Chemists and post offices to take fingerprints as part of national ID scheme (UK)

Dandelion Salad

By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor
Telegraph
06 May 2009

Post offices, high street pharmacies and photo shops are in talks with the Home Office to offer facilities for customers to have their biometric details taken

The move came as it emerged the estimated cost of the controversial scheme has risen by another £213 million.

Post offices, high street pharmacies and photo shops are in talks with the Home Office to offer facilities for customers to have their biometric details taken for when they apply for an ID card or new passport.

It would mean anyone who wants an identity card or biometric passport will go to their local post office or pharmacy to have their fingerprints read and stored along with a face scan.

Ms Smith said: “While private companies will clearly benefit from the increased footfall from offering this service, their customers will benefit from being able to quickly provide their biometrics while they are out doing the shopping. ”

But Phil Booth, of privacy campaign group No2ID, said: “We are talking about a Government that cannot even look after the data of millions of people now asking your local camera shop to process sensitive personal data, including fingerprints.”

[…]

via Chemists and post offices to take fingerprints as part of national ID scheme – Telegraph.

h/t: CLG

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Al Gore: Alarming new slides of the worsening climate crisis

Dandelion Salad

TEDtalksDirector
May 07, 2009

http://www.ted.com At TED2009, Al Gore presents updated slides from around the globe to make the case that worrying climate trends are even worse than scientists predicted, and to make clear his stance on “clean coal.”

Lawmaker Defends Imprisoning Hostile Bloggers + Prison Awaiting Hostile Bloggers (updated)

Dandelion Salad

Updated: May 16, 2009 added video

By David Kravets
http://www.wired.com
May 7, 2009

Sanchez, with the introduction of the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, clearly has a great interest in censoring.

Still, the Democrat from Los Angeles makes several valid points that cyberbullying has lasting consequences on our nation’s youth. The 13-year-old Meier’s suicide is clearly a tragedy. But how she characterizes the measure is simply untrue.

“Put simply, this legislation would be used as a tool for a judge and jury to determine whether there is significant evidence to prove that a person ‘cyberbullied’ another,” she wrote in the Huffington Post. “That is: did they have the required intent, did they use electronic means of communication, and was the communication severe, hostile, and repeated? So — bloggers, e-mailers, texters, spiteful exes and those who have blogged against this bill have no fear — your words are still protected under the same American values.”

[…]

via Lawmaker Defends Imprisoning Hostile Bloggers | Threat Level

Israel would inform, not ask U.S. before hitting Iran

Dandelion Salad

By Dan Williams – Analysis
TEL AVIV Reuters
Wed May 6, 2009 5:34am EDT

When he first got word of Israel’s sneak attack on the Iraqi atomic reactor in 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan privately shrugged it off, telling his national security adviser: “Boys will be boys”

Would Barack Obama be so sanguine if today’s Israelis made good on years of threats and bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, yanking the United States into an unprecedented Middle East eruption that could dash his goal of easing regional tensions through revived and redoubled U.S. outreach?

For that matter, would Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu readily take on Iran alone, given his country’s limited firepower and the risk of stirring up a backlash against the Jewish state among war-weary, budget-strapped Americans?

[…]

via Israel would inform, not ask U.S. before hitting Iran | International | Reuters.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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Iran Israel US Nukes

Mosaic News – 5/6/09: World News From The Middle East

Dandelion Salad

Warning

This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

linktv

Mosaic needs your help! Donate here: http://linktv.org/contribute

“‘Botched’ US airstrike on Afghan villages kills up to ‘120 civilians'” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“US Rapprochement With Iran Unnerves Arabs,” Dubai TV, UAE
“United States Is Committed to Israel’s Security,” IBA TV, Israel
“Peres tells Ban ‘we made mistakes in Gaza'” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“US Assuages Arabs’ Fear of Iran,” Future TV, Lebanon
“Kuwaiti women aim for third time luck in elections,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Iraqis Complain About Foreign Laborers,” Al-Iraqiya TV, Iraq
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.

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New Chief Prosecutor Appointed For Military Commissions At Guantánamo by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
7 May 2009

In a development that will only fuel suspicions that the Obama administration is indeed planning to revive the Bush administration’s much-criticized system of trials by Military Commission at Guantánamo (as flagged up by defense secretary Robert Gates in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee last week), I have just learned that the Commissions’ Chief Prosecutor, Col. Lawrence Morris, is retiring from active duty, and will be replaced by Capt. John Murphy (US Navy Reserve). No formal turnover date has been announced, but it is expected that the transition will take place over the next two months.

