, but imploding U.S. savings rate - ... The U.S. current account deficit - the gap between what America spends and what it produces - recently hit a high because of a sharp drop in personal savings and out-of-control federal spending. " We also conveniently forget that our prolifgate spending has been financed by "... China, along with Japan and few others, ... financing the U.S. current account gap via huge purchases of dollar-demoninated securities at relatively low interest rates." First: the USA buys the most bonds it issues. No one else comes even close. Second, if you add up all the bonds sold the last 30 years, it is over $8 trillion and rising fast. Second: it helps to color things in. When I put the countries that are selling off US bonds in red and the ones buying in green, a pretty nasty picture emerges: our allies who we spend half a trillion protecting every year are SELLING and the countries that harbor some need to control our empire are BUYING. Rapidly. This is a STRATEGIC DISASATER. And we should be seeing hearings about this and there should be demands our allies support our red ink, not make it worse. Certainly, this is a stab in the back. A year ago, Japan held $639.4 billion in US red ink. They sold off $21.6 billion this year. The UK sold off $47 billion. Taiwan sold off $11.4 billion. South Korea sold off $14 billion. Mexico sold off $7 billion. Singapore sold off $5 billion. And Canada sold off $6 billion. These are the top holders of our public bonds who are our allies and who we protect with our super-massive, super-expensive military! And they collectively sold off $112 billion in bonds. This is a huge number since it comes from just ONE YEAR'S statistics! Who bought this $112 billion in bonds? Heh. Hello, communists! After the US itself and Japan, the two top economies that are hosting the weakest currencies relative to all the other top 30 nations, China holds the third most US bonds. $416 billion. They bought another $95 billion in bonds just this year alone. This is the combined total sold by the top four allies of the US. $11 billion of the bonds sold by our allies who are stabbing us in the back were bought by a consortium of OPEC countries seeking to gain influence over our military as well as our government. A consortium the Chinese are courting very strongly. The diplomacy done by China this year aimed at stopping fighting in the Middle East of the Shi'ites versus the Sunni are significant and the fact that China and they nearly totally soaked up every penny of the bonds sold by the Asian 'allies' we are foolishly protecting for free shows clearly that there is something afoot here and I can see the outline of a very large boot coming down on our silly faces. The only two European allies who bought bonds were Germany and Switzerland. Together, this was barely a billion dollars worth. Since NONE of our allies think our bonds are worth buying, nay, they aren't worth holding, is significant on many diplomatic, military and trade levels: they think we are going bankrupt and are ditching us as fast as they dare! These economic relationships between U.S. and China - American's love of the inexpensive Chinese products - the U.S. is a huge market and one of the few strong economies - bind us in a symbiotic relationship. What is the answer to the question on how to compete? One answer is to focus on "value added". What is the primary value your company adds to the product or service? The rest should be open to the most cost effective approach, such as out sourcing, OEM (original equipment manufacturer) relationship, etc. Save what you can . Be prepared to compete on a global basis. We are driving our economic and diplomatic car like we are madmen and it is on fire, the tires are gone and we are grinding grooves in the pavement while we scream and wave guns, shooting anyone who tries to stop us. References *Joined at the Hip *China creates crack unit to crush poverty protests *Chinese oil firm withdraws takeover bid for Unocal Stumble It!

For my loyal readers as a special Christmas Treat for you, watch these Great Classic XMAS time Videos First download the player to view in your browser ... *DivX Web Player and here are special Christmas time video movies (double click on film as it plays for full screen) *Scrooge *A Christmas Carol *Gulliver's Travels *Christmas Videos Stumble It!

At midnight Dec. 21, the Schengen zone of open borders in Europe expands from 15 to 24 states. Citizens of Schengen member states no longer will need passports to travel in other member states, and coordinated policies on immigration, asylum and law enforcement will come into play. Border controls with non-Schengen members will tighten even as all existing checkpoints between Schengen states will be closed down. While most Schengen states are EU members, Schengen is not an EU treaty. Watch the Video ... *Europe's Schengen Zone Grows Expansion of EU's border-free zone: open door to illegals? Concerns over illegal immigration are rising as nine new countries are joining the EU's Schengen zone, where persons can move freely without showing their passports when crossing internal borders. The new members include some Post-Soviet states on Russia's borders. Originally named after a wine-making town in Luxembourg, the Schengen zone has matured a lot since its inception back in 1985. The harmonisation of border controls and cross-boundary police co-operation has proved to be one of the most popular policies of the European block. Fifteen European states have signed up over the years, but this month's expansion is the largest since Schengen was conceived. The Schengen treaty was first implemented in 1985 and has steadily expanded to today's roster of 15 countries, comprising Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. At midnight it will take in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Cyprus plan to join in 2008 or 2009, and Bulgaria and Romania in 2011. For the states that only 20 years ago languished under Soviet rule, admittance to Schengen represents nearly as powerful a moment as when they joined NATO and the European Union. They are now fully integrated into Western political, economic, military and social structures. There are three notable impacts beyond the obvious benefit of easier travel. First, if Europeans can now travel easily among Schengen states, they can now easily work in other Schengen states. That will trigger a great deal of price competition as the newer, poorer members are able to compete with older, richer members for jobs. The result probably will be a taming of European labor inflation, offset by a surge in labor action in the older members. Second, any extra-Schengen state that has a travel spat with one of the new Schengen members must now deal with the Schengen group as a whole. The greatest irritant will lie with Russia's Baltic exclave, Kaliningrad. Since Kaliningrad is cut off from Russia proper, all land connections must pass through either Lithuania or Poland now both Schengen states. Finally, there is the issue of illegal immigration and crime. Open borders are just as good for criminals and human trafficking as they are for people wanting to vacation in a foreign country for the weekend. The festivities kicked off when Alfred Gusenbauer, the Austrian chancellor, and Robert Fico, the Slovak prime minister, ceremonially demolished a border post between their two countries. The new regulations officially came into effect from twelve midnight on Thursday night, when Poland's eastern border became a large part of the new Schengen frontier. West of it, passport controls are to be torn down. The prospect has caused uproar among German police on their country's border with Poland at Frankfurt Oder, which until now has marked the outer limit of the Schengen zone. They fear that Poland's security forces will be overwhelmed by the new arrangement. "The Poles are doing their best, but the task is impossible," said Lars Wendland, a spokesman for a union of border police at Frankfurt Oder. "Schengen will increase illegal immigration massively here. Our motto is Free Entry: Yes. Crime and Terror: No." German border police, many in uniform, have already held protests against the German authorities, who are cutting security staff on the border zone with Poland by almost half, to 1,250 officers. Their protests have been supported by their Polish counterparts, who are meant to be enforcing the new Schengen zone. In a letter to German border police, Polish officers claim to "understand your [German police] fears regarding the major restructuring of the border police at the German Eastern frontier". "We also share your worries about an uncontrolled influx of terrorism and crime, which will no doubt represent a danger for the establishment of a 'new European order' in the framework of the Schengen treaty." The joint concerns of the German and Polish police forces are reinforced by worries over the Schengen II computer system, which is intended to provide detailed information on those crossing the border to member police forces. "We were promised by the EU that we would only open borders if the Schengen II database had been established," said Mr Wendland. "But it's not running yet." The officials' fears, coupled with the scaling back of Germany's own border police, have left some residents of Frankfurt Oder in a state of panic. From today, the narrow concrete grey and blue bridge that spans the river Oder and links Frankfurt with the Polish town of Slubice will lose its array of passport booths and vehicle checkpoints. The steady traffic between the two sides seems placid and friendly. But both Poles and Germans worry about the future under Schengen. "For most people here, the border has functioned as a kind of security filter," said Jolanta Pekowska, a Polish woman who has lived in Frankfurt for six years. "I wouldn't mind if the border controls were kept up, to the contrary." Joerg Vogelsaenger, Frankfurt Oder's MP, said that border controls would in effect have to be replicated, but deeper into German territory, making them harder to carry out. Mixed Feelings One of Brussels' biggest-ever projects, the creation of a constitution for a United Europe, was brought to a crashing halt recently by French and Dutch voters. Analysts conclude that the main reason for their rejection of this project was fear over the pace of expansion, which was seen as threatening their economies with low-paid labor, creating overwhelming immigration flows, and endangering well-established social protections. The EU foreign ministers decided it is too early to pick up the pieces and to see what, if anything, can be rescued from the constitution. "It was a bridge too far," Pypers said. "The European leaders should have recognized that after the 'big bang' of [the 2004] enlargement, the European public were not very keen to face [so soon] another big European project." Even with the current 25 members, EU structures and mechanisms will certainly need streamlining if the bloc's policies are to be coherent. And those problems would only grow were membership to increase further to as many as 30 which would be the case if the current aspirants were admitted. Despite these shortcomings, however, there is jubilation over the open borders between east and west. In Hungary, even those in favour of Hungary staying out of the EU had reason to celebrate, albeit for different reasons. While for many the Schengen Zone represents the freedom of movement between east and west, for some it represents a redress of sorts for past injustices. For instance, some Hungarians view the open borders between Hungary and Slovakia as a reunification of sorts of those territories that were lost to Slovakia at the end of the First World War and in which large Hungarian minorities live. On a more practical level, families which had been separated for decades by politics are now able to once again re-establish frayed and lost ties. As a result of this, many in Hungary are now hoping that Romania will soon join the Schengen Zone. Transylvania in Romania is home to the largest Diaspora of Hungarians. Likewise, there is hope that Serbia will soon be invited to accession talks, culminating in EU membership and ultimately being a part of the Schengen Zone. While generally there is jubilation at the opening of borders throughout Central and Eastern Europe, some have reservations. For the same reason that some see the opening of borders as a reunification of sorts, others see this same opening of borders as a threat to their national security. Not everyone regards the way in which events had turned out a century ago as entirely negative. Nor is everyone is so happy about open borders between east and west. Many Austrians lament the loss of their border control posts with Hungary and other new member states. They fear an influx of criminals and refugees coming from the east. Indeed, many within the new member states are perhaps a little too optimistic about the meaning of open borders. For one, borders between east and west are not irrevocably open; they can be closed at any time for any reason. A case in point is the soccer championships co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland next year. Austria has already announced its intention to reinstate the border crossings during the event. If the fears of Austria and other countries of the negative aspects to allowing new members states to join the Schengen Zone are realized, then the euphoria of open borders between East and West may be short-lived. It must be remembered that not all EU member states are a part of the Schengen Zone: Britain and Ireland, for example, have stayed out precisely because of fears over national security. The idea of open borders is a nice one in theory, but the concept of a united Europe still has a long way to go yet. Stumble It!

