The Global Realm

The Theft of Haiti’s National Sovereignty

By Felicity Arbuthnot
Global Research
February 10, 2010

“A tragedy is the imitation of an action … having a magnitude … with incidents which arouse both pity and terror.” Aristotle (384-322 BC.)

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.

In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.

I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.

The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” Major General Smedley Butler.(1881-1940.)

The earthquake in Haiti has been described as “catastrophic”, with Port-au-Prince: ” a capital in ruins, schools, homes, churches, historic buildings and businesses … dozens and dozens gone.”(London) Guardian. The death toll may be as high as two hundred thousand. Whole families have been lost, sometimes just one shattered relative survives, with uncounted traumatised, bewildered orphans in a country where broadly half the population are under fifteen. Hospitals are either destroyed, damaged or have scant or no medication, anaesthetics and surgical necessities. The dead have been buried in mass graves, unidentified, their names known only to their God.

Nature, it seems, has achieved in hours, what George Herbert Walker Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, and George W. Bush have done to Iraq and Afghanistan over nineteen years and nine years respectively (with a little help from Prime Ministers Anthony Charles Lynton Blair and predecessor, John Major.)

And as with Iraq and Afghanistan, it can only get worse. Fast. President Obama’s response, having told the nation that America holds the people of Haiti in their heart, has appointed as fund raisers and “humanitarian envoys”, the blood-drenched figures of Clinton and George W. Bush. Clinton’s policy was to bomb Iraq massively on a whim, or seemingly as a diversion, when enveloped in potential scandals and bomb more quietly – often daily – in between. When he left office, estimates are that one and quarter million Iraqis had died of “embargo-related causes” and bombings – both entirely U.S., driven.

Clinton’s legal fund was reported as raising $ eight million, to pay his defence bills in the Whitewater, ‘Travelgate”, “Filegate”, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky Scandals – and then needed another $ three point nine million, for “… the first family to leave office without this tremendous burden”, said the fund’s executive director.

George W. Bush’s administration presided over the spectacular collapse of oil giant Enron; the illegal invasion of Iraq was estimated by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz at $ three trillion as his Presidency ended (and counting.) In all it might be thought there are those better suited to humanitarian and fiscal missions. Further, as William Blum in succinct detail points out, it was Clinton (1994) then George W. Bush (2004) who kept Haiti’s democratically elected President Aristide from power.(1)

Further, dwarfing George Orwell’s most surgical satire, Colin Powell told CNN that he would of course help out if he was asked. He was, he said horrified by the destruction of the palace.

“It hit me very deeply. I’ve been in that palace. I’ve been to negotiations in that palace and it’s a beautiful building,” Powell said. “To see it collapse – and when you realize what that meant to the rest of the city – it struck me deeply, and my heart immediately went out to the Haitian people who have suffered so much.”

“Negotiations”? Well, not quite.

“History will record the first black U.S. Secretary of State personally engineered the theft of the national sovereignty of Haiti, the world’s first black republic”, observed The Black Commentator, after the 2004 coup, which ousted …. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, accusing: “… global American pirates (of creating a) new order which congeals like blood on the streets of Port-au-Prince ….. Such is Colin Powell’s horrific legacy … Powell personally initiated the overt, criminally culpable act in the kidnapping of a head of state.”(2)

Ten days later they pointed out: “Powell returned to the scene of his crime last week to assure Gerard Latortue … US-installed interim Prime Minister; ” We are with you all the way.”

Encouragement to a man (said) to have estimated it necessary to kill twenty five thousand people in the capital alone, to stop calls for the return of President Aristide. ‘What’s happening here, is what’s is happening in Iraq …” said Aristide’s attorney, Ira Kurzban. Latortue was dubbed Haiti’s Ahmed Chalabi.

Colin Powell is: “… the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence in the world in my lifetime”, lamented TransAfrica founder, Randall Robinson. (3) Powell is another who finds it “unproductive to count the dead”, in the various incursions in which he has been involved. Hardly a man you would want on your side when trapped in, or scrabbling through the rubble, seeking those you love.

