Keys Corner

When I read this in today’s Guardian, my first reaction was “but it’s not the 1st of April yet”. One the one hand data privacy experts in the EU has been fighting tooth and nail over the last years to prevent the USA getting a pile of personal data each time someone flies to or from the USA; on the other hand, the EU is considering similar measures, which the UK is lobbying to extend to track EU citizens traveling within the EU:

Passengers travelling between EU countries or taking domestic flights would have to hand over a mass of personal information, including their mobile phone numbers and credit card details, as part of a new package of security measures being demanded by the British government. The data would be stored for 13 years and used to “profile” suspects.

Brussels officials are already considering controversial anti-terror plans that would collect up to 19 pieces of information on every air passenger entering or leaving the EU. Under a controversial agreement reached last summer with the US department of homeland security, the EU already supplies the same information [19 pieces] to Washington for all passengers flying between Europe and the US.

But Britain wants the system extended to sea and rail travel, to be applied to domestic flights and those between EU countries…

In fact, according to a recent article by John Lettice, some of the protest from the EU against the USA’s data collection is caused because the EU bureaucracy has been unable to coordinate an agreement with the USA fast enough to stop the USA forming bilateral agreements with some EU-states which don’t have a visa waiver agreement in place with the USA, thus undermining the EU’s position when negotiating deals with the USA. Given that the UK government has been regularly involuntarily leaking data about millions of its citizens recently (lost DVDs and CDs have become a regular topic in the British press in the last 2-3 months), this enthusiasm for collecting even more data really can’t be considered a good idea.

Unfortunately, the Brits don’t write communiques like these any more - if they ever did:

Dear Citizens of America,

In view of your failure to elect a competent President and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy), as from Monday next…

(Found in a comment on vowe dot net)

The USA wants to introduce “democracy” in Iraq, but not in Pakistan:

The US and Britain are pressing Pervez Musharraf’s victorious opponents to drop their demands that he resign as president and that the country’s independent judiciary be restored before forming a government.

In a strategy some Western diplomats admit could badly backfire, the Bush administration has made clear it wishes to continue to support Mr Musharraf even after Monday’s election in which the Pakistani public delivered a resounding rejection of his policies…

No further comment needed, I think.

Picture from Arborsmith Studios website (click picture to visit)Axel Erlandson an American arborsculptor opened an exhibition in 1947 featuring trees which he had shaped by pruning, bending and grafting. The original exhibition, called The Tree Circus had a chequered history, only bringing in a little over $300 in a good year (1955). Eventually 12 of the original trees were bought by Michael Bonfante for his amusement park, Bonfante Gardens, in Gilroy, California. We’ve been to California a number of times, but didn’t know about these trees, unfortunately.

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View from the Pentagon behind the scenes:

US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night…

...Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: ‘They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there’s clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I’ve had, I’d say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran.

‘It feels a lot like, if you get something and Iran’s not involved, it’s a let down.’ He added: ‘I’ve had people say to me, “They’re really pushing the Iran thing. It’s like, shit, you know.” ’

Brose said that reports about Washington’s increasingly hawkish stance towards Tehran, including possible military action, chimed with his experience. ‘My impression is they’re just trying to get every little bit of ammunition possible. If we get something here it fits the overall picture. The engine needs impetus and they’re looking for us to find the fuel – a particular type of fuel…

The official view from both the US and German government leaders:

President George W Bush and visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel say they will continue to seek a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear programme...

...Mrs Merkel warned that if Iran refused to freeze its nuclear work, then “we need to think about further possible sanctions”.

The US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany have agreed to draft a UN resolution calling for new sanctions and officials are meeting in nine days to finalise a text unless the UN’s nuclear watchdog reports concessions by Iran.

Mrs Merkel added that she would work with the business sector in Germany – one of Tehran’s main trading partners – to reduce trade with Iran. Washington has been lobbying its allies to cut business links.

I hope Mrs. Merkel has all her wits about her. If she should find herself on the same side as the USA in a war against Iran in a few months time, she can wave goodbye to running the government after the next elections.

Russia and the USA have the world’s highest populations of prisoners [PDF from the British Government, 116 KB size]. Russia has 685 per 100,000 people of the national population locked away, followed by the USA, which has 645 prisoners per 100,000. Those figures are around 6 times the rates for most countries in Europe, by the way (Germany, France, Switzerland: 90, UK 125, Italy 85 for example. Even Zimbabwe only has 155 per 100,000 in prison).

The USA under George W Bush has moved much closer to a soviet-style regime in another way: the Transport Security Administration (TSA) has just published a proposal that all air passengers will have to apply for permission to fly to/from or over the USA 72 hours in advance of their flight for “security screening”. Only if you get a clean bill of health will you be issued with a boarding card. Non-travellers entering secure areas, such as parents escorting children, will also need clearance. (If you don’t fancy ploughing though a 1MB PDF, the Register has summarized the main points here).

Apart from sounding very like the thin edge of requirements similar to those in Russia to have internal passports for movements within Russia – a requirement which is about to be lifted, by the way, I can’t imagine that it will help tourism, which despite the cheap dollar has been suffering from the increasing bureaucracy associated with trying to arrange travel to the USA.

John Bolton, arch-neocon and former US ambassador to the United Nations called for Iran to be bombed yesterday:

Mr Bolton, who was addressing a fringe meeting organised by Lord (Michael) Ancram, said that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was “pushing out” and “is not receiving adequate push-back” from the west.

“I don’t think the use of military force is an attractive option, but I would tell you I don’t know what the alternative is. Because life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities.”

He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the “source of the problem”, Mr Ahmadinejad.

“If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change … The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back.”

Sounds like the US rhetoric on their invasion of Iraq. Watch the price of oil if they start to move in this direction – it will go through the roof, I think.

Seymour M. Hersh, writing in next week’s New Yorker paints a picture of the American government spoiling for a chance to bomb Iran as soon as they have manufactured a plausible reason for an attack, but that hasn’t learned from their mistakes in Iraq and thought through what will happen if they do attack:

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

Boston police have overreacted again (remember the advertising campaign for the Cartoon Network that caused chaos in Boston in January?) and arrested a student for wearing a circuit board on her sweatshirt at Boston’s Logan Airport. Whether you regard the charges as “paranoid” or think that the student showed “a total disregard to understand the context of the situation she is in, which is an airport of post-9/11”, depends on your point of view. She was apprehended by several State Troopers armed with submachine-guns – luckily she obeyed their orders to freeze:

“She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands and not to make any movement, so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device,” a police spokesman said. “Had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force.”

He added, “She’s lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue.”

A bomber with 6 cruise missiles having atomic warheads under the wings flies across the USA from North Dakota to Louisiana:

The plane took the cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base for decommissioning Thursday, the Air Force said.

“This is a major gaffe, and it’s going to cause some heads to roll down the line,” said Don Shepperd, a retired Air Force major general and military analyst for CNN.

The warheads should have been removed from the missiles before they were attached to the B-52 bomber, according to military officials.

Good job they didn’t drop off – imagine the chaos a perceived atomic attack would have set off, when you think what a bag of flour or a flashing circuit board can do…