The End of the Internet? Net Neutrality Threatened by Cable, Telecom interests. Phone and cable companies are lobbying Congress for legislation that would permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Both Congress and the FCC are currently considering a number of proposals that will have far-reaching implications on the way the Internet works and the vital concept of net neutrality, universal and non-discriminatory to the Internet, is at risk. Say Goodbye to the Internet as we know it- scary stuff The Death of The Internet? Net Neutrality and Internet Freedom Report House Rejects Net Neutrality A large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to as “network neutrality,” the issue has become a tug of war with cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet service providers on the other. Despite important legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines until 2006. And, except for occasional coverage on CNBC’s Kudlow & Kramer, mainstream television remains hands-off to this day (June 2006). Most coverage of the issue framed it as an argument over regulation, but the term “regulation” in this case is somewhat misleading. Groups advocating for “net neutrality” are not promoting regulation of internet content. What they want is a legal mandate forcing cable companies to allow internet service providers (ISPs) free access to their cable lines (called a “common carriage” agreement). This was the model used for dial-up internet, and it is the way content providers want to keep it. They also want to make sure that cable companies cannot screen or interrupt internet content without a court order. Those in favor of net neutrality say that lack of government regulation simply means that cable lines will be regulated by the cable companies themselves. ISPs will have to pay a hefty service fee for the right to use cable lines (making internet services more expensive). Those who could pay more would get better access; those who could not pay would be left behind. Cable companies could also decide to filter Internet content at will. On the other side, cable company supporters say that a great deal of time and money was spent laying cable lines and expanding their speed and quality. They claim that allowing ISPs free access would deny cable companies the ability to recoup their investments, and maintain that cable providers should be allowed to charge. Not doing so, they predict, would discourage competition and innovation within the cable industry. Cable supporters like the AT&T-sponsored Hands Off the Internet website assert that common carriage legislation would lead to higher prices and months of legal wrangling. They maintain that such legislation fixes a problem that doesn’t exist and scoff at concerns that phone and cable companies will use their position to limit access based on fees as groundless. Though cable companies deny plans to block content providers without cause, there are a number of examples of cable-initiated discrimination. The FCC settled a case against a North Carolina-based telephone company that was blocking the ability of its customers to use voice-over-Internet calling services instead of (the more expensive) phone lines A Canadian cable company blocked access to a site that supported the cable union in a labor dispute. In February 2006, Cox Communications denied customers access to the Craig’s List website. Though Cox claims that it was simply a security error, it was discovered that Cox ran a classified service that competes with Craig’s List. Past Court Decisions In June of 1999, the Ninth District Court ruled that AT&T would have to open its cable network to ISPs (AT&T v. City of Portland). The court said that Internet transmissions, interactive, two-way exchanges, were telecommunication offerings, not a cable information service (like CNN) that sends data one way. This decision was overturned on appeal a year later. Recent court decisions have extended the cable company agenda further. The United States Supreme Court ruled that cable corporations like Comcast and Verizon were not required to share their lines with rival ISPs (National Cable & Telecommunications Association vs. Brand X Internet Services). Cable companies would not have to offer common carriage agreements for cable lines the way that telephone companies have for phone lines. According to Dr. Elliot Cohen, the decision accepted the FCC assertion that cable modem service is not a two-way telecommunications offering, but a one-way information service, completely overturning the 1999 ruling. Meanwhile, telephone companies charge that such a decision gives an unfair advantage to cable companies and are requesting that they be released from their common carriage requirement as well. Stumble It!

