Apocalypse Now…

THE TUMBRILS ROLL AT DAWN…

By MIKE WHITNEY

Bank of America is buying Merrill Lynch for $45 billion, AIG needs an
emergency $40 billion bail-out from Uncle Sam to stay afloat, and Lehman

Bros is kaput. Whew! The financial world has been turned upside-down
overnight. It’ll be a rough day of trading ahead.”

The news of Wall Street’s Sunday night massacre sent foreign stock
markets into a deep swoon. Shares tumbled in Asia and dropped more than
4 per cent in Europe. The dollar is steadily losing ground to the euro
and gold is on the rise. The question is not whether the Dow will fall,
but “how far” and what affect that will have on increasingly fragile
financial institutions.

Lehman Brothers, the 158 year old Wall Street warhorse, announced Sunday

that it will file for bankruptcy after weekend rescue plans broke down
without finding a buyer. Fears of credit contagion and a global
recession have resurfaced and become more widespread. Lehman’s failure
suggests that that the other Wall Street giants will soon be following
the same path to extinction. Economist Nouriel Roubini put it like this:

“All of the independent broker dealers are going to disappear. In
March it was Bear Stearns. Tonight it was Lehman and Merrill Lynch.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs should go find a buyer tomorrow.
The business model of broker dealers is fundamentally flawed. They
cannot survive.”

Roubini may be right. The funny thing about capitalism is that you need
capital to play. When the bank-vault is full of nothing but worthless
mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and overvalued junk bonds; the whole
thing goes belly-up fast. That appears to be the case with Lehman Bros,
the century-old Wall Street warhorse that has joined the long procession

of underwater banking establishments now hurtling towards the cliff.
Lehman had a great go of it during the boom times when all it took to
make oodles of money was a predictable flood of low interest credit from

the Fed and a compliant ratings agency that would stamp every crappy
securitized pool of mortgages with a big Triple A before hawking it to
some gullible investor in Shanghai or Heidelberg.

Lehman travails are not much different from anyone else in the banking
fraternity. The problem is that the entire system is under-capitalized
and over-leveraged. When Bear Stearns went down last year, it was
levered at a ratio of 26 to 1. When Hedgie Carlyle Capital blew up, it
was levered at 32 to 1. And when Fannie and Freddie were finally taken
over by the US Treasury; the two behemoths were levered at 80 to 1,
which is to say that they had a one dollar capital cushion for every $80

they had loaned out. They would have continued on the same erratic path
–buying up toxic mortgages and MBS from people who had no chance of
ever repaying their loans — had they not been taken into federal
“conservatorship”, which is a fancy way of saying they were insolvent.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unwisely attached a 6 inch-wide
money-hose from the bowels of the Treasury to Fannie’s front office so
the two mortgage giants could continue to teeter-along at taxpayer
expense regardless of the fact that the securitization business model
has completely broken down and foreign investors–including China–have
already started cutting back on their purchases of GSE debt. This is no
laughing matter. The $700 billion US current account deficit is financed

through foreign investors who are getting increasingly jittery about
sinking money into a system that looks more like casino-poker all the
time. Here’s a clip from China daily on Friday:

“China, which holds a fifth of its currency reserves in Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac debt, may cut the portion held in US dollars,
according to China International Capital Corp (CICC), one of the
nation’s biggest investment banks.

“The crisis has made Chinese officials realize it’s a bad idea to
put all their eggs in one basket,’wrote CICC Chief Economist Ha
Jiming. ‘This will likely lead to greater diversification of foreign
exchange reserve investments.’ China held $447.5 billion of US
agency bonds as of June 2008, according to the CICC calculations
using disclosures by the US Treasury. It is likely to reduce the
portion of reserves in dollar assets from the current 60 percent by
purchasing more non-dollar assets with new reserves, he said.”(China
Daily)

Naturally, foreign investors and central banks will curtail their
purchases of US securities and Treasuries until there’s some indication
that US markets have stabilized and will be able to withstand the
ferocious headwinds of the biggest housing crash in history, a frozen
corporate bond market, a paralyzed banking system, and steadily waning
consumer demand. But Americans still seem breezily unaware of what all
this means for the country’s future. They’d rather savor every new bit
of gossip about the Bible beating, Grizzly-hunting Alaska governor who
wants to lead the country back to Frontierland lips rather than learn
about the about the firestorm raging through the financial markets.

