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Adam Murdock, M.D.
Campaign for Liberty
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:40 EST

Will it make you an enemy of the state?

As I have written about in a previous article entitled "Stop the Swine Whine," the public health establishment has used the current swine flu hysteria to try to impose mandatory vaccination laws under the guise of a health crisis. Fortunately, these proposed laws, with the exception of New York's short-lived mandatory health care worker vaccination mandate, have yet to come to fruition. In the case of New York some courageous doctors and nurses filed suit against the dictatorial law and were successful in getting the state government to back down.

While the constitutional crisis that this represented has been temporarily averted, a dangerous precedent has been set. It may be that in the coming months and years that these same government officials will not so easily relent. It may be as soon as the next flu season or the passage of the Obamacare health bill that our medical rights are lost forever.

Kable
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:26 EST

The Home Office's scheme to monitor all electronic communications remains within the Home Office's financial plans, despite the government postponing the relevant legislation

The Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) is planned for completion in 2016, having started in April 2006, according to a written parliamentary answer from Home Office minister Phil Woolas.

A bill to establish the scheme, which would require communications service providers to greatly increase the data they hold on customers for the benefit of the police and security agencies, has been dropped by the government from this week's Queen's Speech.

However, the information from Woolas shows the Home Office does not anticipate that this will delay the IMP, with 2016 as both the original and the current planned date for completion.

The Struggle for Net Neutrality

Stephen Lendman
OpEdNews
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:48 EST

During his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama promised to "Support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."

Perhaps not given a worse record than his fiercest critics feared, worse than George Bush, across the board on both domestic and foreign policies, including:

-- failing to deliver promised change;

-- being the standard bearer for the corrupted political/business elite;

-- governing like a crime boss in league with Wall Street;

-- disdaining democratic rights, freedoms, and the rule of law;

-- betraying working Americans;

-- proposing social services cuts instead of increasing them when they're most needed;

-- denying budget-strapped states vitally needed aid;

-- ignoring growing poverty, hunger, homelessness and despair;

-- expanding militarism, imperial wars, and state-sponsored terrorism;

-- violating human rights and civil liberties; and

-- providing open-ended banker bailouts, an array of pro-business measures, and the greatest ever amounts of military spending at a time America has no enemies.

Karl Vick
Washington Post
Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:31 EST

Volunteer veterans help California city use counterinsurgency strategy to stem gang violence

Famed to readers as the birthplace of John Steinbeck and in supermarket produce circles as the "Salad Bowl of the World," the city of Salinas carries darker renown in the netherworld of California's prisons. Instant respect is accorded any inmate tattooed with the words "Salad Bowl" or "Salis" -- gang shorthand for a city now defined most of all by ferocious eruptions of violence.

In the space of 11 days this year, seven people were murdered in Salinas. Each killing, like the record 25 homicides the previous year, spilled from the gang warfare that this summer pushed the homicide rate in the city of 140,000 to three times that of Los Angeles. Residents retreated indoors at night, and Mayor Dennis Donohue affirmed his decision to seek help from an unlikely source: the U.S. military.

Dave Lindorff
The Public Record
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:28 EST

© White House photographer Pete Souza
In an unprecedented town hall in Shanghai, the President takes questions on the most pivotal issues in U.S.-China relations directly from students and via the internet.

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a "town meeting" with Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the value of freedom of information, saying that he is a "supporter of non-censorship" and that open access to information was a "source of strength."

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian style control over information.

Let's just take the issue of depleted uranium weapons, over 1000 tons of which have been expended in the US invasion of Iraq, most of it in populated areas where millions remain exposed to the radioactive dust of the burned material. There is almost no reporting on this topic in the US media. The Pentagon has for years lied about and hidden the effects of this deadly substance, used in shells, bombs and bullets because of its unique ability to penetrate hard steel armor and concrete bunker walls.

Don Dahler
New York Times
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:22 EST

© CBS
Residents who live at 1510 Lexington Avenue, New York City's first non-smoking apartment building, aren't even allowed to light up on the sidewalks outside the development.