Enter eight thousand US paratroopers and the 82nd Airborne Division, “primary mission, airfield and seaport seizure.” Which they did – at lightning speed with personnel also taking over the Control Tower. The 82nd’s Base website helpfully further clarifies: “Within eighteen hours of notification, the 82nd Airborne Division strategically deploys, conducts forcible entry parachute assault and secures key objectives for follow-on military operations in support of U.S. national interests.”(4) They speedily set up “control points”, parachuted in to the grounds of the Presidential palace – deja vu all over again – “secured” that and “branched out around the city … prepared to stay for whatever time is necessary.” You bet.

Five days after the earthquake, as aid piled up at the airport, and planes carrying more were turned away, Secretary of State Hilary “no child left behind” Clinton flew in, snarling all up for a further reported three hours (how many died in that time?) The US she stressed, was there as “a friend, partner and supporter” of President Rene Preval and would remain as long as assistance was needed. Haitians are unconvinced, with reports them warning of not to eat food from America, lest it be poisoned.

The 82nd Airborne’s, “support of U.S. national interests”, have included: Vietnam, Grenada, Central America, Kuwait and Iraq (1990-1991) Haiti (1994) Balkans (1999) Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq – again. In Fallujah, they occupied a school, from which they: “randomly opened fire on a crowd of unarmed demonstrators”, who wanted their school back.(London)Independent, 4th May 2003. Fifteen Iraqis were killed and seventy five injured. This led to furious townspeople taking their revenge on four Blackwater mercenaries, hanging them over a bridge. Which resulted in the U.S., army’s murderous assaults and semi-destruction on the ancient town.

After another shoot up, a deserter from the 82nd, Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, applying for refugee status in Canada, related killing more than thirty unarmed men, women and children, including a young Iraqi who got out of his car with his hands up. “We fired at a cyclical rate of five hundred bullets per vehicle.” (Robert Fisk, Independent. 1st January 2005.) “In every instance, our soldiers have shown discipline and restraint”, said a military spokesperson after the Fallujah incident. Heaven forbid they ever have an off day.

As the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson steamed towards the ruined Port au Prince (AFP 15th January) a Haitian lawyer remarked: “Haiti needed fourteen thousand doctors and the U.S., sent fourteen thousand soldiers”, noting that American planes were circling the island with loudspeakers telling people not to think of leaving and going to the U.S., as they would be “detained and returned.” (5) All heart. Wonder what language they were threatening in? Languages are not a towering forte of America’s finest.

The Carl Vinson (with six other US carriers also deployed) can accommodate eighty aircraft, has a flight deck of 4.5 acres, is as high as a twenty four story building. By January the 20th, it was reportedly distributing “a significant increase” of water, nearly three thousand gallons. This Nimitz class carrier, can de-salinate four hundred thousand gallons a day.(6)

Cuba and Venezuela have sent doctors and aid, Senegal has offered to resettle Haitians, poor African countries are sending money (Danny Shechter, as above) with the people of Gaza, under siege from Israel, collecting money and humanitarian aid. Unmentioned are four hundred Haitian doctors, who received free medical training in Cuba that are also tending the injured in their home country.

When Gaza was helplessly under Israeli blitzkrieg exactly a year ago, the BBC refused to broadcast an appeal by the (UK) Disasters and Emergency Committee. Rightly, they repeatedly have for Haiti. Ironically, the BBC took the opportunity, in Haiti’s tragedy, to team-up with an Israeli rescue-team – a nation traditionally burying people under rubble, not digging them out. They have also been accused of harvesting body parts of prisoners and bombing victims.(7)

The 82nd, however, seemingly find it hard to adapt to their new role as angels of mercy. (After “securing the airport” in New Orleons, they didn’t do exactly shine after Hurricane Katrina either.) “We normally do combat, people don’t realise we do compassion too”, said a spokesman. Nevertheless, it was reported that UN “peace keeping troops” – backed by U.S., soldiers – severely beat Haitians who turned up at the airport looking for work and/or offering assistance to unload cargo planes filled with humanitarian supplies. Flights were also being diverted, with Doctors without Borders, saying five of theirs had been and US forces also turning back a French aircraft carrying a field hospital, two aid-loaded craft from Mexico, World Food Program inbound and others.( Military aircraft were priorortised over humanitarian ones. Old habits clearly die hard.

