Pope “Condoms-make-AIDS-worse” Ratzinger is in the news again, this time with a couple of sentences he said in his opening address to the Queen at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

“Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.”

Right.

And that from the leader of the Catholic Church, who’s words are truth by default, and to whom hundreds of millions of people look up to?

The British Humanist Association issued a statement in response:

“The notion that it is non-religious people in the UK today who want to force their views on others, coming from a man whose organisation exerts itself internationally to impose its narrow and exclusive form of morality and undermine the human rights of women, children, gay people and many others, is surreal.”

(Source: BBC)

Many citizens interested in in a transparent state and worried about power abuse have heard about the discussion regarding general video surveillance. In Berlin, for example, cameras are omnipresent, especially in Mitte.

To give you an example, last year’s demonstration “Freiheit statt Angst” passed over 150 cameras. None of these – nor any of the many police cameras – filmed the unchecked police aggression towards an innocent man peacefully protesting; fortunately, demonstrators switched their cameras on as soon as they saw a crime being committed. This actually led to a reform of the Berlin police force: they have to wear an identification number on their uniform now.

Sometimes, the cameras in Berlin have a little sign next to them: “For your own safety, this place is under video surveillance.”

But that is simply not true: a camera does not increase your safety. It is just a piece of metal. If people rob you or assault you a camera will not help you. It will be there, filming, and show people robbing and assaulting. In nearly all cases, these people cannot be identified – that is very well known from cities like London where there is extensive research regarding the usefulness of video footage. We also know that cameras do not reduce crime rates, which was to be expected, because it is common knowledge in psychology that draconic measures of punishment like the death penalty do likewise not reduce crime rates.

Something has happened in London now that really upset me.
In January 2009, there were demonstrations against the Israeli offensive on Gaza. People were throwing bottles at police officers, which is not okay – and so the London police spent months watching CCTV footage in order to identify protestors and charge them. I understand that. But as the Guardian puts it: “It is only right that similar efforts are made to uncover police wrongdoing.” And there have been many documented assaults of policemen towards innocent and peaceful protesters, so that there is a lot of reason to investigate.

One case is a special, however:

“More worrying is the way in which CCTV is being used by the police. Demonstrator Jake Smith was charged with two counts of violent disorder. These charges were later dropped when Smith’s solicitor, Matt Foot, viewed the original CCTV footage and discovered that the police video had been edited to show events out of sequence, at one point implying another man was Smith while omitting footage showing Smith being assaulted by a police officer without provocation.”

Matt Foot, Jake’s solicitor, has published a short and very insighful written statement of the events.

To sum it up: the London police tampered with video footage in order to prosecute an innocent citizen, and they were caught by a very insistent lawyer.
I find that really hard to digest.

However, there was also one good consequence of the demonstrations. Russell and Ashley Inglis were assaulted by the police, but the police officers responsible could not be identified (youtube video).
They wrote a complaint which was turned down, appealed the decision with the same outcome, then decided to take their case to a solicitor for a civil claim. Russell and Ashley have been awarded £25,000 compensation, although the police officers responsible still remain unidentified! That is the first time this has happened, and although it might not be the best solution to let tax-payers cover for police crimes, at least there seems to be the possibility for compensation when the perpetrators cannot be identified.

Posts on this blog with related content:

• Police aggression in Berlin at “Freiheit statt Angst” demonstration, September 2009
• STOP IT: violence towards policemen at Berlin demonstrations

(Sources: Netzpolitik.org, The Guardian)