Residents At 1510 Lexington Avenue Will Be Unable To Smoke Inside -- Or Even Directly Outside -- New Development

Smoking has been banned in restaurants, bars, taxis, office buildings, but what if you were told you couldn't even smoke your own home? That's just the case in Manhattan where "No Smoking" signs are going up in numerous apartment buildings.

For the 1 million New York City residents who smoke, doing so in their own home has been an unwritten privilege. The problem with smoking in an apartment, however, is you can't keep that smoke from going into other parts of the building. In fact, a recent study by the New York City Department of Health says 57 percent of non-smokers have had substantial exposure to cigarette smoke.

So some apartment buildings are now banning smoking for new tenants. Existing tenants who smoke will be allowed to continue to puff away.

That's not the case with the new East Harlem building at 1510 Lexington Avenue, which will be the city's first completely non-smoking residence, where tenants won't even be allowed to walk outside and light up in the immediate perimeter of the building. Even the construction workers can't light up.

The Daily Telegraph
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:17 EST

A council is to equip all its on-street parking wardens with head-mounted video cameras, making it the first in the country to do so.

Wardens in Bolton will be fitted with the gadget - the size of an AA battery - to deter assaults and provide a better service, the town council said.

Each camera is fastened to the side of the officer's cap and it records images continuously over the shift. These images are later downloaded on to a computer.

Council bosses said that in the past three years there had been 53 ''code red'' incidents involving wardens, including physical attacks, being driven at and being spat upon.

The head-cam technology was pioneered by the council's parking enforcement contractor, NSL, which has introduced the services for a small number of local authorities.

Tom Whitehead
The Daily Telegraph
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:13 EST

The expansion of the ID cards and biometric passports programme is costing the taxpayer almost a quarter of a million pounds every day to develop.

The roll out of the controversial identity cards has already cost the public millions of pounds and the bill is growing, figures show.

The daily cost to the taxpayer for the expansion of the biometric documents is now six times the size it was just three years ago.

Last month it emerged some 28 million people would have to sign up for an ID card in order to cover the cost of the scheme.

The Identity and Passport Service spent a £42 million on developing both the ID cards and biometric passport programmes in the six months since March this year.

That was equivalent of £229,508 every day - the highest amount of spending on the joint scheme so far.

In 2008/09, a total of £81.5 million was spent - the equivalent of £223,288 a day.

Sarah Harris
The Times Online
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:56 EST

Teachers will be given new powers in a fresh crackdown on bad behaviour

Teachers have gained new powers to search pupils for drugs, alcohol and stolen goods, it has been revealed.

They will gain the legal right to frisk pupils and search school bags without consent in a fresh crackdown on bad behaviour.

The move extends the existing right of teachers to look for weapons and is enshrined in new legislation.

It is designed to stamp out a culture of drug-taking and underage drinking that is developing in schools.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls said the powers would ensure all pupils knew that a 'teacher's authority in the classroom is unquestionable'.

But teaching leaders warned that staff could face false allegations of assault from pupils as a result. It will also increase the responsibilities of teachers.

Schools can already look for weapons by removing children's jackets and jumpers and 'patting down' their clothing. They can also screen them using the sort of metal detectors seen at airports.

But while they can ask pupils suspected of possessing drugs to turn out their pockets and open their bags, only police can frisk for drugs or other items.

Interpol
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:01 EST

INTERPOL today issued its first ever passports which will enable Heads of National Central Bureaus (NCBs) and staff to travel internationally without requiring a visa when assisting in transnational investigations or urgent deployments to incidents.

Two countries, Pakistan and Ukraine, have already agreed to waive visa entry requirements for INTERPOL passport bearers, recognizing that those individuals will be travelling on behalf of the organization in the furtherance of international police co-operation.

Without the delay of visa processing procedures, any INTERPOL team can be immediately deployed to scenes of terrorist events, major crimes or natural disasters and officials from NCBs can easily cross borders to assist in fugitive extraditions.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson

"There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle." Bill Moyers

"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823

"A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the right of the people to know.": Murray I. Gurfein

One of the shrewdest ways for human predators to conquer their stronger victims is to steadily convince them with propaganda that they're still free. N.A. Scott