Who will audit how many cargoes of refrigeration-reliant vital injectible medications, drips, anaesthetics, perished in the heat instead of saving lives, courtesy the “compassionate”?

Meanwhile, reports Jeremy Scahill, author of “Blackwater”, Florida-based mercenary company All Pro Legal, are arranging to offer their services, along with equally quaintly named outfit, given their stock in trade, International Peace Operations Association (9) Dyncorp and Triple Canopy have also offered their services, says Scahill, in a related interview. It is also reported that South African mercenaries are geared to pitch up. Blackwater (now re-named Xe, due to a little murderous local Iraqi difficulty) surely won’t be far behind.

Not to worry, at least Haiti has God’s representatives on earth there to help and spread the milk of human kindness. There is the US’s evangelical Pat Robertson’s “Operation Blessing”, which has teamed up with one Israeli group.(10) Pat Robertson, of course, said a Haitian “pact with the devil” had wrought this devastation on Haiti. The Israelis themselves must have taken up quite a bit of space at the airport: “An integral part of any aid delegation is a detachment of IDF (Israeli Defence Force) Spokesman Unit and Foreign Ministry Press Officers.”

The “painful truth” is that the Haiti disaster is good for the Israeli government’s tattered image and they intend to milk it for all it is worth, is the premise of some cynics.(11)

More of Christ’s would be representatives on earth, Baptist “missionaries” from Idaho, also seem to have unusual interpretations of His teaching, the: “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not …”

They simply helped themselves to thirty three children and attempted to take them over the border to the Dominican Republic. “They were naiive”, said their lawyer: “… they did not know they needed official papers..” to take children who were not theirs in to another country.

The leader of this unusual group of the well intended, Laura Silsby, reports The Independent, has allegedly been the subject of eight civil lawsuits and fourteen unpaid wage claims, with “a long history” of unpaid debts.” The paper adds: “The revelation will provide grist to the mill of children’s charities who have been highlighting the risk of child trafficking …” Numerous well meaning couples in the West are prepared to pay: “.. as much as $thirty thousand, to adopt.”

The outpouring of generosity from across the globe, it seems, has been woefully negated by military mindset, ignorance, an American puppet government and perhaps other agendas, which designate the suffering of people, a month on, demonstrating for food and help, secondary. The long term agencies on the ground, who know the country, seemingly near hand tied.

Further, any emergency decree by the government would give “.. an enormous amount of authority, which in practice they would delegate to us,” U.S., Secretary of State Clinton, Hilary Clinton has said. Surely coincidentally,Unmentioned are four hundred Haitian doctors, who received free medical training in Cuba that are also tending the injured in their home country. Surely coincidentally, Pacificfreepress.com reports:

“The Jan. 12 earthquake was on a fault line that passes … potential gas reserves, said Stephen Pierce, a geologist who worked in the region for 30 years for companies including the former Mobil Corp. The quake may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing gas or oil to temporarily seep toward the surface, he said yesterday in a telephone interview.

‘A geologist, callous as it may seem, tracing that fault zone from Port-au-Prince to the border looking for gas and oil seeps, may find a structure that hasn’t been drilled,’ said Pierce, exploration manager at Zion Oil & Gas Inc., a Dallas- based company that’s drilling in Israel. ‘A discovery could significantly improve the country’s economy and stimulate further exploration.’

…The Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and their offshore waters, probably hold at least 142 million barrels of oil and 159 billion cubic feet of gas, according to a 2000 report by the U.S., Geological Survey. Undiscovered amounts may be as high as 941 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to the report.”

There may be more vultures than doves hovering over the intensive care unit which is currently beautiful, battered Haiti. And those words : “Support of U.S National Interests” come to mind again.