When the net foreign purchases of US financial assets begin to slow; the

game is over. The Fed will be forced to raise interest rates to attract
foreign capital which will put downward pressure on the economy and
accelerate the housing crash. Paulson’s decision to provide unlimited
capital to Fannie and Freddie, will stack more and more debt atop the
faltering dollar and US Treasuries. It is the equivalent of lashing the
greenback to an anvil and tossing it overboard. Paulson’s attempts to
stave off a systemic banking crisis ensures that the federal government
will undergo an unprecedented funding crisis sometime in the near
future. There will be higher taxes for the battered middle class and
higher interest rates for businesses and consumers. This will trigger a
protracted economic slowdown and weaker growth. Credit will get tighter,

banks will default, unemployment will soar and GDP will shrivel. A
negative feedback loop will develop from the faltering financial system
to the real economy; a vicious circle ending in massive layoffs,
weakening demand, falling stock prices, and withering consumer
confidence. Welcome to Soup kitchen USA.

Presently, Paulson and New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner are pressing
Wall Street banking elites to pony-up enough money to buy up Lehman’s
devalued real estate assets. The Fed’s proposal is similar to
Greenspan’s rescue of Long-Term Management LP (LTCM) which roiled
financial markets in the late 1990s. Paulson has signaled that there be
NO government bailout like Bear Stearns when the Fed bought up $29
billion in mortgage-related assets. The Fed is tapped out, having
already committed half of its balance sheet — nearly $500 billion — in

repos through its “auction facilities” which have recently skyrocketed
to record highs of $19 billion per week for the last 3 weeks. The crisis

is deepening by the day. Similarly, the Treasury has hitched its wagon
to Fannie and Freddie which expands the National Debt by another $5.2
trillion and seriously undermines the “full faith and credit” of the US
in the process. Keep in mind, the biggest source of American power is
its access to cheap capital via the US taxpayer. Paulson has now put
that source of revenue at risk by nationalizing the housing industry and

burdening the taxpayer with (potentially) astronomical future
obligations, even though he knows full-well that the market could drop
another 15 to 20 per cent before the end of 2010. Paulson’s recklessness

has doomed the country to years of struggle.

As of Sunday afternoon, no deal had been struck to buy Lehman Bros. and
it looked like the bank was headed for bankruptcy. Wall Street prepared
for the worst. Nouriel Roubini gave a particularly grim assessment of a
Lehman default in his latest post on his blogsite Global EconoMonitor:

“It is now clear that we are again – as we were in mid- March at the
time of the Bear Stearns collapse – an epsilon away from a
generalized run on most of the shadow banking system, especially the
other major independent broker dealers (Lehman, Merrill Lynch,
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs). If Lehman does not find a buyer over
the weekend and the counterparties of Lehman withdraw their credit
lines on Monday, you will have not only a collapse of Lehman but
also the beginning of a run on the other independent broker
dealers…Then this run would lead to a massive systemic meltdown of
the financial system. That is the reason why the Fed has convened in
emergency meetings the heads of all major Wall Street firms on
Friday and again today to convince them not to pull the plug on
Lehman and maintain their exposure to this distressed broker
dealer.”

The giant investment banks are inescapably trapped in a net of complex,
unregulated, over-the-counter derivatives contracts which — given the
right conditions — could threaten every financial skyscraper in lower
Manhattan.

A sizable portion of Lehman’s $128 billion in long-term debt will
probably be ring-fenced in a “bad bank” which will hold its toxic
mortgage-backed assets and be financed by either the Treasury or the
other Wall Street banks. The good assets can then be separated and sold
off to either Bank of America or Barclays, the two prospective buyers.
That way, according to Forbes, “the bad bank would be kept afloat while
its assets could be unwound over a period of time in a way that wouldn’t

disrupt the financial system more than it already has been.”

Some variation of the “Forbes solution” will probably be enacted, but,
let’s be clear; this is really no solution at all. It’s just a way of
buying time by rolling-over debt to avoid the ugly consequences of
accounting for the massive losses. In other words, it is cheaper to keep

burning up capital to prop up moribund assets than take the loss and
make a genuine effort to restructure the dysfunctional system. Here’s
how former Fed chief Paul Volcker summed it up just two weeks ago:

“This bright new system, this practice in the United States, this
practice in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, has broken down.
Growth in the economy in this decade will be the slowest of any
decade since the Great Depression, right in the middle of all this
financial innovation. The current financial system is dysfunctional.
That is a polite way of saying it failed.”

Securitization has failed. The cuts to the Fed’s Funds rate have failed.

