The Home Office is creating a database to store details of every phone call, email and web page visited in Britain

By Andy Bloxham writing for the Telegraph.

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"The Home Office will create a database to store the details of every phone call made, every email sent and every web page visited by British citizens in the previous year under plans currently under discussion, it has emerged."

"The Government wants to create the system to fight terrorism and crime."

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"A Home Office spokesman said the move was needed to reflect changes in communication that would "increasingly undermine our current capabilities to obtain communications data and use it to protect the public"."

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Read the full article here.

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"This and no other is the root from which the tyrant springs: when he first appears he is a protector." (Plato)

Mario Savio: Speaking in 1964

Sibel Edmonds and the Machine: chewed up and spat out

Sibel Edmonds was born in 1970 and is Turkish-American. Up until March 2002 she worked as a translator for the FBI. During the course of her work she encountered evidence that the the FBI was actively supressing evidence of US involvement in the illegal sales of nuclear materials and technologies to Turkey (often on behalf of Pakistan's ISI), drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism, and corruption from the very highest levels of the US government down.

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Joseph K in the 21st Century

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When Sibel Edmonds brought this evidence to her superiors at the FBI she was told to leave it alone and that pursuing it would only open a can of worms. So she took her concerns to higher management within the FBI and eventually to assistant director Dale Watson and the FBI's director Robert Mueller. At this stage she was told not to take her concerns any further. If she did, she was told, the FBI would retaliate against her. When Sibel Edmonds refused to keep quiet she was fired. The offical and indeed only reason she was given for being fired was, "Solely for the convenience of the United States government.

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In March 2002, around three weeks before she was fired, Sibel Edmonds took her case to the Department of Justice Inspector General's office and also the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC). The Inspector General promised the SJC a completed investigation into Edmonds case by autumn of that year. The investigation was never finished and never made public. The reason cited was "state privilege" and "national security". In spite of this several Senators of the SJC continued to work with Edmonds on her case. However this work finally came to an end in May 2004 when Attorney General John Ashcroft sent an order to Congress saying that the Justice Department was "retroactively" classifying everything Congress and the SJC had in its possession in regards to Sibel Edmonds case. The SJC was ordered to delete everything about Edmonds from their websites. The Attorney General was literally gagging Congress. From that time on the Senators of the SJC who had worked on Edmond's case simply stopped returning her phone calls.

Sibel Edmonds has since become known as the most gagged woman in US history. If she speaks out about what she knows she will be jailed.

That is a brief synopsis of Sibel Edmonds case. Listen to Edmonds tell her story in her own words below.

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Who you gonna call?

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What's perhaps most revealing when you look into Sibel Edmonds story and hear her speak is that you begin to understand how the vast US political, judicial, corporate and media machine operates when it is the US government itself that is accused of wrong doing. The FBI is the federal government agency whose purpose is to investigate crimes and gather evidence. They not only refused to investigate the evidence Edmonds had - or at least they refused to make their investigation public - they fired her, simply because she would not ignore the crimes she had uncovered. So Edmonds went to Congress. And Congress was duly gagged by the Attorney General. Then the courts threw out her case after hearing testimony given by government lawyers that Edmonds and her council were barred from hearing (they were told by the judge to leave the court room and were given no transcript of what was said; a situation that you cannot help but describe as Kafkaeque). Then there is the testimony she gave to the 9/11 Commission (behind closed doors). Not only was it left out of the final report, it was also stricken from the public record. All the while the Executive branch of government has classified everything in relation to Edmonds case. And I mean everything. Even Sibel Edmonds date of birth has been classified. And of course there is the coporate media, which does and says nothing.

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In US politics the constitutional 'checks and balances' that are suposed to restrain government are now utterly impotent. Government does pretty much whatever it likes, even if that means commiting crimes (and in Edmonds case we are talking about potentially treasonous activity). And why not? Especially when you know you have the means to cover those crimes up, and to halt, control or impede any investigation into them. And if someone speaks out, that can be dealt with. Those who refuse to be silenced, the whistle blowers, those who try to alert the public of illegal government activity, can simply be chewed up and spat out by the machine. Just like Edmonds. Just like Joseph K.