• Hadassa Ben-Itto, a retired Israeli Judge elaborated the idea to learn from Nazis. She said “We must learn from the Nazi tactics” during a conference, discussing the State of Israel’s PR efforts in the world.
  said a couple of days ago at a conference
• For three years now, some parts of the city of Hamburg are under video surveillance. The idea behind it is, as in many cities all over the world: people won’t commit crimes when they are watched by cameras.
  An official document was released now, evaluating this “security” measure: criminal acts increased by 32% (the incidence of bodily injury even increased by 75%). Although this result might be confounded with other variables, and therefor makes a causal interpretation difficult, it is yet again one of a growing number of studies showing that generally suspecting all citizens of a country to be criminals does not improve anything.
• George Lucas (producer of “Star Wars”) is threatening a laser-producing company (“Wicked Lasers”) with legal action if it doesn’t change a specific product or stops selling it. Why? Because it looks too much like a lightsabre used in the Starwars movies.
  Seriously?! …
• American scientists discovered two human antibodies, which seem to be able to stop around 90% of the known HIV-groups.

— via Fefe & Jana

Sombe numbers on prices of food, drinks and legal drugs in the European Union.

• Milk, eggs and cheese are pretty cheap in Germany compared to the other 26 countries; meat is 20% more expensive, though (only Denmark and Austria have higher meat prices).
• Food and non-alcoholic drinks in Poland are 36% cheaper than EU average, Denmark is 39% above the average.
• You can get cigarettes in Bulgaria for half of the average EU price, Irish smokers pay more than 5 times as much.
• Alcohol costs 70% more than average in Finland and Ireland, Germany is pretty cheap with 30% below average.

I’m pretty sure that Norway would just completely outprice every country on most categories … but it’s not a member of the EU.

You read about the Oil Desaster in the Gulf of Mexico, no point repeating the news here.

(1)
What you might not know is that Oil Drilling in Offshore Areas has been quite a topic in the United States. There was a “longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast, from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean” (source).

I say was. Because Barack Obama decided that this moratorium is really not necessary anymore.

New York Times, 31st of March 2010, in an article called “Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time”:

Drilling there has been strongly opposed by officials from both political parties in Alabama and Florida who fear damage to coastlines, fisheries, popular beaches and wildlife.

Right.

(2)
The “accident” has happened. An interesting fact is that there is a very easy way to avoid such a catrastrophe: relief wells. In Canada, these wells are required by law.

Businessweek offers an explanation:

The relief well aims to intercept the damaged hole at an angle thousands of feet below the seabed and permanently close it with heavy mud and cement.

The final solution BP offers now is exactly that: to drill a relief well. Unfortunately, this is a very complicated procedure, especially when things have gone so terribly wrong already. BP hopes they could be finished by August.

The company has made very active lobbyism to avoid the necessity of these relief wells in the United States – and was successful. Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, said in an interview with Reuters:

“Make no mistake: BP ranks among the most powerful corporate forces in U.S. politics. It donates hundreds of thousands of dollars every election cycle through its employees and political action committee and is routinely a seven- or eight-figure federal lobbying powerhouse each year.”

To give an example for the year 2008, there have been donations of $37.000 to members of the House Energy Committee and over $100.000 to members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee (dealing with security issues facing the nation’s oil supply). BP spent $15.9 million on lobbying in 2009.

It worked.

(3)
Some pretty … intense photographs.

Eight days ago, I happened to watch the most influential German TV news: Tagesthemen at 8pm. Sitting in the living room of my grandmother, I hoped that they would show footage of what happened at a press conference that day, and was very surprised as they actually did.

They ran a two minutes story about the video Wikileaks released that day:

WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded. For further information please visit the special project website www.collateralmurder.com.

Finally, Wikileaks has reached the German mass media. I consider it one of the most important democratic tools the internet currently offers, and am very happy that it has been mentioned in the Tagesthemen.

What is Wikileaks?

• Scroll down on their website, and “Click here to make a secure submission.” That’s the main thing about Wikileaks.
• Wikileaks gives people the opportunity to publish documents they think are important for the public – anonymously. We have seen courts all over the world forcing newspapers and other media to disclose their sources in the last years, Wikileaks is trying to fill this gap.
• 10 questions on Wikileaks on CPJ blog (Committee to protect journalists)
• ForeignPolicy wrote an article called “Is This the Future of Journalism? Why Wikileaks matters.”
• A post I wrote a couple of months ago about Wikileaks leaking a document written by the British Ministry of Defence giving advice on how to stop documents leaking onto the internet

WikiLeaks is an organization protecting internal dissidents, whistleblowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes [...], we are of assistance to people of all nations who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources. We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies.