Police State 101 - You Are Being Watched

Total Enslavement Police State New World Order 103 - Future of America Big Brother is watching you 24/7 Closed-circuit TV cameras, smart cards, GPS chips in cell phones, and every one of your electronic transaction recorded and archived for data mining by the authorities and corporations - this is the lot of American citizens in the 21st century. It is hard to move unnoticed in the United States, especially after September 11, an event which is exploited by "the worst elements of the political class, who seek to steer fear and anger toward the destruction of traditional American liberties." As Americans "have embraced their loss of privacy with patriotic vigor and pop-culture nonchalance," it is possible that many people simply don't realize the extent of the invasion. Television shows such as Big Brother (a Dutch invention) attempt to impose narrative on everyday actions monitored by constant surveillance, and people "treat [this surveillance] as another natural element, like heat or cold, with which we must live and against which we test our wits." This is a chilling view of society, one that makes 1984 look like a mere rehearsal. Journalist Christian Parenti sets out to track and chronicle surveillance in the United States, beginning in the 18th century and progressing to the present, and shows that privacy is fast slipping from our grasp. Parenti sees modern surveillance as originating in the times of slavery, as a means of identifying and denying true identity to blacks as a class. Presenting some of the means used to search for runaway slaves, Parenti suggests that these attempts to describe truants were a form of forced identification. But this is truly stretching the issue - a physical description of a person, a sketchy one at that, in no way violates privacy. However, the use of tin identity tags and badges in the late 18th century was indeed the first step toward establishing identity cards, which did mark their holders as slaves. The next step in what might be called passive surveillance was photography. Identifying miscreants on paper was difficult; keeping rogue's galleries of them in photographic form made it much easier to spot them again. Bertillonage, an early form of biometrics, based on body measurement, and later fingerprinting, helped police identify criminals, just as DNA testing is now used to do the same. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the "authorities" kept striving to develop foolproof systems of identification, all of which were designed to identify repeat offenders, or people whose identities had been recorded because of their race or political ideas. But surveillance reached a new level of pervasiveness with the advent of digital technology. The first example of electronic surveillance occurred when IBM worked for the German National Socialist government organizing and analyzing its census, a project which was "as integral to Hitler's Final Solution as was Zyclon-B." The numbers tattooed on prisoners' forearms - "death camp barcodes" - were linked to their computerized records. There may be a giant leap from these tattoos to Social Security numbers used for identification purposes, but one of the risks presented in this book is that data existing for specific purposes today may tomorrow be used for other reasons. From Social Security numbers to credit cards, from bar codes to GSM chips; as times marches on, the tiny details all add up to a disturbing picture: in developed countries, it is very difficult to live without leaving traces of your actions on a daily level. From your ATM, which knows where you were when you withdrew cash, to your cell phone, which records your location as you speak, the "soft cage" of surveillance surrounds you constantly. Cameras film you day and night, your passage through toll booths is recorded if you use a system designed to save you time, and your employer can monitor your work through your computer. It's odd that a technology espoused as liberating and boundary-free - the Internet - is one of the prime vectors of controlling dissent and monitoring the actions of citizens. Its ubiquity makes data transfer cheap and easy, and allows the authorities to combine databases and provide trans-national access to police forces all across the country. In spite of all this, Parenti avoids being overly hysterical, and presents these technologies with a cool objectivity that surprises at times. But make no mistake; his presentation of these technologies is designed to inform you of the eye that watches you in everything you do. Whether people will eventually react to this loss of freedom is unclear. As it stands, the majority of people, when polled, are generally in favor of such devices as closed-circuit cameras, since they make for safer neighborhoods. In France, where I live, the police have recently introduced automatic radar cameras to catch speeders on highways. There is little complaint about this - and in my opinion rightly so - because this is helping to reduce the highest rate of road deaths in Europe. But when these cameras are used to track people doing other things, or the data is allowed - on purpose or accidentally - to get into the hands of others, will the public be in favor of it? Orwell's 1984 was merely a rehearsal for today's surveillance technologies, and this book shows you why. It offers few suggestions on how to counter these technologies, other than a couple of paragraphs at the end of the book. While it's relatively easy to inventory the "thousand things that make up the soft cage", it's a much more difficult thing to revolt against them. At least this book will help foster awareness of the ways in which privacy is becoming a thing of the past. On a typical day, you might make a call on a cell phone, withdraw money at an ATM, visit the mall, and make a purchase with a credit card. Each of these routine transactions leaves a digital trail, logging your movements, schedules, habits and political beliefs for government agencies and businesses to access. As cutting-edge historian and journalist Christian Parenti points out in this urgent and timely book, these everyday intrusions on privacy, while harmless in themselves, are part of a relentless expansion of routine surveillance in American life over the last two centuries. Vivid and chilling, The Soft Cage explores the hidden history of surveillance from controlling slaves in the old South to implementing early criminal justice, tracking immigrants, and even establishing modern social work. It also explores the role computers play in creating a whole new world of seemingly benign technologies--such as credit cards, website "cookies," electronic toll collection, "data mining." and iris scanners at airports. With fears of personal and national security at an all-time high, this ever-growing infrastructure of high-tech voyeurism is shifting the balance of power between individuals and the state in groundbreaking--and very dangerous--ways. From closed-circuit television cameras to the Department of Homeland Security, The Soft Cage offers a compelling, vitally important history lesson for every American concerned about the expansion of surveillance into our public and private lives. The Soft Cage is the first book to detail the continuum of surveillance in the making of the United States - from the slave pass to the Social Security number all the way to the many forms of computerized monitoring now shaping the post-9/11 world. The Soft Cage explores not just the history but also the politics of everyday surveillance, and explains to readers why the question of who is watching and listening is of utmost importance today. Parenti details how seemingly benign technologies - E-ZPass, GPS systems in rental cars, and iris scans at airports - present opportunities for a reconfiguration of the balance of power between the individual and the state. Under the aegis of security and convenience, Parenti argues, corporations and the U.S. government, often working together, have, without any oversight, substantially eroded civil liberties - including the right to privacy - that Americans have long taken for granted. As soon as possible, reread *George Orwell's "1984." Then break your cellphone into small pieces, put the pieces in a paper bag, and burn it. Some of us might take such actions after reading Christian Parenti's thought-provoking book, "The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America - From Slave Passes to the War on Terror." Parenti, a historian and author of the well- received, " Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis" (1999), has hit another sociopolitical nerve with this analysis of America's culture of surveillance. "Consider this," Parenti writes ominously at the beginning. "More than 111 million Americans carry mobile phones, each of which creates a rough electronic account of the user's location in time and space." A harmless little detail, right? Not exactly. During the first year of the second intifada, the government of Israel assassinated six Palestinian militants "by first locating the target's cell phone and then directing fire at the coordinates of the phone," Parenti writes. Cellphones are just one example of how all of us are easily traced everyday through the convenience of modern technology. Credit cards, Internet accounts, gym memberships, library cards, health-insurance records, and workplace identification badges are some of the other routine technological conveniences that daily record our every move. By closely examining chattel slavery in America, Parenti illustrates how this pattern began centuries ago. Using such measures as patrols and passes, America desperately tried to keep track of its many African slaves. The creation of full-time police departments, starting in New York City in 1845, marked a further broadening of America's surveillance system. These police departments used finger-printing and photography to track criminals and, Parenti says, in the process laid the groundwork for our current system of mass observation. The individual chapters of "The Soft Cage" focus on particular topics that could be books themselves. One of the best, "The Camera Land: Security Aesthetics and Public Space," discusses the proliferation of cameras that seem to watch all public spaces. Parenti notes that such an arrangement has a "corrosive effect upon democracy." He also analyzes surveillance at work in the social-welfare system, and through the economy in which the proliferation of "digital cash" (debit and credit cards) has "caused an unplanned, unexamined extension of state power and social discipline." "The Soft Cage" concludes with a discussion of Sept. 11 and the current battle in America over privacy, civil liberties, and security. "Sept. 11 did not create a technical or legal rupture in the developing infrastructure of everyday superintendence," Parenti stresses. "It did, however radically accelerate momentum towards the soft cage of a surveillance society." Though Parenti makes it clear that "even before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the routine surveillance of everyday activity was expanding rapidly," he claims the horror of that day has been "seized, even hijacked, by the worse elements of the political class who seek to steer fear and anger towards the destruction of traditional American liberties." "The Soft Cage" concludes optimistically with musings on the future of resistance in a surveillance society. Parenti defines a concept he calls "the right to illegality." In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, he asks, "Are the rules and laws of this society all rational, benevolent and just? If they are not, and if many of them serve to reproduce racism, stupidity, exploitation, environmental devastation, and general brutality, then should we not resist them?" Soon we will all have to give an answer. References *The Corporate Control Of Society And Human Life *Corporate Greed, Corruption, and the Coming Collapse of America As We Know It *How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with Radio Frequency Identification Stumble It!