The auction facilities — TAF, PDCF, and TSLF — have all failed. The
off-balance sheets operations, the debt-pyramiding asset-inflation, the
Enron-style accounting, the SIVs, the CP, MBS, CDOs, have failed. The
subprimes, the piggybacks, the option-ARMs, the Alt-As have all failed.
Structured finance has failed. The system doesn’t work; won’t work;
can’t work. It’s built on the misguided assumption that capitalism can
thrive without capital; that one dollar can be infinitely magnified by
complex debt-instruments and mega-leveraging to generate real wealth and

keep the wheels of finance and industry humming along. It can’t be done.

The system is under-water. Economist and author Henry Liu put it like
this:

“Yet this approach is preferred by those in authority, trapped in self
deception about unregulated market capitalism being still fundamentally
sound. They try to calm markets by asserting that the current turmoil is

merely a minor liquidity bottleneck that can be handled by the central
bank releasing more liquidity against the full face value of collateral
of declining worth. (There are) No signs of any coherent grand strategy
or plan to save the cancerous system from structural self-destruction.”

Instead, the marauding of a handful of Wall Street
“innovators”–drunk with hubris and blinded by their own bizarre
sense of entitlement—have thrust the financial markets to the
brink of catastrophe and pushed the the broader “real” economy
towards a painful retrenchment. Now everyone will pay for the greed
of the few.

So, what’s next?

An article in the Financial Times spells it out, but government
officials will undoubtedly deny it until after the November presidential

election.

From the Financial Times:

“The debate over whether an RTC-style (Resolution Trust
Corporation)vehicle is needed – perhaps just to ring-fence troubled
mortgage assets – also gained traction among central bankers at the
Jackson Hole symposium hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas
City in August….

“The problem that an RTC vehicle could help to solve is that there
are very few buyers for troubled mortgage assets, and few investors
now willing to inject fresh capital into the tattered balance sheets
of the banks left holding them. As a result, banks such as Lehman
and Washington Mutual have struggled to sell their soured mortgage
portfolios, and to broker deals for fresh capital. The takeover of
Fannie and Freddie, which virtually wiped out preferred equity
holders, has also made banks’ access to the preferred capital market
increasingly difficult. Through a new RTC, the government could
provide financial support if needed in return for a share in
potential profits once the assets were liquidated.”

What the Feds are refusing to admit, is that there is already a plan in
place to make the government an active, “shareholding” partner in
failing commercial banks. (There’s no way the FDIC could pay for all the

projected losses anyway) That will give the US Treasury the authority to

provide insolvent banks with enough capital to muddle through while
their impaired assets are liquidated via the RTC; a morgue for
distressed mortgage-backed garbage.

How this will affect the already-anemic dollar is anyone’s guess. But it

won’t be pretty.

–
R. T. Naylor
Professor of Economics
McGill University
855 Sherbrooke St West
Montreal H3A 2T7
514 398-4828

Interim Government in the Event of ‘Disaster’

The Continuity in Government Project

by Bruce Tanner

The political infrastructure for martial law in the U.S. is already in place. Apparently unsure that the USAPATRIOT Act(s) and the Military Commissions Act weren’t strong enough, on May 9, 2007, Bush issued a document doubly titled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51″ and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20.” This document supposedly outlines the federal government’s plan for maintaining continuity in the face of a “catastrophic emergency.”

“Catastrophic emergency” is defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function.” So, pretty much anything…

In the event of this improbable catastrophe, this unconstitutional legislation by the executive grants itself supreme power to ensure the continuity of Constitutional government. Good one.

In other words, NSPD 51/HSPD-20 would impose martial law under the authority of the White House through DHS. It would suspend constitutional government under the provisions of Continuity in Government (COG).

Since 2003, following the invasion of Iraq, Homeland Security (DHS) has contemplated time and again the possibility of a so-called code red alert “scenario” — using a potential or possible Al Qaeda terrorist attack on American soil — as a pretext for implementing martial law. At one time, Tommy Thompson Former Health and Human Services Secretary said that if we “went to” Code Red the entire civilian government would “shut down.” There are no known provisions for returning America from Code Red status, once it is invoked.

Michel Chosudovsky in “Bush Directive for a “Catastrophic Emergency” in America” writes:

“This Combined Directive NSPD /51 HSPD 20 grants unprecedented powers to the Presidency and the Department of Homeland Security, overriding the foundations of Constitutional government. NSPD 51 allows the sitting president to declare a “national emergency” without Congressional approval The adoption of NSPD 51 would lead to the de facto closing down of the Legislature and the militarization of justice and law enforcement:

The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. In order to advise and assist the President in that function, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counter terrorism (APHS/CT) is hereby designated as the National Continuity Coordinator. The National Continuity Coordinator, in coordination with the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), without exercising directive authority, shall coordinate the development and implementation of continuity policy for executive departments and agencies. The Continuity Policy Coordination Committee (CPCC), chaired by a Senior Director from the Homeland Security Council staff, designated by the National Continuity Coordinator, shall be the main day-to-day forum for such policy coordination. (National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/HSPD 20, emphasis added)

NSPD 51 grants extraordinary Police State powers to the White House and Homeland Security (DHS), in the event of a “Catastrophic Emergency”. The Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counter terrorism (APHS/CT), who is slated to play a key role in the eventuality of Martial law, is a key White House adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend.”

