Automatic facial recognition in action

Things on the global Police State front get more frightening and ominous by the day. This latest announcement serves to underline that. The FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars. It is known as the Next Generation Identification (NGI) program. This report comes from Russia Today (rt.com) and quotes an article in New Scientist magazine. The project itself was announced back in 2005 and was part of a project to upgrade the existing Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America.

Related Feature on TrapWire: Stratfor Hacked Emails Reveal the TrapWire System run by Private Corporations run by ex-CIA/NSA people

Related Links: TrapWire tied to White House, Scotland Yard, MI5 and others, claims hacked Stratfor email | ‘Total Information Awareness’ surveillance program returns, bigger than ever Freedom Not Fear: CCTV Surveillance Cameras In Focus US National Security Agency (NSA) related: NSA Watch | See Scandal | Echelon FAQ | Echelon Docs -These are a bit dated (circa 2000) so the system would be vastly more powerful now. | Intercept Capabilities -written 1999. | Ireland Joins Echelon - the US/UK Global Spy Network | Thousands of military drones to be deployed over US mainland | EU / Ireland / Indymedia Related: EU agrees rules for remote computer access by police forces - but fails, as usual, to mention the security and intelligence agencies, by Tony Bunyan | Spooky Tales From Rossport and MI5 | Search Engines Should Become Government Spies Says EU Parliament | EU Agree Plan for Police Forces to place radicals & protestors under Surveillance New Pan-European Intelligence Gathering Scheme Highlighted – RNU Internet Freedom Fighters Build a Shadow Web | Pirate Party Speaks Out Against Government Filtering Plans | Are government representatives and gardai poring over your private emails and texts without you even knowing? | Some observations on state repression | How are we to handle police intelligence with care? Swedish government adopts invasive wire-tapping measures -law allows govt to monitor all e-mail and telephone communications that enter, leave or even pass through Sweden.

Surveillance cameras everywhere now

A series of reports from Russia Today (rt.com) and other sites have explained how activists reading through last year's hack by Anonymous of the Strategic Forecasting Intelligence agency (Stratfor) have revealed a little known system already in place and run by the Abraxas corporation although hints of the system were known years earlier. The email have since been released on WikiLeaks. Global Intelligence Files

Related Feature on TrapWire: FBI begins installation of $1 billion face recognition system across America When you read this other story, it is evident that the capability has rapidly come together in the last few years for computer systems to now store billions of photographs and run continual analysis on them and other related data such as location info (GPS from your phone), phone call history, credit card & bank transactions, vehicle registration recognition and tracking by motorway + street overhead cameras etc

Related Links: Abraxas and Trapwire: the technology and personnel revealed | Trapwire Article on Cryptogon | (Guradian) Trapwire surveillance system exposed in document leak | (ACLU) What to make of the Trapwire Story | Leaked Microsoft intelligence document: Here's what Microsoft will reveal to police about you

Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor’s sentencing to 50 years’ imprisonment on 11 counts of war crimes is undeniably momentous. However, with Sierra Leoneans still suffering abject poverty and remaining in dire need of aid, it must be questioned for whose benefit the costly War Crimes Court really is, writes EMMA PURDY

Related Links: Charles Taylor (wiki) | Blood diamond (wiki) | The other end of blood diamond trade | Information on Sierra Leone

The Special Court for Sierra Leone will conclude this year on a triumphant note, with former Liberian president Charles Taylor now the first ex-head of state convicted by international justice since the 1946 Nuremburg trials.

The 64-year-old was found guilty this April of arming and supporting Revolutionary United Front rebels in exchange for illegally mined blood diamonds and thus “aiding and abetting” the country’s brutal civil war. He was sentenced on 30 May to 50 years’ imprisonment, having been held “criminally responsible” by judges after a protracted four-and-a-half-year trial.

From the outset in January 2008, after Taylor boycotted the initial 2007 proceedings, the trial was lauded as the first ever of a former African head of state in an international court. Taylor was the Court’s 11th defendant from a total of 21 indictments since its establishment in January 2002, its remit being to try “those who bear the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law” during the 11-year conflict.

Embedded Video Description: Video Id: abEdrPYqtkA Type: Youtube Video
Agricultural investment or land-grab in Sierra Leone?

Nuclear armed and funded by diamonds

As the leaders of the global diamond industry gathered in Vicenza, Italy for the annual meeting of the World Diamond Council, Palestinians remained trapped in a surreal nightmarish existence under the cosh of a diamond-funded, nuclear-armed belligerent regime: "The Israeli forces used [taser guns] and I have bruises on my arms and legs. I saw them open a protester's mouth by force and spit in it, and they spit in my face as well. While being under custody, a police officer of Ramle district addressed both me and another female activist while being cuffed with verbal sexual harassment, threatening to rape us. I have to admit I burst in tears ."

Related Links:
De-Beers asked to remove blood diamond display from Tower of London | No Valentine for Kimberley Process | Israeli Blood Diamond Campaign claims another victory | Two global diamond retailers resort to censorship over Israeli Blood Diamonds issue | Marilyn Monroe launches ‘Boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds’ campaign in Dublin | Kimberley Process (wikipedia) | Amnesty US page on conflict diamonds

Basque trade union barricade during general strike in March

A political struggle in a European nation of less than three million, largely ignored by other socialists in Europe, has nevertheless come to the fore in the capitalist media repeatedly since the late 1960s. This has been largely as a result of the the Basque people’s struggle for socialism and independence from the Spanish and French states, a struggle led for decades by Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the marxist armed organisation better known by its acronym, ETA. The organisation reawakened Basque national consciousness, has worked with others for the restoration of Euskara, the Basque language, organised Basque workers and faced the repression of the General Franco dictatorship in the Spanish state. Famously, in 1973 it assassinated the Prime Minister of the state, Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s right-hand man, which hastened the fragmentation of the dictatorship and its passage to partial democracy.

Related Links: The Abertzale Left makes big electoral gains in the basque Country – but is it being steered towards social democracy? | Basque Trade Unions Square Up To The Spanish State | Report on the largest demo ever in the Basque Country, estimated 100,000, Bilbao January this year -- in solidarity with political prisoners