Biggest Censored News Stories 2007

Fascism thrives on the dumbing down of society. Disinformation, misinformation, and censorship are the key ingredients. To start things off watch these censored videos that you in the USA have never seen on your media. The rest of this post contains info and links to the biggest news stories censored in the USA in 2007 following these videos .... Warning Graphic Violence Censored (part 1) Censored (part 2) Censored (part 3) Censored (part 4) Censored (part 5) Censored (part 6) Censored (part 7) Censored (part 8) Censored (part 9) 9/11 Video Clips Dan Rather Would Rather Not Show You Ignored E-4B Aired Six Years Later By CNN, Censored 9/11/01 *Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media Throughout the year a large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to as “network neutrality,” the issue has become a tug of war with cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet service providers on the other. Yet despite important legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines until 2006. *Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran According to journalist Jason Leopold, sources at former Cheney company Halliburton allege that Halliburton sold key components for a nuclear reactor to an Iranian oil development company. Leopold says his Halliburton sources have intimate knowledge of the business dealings of both Halliburton and Oriental Oil Kish, one of Iran’s largest private oil companies. *Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger Oceanic problems once found on a local scale are now pandemic. Data from oceanography, marine biology, meteorology, fishery science, and glaciology reveal that the seas are changing in ominous ways. A vortex of cause and effect wrought by global environmental dilemmas is changing the ocean from a watery horizon with assorted regional troubles to a global system in alarming distress. *Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US The number of hungry and homeless people in U.S. cities continued to grow despite claims of an improved economy. Increased demand for vital services rose as needs of the most destitute went unmet, according to the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors Report, which has documented increasing need since its 1982 inception. *High-Tech Genocide in Congo The world’s most neglected emergency, according to the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, is the ongoing tragedy of the Congo, where six to seven million have died since 1996 as a consequence of invasions and wars sponsored by western powers trying to gain control of the region’s mineral wealth. At stake is control of natural resources that are sought by U.S. corporations - diamonds, tin, copper, gold, and more significantly, coltan and niobium, two minerals necessary for production of cell phones and other high-tech electronics; and cobalt, an element essential to nuclear, chemical, aerospace, and defense industries. *Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy Special Counsel Scott Bloch, appointed by President Bush in 2004, is overseeing the virtual elimination of federal whistleblower rights in the U.S. government. *US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released documents of forty-four autopsies held in Afghanistan and Iraq. Twenty-one of those deaths were listed as homicides. The documents show that detainees died during and after interrogations by Navy SEALs, Military Intelligence, and Other Government Agency (OGA). *Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act The Department of Defense has been granted exemption from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Congress passed the 2006 Defense Authorization Act which renders Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) “operational files” fully immune to FOIA requests, the main mechanism by which watchdog groups, journalists and individuals can access federal documents. Of particular concern to critics of the Defense Authorization Act is the DIA’s new right to thwart access to files that may reveal human rights violations tied to ongoing “counterterrorism” efforts. *The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision that called for tearing down the Wall and compensating affected communities, construction of the Wall has accelerated. The route of the barrier runs deep into Palestinian territory, aiding the annexation of Israeli settlements and the breaking of Palestinian territorial continuity. The World Bank’s vision of “economic development,” however, evades any discussion of the Wall’s illegality. *Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians There is widespread speculation that President Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent within his own party as well as within the military itself, will begin pulling American troops out of Iraq in 2006. A key element of the drawdown plans not mentioned in the President’s public statements, or in mainstream media for that matter, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. *Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed Several recent studies confirm fears that genetically modified (GM) foods damage human health. These studies were released as the World Trade Organization (WTO) moved toward upholding the ruling that the European Union has violated international trade rules by stopping importation of GM foods. *Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines The Bush administration plans to resume production of antipersonnel landmine systems in a move that is at odds with both the international community and previous U.S. policy, according to the leading human rights organization, Human Rights Watch (HRW). *New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup New studies from both sides of the Atlantic reveal that Roundup, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, poses serious human health threats. More than 75 percent of genetically modified (GM) crops are engineered to tolerate the absorption of Roundup - it eliminates all plants that are not GM. Monsanto Inc., the major engineer of GM crops, is also the producer of Roundup. Thus, while Roundup was formulated as a weapon against weeds, it has become a prevalent ingredient in most of our food crops. *Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps in the United States. *Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) research program is increasingly relying on corporate joint ventures, according to agency documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The American Chemical Council (ACC) is now EPA’s leading research partner and the EPA is diverting funds from basic health and environmental research towards research that addresses regulatory concerns of corporate funders. *Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court Ecuador and Mexico have refused to sign bilateral immunity agreements (BIA) with the U.S., in ratification of the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty. Despite the Bush administration’s threat to withhold economic aid, both countries confirmed allegiance to the ICC, the international body established to try individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. *Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda According to a report from journalist, Greg Palast, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was indeed about the oil. However, it wasn’t to destroy OPEC, as claimed by neoconservatives in the administration, but to take part in it. *Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story Research into the events of September 11 by Brigham Young University physics professor, Steven E. Jones, concludes that the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according to laws of physics. Jones is calling for an independent, international scientific investigation “guided not by politicized notions and constraints but rather by observations and calculations.” *Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever New developments in satellite imaging technology reveal that the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed twice as quickly as previously estimated due to the surreptitious practice of selective logging. *Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on bottled water in the belief—often mistaken—that it is better for us than what flows from our taps. Worldwide, bottled water consumption surged to 41 billion gallons in 2004, up 57 percent since 1999. *Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers Barrick Gold, a powerful multinational gold mining company, planned to melt three Andean glaciers in order to access gold deposits through open pit mining. The water from the glaciers would have been held for refreezing in the following winters. *Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed More than $8 billion in Homeland Security funds has been doled out to states since the September 11, 2001 attacks, but the public has little chance of knowing how this money is being spent. *US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe Lobbyists funded by the U.S. oil industry have launched a campaign in Europe aimed at derailing efforts to tackle greenhouse gas pollution and climate change. *Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year Vice President Dick Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over $8 million in 2005, an increase of more than 3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to rake in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit government contracts. *US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region Five hundred U.S. troops arrived in Paraguay with planes, weapons, and ammunition in July 2005, shortly after the Paraguayan Senate granted U.S. troops immunity from national and International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction. Neighboring countries and human rights organizations are concerned that the massive air base at Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay is potential real estate for the U.S. military.

Top Posts of This Blog

Blog Directory Because of the large Archive of this blog (over 450 posts), here is a pictured link directory of the most popular posts, making it easy for you to identify the topics that interest you. Included is a one of a kind sidebar where topics are grouped by category. Just Click below ... *Top Posts