Of course, preparations for emergency management of the U.S. Government has by this time become a tradition here in the Homeland.

According to William M. Arkin in “Shadow Government” in the Case of a “Second 9/11:”

“Continuity programs began in the early 1950s, when the threat of nuclear war moved the administration of President Harry S. Truman to begin planning for emergency government functions and civil defense. Evacuation bunkers were built, and an incredibly complex and secretive shadow government program was created.

At its height, the grand era of continuity boasted the fully operational Mount Weather, a civilian bunker built along the crest of Virginia’s Blue Ridge, to which most agency heads would evacuate; the Greenbrier hotel complex and bunker in West Virginia, where Congress would shelter; and Raven Rock, or Site R, a national security bunker bored into granite along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border near Camp David, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff would command a protracted nuclear war. Special communications networks were built, and evacuation and succession procedures were practiced continually.

When the Soviet Union crumbled, the program became a Cold War curiosity: Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney ordered Raven Rock into caretaker status in 1991. The Greenbrier bunker was shuttered and a 30-year-old special access program was declassified three years later.

Then came the terrorist attacks of the mid-1990s and the looming Y2K rollover, and suddenly continuity wasn’t only for nuclear war anymore. On Oct. 21, 1998, President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 67, “Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations.” No longer would only the very few elite leaders responsible for national security be covered. Instead, every single government department and agency was directed to see to it that they could resume critical functions within 12 hours of a warning, and keep their operations running at emergency facilities for up to 30 days. FEMA was put in charge of this broad new program.

On 9/11, the program was put to the test — and failed. Not on the national security side: Vice President Cheney and others in the national security leadership were smoothly whisked away from the capital following procedures overseen by the Pentagon and the White House Military Office. But like the mass of Washingtonians, officials from other agencies found themselves virtually on their own, unsure of where to go or what to do, or whom to contact for the answers.”

Continuity in Government programs have been one edge of the wedge to wrest control of the U.S. government away from Constitutional authority and put it in the hands of the secret teams under the direction of hidden interests. The elite decision-makers behind this crypto-fascist coup obviously include big finance, military corporations, elements of intelligence, and interlocking corporations, and also have curious deep ties to the creation and sustenance of the State of Israel.

It’s commonplace humor to refer to Dick Cheney’s being in a “secure location,” but he and Donald Rumsfeld have been intimately involved in Continuity in Government (COG) since their days in Congress. I’ve read several articles on this connection, but was interested to find that I could find no reference to this, or to much at all about the ongoing development of COG programs since the onset of the cold war.

It’s also interesting to note that in Arkin’s excerpt above he notes that for most of Official Washington the COG measures in place failed to take account for them, serving instead only some short list of insiders. This begins to make obvious just who this government serves.

SOURCE: http://www.nworeport.com/continuity.htm

RFID… A Brave New World Order

RFID: “Smart Cards” in a Surveillance Society

by Tom Burghardt

If incorporating personal details into an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip implanted into a passport or driver’s license may sound like a “smart” alternative to endless lines at the airport and intrusive questioning by securocrats, think again.

Since the late 1990s, corporate grifters have touted the “benefits” of the devilish transmitters as a “convenient” and “cheap” way to tag individual commodities, one that would “revolutionize” inventory management and theft prevention. Indeed, everything from paper towels to shoes, pets to underwear have been “tagged” with the chips. “Savings” would be “passed on” to the consumer. Call it the Wal-Martization of everyday life.

RFID tags are small computer chips connected to miniature antennae that can be fixed to or implanted within physical objects, including human beings. The RFID chip itself contains an Electronic Product Code that can be “read” when a RFID reader emits a radio signal. The chips are divided into two categories, passive or active. A “passive” tag doesn’t contain a battery and its “read” range is variable, from less than an inch to twenty or thirty feet. An “active” tag on the other hand, is self-powered and has a much longer range. The data from an “active” tag can be sent directly to a computer system involved in inventory control–or surveillance.