Col. Morris took over as Chief Prosecutor following the resignation, in October 2007, of Col. Morris Davis, who later dealt what should have been a mortal blow to what little credibility the trial system had –- in the face of widespread condemnation by legal experts, the government’s own military defense attorneys, several former prosecutors, and the US Supreme Court –- when he explained that he had resigned specifically because he had been placed in a chain of command under William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon’s General Counsel.

Triumphant Obama the Best Indictment of Bush-Cheney By Robert S. Becker, Ph.D.

Sent to DS by the author, thanks, Robert.

By Robert S. Becker, Ph.D.
www.beyondchron.org
May 7, 2009

Picture yourself a conflicted White House adviser at midnight.   Do we dutifully prosecute the domestic Axis of Evil (Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld), though doubtful any jury will convict?  Won’t “not guilty” findings turn evildoers into martyrs?  Or do we expand writ large, confident the best ways to trump an eight-year train wreck are high-performance, paradigm-shifting feats that, by contrast, affirm fiascos?  Yet won’t justice suffer?

“Why not both,” yells the irate peanut gallery?  Since we don’t jail ex- presidents, our chief executive’s reluctance affirms precedence: media-crazed circus trials would stop cold desperately needed legislation.  And yet, what invaluable lessons would accrue from Watergate-quality inquests into war crimes, Constitutional violations, and corruptions that gutted federal efficacy (emergency aid, illegal hiring/firings, censorship of fact-driven reports, or billions squandered in Iraq)?   Weekly revelations, moreover, only remind us what we still don’t know.  I feverishly await the shadowy Bush “Executive Order” noted in the Torture Memos that authorized crimes.

Single-Payer advocates protest Senate hearing + The Divine Comedy: Sweden

Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews

Chair of Finance Committee takes Single-Payer plan off the table and calls for “more police”.

Naomi Klein on the Bank Bailouts + Kaptur: When Will The Wall Street Wrongdoers Be Brought To Justice?

Dandelion Salad

heathr456
May 06, 2009

Obama Returns To Bush Era On Guantánamo by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
7 May 2009

Two distressing pieces of news emerged last week regarding the Obama administration’s plans to close Guantánamo, and both were delivered by defense secretary Robert Gates in testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Discussing what would happen to the remaining 241 prisoners, Gates announced that the question was “still open” as to what the government should do with “the 50 to 100 — probably in that ballpark — who we cannot release and cannot try.” He also announced that the much-criticized Military Commission trial system, suspended for four months by Barack Obama on his first day in office, was “still very much on the table.”

Dozens injured as protesters clash with police in Georgia

Dandelion Salad

RussiaToday

Several leaders of the Georgian opposition including the former speaker of the county’s parliament are among more than 60 people who have been injured in clashes with police in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

US interrogators may have killed dozens, human rights researcher and rights group say

Dandelion Salad

By John Byrne
Raw Story
May 6, 2009

United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.

In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.

The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their US interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic.

[…]

via Raw Story » US interrogators may have killed dozens, human rights researcher and rights group say.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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Death-destruction

Human Rights on Dandelion Salad

Torture on Dandelion Salad

Rendition

Gitmo

“Web of Debt”: The Inner Workings of the Monetary System by Stephen Lendman

Dandelion Salad

by Stephen Lendman
Global Research, May 6, 2009

A review of Ellen Brown’s book

This is the first of several articles on Ellen Brown’s superb 2007 book titled “Web of Debt,” now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells “the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free.” Given today’s global economic crisis, it’s an appropriate time to review it and urge readers to digest the entire work, easily gotten through Amazon or Brown’s webofdebt.com site. Her book is a remarkable achievement – in its scope, depth, and importance.

In the forward, banker/developer Reed Simpson said:

“I have been a banker for most of my career, and I can report that even most bankers (don’t know) what goes on behind (top echelon) closed doors….I am more familiar than most with the issues (Brown covered, and) still found it an eye-opener, a remarkable window into what is really going on….(Although many banks follow high ethical practices), corruption is also rampant, (especially) in the large money center banks, in one of which I worked.”

“Credible evidence (reveals) a world (banking) power elite intent on gaining absolute control over the planet and its natural resources, including its subservient human (ones).” Money is their “lifeblood,” and “fear (their) weapon.” Ill-used, they can “enslave nations and ensure perpetual wars and bondage.” Brown exposes the scheme and offers a solution.

Debt Bondage