If you are going to spend a bit of money on charity projects this year, consider giving $10 to Wikileaks. They accept no other funding than private donations, since they want to stay absolutely incorruptable and transparent.

• A school in the US equipped students with laptops – and actively spied on them and their families at home using integrated webcams (without their knowledge or consent). Moreover, they were actually stupid enough to discipline a pupil for “improper behavior”, using a photograph of the webcam as evidence. (source)
• Over 200 Russians got sick after a mass in the church St Michael in Irkutsk. The infection was caused by … holy water. (source)
• “Don’t you hate it when you can’t get that pesky alien implant out of your groin? Dr. Roger Leir is here to help.” They are serious about this, by the way: Dr. Leir actually removes alien implants, if you happen to have problems with them. He has lots of “evidence” posted on his website. (source)
• “Harvard professor and noted Google critic Ben Edelmen provided video evidence of the Google toolbar transmitting data back to the Mountain View Chocolate Factory after he chose to disable the application in the browser window he was currently using.” (source)
• Utah passed a bill two days ago, disputing science of climate change, claiming emissions are “essentially harmless”. (source)
• The German cinemas increased their turnover by 22.8% in the year 2009. So much for “internet piracy is killing the movie industry”. On the other hand, it has to be stated that there seems to be a rather sad ongoing trend: small cinemas are closing down, and the big chains are gaining more and more market share. But the same applies to all other stores, e.g. bookstores, so that’s nothing the “pirating” can be blamed for. It’s the way capitalism works, I presume. (source)

(1) Why pirates save the environment
The pirate raids in the seas east of Africa have had a significant impact on the environment: international trawlers that were illegally fishing there for years have apparently been avoiding the shores, which led to a dramatic increase in fish stock. In Mogadishu (capital of Somalia), the growing supply has led to decreasing prices, thus people who live there can actually afford to eat fish for the first time in many years. So far, most of the fish was exported.
(Source: sz-online.de)

(2) Why there is beauty in architecture
I have not seen anything like that before … take yourself 12 minutes, relax, get a cup of tea and a blanket, and watch this. Please.
And after you realize that this is nearly 100% rendered (this is not filmed, it was created with a computer), I hope you’re as amazed as I am.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some officials at an international European airport come up with the funny idea to put explosives in bags of passengers who don’t know about this, in order to check the security of the airport.

Security finds explosives. After a hard day of work, the conversation maybe goes like this:

“Hey guys, good job. By the way, did we actally find all explosives we put into the luggage?”
- “Not sure sir, we didn’t count how many we put in. Around ten, I presume?”
“Oh well, should be fine really. It’s just explosives in the luggage of random innocent travellers. What could possibly go wrong?”

Or perhaps like this?

“Hey guys, funny thing huh, we missed one, hehe.”
- “Ye well, lol. Wonder what will happen?”
“Haha, the person will get arrested I guess. Let’s go to a bar and get wasted.”
- “Sure.”

Now comes the part where it gets less funny, because that actually happened. RTI.IE reports that Bratislava Airport Security put eight explosives in luggage of unsuspecting passengers, and failed to detect all – leading to a major incident at Dublin Airport this morning.

The explosive was one of eight pieces of contraband planted by the authorities in the luggage of unsuspecting passengers at Bratislava Airport in Slovakia last weekend as part of a test of security procedures.

Seven were detected by airport security, but the eighth – 90g of research development explosive – was put in the luggage of a Slovakian electrician who lives and works in Dublin.

The 49-year-old unwittingly brought the material to Dublin when he returned from Christmas holidays.

(via fefe)