But as Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) state in a joint position paper, “RFID has the potential to jeopardize consumer privacy, reduce or eliminate purchasing anonymity, and threaten civil liberties.” As these organizations noted:

While there are beneficial uses of RFID, some attributes of the technology could be deployed in ways that threaten privacy and civil liberties:

* Hidden placement of tags. RFID tags can be embedded into/onto objects and documents without the knowledge of the individual who obtains those items. As radio waves travel easily and silently through fabric, plastic, and other materials, it is possible to read RFID tags sewn into clothing or affixed to objects contained in purses, shopping bags, suitcases, and more.

* Unique identifiers for all objects worldwide. The Electronic Product Code potentially enables every object on earth to have its own unique ID. The use of unique ID numbers could lead to the creation of a global item registration system in which every physical object is identified and linked to its purchaser or owner at the point of sale or transfer.

* Massive data aggregation. RFID deployment requires the creation of massive databases containing unique tag data. These records could be linked with personal identifying data, especially as computer memory and processing capacities expand.

* Hidden readers. Tags can be read from a distance, not restricted to line of sight, by readers that can be incorporated invisibly into nearly any environment where human beings or items congregate. RFID readers have already been experimentally embedded into floor tiles, woven into carpeting and floor mats, hidden in doorways, and seamlessly incorporated into retail shelving and counters, making it virtually impossible for a consumer to know when or if he or she was being “scanned.”

* Individual tracking and profiling. If personal identity were linked with unique RFID tag numbers, individuals could be profiled and tracked without their knowledge or consent. For example, a tag embedded in a shoe could serve as a de facto identifier for the person wearing it. Even if item-level information remains generic, identifying items people wear or carry could associate them with, for example, particular events like political rallies.(”Position Statement on the Use of RFID on Consumer Products,” Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, November 14, 2003)

As the corporatist police state unfurls its murderous tentacles here in the United States, it should come as no surprise that securocrats breathlessly tout the “benefits” of RFID in the area of “homeland security.” When linked to massive commercial databases as well as those compiled by the 16 separate agencies of the “intelligence community,” such as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) that feeds the federal government’s surveillance Leviathan with the names of suspected “terrorists,” it doesn’t take a genius to conclude that the architecture for a vast totalitarian enterprise is off the drawing board and onto the streets.

As last week’s mass repression of peaceful protest at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul amply demonstrated, the Bush regime’s “preemptive war” strategy has been rolled out in the heimat. As the World Socialist Web Site reports,

On Wednesday eight members of the anarchist protest group the Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee (RNCWC) were charged under provisions of the Minnesota state version of the Patriot Act with “Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism.”

The eight charged are all young, and could face up to seven-and-a-half years in prison under a provision that allows the enhancement of charges related to terrorism by 50 percent. …

Among other things, the youth, who were arrested last weekend even prior to the start of the convention, are charged with plotting to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers and attack airports. Almost all of the charges listed are based upon the testimony of police infiltrators, one an officer, the other a paid informant. (Tom Eley, “RNC in Twin Cities: Eight protesters charged with terrorism under Patriot Act,” World Socialist Web Site, 6 September 2008)

As the ACLU pointed out, “These charges are an effort to equate publicly stated plans to blockade traffic and disrupt the RNC as being the same as acts of terrorism. This both trivializes real violence and attempts to place the stated political views of the defendants on trial,” said Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “The charges represent an abuse of the criminal justice system and seek to intimidate any person organizing large scale public demonstrations potentially involving civil disobedience,” he said.

An affidavit filed by the cops in order to allow the preemptive police raid and subsequent arrests declared that the RNCWC is a “criminal enterprise” strongly implying that the group of anarchist youth were members of a “terrorist organization.”

Which, as we have learned over these last seven and a half years of darkness, is precisely the point: keep ‘em scared and passive. And when they’re neither scared nor passive, resort to police state tactics of mass repression. While the cops beat and arrested demonstrators and journalists outside the Xcel Energy Center, neanderthal-like Republican mobs chanted “USA! USA!” while the execrable theocratic fascist, Sarah Palin, basked in the limelight. But I digress…

Likened to barcodes that scan items at the grocery store check-out line, what industry flacks such as the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility (AIM) fail to mention in their propaganda about RFID is that the information stored on a passport or driver’s license is readily stolen by anyone with a reader device–marketers, security agents, criminals or stalkers–without the card holder even being remotely aware that they are being tracked and their allegedly “secure” information plundered. According to a blurb on the AIM website,

Automatic Identification and Mobility (AIM) technologies are a diverse family of technologies that share the common purpose of identifying, tracking, recording, storing and communicating essential business, personal, or product data. In most cases, AIM technologies serve as the front end of enterprise software systems, providing fast and accurate collection and entry of data. (”Technologies,” Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility, no date)

Among the “diverse family of technologies” touted by AIM, many are rife with “dual-use” potential, that is, the same technology that can keep track of a pallet of soft drinks can also keep track of human beings.

