Obama grows the drug war, with enforcement a clear priority

According to 2011 funding "highlights" released by the ONDCP (PDF link), the Obama administration is growing the drug war and tilting its funds heavily toward law enforcement over treatment.

The president's National Drug Control Budget also continues the Bush administration's public relations tactic of obscuring the costs of prosecuting and imprisoning drug offenders. "Enron style accounting," is how drug policy reform advocate Kevin Zeese described it, writing for Alternet in 2002.

Full Story

Computers that understand how you feel

Robots can now pick up the mood of their users, and can even tell if they're drunk.

Now computers can sense the mood of their users. Already they can identify smiles, frowns and blushes. Many people have commented on the contrast between Tony Blair's urbane comments to last week's Chilcott Enquiry and his physical unease in its first minutes as manifest in blinks, foot-tapping, crossed legs, and soon. Body language – non-verbal communication – is a valuable clue to innerfeelings (a truth, or half-truth, that men's magazines often use when advising their readers how to tell whether a young lady might be interested in body language of another kind).

Full Story

Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review

San Francisco - A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails.

"We're deeply disappointed in the judge's ruling," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "This ruling robs innocent telecom customers of their privacy rights without due process of law. Setting limits on Executive power is one of the most important elements of America's system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that."

Full Story

CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones

Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ­"routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, ­protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.

Full Story

The Bogus Anti-Terrorist Crackdown on Financial Freedom

In the post-9/11 era, federal officials are treating cash as they would a suspected weapon of mass destruction. They have created legions of new restrictions and reporting requirements for citizens' money. But the new controls have done nothing to make Washington any more competent at protecting Americans from real threats.

Full Story

It’s Official: A Majority Of Americans Would Give Up Liberty In Order To Be Safe From Terrorism

It is now official. A majority of Americans are willing to give up liberty in order to be safer from terrorism. A stunning new McClatchy-Ipsos poll has found that 51 percent of Americans agree with this statement: "it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism."

Only 36 percent of those polled agreed with this statement: "some of the government's proposals will go too far in restricting the public's civil liberties."

So are Americans really this stupid?

Full Story

Italy to Require Anyone Who Uploads Video to the Internet to Obtain Government Authorization

New rules to be introduced by government decree will require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web, opposition lawmakers have warned.

Full Story

More on Cass Sunstein

Thanks to the author of the Bleeding Heart Show, I have got my hands on a copy of Sunstein’s white paper entitled Conspiracy Theories (2008). I’d like to draw your attention to some interesting features.

According to the introduction of the paper, polls suggest that roughly one-third of Americans subscribe to a ‘conspiracy theory’ about the September 11th attacks in NYC, whether it be that the government knew about it in advance, conspired in it themselves, or covered up Israeli involvement. In most illuminating fashion, the paper then states:

Full Story

Airport body scanners could 'breach human rights'

Airport body scanners, which show the naked form of anyone who passes through them, could breach human rights, according to the UK's "equality watchdog."

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has written to the Home Secretary of the UK over concerns about the proposed introduction of body scanners at airports. It fears they could breach an individual's right to privacy as laid out in the Human Rights Act.

Earlier this month, Gordon Brown announced that air travellers would see the ''gradual'' introduction of body scanners at airports around Britain.

Full Story

WHO Eyeing Global Tax on Finance, Internet Activity

The World Health Organization is considering a plan to ask governments to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online.

Such a scheme could raise "tens of billions of dollars" on behalf of the United Nations' public health arm from a broad base of consumers, which would then be used to transfer drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities, among other things, to the developing world.

The multibillion-dollar "indirect consumer tax" is only one of a "suite of proposals" for financing the rapid transformation of the global medical industry that will go before WHO's 34-member supervisory Executive Board at its biannual meeting in Geneva.

WHO's self-proclaimed "Expert Working Group" has suggested asking rich countries to set aside fixed portions of their gross domestic product to finance worldwide research and development.

Full Story

Comment: World leaders who support globalism are really pushing hard right now, aren't they? And you've gotta love how they want to tax the Internet -- they absolutely hate the free Internet.

Poll: Most Americans would trim liberties to be safer

WASHINGTON — After a recent attempted terrorist attack set off a debate about full-body X-rays at airports, a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll finds that Americans lean more toward giving up some of their liberty in exchange for more safety.

The survey found 51 percent of Americans agreeing that "it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism."

Full Story

Obama staffer wants ‘cognitive infiltration’ of 9/11 conspiracy groups | Raw Story

In a 2008 academic paper, President Barack Obama's appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated "cognitive infiltration" of groups that advocate "conspiracy theories" like the ones surrounding 9/11.

Full Story

Police fight cellphone recordings

Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.

Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.

Full Story

How the US Government Created the 'Drug Problem' in the USA

by Michael E. Kreca

"The bottom line on this whole business has not yet been written."

Dr. Sidney Gottlieb

CIA Technical Services Staff director for the MK-ULTRA program

Eighteenth-century German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel long ago developed, among other things, what he called the principle of "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" to explain the process of deliberately enacted social disorder and change as a road to power. To achieve a desired result, one deliberately creates a situation ("thesis,") devises a "solution," to solve the "problems" created by that situation ("antithesis,") with the final result being the ultimate goal of more power and control ("synthesis.") It is unsurprising Karl Marx and his disciples like Lenin and Trotsky, as well as the US government in its so-called War On Drugs, made this process a keystone of their drive for total control of all individual actions that, in their views, were not, in Mussolini s terms, "inside the state" and thus controllable by the same.

Full Story

Who's Getting Rich From the Naked Full-Body Scanner Boom? | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet

Who's Getting Rich From the Naked Full-Body Scanner Boom? | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet

Which brings us to the money shot. The body scanner is sure to get a go-ahead because of the illustrious personages hawking them. Chief among them is former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, who now heads the Chertoff Group, which represents one of the leading manufacturers of whole-body-imaging machines, Rapiscan Systems. For days after the attack, Chertoff made the rounds on the media promoting the scanners, calling the bombing attempt "a very vivid lesson in the value of that machinery" -- all without disclosing his relationship to Rapiscan. According to the Washington Post

Scanners a necessary evil, say travellers

"I'd do anything for safety," said Pari Paramasivam, while waiting for a flight to India at Pearson airport's Terminal 1.

Full Story