Notes

1. http:// www.killinghope.org/bblum/aer78.html

2. http://www.blackcommentator.com/117/117_cover_haiti.html

3. Excellent overview: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Haiti/Haiti.html

4. http://www.bragg.army.mil

5. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17440

6. http://www.navy.mil

7 eg: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/swedish-article-suggestin_n_262787.html

8. http://www.periodico26.cu and news/websites

9. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100201/scahillg

10. http://www.israeliconsulatela.org/index.php?…416%3Aisraeli…aid…haiti.

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2010/January/Operation-Blessing-Teams-Up-with-Israeli-Doctors-in-Haiti/

11. http://www.care2.com/news/member/98613489/1369033

© Copyright Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, 2010

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17518

Descent Into Barbarism: The US and NATO Wage War on the World

By Finian Cunningham
Global Research
February 9, 2010

The argument is won: capitalism as an effective system to organise society and provide for human needs has expired. The evidence is conclusive. Trillions of dollars to kickstart the economy in the US and Europe may have given an ephemeral lease of life to the financial class to spin the casino wheel once again, but it is more apparent by the day that the tentative “recovery” has spluttered to a standstill. Gridlocked by unprecedented levels of personal and national debts, the engine of production – the real economy – is in a state of rigor mortis.

This collapse has been a long time in the making. Decades of easy credit was up to now a way for the ruling class – government, corporations, financial institutions – to let the majority of workers subsidise the chronic loss in their livelihoods, which have been drained since the mid-1970s by the oligarchy’s self-aggrandisement from wage cutting, regressive taxation and public spending cuts. The political class – whether liberal or conservative, right or left – have facilitated this giant wealth-siphoning process.

However, the point is that the economic system is now objectively shown to be moribound. And it is impossible for so-called mainstream politicians to think of any other way of doing business. They are ideologically blind. Recall former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s arrogant assertion: “There is no alternative”. Likewise, US President Barack Obama insists on throwing billions more dollars at the banks and financiers on Wall Street. But that won’t kickstart an economy in which millions of workers are without jobs and homes or who are on crumby wages and up to their necks in debt. The profit system has hit an historic dead-end and this gridlock is a result of deep trends to do with the decline in capitalism as a mode of social production (falling wages and profits and the concomitant explosion in financial speculation and debts).

Widespread poverty and human misery is now seen on a massive scale in the so-called developed world. Some 40 million Americans, for example, are subsisting on food stamps. The distinction between “developed” and “developing” economies (always a myth anyway) is blurred. The ranks of the world’s long-suffering poor are swelled with dispossessed blue and white-collar workers and their families from across the US and Europe. Together more than ever, they stand shut out from those gated havens of obscene wealth for a global minority.

Similar historic junctures have been witnessed before when capitalism floundered from its inexorable tendency to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Disturbingly, the release valve for the system and its bankruptcy has always been war. Death and destruction is the lender of last resort to an economic system that – despite itself – inevitably polarises wealth to an unworkable degree. The First and Second World Wars – claiming more than 70 million over a period of less than 10 years lives – were effectively the ultimate, grotesque bailouts.

In our time, war, it seems, has already begun. The US oligarchy and its NATO allies are waging a veritable war on the world: killing, disappearing and incarcerating millions of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – a war that is expanding into Yemen, Somalia and the rest of the Horn of Africa, with the militarisation of sea lanes and oceans (see Chossudovsky, Globalresearch.ca) and the setting up of “forward projecting” military and missile bases in every continent (see Rozoff, ditto). On top of ordinary poverty and misery, the world is truly seeing another historic descent into barbarism. Given this war-mongering dynamic, the growing US antagonism with Iran, Russia and China is far from an idle threat. It is the logical next step for a deeply illogical economic system.

