Prechter warns that as the depression deepens, more and more avenues of escape are going to be shut off. He lists three that have become difficult:
1. You used to be able to invest in tax-free foreign annuities. Now you have to pay tax on them.
2. You could deposit your money at any Swiss bank. Now, harassment by US authorities has led many of those banks to shut the door on American depositors.
3. You could emigrate to New Zealand easily. Now, independent operators without a government license who try to help immigrants face trouble.
“Responding to a domestic violence report, police in Merced, California helped child “protection” workers abduct the two-year-old daughter of 40-year-old Gregory Williams, a double amputee who is confined to a wheelchair.
Williams, a father of three who lost his legs to deep vein thrombosis six years ago and is currently unemployed, had been arguing with his wife. Rather than trying to defuse the situation, the police summoned a CPS worker who decided to seize the two-year-old, Ginni.
When Williams objected, the police placed him under arrest and attempted to force him into the familiar “prone-out” position….
This act of instinctive self-preservation was described as “resisting arrest”
So Officer John Pinnegar shoved his Portable Electro-Shock Torture device into Williams’ ribs and pulled the trigger twice.
At least one other officer, Sgt. Rodney Court, assisted the valiant Pinnegar in subduing the legless man. Hey, can’t be too careful — “officer safety” and all that. At one point Court shoved a knee into the middle of Williams’ back while Pinnegar cuffed the victim.
The double-amputee was left sitting on the pavement, handcuffed behind the back, with his pants pulled down below the waist — in broad daylight, in full view of the residents of his apartment complex.”
“While Brits are longing for less surveillance in their electronic snoop state, the government in India seems to want to take Bharat Mata farther down that road. Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of India’s tech giant, Infosys, and now the head of the Government’s Unique ID project, is proposing an Indian biometric ID.
What’s incredible is he thinks it’s feasible to extend this to the whole population. Apart from the logistics, the level of technology, and the cost (1.5 lakh crores – a number I’ll translate later), there’s the vulnerability to abuse, considerations which deterred Britain from going ahead with its own biometric ID scheme.
They don’t seem to bother Nikelani – one of “Flat Earth” globalist Tom Friedman’s favorite people. He discussed the objections in an interview with CNN-IBN’s Karan Thapar, published in the Hindu.
Here’s a short excerpt:
“Karan Thapar: You said a moment ago that you would create checks and balances. I put it to you that you can never create sufficient and the reason say is this — In the UK, in the US and in Australia, because the authorities couldn’t respond to public concerns about misuse, they have effectively put on the backburner consideration of similar schemes for those countries. Now if developed countries cannot tackle the problem of misuse, then how can India, where 35 per cent of the people are illiterate and 22 per cent live below the poverty line? How can India claim that we can tackle these problems?
Nandan Nilekani: What these developed countries have put on hold is giving national ID cards to people. But both the countries, US and UK have a number. For example in the US, you have the social security number, in the UK there is the national insurance number. They already have a numbering system, which is what we are going to propose.
Karan Thapar: Except for the fact that is is nowhere near as extensive or as complete in terms of the biometeric details as what you are proposing in India. The national insurance in Britain has been around and developing slowly but it doesn’t have any details that could lead to an invasion of privacy. It doesn’t have any details that can be misused for profiling. Yours could have both?
Nandan Nilekani: As I said, these are legitimate concerns and I think we have to address them in the public as well as in the laws and so on. But notwithstanding these concerns, the social benefit, the inclusivity that this project will provide for the 700 million people in this country who are outside the system is immense enough to justify doing this project…”
My Comment
Notice, once more, that’s it’s “social uplift” that’s the excuse for the expansion of the state, the same reasoning given for the sale of IMF gold. And as suspect in this case as it is in that. It seems as if public officials hardly get a wink of sleep cooking up schemes to help the poor.
Consider that the British biometric scheme was put on the backburner because it cost too much. The London School of Economics calculated that it would cost between 10 and 20 billion pounds, and Britian is about 1/20 the size of India. Now figure how mind-boggling the Indian scheme is likely to be be…..in every respect.
“A poll run by PoliticsHome this week revealed a fascinating result to the question: “Do you think in general, the state has too much or too little of a say in what people can and cannot do?” Nearly four-fifths of the sample (79%) answered that the state had too much of a say, while only 8% believe the state has too little say.
