UK plans to put X-ray cameras on lampposts

Airport-style x-ray cameras, which can see through clothes, could be installed on street lampposts in a bid to combat terrorism, it was claimed on January 29, 2007.

The measure was, apparently, suggested in a memo sent to one of Tony Blair's working groups at the Cabinet Office, so the Sun “newspaper” has reported.

This move comes amid growing concern about Britain's "surveillance society" and I think one can only ask “What next?”.

The Home Office memo, to the Prime Minister's working group on security, crime and justice, reportedly said: "Street furniture could routinely house detection systems that would indicate the likely presence of a gun, for example.'”

The Government is increasingly finding new ways of using “street furniture” for security.

“Architectural security improvements have been designed carefully on the basis of specific architectural advice to improve security measures in a widespread way,” the Cabinet Office admitted last week.

So, in other words, we must assume that all lampposts, benches, litter bins (where there are any), and probably even walls, etc. could have “security implements” embedded.

Apparently both the Cabinet Office and the Home Office refused to comment on the memo. Surprise, not.

Whether the “X-ray” they are talking about is actual “X-ray” but more like so-called “back scatter”, of the same kind that is being used on airports and even on many of the mainline railroad stations in the UK nowadays.

People who walk about with open eyes can see the devices that are already found on lampposts, from rather sophisticated and concealed CCTV surveillance cameras, microphones, and other gadgets attached. All that is left to ask is, as I already did “what next?”.

M V Smith, January 30, 2007

What is Germany up to?

Germany wants to change term of presidency of EU

by M Veshengro Smith January 16, 2007

Germany, which today has taken over the rotating presidency of the European Union, besides “urging” (I see there more than urging) all member states to adopt the European Constitution in the next couple of years, tries to change the length of time of the presidency of the EU that is held by individual countries from the current six months to a much longer period. The reason given for this desire is that not enough can be achieved in six months and one would need a longer timespan to make a real impact.

Is that the really the true reason? The desire to be able to archive more for the good of the EU?

As someone who is rather viewing Germany with different eyes and a healthy suspicion I would say we are headed again for something else with Germany and I would like to issue here a “severe weather warning”. For very good reason the EU presidency was laid out in such a way of a six-monthly rotating term, namely in order to prevent any one country being able to go too far in what they want to archive and put upon the EU, in the same way as the Swiss president only serves for one year, thereby avoiding crony-ism and such like and the accumulation of power in someone's – or in the case of the EU, some country's – hands.

What is Germany's true intention, I ask, and this makes my hackles stand up in concern. I fear Germany has never given up the ideas and ambitions of the Third Reich after the defeat through the Allied Powers in WWII. All that has been done was to put things into hibernation. Now it seems the time has come for them to reanimate them and for this they need a longer EU presidency.

With the Constitution the rotating presidency will be, so I understand, done away with altogether and there will be an elected president (by whom, I would like to ask, for I doubt that we all get a shot at electing this all-European president) and a all-European government (in the end).

We must be ever vigilant, Gypsies and all Anti-Fascists, to the rise of the new Nazis (which are but the young guard of the old Nazis) in Europe, and especially we will have to watch Germany. We cannot and must not trust the government of that nation that cause two world wars and the destruction of over a million of our Gypsy People, and countless others.

© M V Smith, January 2007