But history is not inevitable. We are not necessarily programmed to repeat its horrors. A combination of global communications among citizens and political and social consciousness may be enough to prevent a military conflagration and overthrow the misrule of the oligarchy. What is needed is a) a widening of the recognition that capitalism as a system of social production is finished; and b) the case has to be confidently made that an alternative is very possible. That alternative is socialism (the subject of a further article). To those who remain skeptical, they should bear in mind the stark choice that Rosa Luxemberg foresaw for humanity: that is, socialism or barbarism. And we already have the latter.

finian.cunningham@gmail.com

© Copyright Finian Cunningham, Global Research, 2010

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17517

Think Government Is Corrupt? You May Face 10 Years In Jail
South Carolina forces “subversives” to register with the authorities or do hard time

By Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
2010-02-08

Subversives who think government is corrupt and should be controlled by the people face 10 years in prison and a $25,000 dollar fine if they fail to register with authorities in South Carolina, in another chilling example of how free speech and dissent is being criminalized in America.

The state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act” is now officially on the books and mandates that “Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.”

Of course, the right to overthrow a government that has become corrupt, abusive and completely unrepresentative of its electorate is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence – that’s how America came to be a Republic in the first place – advocating or teaching that the people should “control” the government via their elected representatives is a basic function of a democratic society, but this law effectively makes it a terrorist offense.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness,” states the Declaration of Independence.

Under the sweeping terms of the law, members of tax protest organizations, the Tea Party movement and the States’ Rights movement based in South Carolina are all domestic terrorists if they fail to register their dissent with the authorities.

It is important to stress that the notion this law somehow only applies to “Islamic terrorists” is completely at odds with the fact that federal and state authorities now consider the main terror threat to be from informed American citizens exercising their constitutional rights in opposition to the big government agenda they are being subjected to.

As we saw with the MIAC report and a plethora of similar training manuals which were leaked over the last decade, police are being trained that libertarians, gun owners, Ron Paul supporters and anyone who is mildly political is a domestic extremist and a potential terrorist – these people are the real target of the subversives list in South Carolina.

The infamous Phoenix Federal Bureau of Investigation manual (page one, page two) produced in association with the Joint Terrorism Task Force listed “defenders of the U.S. constitution” and “lone individuals” as terrorists. Will anyone in South Carolina who defends the Constitution, the very bedrock of what America stands for, have to register with the authorities unless they want to be locked up for a decade?

Of course, since nobody is going to register as a “subversive” with South Carolina authorities, their failure to “comply” with the regulation will later be used against them as a means of eliciting criminal charges, in what represents a clear end run around the First Amendment.

The government isn’t going to just come out all guns blazing and ban free speech, they are simply going to make anyone who refuses to register for permission a criminal for failing to adhere to a separate mandate.

Just like people in places such as New York and Chicago were told that they had to get a license to purchase a gun – at first the process was a mere inconvenience but now the licensing process means they have to jump through 200 flaming hoops and the second amendment has effectively been outlawed in these cities.

They won’t hesitate to pull the same tricks with the First Amendment, and it’s already happening with calls to license Internet users and force them to get government permission to run a website.

© Copyright Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet, 2010

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17513

Wars Sending U.S. Into Ruin
Obama the peace president is fighting battles his country cannot afford

By Eric Margolis
Toronto Sun
2010-02-05

U.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America’s economic health.

In fact, it’s another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug — debt.

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks.

Washington’s deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will cost $250 billion.

To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today.

Obama’s total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan; 225,000 military “contractors” (mercenaries and workers); and veterans’ costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four times Canada’s total defence budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama’s Afghan “surge” of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion — more than Germany’s total defence budget.

No wonder U.S. defence stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama’s “austerity” budget.

Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment heads over 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. America has become the Sick Man of the Western Hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire.

The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America’s rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%.

China and Russia combined spend only a paltry 10% of what the U.S. spends on defence.

There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea.

Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. During the Bush administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — funded by borrowing — cost each American family more than $25,000.

Like Bush, Obama is paying for America’s wars through supplemental authorizations — putting them on the nation’s already maxed-out credit card. Future generations will be stuck with the bill.

This presidential and congressional jiggery-pokery is the height of public dishonesty.

America’s wars ought to be paid for through taxes, not bookkeeping fraud.