If the poll is an accurate reflection of the nation’s mood this is an important finding. For some time I have been aware of sharp change in the public’s attitudes to surveillance, as well as a general feeling that the government is too quick to seize personal data and tell people how to lead their lives.”
“The nation’s highest court ruled in 1966 that police could have blood tests forcibly done on a drunk driving suspect without a warrant, as long as the draw was based on a reasonable suspicion that a suspect was intoxicated, that it was done after an arrest and carried out in a medically approved manner. The practice of cops drawing blood, implemented first in 1995 in Arizona, has also raised concerns about safety and the credibility of the evidence….”
More here at AP on another symptom of a system out of whack.
“Americans really are good folk. The government isn’t. It’s the gravest problem we face, both internationally and domestically.
(6) The Constitution really is going away, or has gone. It never did work as well as it should have, but few things human ever do. Habeas corpus is dead, right to an attorney, congressional right to declare war – it’s not even worth listing the list……
(7) The increasing, detailed, intrusive regulation of life, the national desire for control, control, control. Everything is the business of some form of government. Want to paint your shutters? The condo association won’t let you. Let dogs in your bar? Never. Decide who to sell your house to? Racial matter. Own a dog? Shot card, pooper-scooper, leash, gotta be spayed, etc. Have a bar for men only, women only, whites or blacks only? Here come the federal marshals. What isn’t controlled by government is controlled by the crypto-vindictive mob rule of political correctness. This wasn’t always in the American character.
Add the continuing presence of police in the schools, the arrest in handcuffs of children of seven, the expulsions for drawing a picture of a soldier with a gun. Something very twisted is going on.
How much of the public knows what is happening, or even knows that something is happening? I don’t know. But I don’t think that it’s going to go away. In ten years it will be an entirely different place with the same name. Almost is now.”
“Verizon online knows when I logged on, and New York Sports Club knows when I swiped my membership card. The M.T.A. could trace (through the MetroCard I bought with a credit card) when and where I took the subway, and The Times knows when I used my ID to enter the building. AT&T could follow me along the way through my iPhone.
There may also be videotape of my travels, given the ubiquity of surveillance cameras in New York City. There are thousands of cameras on buildings and lampposts around Manhattan, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, many near my home and office. Several may have been in a position to film dinner on Elisabeth and Dan’s roof.
A little-appreciated downside of the technology revolution is that, mainly without thinking about it, we have given up “locational privacy.” Even in low-tech days, our movements were not entirely private. The desk attendant at my gym might have recalled seeing me, or my colleagues might have remembered when I arrived. Now the information is collected automatically and often stored indefinitely.
Privacy advocates are rightly concerned. Corporations and the government can keep track of what political meetings people attend, what bars and clubs they go to, whose homes they visit. It is the fact that people’s locations are being recorded “pervasively, silently, and cheaply that we’re worried about,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a recent report.
People’s cellphones and E-Z Passes are increasingly being used against them in court. If your phone is on, even if you are not on a call, you may be able to be found (and perhaps picked up) at any hour of the day or night. As disturbing as it is to have your private data breached, it is worse to think that your physical location might fall into the hands of people who mean you harm….”
My Comment
And of course, that’s what I’m liking about my stay down south. The feeling of having someone always looking over your shoulders diminishes a lot once you leave the country.
To add to Cohen’s litany of surveillance, take Google accounts. There’s an option that lets Google keep track of your web browsing, of every site you opened, and all it takes is a check against the box. Say someone hacks your Google account. Or a Google employee decides to do it as a prank or from malice. They could check that box and keep tabs on what it was you were reading and investigating.
That’s only one possibility. Obviously, someone could also hack your account and browse through it to create a fake history of what you were investigating or browsing. You could without your knowledge have been reading “jihadi” sites….or racist sites…or hate sites of some other type…or child pornography…or anything else your enemies might want to recreate you as.
People who think Google and wiki are going to bring down the establishment have got to be kidding or very naive. Google and wiki can, have, and will work with the establishment when it suits them.
“State health commissioner P.N. Sreenivasachari told IANS: ‘It’s difficult to say why Karnataka, more precisely Bangalore, which is endowed with adequate healthcare facilities, is witnessing large number of swine flu deaths. We too are puzzled.