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As Edmonds says in the above film: where else can she go? Who does she call when it is the government who is being charged with criminal activity? She has tried the courts, the FBI, Congress, the SJC and the media, and each of them have failed her and have failed others like her.

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If anyone says to you, "well, why don't people speak out?" Tell them that they do. And that one way or another those people are silenced.

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9/11: Cover Up

Whilst working at the FBI Sibel Edmonds, amongst everything else, came across evidence that several of the 9/11 hijackers had been actively protected by the Justice Department, the State Depeartment, the White House and the FBI prior to the attacks. Not only was this covered up, following the attacks high level officials within the Bush administration were actively involved in getting persons suspected of being involved with those hijackers out of the country.

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Links

For sale: Weat's deadly nuclear secrets (The Times, Jan 2008)
Interview with Jim Hodge
Just a Citizen (Sibel Edmonds website. You may be interested in the 'gallery'. Remember that Edmonds has been gagged from naming those involved in her case...)
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (founded by Edmonds in 2004)

The Orchestrated Eradication of Liberty in Britian

"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is the highest political end."(Lord Acton)

Around five or six months ago I decided to keep a file dedicated news articles about the increasing number of ways the British state is spying on us. I was partly motivated after finding out that home secretary Jacqui Smith had quietly passed a law in July 2007 giving 795 public companies and government agencies the right to spy on all British mobile phone calls and messages. No discussion. No debate. You are no longer at liberty to make private phone calls.

Then I kept reading other stories in the press about new government spying programmes, so many so that it was becoming hard to remember them all. Hence I started keeping the file.

A few weeks ago I noticed how large this file had grown. Forty-five articles in around six months. And this list is not exhaustive.

The majority of the articles I've linked below are from mainstream British news organisations and were published in the last six months. Relatively few were published earlier than this. I should also mention that the majority of articles are exclusively about Britain. I've got another file with article's about the eradication of civil liberties in the US, Europe and elsewhere. For the moment, that's another story.

In the 'war on terror' state power is winning, liberty is losing.

It's nevertheless worth noting the numerous parallels between Britain and the US in regard to not just surveillance measures and the eradication of liberty but also the politics of 'terror'. Both here and in the US the state is using 'terror', by which I mean deliberate fear-mongering, to scare the populous into accepting the erosion of their liberties.

This is far from an original state of affairs. Hitler did exactly the same in the 1930's and for the same reason: to increase the power of the state and to diminish the power and liberty of the people. It is what you would expect in an actual or creeping dictatorship: the creation or exajuration of a common enemy, a mutual national threat (in our case we know that Al Qaeda was a creation of the CIA and we know that the threat posed to us by Al Qaeda has been relentlessly exajurated by government and media alike). The state then claims only it can protect you from this enemy, from this national threat. The cost of state protection is liberty.

The global 'war on terror' is in many ways perceivably indistinguishable from a global war on liberty.

The threat to liberty in this country does not begin and end with the state. Powers are increasingly being centralised beyond national democratic boundaries. Work is underway to create databases and surveillance networks that are Anglo-American and European in nature, not just national. It is also noticable that surveillance measures and policies introduced in the UK are simultaneously turning up in the US and elsewhere around Europe.

[To this end consider the following stories which are detailed in the list below. 1) The US now has the authority to spy on British citizens who are on British soil. 2) The FBI is striving to gain access to British biometric information in its efforts to establish a global database of everyone. 3) The US - a country on the verge of martial law - has told Britain that it can "kidnap" British citizens if they are wanted for crimes within the US. That is, a US Supreme Court ruling now gives the US authorities legal jurisdiction in this country. And we are not talking about extradition here. We are talking about "kidnap".]

Government spying programmes in the UK have reached epidemic proportions. Trends in the US and Europe are following the same trajectory. Everything is increasing. The spying with cameras and listenning devices; the recording of phone calls, emails and internet activity (programmes are actually underway to censor the internet); the introduction of iris and fingerprint recognition technology; increasing DNA and biometric databases; ID Cards; the use of RFID chips in prisoners; mobile phone tracking technology; face recognition technology; smell recognition technology...