The American - Chinese (Catch 22) Trade Relationship

A Symbionic Relationship Current economic projections suggest that by 2050 the hierarchy of the largest economies would have China as the largest, followed by the USA, India, Japan, Brazil and Russia. Such historic shift of power is not likely to be smooth for a variety of reasons. First, and foremost, is the complex, symbiotic relationship between the Chinese economy and American prosperity and indebtedness. A large fraction of the American trade deficit is with China. This is now becoming a political issue in the US, but since the Chinese purchase of American bonds is keeping the interest rates in America low, the recent American demand for a revaluation of the yuan is largely shadow boxing. Nevertheless China and the United States remain economic competitors. The Chinese appetite for commodities is driving up world prices. In Mapping the Global Future, an assessment of the world's prospects in 2020, the US government's National Intelligence Council says China is expected to boost its energy consumption by 150 per cent. The Chinese feel vulnerable since America controls the sea lanes from the Middle East. Consequently, the Chinese are building up their naval power to defend these sea lanes and also entering into exploration agreements with Central Asian and South American countries. In my own view, the mutual economic and business linkages will ensure that there would not be a military conflict between the US and China. China Delivers US $10 Billion Deal: Hush $$$ For Critics? US - China Trade SC Debate: Duncan Hunter on Trade and China US-China Trade Policy: Is China Winning The Money War? CNBC The Hukou System China's real dangers are internal. The main challenge is the idea of Western individualism which goes against the Chinese tradition related to order and harmony in society. The failed Taiping rebellion of the mid-19th century, the communist revolution of Mao Tsetung, and the Tiananmen protests were attempts to find Chinese answers to this Western challenge. Looking from outside, the centralisation of power by the Communist Party, and absence of institutions that provide outlet to vent frustrations of the public, appear future vulnerabilities. But Chinese leaders haven't yet found a new paradigm that would be in harmony with its own history as well as the needs of the times. Meanwhile, certain problems are festering, such as its hukou (household registration) system of two Chinas in which more than one-sixth of the population is denied the rights that others have. Under the hukou system, people must live and work in the place where they are permanently registered, which is normally their place of birth. Households are designated as rural or urban. Urban workers are permitted to change jobs and they are provided with state housing and pensions. Rural workers need government permission to seek work in designated urban areas. In their jobs, rural workers are required to enter into bonded contracts which they can break only if they pay the employer a large amount of money. Employers prefer to recruit young, single women, who are housed in cement-block dormitories; the fear of the registration laws ensures that the women spend most of their time in the factory complex. In effect, the hukou system perpetuates two Chinas, where the rural sixth has become the underclass in relation to the urban population. The urban folks are like the silk-industry bourgeoisie, and the women of the peasant families are like the workforce for cocoon production. Absent legal safeguards for the rural people, local governments have recruited gangsters, known in Chinese as 'the black society,' to collect extortionary taxes. According to a recent World Bank report, China's rural poor have suffered a six per cent decline in living standards since Beijing's accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. From the Taiping rebellion to the Tiananmen Massacre The mix of foreign ideas, bureaucratic control, greed, and corruption has led to several social explosions from time to time. Given that the Communist Party in China allows no opposition to it, could there be periods of breakdown of order? A historical breakdown of monumental proportions was the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864). One of the bloodiest conflicts in history, it was a struggle between the forces of Imperial China and those inspired by the Christian convert Hong Xiuquan. It is estimated that this war cost more than 20 million civilian and military lives. Both the Chinese Nationalists and the Communists, two groups that later ruled the nation, claimed to have been inspired by it. The British East India Company started to import opium to China in early 19th century. Warren Delano, maternal grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was an important figure in this business. The Chinese resisted the importation of opium, but the Western powers insisted on carrying it out in the name of free trade and this led to the Opium Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860. The treaties of Nanjing and Tianjin, which legalised the opium trade, also legitimised missionary activities throughout China. This story had an American connection in the name of Issachar J Roberts, a Baptist minister, who was Hong's religious teacher. Believing that he was the Son of God and the younger brother of Jesus, Hong announced that his mission on earth was to rid China of evil influences of Manchus, Taoists, Buddhists, and Confucians. In the late 1840s, Hong reorganised his movement into a military organisation. In 1851, after repulsing an attack by the Imperial forces, he declared that a new Kingdom of Heavenly Peace had been established; he himself was the Heavenly King and the era of the Taiping (Great Peace) had begun. The rebellion got off to an impressive start. Its soldiers raced northward through the central Yangtse valley to Nanjing. However, they were repulsed in Beijing. For the next ten years, the Taipings warred continuously to maintain their territory. But, slowly, the Kingdom began to unravel and in June, 1864, Hong poisoned himself. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were squelched before they became an unstoppable force. Although sparked by students mourning the death of a liberal Party leader, they were a consequence of the inability of the Communist party to resolve its differences in an orderly manner. It was the struggle between reformers and conservatives being played out in the streets in which the demonstrators called for greater democracy, and an end to official corruption. As the protests spread nationwide, the hardliners got the upper hand and Beijing was placed under martial law. Tiananmen Square was not cleared, and on May 30 students erected the 'Goddess of Democracy' statue to the cheers of a large crowd. On June 4, on the orders of the party elders, troops and tanks cleared Tiananmen Square. Hundreds (some say, nearly 3,000) of unarmed protestors were killed. The Chinese government has refused to give out the number of dead and wounded. The Taipings wanted to create an ideal theocratic state, whereas the Tiananmen protestors wanted an ideal liberal state. The liberal State model would solve the problems of hukou and hasten the creation of a civil State, but its goals are different from that of the Communist Party, which remains provincial in many respects. The Use of Nationalism It is the reluctance to face up to these tasks of bringing democracy within, that Chinese leaders have used hegemonic nationalism related especially to Taiwan for its internal political purposes. The same reason leads to a selective use of history. Recently, there were state sponsored demonstrations against Japanese atrocities in the Second World War, yet China is purging its own textbooks of its own war in the late 1980s in Vietnam, and whitewashing the events of the Tiananmen Square protests. The Chinese economy also has to carry the burden of an aging population that is proportionately greater than in other large countries. The demographic problem of China will get worse in the next decade. The way China has catapulted itself onto the Monopoly board of global capitalism has caught most Western leaders on the hop. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid looking back at their pursuers, top U.S. and European Union businesspeople are wondering, "Who are those guys?" After all, how much do we know about the China National Petroleum Corp., which yesterday bid $4.18 billion for PetroKazakhstan, a Canadian oil company with big reserves in Central Asia? Or Haier, which earlier this year tried to nab U.S. white-goods company Maytag? Or Lenovo, which bought IBM's PC business? How do you pronounce corporate acronyms like CNOOC (the China National Offshore Oil Corp., which recently tried to purchase Unocal), SAIC (the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., which fought Nanjing Automotive Corp. for Britain's Rover), or TCL (the TV company that bought France's Thomson Electronics)? China has been a global trade presence since well before Marco Polo trekked there, but, as the recent flurry of successful and attempted acquisitions of major Western brands suggests, its influence has surged of late. If you like the German spectator sport of schadenfreude, one delicious consequence of this is watching presidents, prime ministers, and CEOs from other nations scramble for position in the rapidly rearranging global business turf. Countless commentators have raised questions about the economic and global security implications of this rearrangement, but the murmur about the potential environmental and social consequences has been far more subdued. Take CNOOC. Earlier this month, the company withdrew its $18.5 billion offer to buy Unocal in the wake of a political firestorm in the United States. That firestorm was triggered not by the company's corporate-responsibility record, which would have been a