Indeed, the Association touts biometric identification as “an automated method of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic.” This is especially important since “the need” for biometrics “can be found in federal, state and local governments, in the military, and in commercial applications.” When used as a stand-alone or in conjunction with RFID-chipped “smart cards” biometrics, according to the industry “are set to pervade nearly all aspects of the economy and our daily lives.”

Some “revolution.”

The industry received a powerful incentive from the state when the Government Services Administration (GSA), a Bushist satrapy, issued a 2004 memo that urged the heads of all federal agencies “to consider action that can be taken to advance the [RFID] industry.”

An example of capitalist “ingenuity” or another insidious invasion of our right to privacy? In 2006, IBM obtained a patent that will be used for tracking and profiling consumers as they move around a store, even if access to commercial databases are strictly limited.

And when it comes tracking and profiling human beings, say for mass extermination at the behest of crazed Nazi ideologues, IBM stands alone. In his groundbreaking 2001 exploration of the enabling technologies for the mass murder of Jews, communists, Roma and gays and lesbians, investigative journalist Edwin Black described in IBM and the Holocaust how, beginning in 1933, IBM and their subsidiaries created technological “solutions” that streamlined the identification of “undesirables” for quick and efficient asset confiscation, deportation, slave labor and eventual annihilation.

In an eerie echo of polices being enacted today against Muslims and left-wing “extremists” by the corrupt Bush regime in their quixotic quest to “keep America safe” in furtherance of capitalist and imperialist goals of global domination, Black writes:

In the upside-down world of the Holocaust, dignified professionals were Hitler’s advance troops. Police officials disregarded their duty in favor of protecting villains and persecuting victims. Lawyers perverted concepts of justice to create anti-Jewish laws. Doctors defiled the art of medicine to perpetrate ghastly experiments and even choose who was healthy enough to be worked to death — and who could be cost-effectively sent to the gas chamber. Scientists and engineers debased their higher calling to devise the instruments and rationales of destruction. And statisticians used their little known but powerful discipline to identify the victims, project and rationalize the benefits of their destruction, organize their persecution, and even audit the efficiency of genocide. Enter IBM and its overseas subsidiaries. (IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, New York: Crown Publishers, 2001, pp. 7-8)

As security and privacy analyst Katherine Albrecht writes describing IBM’s patented “Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items in Store Environments,”

…chillingly details RFID’s potential for surveillance in a world where networked RFID readers called “person tracking units” would be incorporated virtually everywhere people go — in “shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, restrooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, [and] museums” — to closely monitor people’s movements. (”How RFID Tags Could Be Used to Track Unsuspecting People,” Scientific American, August 21, 2008)

According to the patent cited by Albrecht, as an individual moves around a store, or a city center, an “RFID tag scanner located [in the desired tracking location]… scans the RFID tags on [a] person…. As that person moves around the store, different RFID tag scanners located throughout the store can pick up radio signals from the RFID tags carried on that person and the movement of that person is tracked based on these detections…. The person tracking unit may keep records of different locations where the person has visited, as well as the visitation times.”

Even if no personal data are stored in the RFID tag, this doesn’t present a problem IBM explains, because “the personal information will be obtained when the person uses his or her credit card, bank card, shopper card or the like.” As Albrecht avers, the link between the unique RFID number and a person’s identity “needs to be made only once for the card to serve as a proxy for the person thereafter.” With the wholesale introduction of RFID chipped passports and driver’s licenses, the capitalist panoptic state is quickly — and quietly — falling into place.

If America’s main trading partner and sometime geopolitical rival in the looting of world resources, China, is any indication of the direction near future surveillance technologies are being driven by the “miracle of the market,” the curtain on privacy and individual rights is rapidly drawing to a close. Albrecht writes,

China’s national ID cards, for instance, are encoded with what most people would consider a shocking amount of personal information, including health and reproductive history, employment status, religion, ethnicity and even the name and phone number of each cardholder’s landlord. More ominous still, the cards are part of a larger project to blanket Chinese cities with state-of-the-art surveillance technologies. Michael Lin, a vice president for China Public Security Technology, a private company providing the RFID cards for the program, unflinchingly described them to the New York Times as “a way for the government to control the population in the future.” And even if other governments do not take advantage of the surveillance potential inherent in the new ID cards, ample evidence suggests that data-hungry corporations will.