"All those who would sacrifice a little liberty for a little security will lose both and deserve neither." (B Franklin)

The articles below should be read as a warning. We are getting ever closer to the point where pretty much everything we do will be monitored in a state surveillance grid from which it will be impossible to escape. This has to stop. The government needs to understand that we are not going to tollerate being spied on and monitored. The laws allowing government to do so must be repealed. The surveillance apperatus, dismantled. There can be no exceptions.

It's a simple choice between liberty or slavery. You choose.

1. 1.5m children to have DNA taken next year
2. Smith targets internet extremism: "The internet can't be a no-go area for government."
3. Camera looks through clothing
4. Big Brother Britain: government and councils to spy on all our phones
5. Big Brother is watching us - and he lives in the town hall
6. Big Brother is watching us all
7. Big Brother is watching you
8. Big Brother tapping our phones and emails 1,000 times a day In the last nine months of 2006, various authorities and agencies made "253,500 requests for phone taps, the interception of emails or post."
9. Britain makes camera that sees under clothes
10. CCTV camera microphones to be axed: A somewhat absurd report by the Telegraph stating that camera microphones are to be "outlawed" because they are "highly intrusive". Yet later in the report they say camera microphones will be allowed in "extremely special circumstances," so they're not being 'axed' at all.
11. CCTV could be used in exam rooms
12. CCTV in class spies on teachers, says union
13. Child fingerprint checks at European borders
14. Children should be put on DNA database: This is the view of Britian's most senior forensics expert, Gary Pugh. Behaviour should be analysed to assess if children are "potential offenders". If found guilty - of potential future crimes - their DNA is taken.
15. CIA and Google team up in creation of vast closed source database for global spying
16. 'Coercion' plan to force ID cards on first time drivers
17. Council that snooped on parents now uses anti-terror laws to spy on fishermen
18. Every pupil to be numbered and kept on government database for life
19. Face scans for air passengers will start in the UK this summer
20. Facebook can ruin your life. So can MySpace, Bebo...: Information you post on scoical sites can be used against you.
21. FBI wants instant access to British identity data
22. 'Free CCTV film access for security services': They can spy on us at will.
23. Insects become fly-on-the-wall spies, with tiny cameras, radio controls and microphones: Moths, beetles, rats, pigeons and sharks have been installed with electronic brain implants so they can be controlled remotely. They can also carry cameras and microphones. No, really.
24. Government to begin rolling out ID cards 'by stealth' within a year: 'Workers in sensitive jobs will be required to apply for the compulsory cards in 2009, despite the Home Office postponing the overall scheme until 2012...Some 100,000 British airport staff and others working in sensitive locations are expected to be affected by the move.'
25. Government wants personal details of every traveller: 'Phone numbers and credit card data to be collected under expanded EU plan.' Interestingly, the UK is 'the only country of 27 EU member states that wants the system used for "more general public policy purposes" besides fighting terrorism and organised crime.'
26. The government trumpets free speech while trampling on it
27. Heathrow airport first to fingerprint
28. Heathrow fingerprint plan probed
29. Hi-tech face recognition cameras used in Budgens to spot underage drinkers
30. How mobile phones let spies see our every move: 'Government's secret Celldar project will allow surveillance of anyone, at any time, and anywhere there is a phone signal'.
31. London cops declare war on photography
32. Man arrested, put in DNA database for "allegedly" dropping apple core
33. Met police officers to be 'microchipped' by top brass in Big Brother style tracking: All cops will chipped and tracked.
34. MI5 seeks power to trawl records in new terror hunt: 'Millions of commuters could have their private movements around cities secretly monitored under new counter-terrorism powers being sought by the security services.'
35. Military Industrial Complex biometric surveillance control grid revealing itself
36. New anti-terroism rules 'allow US to spy on British motorists'
37. Police to deploy hundreds of airport-style mobile electronic search units
38. Prisoners 'to be chipped like dogs': Prisoners who once wore trackable bracelets are now to have Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips surgically inserted under their skin. RFID chipping may also be used to track prisoners in jail.
39. Roadside cameras that detect blood will catch lone drivers who abuse car-sharing lanes
40. Schools to fingerprint pupils for new school dinner payment system
41. Surveillance system tracks faces on CCTV
42. US and Britain: "Endemic surveillance societies"
43. US says it has right to kidnap British citizens
44. UK council accused of Big Brother tactics over use of fingerprint technology in schools: A school in Wales is introducing a system whereby children will pay for their lunches with fingerprints rather than money.
45. When surveillance cameras talk

