3 posts tagged “terrorism”
German online IT newspage Heise.de reports in its Tuesday edition that the German legislator drafts a law that would forbid the dissemination of precise geodata. Some remark, it is a shift into full gear, back into communist era censorship.
According to the report, the German government has submitted a draft law to the upper chamber of German parliament titled: "Law for the protection against imperilment of the security of Germany by means of distribution of high quality reconnaissance data".
The law puts all earth reconnaissance and geo-data systems operated from Germany or by Germans under the potential threat of prohibition, and leaves large leeway for interpretation to the authorities to define what "high quality" actually is.
All operators of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) would, according to the draft law, need a written permission by the German authorities to distribute data, which would potentially confront the development of satellite based navigation systems and map material with unacceptable bureaucratic hurdles. The now introduced legislation, according to Heise, would also concern terrain elevation data models, as they could be used to operate unmanned aviation vehicles in terrorist contexts. It is interesting to observe that the law draws its constitutional justification from Article 26 of the German Grundgesetz (constitution):
"Article 26 [Ban on preparations for war of aggression]
(1) Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense.
(2) Weapons designed for warfare may be manufactured, transported, or marketed only with the permission of the Federal Government. Details shall be regulated by a federal law."
[Non authoritative translation FYI, source: http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/GG.htm#26]
Commentators in the blogosphere argue that services like Google Earth would either be beaurocratized to the degree of standstill by the now introduced legislation, or be put in peril considered the potential risk of law violation, making it easy for GIS-companies to decide in turn to divert investment away from Germany.
The law provides for a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment or fines of up to EUR 500.000, putting the politically undesired distribution of geo data in one league with the sale of deadly weapons to rogue states, to which article 26 of the Grundgesetz did pertain in its original intention. It is noteworthy that the law, very obviously being a mishapped attempt to curb terrorist dangers, puts terrorist act at one level with "wars of aggression", completely blurring the border between individual criminal acts and state-sponsored wars of aggression.
Some members of the blogosphere also observed in comments about the article that the now introduced law marks an important step back towards communist-era handling of geodata, quoting a report from Berliner Zeitung about intentionally distorted maps in communist Eastern Germany before 1990.
Alternative media sources have been rife with reports of U.S.-plans for an intervention in South America, using Paraguay's Chaco region as an operational basis against neighboring countries in the so called Tri Border Region (Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina) as well as neighboring Bolivia.
In late 2005, Argentine news daily Clarin reported about a remote military base in the North of Praguay in the settlement of Marriscal Estigarribia. The settlement is in the far North of the small country, located strategically at the heart of the continent. What is interesting about the base is its location, and its size: Far remote from the Southern centers, Marriscal Estigarribia has little or no significance for Paraguay's domestic affairs. What's more, if one approaches the site from air, the massive tarmac of a 3.8 Kilometre long runway stretches in the middle of, basically, the jungle. While the Paraguayan air force only uses very light aircraft, the question remains over what such an overdimensioned tarmac could be used for.
The runway which can receive B 52-sized aircraft without major complications, has been constructed in the mid-1980s under then dictator Alfredo Stroessner. What makes it an ideal location today is its strategic location between Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela well within reach. It might also be noteworthy that Paraguay and its neighbor Brazil sit on one of the world's largest reserves of drinking water, the Aquifero Guaraní, making it an ideal strategic possible foothold for 21st century wars over drinking water.
While the U.S.-government has constantly denied allegations by alternative media that the U.S. presidential family has been active in purchasing land in this region of Paraguay, there are reports in the alternative media that, since 2005, about one dozen exercises have been held with the participation of U.S.- and Paraguayan forces. Some of these are reported to have resulted in violent, at times deadly, clashes between expropriated campesinos and security forces with strong U.S.-participation. Rumors according to which U.S. Marines were granted an immunity statute by the Paraguayan government were also denied in several communiqués sponsored by the U.S. administration. Official claims that there is no military base in Northern Paraguay can be as easily refuted as with a click to Google Maps, giving some very clear indications that the installations rather cater to the standards of an Army sponsored facility for 20.000 personell than to Southern American barrack-standards.
There are however clear signs for a buildup of North American forces in the region, as PR and communications activities apparently already begin levelling the field for a possible intervention. Instead of a, now non-exsistant, communist threat, a concentration of Arabs with a terrorist background is now used as the official pretext for surveillance measures in the region. Using military force instead of having a Gay Old Time with 1970's style coups d'etat would hence seem a rational choice to make for the sitting administration, as the blogosphere and a certain degree of transparency would make it more difficult than cutting some phone lines and occupying some radio stations to take protest off the air. Also, recent development in Latin America have triggered a possible domino scenario which could be considered highly risky from the U.S. governments' perspective. With the nationalizations of natural energy resources by the leftist presidents in Bolivia and Venezuela, policies tilted somewhat to left center in Argentina and a socialist government in Brazil, the continent could nourish and financially support to an extent the flame of the anti-globalization movement.
One question remains: Why would Paraguay put relationships with its neighbors in the Mercosur region at stake? Clarin reports that slim chances of exporting chiefly its produce to the Mercosur region as well as a whopping unemployment of close to 40% in some regions as well as over half of its population below the poverty line could leave Paraguay with little choice than to offer itself as a kind of land based aircraft carrier in exchange for certain economic concessions and lifting of trade barriers by the U.S.
When I sifted through the online version of German newsweekly DER SPIEGEL today, i felt more than slightly uncomfortable. A North American Scientist, it said, wanted to tell evil terrorist intentions from facial expressions.
It seems like an April Fool's that never ends: According to an article in German newsweekly DER SPIEGEL, American psychologist Paul Ekman and the Department for Homeland Security now want to screen passing-by passengers for terrorist or otherwise evil intentions by looking at their faces.
Ekman, the article says, has studied universal facial expressions for over four decades and maintains that there is a universality to facial expressions in every human. Consequently, at 14 US-airports, specially trained officers have been posted to guess possible delinquents from the facial expression with which they pass by.
After rolling my mouse over the task bar calendar, I reassured myself that it was not April, 1st, 2007. As expected, it wasn't.
The now initiated programme seems only the latest step of a global culture shifting into full gear , towards medieval or inquisitory methods of second guessing and superstition as a means of penal (or at least pre-penal) justice. The principle has re-emerged at different historical stages, and maybe was best known during the late 1930's and early 1940's in Germany, when the Nazi-spindocs tried to match facial features such as nose size or the size of the temples to human charactaristics such as intelligence or mental illness.
As early as 1933, the Nazi smut literature was made available to the hobby-racist, titled "Kleine Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes" (little racial almanac for German citizens).
It remains to be seen, whether hobby-denouncers soon will have facial expression files for PDAs, laptop computers, PSPs and iPods at hand on their trip, alongside with publications of the above shown style.