reasonable subject for discussion, but rather by the idea of selling off a U.S. oil company that some regard as a national strategic asset. On that issue, it was Thomas Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times that, "if China wants to overpay for a second-tier U.S. energy company, that's China's business. Anyway, the more starved Americans are for oil, the sooner we will adopt alternatives and get off this drug once and for all." But Friedman made a deeper point, one that's not going away with the CNOOC bid off the table. As he put it, China and America have become economic "Siamese twins." He writes, "We have slipped into a symbiotic relationship with another major power that is neither a free market nor a democracy." That, surely, is the real issue. How can we help bring China, and other emerging economies, up to speed on environmental, human-rights, and anticorruption protections? One major obstacle to doing so is the hypocrisy of many Western approaches to globalization. After years of insisting they were 100 percent committed to free markets and no-holds-barred globalization, political and business leaders in the U.S. and E.U. are having their bluff called by China, Inc. From the East looking West, it's increasingly clear that, in fact, Americans were 100 percent committed to Americanization, Europeans to Europeanization, and so on. It's hardly surprising, then, if some Chinese business leaders view Western concerns about corporate social responsibility and sustainable development as little more than protectionist trade barriers. Still, that hardly makes legitimate concerns about the environment and worker rights disappear. Today's China is awash in contrasts. The newest factories, whether churning out cars or pharmaceuticals, are among the best in the world. At the same time, the country has some of the worst sweatshops and some of the most dangerous working conditions; think of the endless stream of coal-mine disasters that kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Chinese miners every year. The civil society and nongovernmental-organization (NGO) sectors are gradually gaining their feet, but those feet are still tightly bound by government controls that massively constrain NGO evolution and censor what such organizations can say. Instead of expanding civil liberties and liberalizing economic policy simultaneously (as some other governments are doing), China's leaders are trying to increase economic health while maintaining tight political controls -- in the hope, apparently, that wealth will suppress the nascent appetite for democracy. It's hard to say whether this high-stakes gamble will succeed. On the one hand, Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang recently told a closed meeting that 3.76 million Chinese took part in 74,000 mass protests last year alone. On the other, such public activism can hardly be taken for granted; the London Times reported last week that China has created elite police squads in 36 cities to crush protests. What is certain, though, is that anything that enables China to operate without civil-sector watchdogs should make the rest of us uneasy, not just about the nation's growing economic clout, but also about its environmental reach. (Air pollution from the country's great urban-industrial concentrations is now turning up as far afield as Canada. And that's to say nothing of the country's coal-powered carbon-dioxide emissions that will help accelerate global climate change.) In a July 2005 survey by Toronto-based polling company GlobeScan, over 300 sustainability experts worldwide were asked whether they thought China would adopt the "best environmental and energy technologies and practices available." Forty-four percent thought it unlikely, against 28 percent who were confident that China would rise to the occasion. One of the optimists is eco-designer Bill McDonough, whom we bumped into in Beijing, at the Fortune Global Forum this May. As chair of the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development, he believes China will be forced to become a leading incubator of environmental innovation simply because the in-country collision between people's needs and the ability of natural systems to support them is already so acute. As he notes, "The Chinese have to build new housing for 400 million people in 12 years." General Electric Chair and CEO Jeff Immelt also sees China's impending crises as a huge opportunity for sustainability solutions, telling Fortune, "While Europe has been a driver for innovation in cleaner technologies, China promises to be its market." Having met people from CNOOC, PetroChina, and Sinopec, it's clear to us that sustainable development will be a tough sell in China. That said, we share McDonough and Immelt's optimism, not least because of two meetings we had with Vice Minister Pan Yue, deputy director of the State Environment Protection Administration. He and SEPA have stalled dozens of major development projects that ignored environmental laws. The fact that anyone would even try to stop the juggernaut, let alone succeed, is encouraging. We owe people like Pan all the support we can offer. We must use the oft-claimed leverage gained by engaging China as a trade partner to help its leaders and citizens fight for new rights and responsibilities. Otherwise, we risk having our own undermined. China, which sends one-third of its exports to America, accounts for 26% of the U.S. trade gap. Most of its exports to the U.S. are manufactured products, made by workers earning only 4.5% of the average U.S. factory wage. ..." The article continues with: "But the fate of U.S. Workers depends primarily on domestic conditions, not the trade gap. A Brookings Institution study ... found that trade accounts for only about 12% of the nation's manufacturing job losses since 2000. Most of the losses stem from weaker exports ... The main source of the deficit isn't China's ... low wages, or export subsidies, but imploding U.S. savings rate - ... The U.S. current account deficit - the gap between what America spends and what it produces - recently hit a high because of a sharp drop in personal savings and out-of-control federal spending. " We also conveniently forget that our prolifgate spending has been financed by "... China, along with Japan and few others, ... financing the U.S. current account gap via huge purchases of dollar-demoninated securities at relatively low interest rates." First: the USA buys the most bonds it issues. No one else comes even close. Second, if you add up all the bonds sold the last 30 years, it is over $8 trillion and rising fast. Second: it helps to color things in. When I put the countries that are selling off US bonds in red and the ones buying in green, a pretty nasty picture emerges: our allies who we spend half a trillion protecting every year are SELLING and the countries that harbor some need to control our empire are BUYING. Rapidly. This is a STRATEGIC DISASATER. And we should be seeing hearings about this and there should be demands our allies support our red ink, not make it worse. Certainly, this is a stab in the back. A year ago, Japan held $639.4 billion in US red ink. They sold off $21.6 billion this year. The UK sold off $47 billion. Taiwan sold off $11.4 billion. South Korea sold off $14 billion. Mexico sold off $7 billion. Singapore sold off $5 billion. And Canada sold off $6 billion. These are the top holders of our public bonds who are our allies and who we protect with our super-massive, super-expensive military! And they collectively sold off $112 billion in bonds. This is a huge number since it comes from just ONE YEAR'S statistics! Who bought this $112 billion in bonds? Heh. Hello, communists! After the US itself and Japan, the two top economies that are hosting the weakest currencies relative to all the other top 30 nations, China holds the third most US bonds. $416 billion. They bought another $95 billion in bonds just this year alone. This is the combined total sold by the top four allies of the US. $11 billion of the bonds sold by our allies who are stabbing us in the back were bought by a consortium of OPEC countries seeking to gain influence over our military as well as our government. A consortium the Chinese are courting very strongly. The diplomacy done by China this year aimed at stopping fighting in the Middle East of the Shi'ites versus the Sunni are significant and the fact that China and they nearly totally soaked up every penny of the bonds sold by the Asian 'allies' we are foolishly protecting for free shows clearly that there is something afoot here and I can see the outline of a very large boot coming down on our silly faces. The only two European allies who bought bonds were Germany and Switzerland. Together, this was barely a billion dollars worth. Since NONE of our allies think our bonds are worth buying, nay, they aren't worth holding, is significant on many diplomatic, military and trade levels: they think we are going bankrupt and are ditching us as fast as they dare! These economic relationships between U.S. and China - American's love of the inexpensive Chinese products - the U.S. is a huge market and one of the few strong economies - bind us in a symbiotic relationship. What is the answer to the question on how to compete? One answer is to focus on "value added". What is the primary value your company adds to the product or service? The rest should be open to the most cost effective approach, such as out sourcing, OEM (original equipment manufacturer) relationship, etc. Save what you can . Be prepared to compete on a global basis. We are driving our economic and diplomatic car like we are madmen and it is on fire, the tires are gone and we are grinding grooves in the pavement while we scream and wave guns, shooting anyone who tries to stop us. References *Joined at the Hip *China creates crack unit to crush poverty protests *Chinese oil firm withdraws takeover bid for Unocal