Keith Fucking Nails It

Project Censored

Founded in the US in 1976 Project Censored conducts research into important national news stories that are 'underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media'. Between 700 and 1,000 stories are submitted to Project Censored each year. Of these, through the work of over 200 Sonoma State University faculty, student and community members, 25 stories are selected for content, reliability of sources and national significance. These 25 stories are then ranked in order of importance by a panel of judges and published in a yearbook called Censored: The News That Didn't Make The News.

The annual Project Censored top 25 archive is also available online. See archive here.

Project Censored is an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to find out the things that the US corporate media doesn't want you to know. To my knowledge, much of Project Censored's content is as little reported here as it is in the US.

For instance consider from the current 2008 list #16 No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11. This is one of several stories on Project Censored relating to 9/11 which have received next to no attention in the mainstream UK media.

Also from the current list #2 Bush Moves Toward Martial Law. As I refered to in The United States of America: On The Road to Martial Law, the plans to execute what would in effect be a military dictatorship in the US are in place. Detention camps have been built. Laws giving the president the authority to indefinately detain anyone he likes have been signed. Not to mention the suspension of Habeas Corpus which is top of the current list: #1 No Habeas Corpus for “Any Person”. Again, these clearly urgent stories have largely failed to make their way into the British media. Though the fact that they largely unreported in the corporate US media is much more disturbing.

Highly pertinent to present times is the following story from last years list: 2. Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran. A story which reaffirms the age old US policy of arming countries with weapons and technologies and then kicking - or threatening to kick -the shit out of them.

Project Censored offers fascinating and frequently disturbing insight into just how efficient the US corporate media has become in controlling the news.

Thank fuck for the internet!

Volvanic Eruption In Chile

Steven Jones et al Publish Paper in The Open Civil Engineering Journal

Read the paper from Steven Jones blog linked below.

Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction

On the question of NIST's refusal to investigate or even consider the possibility that World Trade Centre building 7 was brought down in a controlled demolition, the paper mentions the following exchange (below), which says something about NIST's attitude towards doing tests for the use of explosives. Remember that NIST - whose investigation props up the official governmental 9/11 story - said they found no evidence for the use of explosives whilst also admitting that they had done no tests for them. While NIST have not yet been able to provide any explanation as to why WTC 7 collapsed they continue to ignore and dismiss this possibility.

Anyone who thinks it's ludicrous that WTC 7 could have been brought down by controlled demolition have to realise that NIST, which is a government funded agency, did not scientifically investigate the possibility that it was. There are now many highly credible controlled demolition and architectural experts who have shown, I think conclusively, that WTC 7's collapse has every hallmark of a typical controlled demolition. The evidence is very clear and straight forward. Buildings tend not to spontaneously disintigrate like this of their own accord. A partial collapse is one thing. It is quite another when a building suddenly collapses and the structure below offers the same resistence as air.

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The exchange below is between investigative reporter Jennifer Abel and NIST spokesperson (Michael?) Neuman.

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Abel: "...what about that letter where NIST said it didn't look for evidence of explosives?”

Neuman: "Right, because there was no evidence of that."

Abel: But how can you know there's no evidence if you don't look for it first?

Neuman: "If you're looking for something that isn't there, you're wasting your time...”

The Bank Of England & The Federal Reserve

I've heard many times that the international bankers which owned the Bank of England are the same people that established the US Federal Reserve bank in 1913. I recently came across the following charts from the Congressional House Banking Committee Staff Report, published August 1976, which explain the somewhat complex links between the major London and US banking institutions. They also detail the links between them and the major US and British national and muti-national corporations.

See the charts here.