I would disagree with Albrecht on one salient point: governments, particularly the crazed, corporate-controlled grifters holding down the fort in Washington, most certainly will take advantage of RFID’s surveillance potential.

In 2005 for example, the Senate Republican High Tech Task force praised RFID applications as “exciting new technologies” with “tremendous promise for our economy.” In this spirit, they vowed to “protect” RFID from regulation and legislation. Needless to say, the track record of timid Democrats is hardly any better when it comes to defending privacy rights or something as “quaint” as the Constitution.

Under conditions of a looming economic meltdown, rising unemployment, staggering debt, the collapse of financial markets and continuing wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. imperialism, in order to shore up its crumbling empire, will continue to import totalitarian methods of rule employed in its “global war on terror” onto the home front.

The introduction of RFID-chipped passports and driver’s licenses for the mass surveillance and political repression of the American people arises within this context.

SOURCE: http://www.nworeport.com/smartcards.htm

Policing Environmental Crimes

Schoolchildren recruited by councils to spy on neighbours who commit ‘environmental crimes’

By Daily Mail Reporter

Children are being offered money by councils to spy on neighbours and report petty offences such as ‘bin crimes’ and dog-fouling.

The youngsters are among 5,000 residents encouraged to photograph or video neighbours in the act of ‘environmental crimes’.
In some cases children as young as eight, are being bribed with rewards of £500 for passing on the names of neighbours or taking down their car registration numbers.

The Daily Telegraph found that one in six councils out of 240 contacted admitted to signing up the ‘environmental volunteers.’

Councils using the methods include Luton, Southwark, Birmingham, Blaenau Gwent, and Congleton, Cheshire.

A spokeswoman for Ealing council, west London, told the paper: ‘There are hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged eight to 10-years-old, who are trained to identify and report environmental crime issues such as graffiti and fly-tipping.’

Harlow council in Essex told them: ‘We currently have 25 Street Scene Champions who work with the council. They are all aged between 11 to 14.

‘They are encouraged to report the aftermath of enviro-crimes such as vandalism to bus shelters, graffiti, abandoned vehicles, fly-tipping etc. They do this via telephone or email direct to the council.’

Last week, Mail Online revealed that town hall snoopers armed with police powers are issuing ‘wanted’ photographs of suspected litterbugs.

Litter wardens given police-style accreditation by the Government are using cameras to snap alleged offenders. They are then shamed in local newspapers.

Colchester Borough Council in Essex said it would make it easier to find offenders and make them pay a £75 fine.

It also said the images would be stored to help identify repeat offenders.

Four ’street care officers’ can stop members of public, demand personal information, take photographs and issue fines under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme, details of which were revealed in the Daily Mail.

Hundreds of town hall workers and security guards have been given sweeping powers allowing them to hand out fines for a large number of offences, stop cars and seize alcohol from under-age drinkers.

Privacy campaigners have accused ministers of moving towards a ‘Stasi snooper state’ – a reference to the notorious former East German secret police.

There are also concerns that the Government is attempting ‘policing on the cheap’, by allowing civilians to carry out jobs previously reserved for officers.

Simon Reed, of the Police Federation, said: ‘This government seems intent on diluting the policing resilience in this country by handing out traditional policing powers to civilian staff.

The federation has concern about the presence of an ill-equipped and poorly trained second layer of law enforcement.

‘Not only does it cause members of the public confusion over who has what powers, but it undermines the special covenant between the police and the public who rightly expect policing functions to be performed by trained, independent and accountable officers.’

However a spokeswoman for the Local Government Association defended councils’ use of information from members of the public.

She told The Daily Telegraph: ‘Environmental volunteers are people who care passionately about their area and want to protect it from vandals, grafittists and fly-tippers.

‘These residents are not snoopers. They will help councils cut crime and make places cleaner, greener and safer.’

SOURCE: http://www.nworeport.com/councils.htm

Russia Prepares Counter-Offensive to US Armada

Russia Orders ‘Destruction’ of US Naval Armada In Persian Gulf

August 10, 2008

By: Sorcha Faal

Reports in the Kremlin today are stating that Prime Minister Putin has ordered the Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation to put the Volga-Urals Military District and Black Sea Fleet on ‘full war alert’ to prepare for the defense of the Iranian Nation against what is being termed as an ‘imminent attack’ being planned by the Western Powers.