Special Christmas Video Post

For my loyal readers as a special Christmas Treat for you, watch these Great Classic XMAS time Videos First download the player to view in your browser ... *DivX Web Player and here are special Christmas time video movies (double click on film as it plays for full screen) *Scrooge *A Christmas Carol *Gulliver's Travels *Christmas Videos

Europe Expands Again

At midnight Dec. 21, the Schengen zone of open borders in Europe expands from 15 to 24 states. Citizens of Schengen member states no longer will need passports to travel in other member states, and coordinated policies on immigration, asylum and law enforcement will come into play. Border controls with non-Schengen members will tighten even as all existing checkpoints between Schengen states will be closed down. While most Schengen states are EU members, Schengen is not an EU treaty. Watch the Video ... *Europe's Schengen Zone Grows Expansion of EU's border-free zone: open door to illegals? Concerns over illegal immigration are rising as nine new countries are joining the EU's Schengen zone, where persons can move freely without showing their passports when crossing internal borders. The new members include some Post-Soviet states on Russia's borders. Originally named after a wine-making town in Luxembourg, the Schengen zone has matured a lot since its inception back in 1985. The harmonisation of border controls and cross-boundary police co-operation has proved to be one of the most popular policies of the European block. Fifteen European states have signed up over the years, but this month's expansion is the largest since Schengen was conceived. The Schengen treaty was first implemented in 1985 and has steadily expanded to today's roster of 15 countries, comprising Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. At midnight it will take in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Cyprus plan to join in 2008 or 2009, and Bulgaria and Romania in 2011. For the states that only 20 years ago languished under Soviet rule, admittance to Schengen represents nearly as powerful a moment as when they joined NATO and the European Union. They are now fully integrated into Western political, economic, military and social structures. There are three notable impacts beyond the obvious benefit of easier travel. First, if Europeans can now travel easily among Schengen states, they can now easily work in other Schengen states. That will trigger a great deal of price competition as the newer, poorer members are able to compete with older, richer members for jobs. The result probably will be a taming of European labor inflation, offset by a surge in labor action in the older members. Second, any extra-Schengen state that has a travel spat with one of the new Schengen members must now deal with the Schengen group as a whole. The greatest irritant will lie with Russia's Baltic exclave, Kaliningrad. Since Kaliningrad is cut off from Russia proper, all land connections must pass through either Lithuania or Poland now both Schengen states. Finally, there is the issue of illegal immigration and crime. Open borders are just as good for criminals and human trafficking as they are for people wanting to vacation in a foreign country for the weekend. The festivities kicked off when Alfred Gusenbauer, the Austrian chancellor, and Robert Fico, the Slovak prime minister, ceremonially demolished a border post between their two countries. The new regulations officially came into effect from twelve midnight on Thursday night, when Poland's eastern border became a large part of the new Schengen frontier. West of it, passport controls are to be torn down. The prospect has caused uproar among German police on their country's border with Poland at Frankfurt Oder, which until now has marked the outer limit of the Schengen zone. They fear that Poland's security forces will be overwhelmed by the new arrangement. "The Poles are doing their best, but the task is impossible," said Lars Wendland, a spokesman for a union of border police at Frankfurt Oder. "Schengen will increase illegal immigration massively here. Our motto is Free Entry: Yes. Crime and Terror: No." German border police, many in uniform, have already held protests against the German authorities, who are cutting security staff on the border zone with Poland by almost half, to 1,250 officers. Their protests have been supported by their Polish counterparts, who are meant to be enforcing the new Schengen zone. In a letter to German border police, Polish officers claim to "understand your [German police] fears regarding the major restructuring of the border police at the German Eastern frontier". "We also share your worries about an uncontrolled influx of terrorism and crime, which will no doubt represent a danger for the establishment of a 'new European order' in the framework of the Schengen treaty." The joint concerns of the German and Polish police forces are reinforced by worries over the Schengen II computer system, which is intended to provide detailed information on those crossing the border to member police forces. "We were promised by the EU that we would only open borders if the Schengen II database had been established," said Mr Wendland. "But it's not running yet." The officials' fears, coupled with the scaling back of Germany's own border police, have left some residents of Frankfurt Oder in a state of panic. From today, the narrow concrete grey and blue bridge that spans the river Oder and links Frankfurt with the Polish town of Slubice will lose its array of passport booths and vehicle checkpoints. The steady traffic between the two sides seems placid and friendly. But both Poles and Germans worry about the future under Schengen. "For most people here, the border has functioned as a kind of security filter," said Jolanta Pekowska, a Polish woman who has lived in Frankfurt for six years. "I wouldn't mind if the border controls were kept up, to the contrary." Joerg Vogelsaenger, Frankfurt Oder's MP, said that border controls would in effect have to be replicated, but deeper into German territory, making them harder to carry out. Mixed Feelings One of Brussels' biggest-ever projects, the creation of a constitution for a United Europe, was brought to a crashing halt recently by French and Dutch voters. Analysts conclude that the main reason for their rejection of this project was fear over the pace of expansion, which was seen as threatening their economies with low-paid labor, creating overwhelming immigration flows, and endangering well-established social protections. The EU foreign ministers decided it is too early to pick up the pieces and to see what, if anything, can be rescued from the constitution. "It was a bridge too far," Pypers said. "The European leaders should have recognized that after the 'big bang' of [the 2004] enlargement, the European public were not very keen to face [so soon] another big European project." Even with the current 25 members, EU structures and mechanisms will certainly need streamlining if the bloc's policies are to be coherent. And those problems would only grow were membership to increase further to as many as 30 which would be the case if the current aspirants were admitted. Despite these shortcomings, however, there is jubilation over the open borders between east and west. In Hungary, even those in favour of Hungary staying out of the EU had reason to celebrate, albeit for different reasons. While for many the Schengen Zone represents the freedom of movement between east and west, for some it represents a redress of sorts for past injustices. For instance, some Hungarians view the open borders between Hungary and Slovakia as a reunification of sorts of those territories that were lost to Slovakia at the end of the First World War and in which large Hungarian minorities live. On a more practical level, families which had been separated for decades by politics are now able to once again re-establish frayed and lost ties. As a result of this, many in Hungary are now hoping that Romania will soon join the Schengen Zone. Transylvania in Romania is home to the largest Diaspora of Hungarians. Likewise, there is hope that Serbia will soon be invited to accession talks, culminating in EU membership and ultimately being a part of the Schengen Zone. While generally there is jubilation at the opening of borders throughout Central and Eastern Europe, some have reservations. For the same reason that some see the opening of borders as a reunification of sorts, others see this same opening of borders as a threat to their national security. Not everyone regards the way in which events had turned out a century ago as entirely negative. Nor is everyone is so happy about open borders between east and west. Many Austrians lament the loss of their border control posts with Hungary and other new member states. They fear an influx of criminals and refugees coming from the east. Indeed, many within the new member states are perhaps a little too optimistic about the meaning of open borders. For one, borders between east and west are not irrevocably open; they can be closed at any time for any reason. A case in point is the soccer championships co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland next year. Austria has already announced its intention to reinstate the border crossings during the event. If the fears of Austria and other countries of the negative aspects to allowing new members states to join the Schengen Zone are realized, then the euphoria of open borders between East and West may be short-lived. It must be remembered that not all EU member states are a part of the Schengen Zone: Britain and Ireland, for example, have stayed out precisely because of fears over national security. The idea of open borders is a nice one in theory, but the concept of a united Europe still has a long way to go yet.

Death of the Internet - Future of Internet Ignored by Media

The End of the Internet? Net Neutrality Threatened by Cable, Telecom interests. Phone and cable companies are lobbying Congress for legislation that would permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Both Congress and the FCC are currently considering a number of proposals that will have far-reaching implications on the way the Internet works and the vital concept of net neutrality, universal and non-discriminatory to the Internet, is at risk. Say Goodbye to the Internet as we know it- scary stuff The Death of The Internet? Net Neutrality and Internet Freedom Report House Rejects Net Neutrality A large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to as “network neutrality,” the issue has become a tug of war with cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet service providers on the other. Despite important legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines until 2006. And, except for occasional coverage on CNBC’s Kudlow & Kramer, mainstream television remains hands-off to this day (June 2006). Most coverage of the issue framed it as an argument over regulation, but the term “regulation” in this case is somewhat misleading. Groups advocating for “net neutrality” are not promoting regulation of internet content. What they want is a legal mandate forcing cable companies to allow internet service providers (ISPs) free access to their cable lines (called a “common carriage” agreement). This was the model used for dial-up internet, and it is the way content providers want to keep it. They also want to make sure that cable companies cannot screen or interrupt internet content without a court order. Those in favor of net neutrality say that lack of government regulation simply means that cable lines will be regulated by the cable companies themselves. ISPs will have to pay a hefty service fee for the right to use cable lines (making internet services more expensive). Those who could pay more would get better access; those who could not pay would be left behind. Cable companies could also decide to filter Internet content at will. On the other side, cable company supporters say that a great deal of time and money was spent laying cable lines and expanding their speed and quality. They claim that allowing ISPs free access would deny cable companies the ability to recoup their investments, and maintain that cable providers should be allowed to charge. Not doing so, they predict, would discourage competition and innovation within the cable industry. Cable supporters like the AT&T-sponsored Hands Off the Internet website assert that common carriage legislation would lead to higher prices and months of legal wrangling. They maintain that such legislation fixes a problem that doesn’t exist and scoff at concerns that phone and cable companies will use their position to limit access based on fees as groundless. Though cable companies deny plans to block content providers without cause, there are a number of examples of cable-initiated discrimination. The FCC settled a case against a North Carolina-based telephone company that was blocking the ability of its customers to use voice-over-Internet calling services instead of (the more expensive) phone lines A Canadian cable company blocked access to a site that supported the cable union in a labor dispute. In February 2006, Cox Communications denied customers access to the Craig’s List website. Though Cox claims that it was simply a security error, it was discovered that Cox ran a classified service that competes with Craig’s List. Past Court Decisions In June of 1999, the Ninth District Court ruled that AT&T would have to open its cable network to ISPs (AT&T v. City of Portland). The court said that Internet transmissions, interactive, two-way exchanges, were telecommunication offerings, not a cable information service (like CNN) that sends data one way. This decision was overturned on appeal a year later. Recent court decisions have extended the cable company agenda further. The United States Supreme Court ruled that cable corporations like Comcast and Verizon were not required to share their lines with rival ISPs (National Cable & Telecommunications Association vs. Brand X Internet Services). Cable companies would not have to offer common carriage agreements for cable lines the way that telephone companies have for phone lines. According to Dr. Elliot Cohen, the decision accepted the FCC assertion that cable modem service is not a two-way telecommunications offering, but a one-way information service, completely overturning the 1999 ruling. Meanwhile, telephone companies charge that such a decision gives an unfair advantage to cable companies and are requesting that they be released from their common carriage requirement as well.