‘We can say the virus is already in the air and it’s time people became more aware and cautious to stop the spread of the virus. However, from the point of view of the administration, we have provided adequate healthcare facilities to treat swine flu patients,’ added Sreenivasachari.
Principal secretary (Health) I.R. Perumal said people should not get panicky.
‘People with swine flu like symptoms should immediately get themselves checked, as the city is well equipped to deal with the pandemic,’ added Perumal.
On Friday, two deaths were reported from Bangalore, one came from Bijapur.
My Comment
Why? I have no idea. More international travelers is one reason and a plausible one. But I confess I couldn’t help thinking about this piece I wrote in 2005, “Terror Hits Bangalore.”
One result of swine flu scare-mongering will be a shift of money to influenza research – hitherto absent in India. That means funding for drug trials. I wonder who the lucky drug companies are that will benefit?
The two states hit hardest are Karnataka (where Bangalore is) and Maharashtra (where Bombay is). Those are also the states that are the destinations of most foreign travelers and where India’s IT business and stock market are located. Bangalore is the home of a booming biotech business. And a locus of the anti-globalization movement as well. Just thinking out a loud…
Deaths so far are a hundred or less. That’s in a country of roughly a billion and a quarter where tens of thousands die from traffic accidents (300 a day or around 100,000 a year) and from water-borne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, and jaundice. Hundred of farmers are committing suicide. None of that has qualified for the term pandemic….OR for the accompanying switch in research funding..
Here’s some information on malaria in India in 2008:
“While the official figures state that in 2008 India had 1.5 million malaria cases, resulting in 924 deaths, the real number of deaths is higher by several orders of magnitude.
“These numbers are a joke,” said Sunil Kaul, a doctor who works for a volunteer organization called the Ant that treats villagers. “In Assam alone we had at least 1,500 deaths last year.”
The real number of malaria-related deaths in India was closer to 40,000 in 2008, according to various non-governmental sources and some government officials who didn’t want to be named.”
Under-reporting and lack of knowledge about the disease are two of the main obstacles in retarding the spread of malaria. But interestingly, it’s also international organizations like WHO that obstruct progress in many ways:
“These problems are further complicated by foreign agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), which — under the influence of global lending agencies like the World Bank and big pharmaceutical companies — have pushed India to adopt prevention methods that don’t suit the local conditions and to initiate huge, ill-considered projects rather than targeted ones. ….”
Please note, I have it as Harold Varnus in the piece. It should be Varmus, as in my previous blog post on the subject. In my defense, I wrote it mostly in very dim light…
“The latest in the barrage of media reports on swine flu is a Bloomberg news report (August 25, 2009) that it might hospitalize 1.8 million patients in the US and over-burden hospital intensive care units.
This comes from a planning scenario released by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology
The Bloomberg story cites some theatrical numbers:
Half of the US population infected (that is, over 150 million people)
300,000 people in hospital intensive care units
30–90,000 people dead
By-pass surgery emergency operations disrupted
But hidden in paragraph 5 of the Bloomberg piece is the most pertinent part:
These numbers are only “scenario projections” that were “developed from models put together for planning purposes only,” says a Centers for Disease Control spokesman.
So.
Statistical projections.
Projections from models of past pandemics. (And not the past, as in 1968 or 1957, but way back, as in 1918.)
Projections developed for planning purposes only.
That’s three stages removed from anything you could call reality.
But perish this tenuous link with facts, PCAST wants Obama to rush through vaccine production so that 40 million people can be infect – er – injected by mid-September.
And who should make that decision?
A doctor? The surgeon-general? A medical team?
Why, the homeland security adviser!
That’s John Brennan, a former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, deputy executive director of the CIA under George Tenet, and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (CTC) from 2004 to 2005 during the exact period when the CIA became most heavily involved in torture practices in Iraq and elsewhere.”
Note:
I wanted to state here that my social views are quite liberal, and I do not have any objection to voluntary family planning and contraception. I’m also firmly pro-choice. And in terms of the environment, I support far greater consideration by each of us, as individuals and as communities, for animal life, nature, and conservation.
But those are my personal views. Putting the legal and physical force of the corporate- state behind those preferences, in the form that Holdren apparently thinks will work, is, in my view, completely misguided.