As we had previously reported on in our August 8th report, “Kuwait Goes On ‘War Alert’ As Massive US Armada Heads For Iran”, the fears of Russian Military Analysts have been realized with the US backed puppet state of Georgia launching an unprecedented and unprovoked attack upon the Russian protected enclave of South Ossetia, and to which the latest reports have put the death toll at over 1,500 citizens of Russia and over 15 Russian Peacekeepers.

In a bid to force Russia from its planned defense of the Iranian peoples by provoking war in the Caucasus, however, the West has severely miscalculated as Putin has not only ordered the retaking of South Ossetia from the Western backed Georgian forces, but has also ordered the destruction of all oil pipelines going through Georgia to the West.

The first of these attacks is being reported today, and as we can read as reported by the Reuters News Service:

“Russian fighter jets targeted the the major Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline which carries oil to the West from Asia but missed, Georgia’s Economic Development Minister Ekaterina Sharashidze said on Saturday.”This clearly shows that Russia has not just targeted Georgian economic outlets but international economic outlets in Georgia,” she said at a news briefing.”
The West is, also, not alone in arousing the might of the Russia ’s, as the Israelis have sided with their Western backers against the Russian people, and as we can read as reported by one of Israel ’s intelligence organs DEBKAfile:

“Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean.

Aware of Moscow’s sensitivity on the oil question, Israel offered Russia a stake in the project but was rejected.

Last year, the Georgian president commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also offer instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel.

These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday.

In recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was “defensive.”

This has not gone down well in the Kremlin. Therefore, as the military crisis intensifies in South Ossetia, Moscow may be expected to punish Israel for its intervention.”

These reports continue by stating that the massive US backed Naval Armada, said to be the largest assembled since World War II, heading towards war with Iran will be met by both Russian and Iranian counterattacks aimed at destroying these enemy forces prior to their planned attack.

It is, also, interesting to note, that after unleashing the Israeli led puppet Georgian military forces against unarmed Russian citizens and lightly armed Russian peacekeepers, President Bush has said, “This fighting must stop, and, “I am deeply concerned about the situation in Georgia,” he said. “The United States takes this matter very seriously.”

But, not as seriously as he claims as he had just previously instructed his Ambassador to the United Nations to veto Russia ’s resolution before the Security Council that stated, and as China ’s Xinhua reports:
“The draft also called on “the parties to cease bloodshed without delay and renounce the use of force.” Diplomats said that during the closed-door consultations, the council failed to reach an agreement on the Russian text because some council members, including the United States, opposed the part calling on the parties to “renounce the use of force.”

President Medvedev was so livid after President Bush’s refusal to commit to peace that, these reports continue, he ordered the ‘immediate and systematic’ destruction of Georgian Military Forces, ‘wherever they are located in the World’.

Georgia ’s President, Mikheil Saakashvili, responded to Medvedev’s moves by declaring martial law in Georgia and ordering all Georgian troops home from Iraq, where they had been stationed providing support to the US in its war on the Muslim peoples of the World.

These latest moves by the Georgian dictator, however, are appearing too late in this war to save his troubled Nation, and as we can read from the latest battlefield updates:

“The war between Russia and Georgia expanded on Saturday, with fighting spilling outside the Caucasus province of Ossetia, both sides moving reinforcements into the region and Georgian President Mikheil Saakhashvili declaring martial law in the country.

While the international community continued to exhort both sides to step back from the brink, the United Nations Security Council remained unable to forge a united response. The fiercest battles were in the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali, where street fighting and artillery exchanges continued throughout the day and eyewitnesses reported city blocks reduced to rubble.

Russian forces consisting of Spetsnaz special forces infantry, and paratrooper infantry flown in from the Russian interior had captured Tskhinvali by Saturday afternoon, Georgian officials said.

Aleksander Lomaia, Georgia’s national security chief, in a telephone interview said Georgian forces had pulled back from the town ‘unilaterally.’ Lomaia estimated the Russian infantry assault force at 1,500 to 2,500 troopers.

Counts of civilian casualties varied widely, with Georgia estimating between one and two dozen killed, and some 100 injured as of Friday evening. Eduard Kokoity, South Ossetia’s leader, claimed more than 1,600 civilians had died and implied thousands more had been injured.”

And, as Prime Minister Putin has just arrived in the War Region of South Ossetia, the resolve of the Worlds peace loving Nations to stop the expansion of the Western Powers though military might appears to have met its most logical first major obstacle by the awakening of a very, very angry Russian Bear from its long hibernation since the dissolution of the Soviet Empire.

© August 10, 2008 EU and US all rights reserved.

SOURCE: http://dijaspora.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/russia-orders-‘destruction’-of-us-naval-armada-in-persian-gulf/