Police State 101 - You Are Being Watched

Total Enslavement Police State New World Order 103 - Future of America Big Brother is watching you 24/7 Closed-circuit TV cameras, smart cards, GPS chips in cell phones, and every one of your electronic transaction recorded and archived for data mining by the authorities and corporations - this is the lot of American citizens in the 21st century. It is hard to move unnoticed in the United States, especially after September 11, an event which is exploited by "the worst elements of the political class, who seek to steer fear and anger toward the destruction of traditional American liberties." As Americans "have embraced their loss of privacy with patriotic vigor and pop-culture nonchalance," it is possible that many people simply don't realize the extent of the invasion. Television shows such as Big Brother (a Dutch invention) attempt to impose narrative on everyday actions monitored by constant surveillance, and people "treat [this surveillance] as another natural element, like heat or cold, with which we must live and against which we test our wits." This is a chilling view of society, one that makes 1984 look like a mere rehearsal. Journalist Christian Parenti sets out to track and chronicle surveillance in the United States, beginning in the 18th century and progressing to the present, and shows that privacy is fast slipping from our grasp. Parenti sees modern surveillance as originating in the times of slavery, as a means of identifying and denying true identity to blacks as a class. Presenting some of the means used to search for runaway slaves, Parenti suggests that these attempts to describe truants were a form of forced identification. But this is truly stretching the issue - a physical description of a person, a sketchy one at that, in no way violates privacy. However, the use of tin identity tags and badges in the late 18th century was indeed the first step toward establishing identity cards, which did mark their holders as slaves. The next step in what might be called passive surveillance was photography. Identifying miscreants on paper was difficult; keeping rogue's galleries of them in photographic form made it much easier to spot them again. Bertillonage, an early form of biometrics, based on body measurement, and later fingerprinting, helped police identify criminals, just as DNA testing is now used to do the same. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the "authorities" kept striving to develop foolproof systems of identification, all of which were designed to identify repeat offenders, or people whose identities had been recorded because of their race or political ideas. But surveillance reached a new level of pervasiveness with the advent of digital technology. The first example of electronic surveillance occurred when IBM worked for the German National Socialist government organizing and analyzing its census, a project which was "as integral to Hitler's Final Solution as was Zyclon-B." The numbers tattooed on prisoners' forearms - "death camp barcodes" - were linked to their computerized records. There may be a giant leap from these tattoos to Social Security numbers used for identification purposes, but one of the risks presented in this book is that data existing for specific purposes today may tomorrow be used for other reasons. From Social Security numbers to credit cards, from bar codes to GSM chips; as times marches on, the tiny details all add up to a disturbing picture: in developed countries, it is very difficult to live without leaving traces of your actions on a daily level. From your ATM, which knows where you were when you withdrew cash, to your cell phone, which records your location as you speak, the "soft cage" of surveillance surrounds you constantly. Cameras film you day and night, your passage through toll booths is recorded if you use a system designed to save you time, and your employer can monitor your work through your computer. It's odd that a technology espoused as liberating and boundary-free - the Internet - is one of the prime vectors of controlling dissent and monitoring the actions of citizens. Its ubiquity makes data transfer cheap and easy, and allows the authorities to combine databases and provide trans-national access to police forces all across the country. In spite of all this, Parenti avoids being overly hysterical, and presents these technologies with a cool objectivity that surprises at times. But make no mistake; his presentation of these technologies is designed to inform you of the eye that watches you in everything you do. Whether people will eventually react to this loss of freedom is unclear. As it stands, the majority of people, when polled, are generally in favor of such devices as closed-circuit cameras, since they make for safer neighborhoods. In France, where I live, the police have recently introduced automatic radar cameras to catch speeders on highways. There is little complaint about this - and in my opinion rightly so - because this is helping to reduce the highest rate of road deaths in Europe. But when these cameras are used to track people doing other things, or the data is allowed - on purpose or accidentally - to get into the hands of others, will the public be in favor of it? Orwell's 1984 was merely a rehearsal for today's surveillance technologies, and this book shows you why. It offers few suggestions on how to counter these technologies, other than a couple of paragraphs at the end of the book. While it's relatively easy to inventory the "thousand things that make up the soft cage", it's a much more difficult thing to revolt against them. At least this book will help foster awareness of the ways in which privacy is becoming a thing of the past. On a typical day, you might make a call on a cell phone, withdraw money at an ATM, visit the mall, and make a purchase with a credit card. Each of these routine transactions leaves a digital trail, logging your movements, schedules, habits and political beliefs for government agencies and businesses to access. As cutting-edge historian and journalist Christian Parenti points out in this urgent and timely book, these everyday intrusions on privacy, while harmless in themselves, are part of a relentless expansion of routine surveillance in American life over the last two centuries. Vivid and chilling, The Soft Cage explores the hidden history of surveillance from controlling slaves in the old South to implementing early criminal justice, tracking immigrants, and even establishing modern social work. It also explores the role computers play in creating a whole new world of seemingly benign technologies--such as credit cards, website "cookies," electronic toll collection, "data mining." and iris scanners at airports. With fears of personal and national security at an all-time high, this ever-growing infrastructure of high-tech voyeurism is shifting the balance of power between individuals and the state in groundbreaking--and very dangerous--ways. From closed-circuit television cameras to the Department of Homeland Security, The Soft Cage offers a compelling, vitally important history lesson for every American concerned about the expansion of surveillance into our public and private lives. The Soft Cage is the first book to detail the continuum of surveillance in the making of the United States - from the slave pass to the Social Security number all the way to the many forms of computerized monitoring now shaping the post-9/11 world. The Soft Cage explores not just the history but also the politics of everyday surveillance, and explains to readers why the question of who is watching and listening is of utmost importance today. Parenti details how seemingly benign technologies - E-ZPass, GPS systems in rental cars, and iris scans at airports - present opportunities for a reconfiguration of the balance of power between the individual and the state. Under the aegis of security and convenience, Parenti argues, corporations and the U.S. government, often working together, have, without any oversight, substantially eroded civil liberties - including the right to privacy - that Americans have long taken for granted. As soon as possible, reread *George Orwell's "1984." Then break your cellphone into small pieces, put the pieces in a paper bag, and burn it. Some of us might take such actions after reading Christian Parenti's thought-provoking book, "The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America - From Slave Passes to the War on Terror." Parenti, a historian and author of the well- received, " Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis" (1999), has hit another sociopolitical nerve with this analysis of America's culture of surveillance. "Consider this," Parenti writes ominously at the beginning. "More than 111 million Americans carry mobile phones, each of which creates a rough electronic account of the user's location in time and space." A harmless little detail, right? Not exactly. During the first year of the second intifada, the government of Israel assassinated six Palestinian militants "by first locating the target's cell phone and then directing fire at the coordinates of the phone," Parenti writes. Cellphones are just one example of how all of us are easily traced everyday through the convenience of modern technology. Credit cards, Internet accounts, gym memberships, library cards, health-insurance records, and workplace identification badges are some of the other routine technological conveniences that daily record our every move. By closely examining chattel slavery in America, Parenti illustrates how this pattern began centuries ago. Using such measures as patrols and passes, America desperately tried to keep track of its many African slaves. The creation of full-time police departments, starting in New York City in 1845, marked a further broadening of America's surveillance system. These police departments used finger-printing and photography to track criminals and, Parenti says, in the process laid the groundwork for our current system of mass observation. The individual chapters of "The Soft Cage" focus on particular topics that could be books themselves. One of the best, "The Camera Land: Security Aesthetics and Public Space," discusses the proliferation of cameras that seem to watch all public spaces. Parenti notes that such an arrangement has a "corrosive effect upon democracy." He also analyzes surveillance at work in the social-welfare system, and through the economy in which the proliferation of "digital cash" (debit and credit cards) has "caused an unplanned, unexamined extension of state power and social discipline." "The Soft Cage" concludes with a discussion of Sept. 11 and the current battle in America over privacy, civil liberties, and security. "Sept. 11 did not create a technical or legal rupture in the developing infrastructure of everyday superintendence," Parenti stresses. "It did, however radically accelerate momentum towards the soft cage of a surveillance society." Though Parenti makes it clear that "even before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the routine surveillance of everyday activity was expanding rapidly," he claims the horror of that day has been "seized, even hijacked, by the worse elements of the political class who seek to steer fear and anger towards the destruction of traditional American liberties." "The Soft Cage" concludes optimistically with musings on the future of resistance in a surveillance society. Parenti defines a concept he calls "the right to illegality." In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, he asks, "Are the rules and laws of this society all rational, benevolent and just? If they are not, and if many of them serve to reproduce racism, stupidity, exploitation, environmental devastation, and general brutality, then should we not resist them?" Soon we will all have to give an answer. References *The Corporate Control Of Society And Human Life *Corporate Greed, Corruption, and the Coming Collapse of America As We Know It *How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with Radio Frequency Identification