If U.S. taxpayers actually had to pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars, these conflicts would end in short order.

America needs a fair, honest war tax.

The U.S. clearly has reached the point of imperial overreach. Military spending and debt-servicing are cannibalizing the U.S. economy, the real basis of its world power. Besides the late U.S.S.R., the U.S. also increasingly resembles the dying British Empire in 1945, crushed by immense debts incurred to wage the Second World War, unable to continue financing or defending the imperium, yet still imbued with imperial pretensions.

It is increasingly clear the president is not in control of America’s runaway military juggernaut. Sixty years ago, the great President Dwight Eisenhower, whose portrait I keep by my desk, warned Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. Six decades later, partisans of permanent war and world domination have joined Wall Street’s money lenders to put America into thrall.

Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe — what neocons call “full spectrum dominance.”

If Obama really were serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation’s giant Frankenbanks.

© Copyright Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun, 2010

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17512

Palestine: High Price Tag for Settlers’ Eviction

By Jonathan Cook
Global Research
February 9, 2010

Jerusalem’s mayor threatened last week to demolish 200 homes in Palestinian neighbourhoods of the city in an act even he conceded would probably bring long-simmering tensions over housing in East Jerusalem to a boil.

His uncompromising stance is the latest stage in a protracted legal battle over a single building towering above the jumble of modest homes of Silwan, a deprived and overcrowded Palestinian community lying just outside the Old City walls, in the shadow of the silver-topped al Aqsa mosque.

Beit Yehonatan, or Jonathan’s House, is distinctive not only for its height — at seven storeys, it is at least three floors taller than its neighbours — but also for the Israeli flag draped from the roof to the street.

The settlement outpost, named for Jonathan Pollard, serving a life sentence in the US for spying on Israel’s behalf in the 1980s, has been home to eight Jewish families since 2004, when it was built without a licence by an extremist settler organisation known as Ateret Cohanim.

Beit Yehonatan is one of dozens of settler-occupied homes springing up in Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem, most of them takeovers of Palestinian homes.

Critics say the intent of these “outposts”, together with the large settlements of East Jerusalem built by the state and home to nearly 200,000 Jews, is to foil any peace agreement that might one day offer the Palestinians a meaningful state with Jerusalem as its capital.

But exceptionally for the settlers, who are used to a mix of overt and covert assistance from officials, the inhabitants of Beit Yehonatan are at risk of being evicted from their home, two years after an “urgent” enforcement order was issued by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Last week Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, finally agreed “under protest” to seal Beit Yehonatan amid mounting pressure from an array of legal officials. Mr Barkat had been fighting strenuously against implementing the court order, aided by senior members of the parliament, the police, and even Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who opposed his own attorney general’s advice by declaring Beit Yehonatan’s future “a purely municipal matter”.

But the mayor has not simply capitulated. He warned that Beit Yehonatan would be evacuated only on condition that more than 200 demolition orders on Palestinian homes, most of them in Silwan, were carried out at the same time. He argued that he had to avoid any impression that the law was being enforced in a “discriminatory” manner against Jews.

Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, said Mr Barkat’s idea of fairness was “ridiculous”.

“In the past 15 years there have been more than a thousand Palestinian homes demolished in East Jerusalem versus absolutely no settler homes,” he said. “In fact, no settlers have ever lost their home in East Jerusalem.”

In making his announcement, Mr Barkat admitted that the 200 demolitions would trigger “a strong possibility for conflict”. Palestinians in East Jerusalem are already seething over decades of planning restrictions that have forced many of them to build or extend homes illegally because it is all but impossible to get permits from the Israeli authorities.

Mr Halper said the municipality had classified 22,000 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem as illegal, even as it also assessed a shortage of 25,000 homes for the city’s 250,000-strong Palestinian population.

The homes targeted for demolition include Palestinian houses around Beit Yehonatan that violate planning restrictions that allow families to build only two floors; despite the restriction, many houses have four storeys and owners pay fines.

In addition, the city council wants to demolish 88 homes in a small area called Bustan that the municipality claims is in danger of flooding.

Zeinab Jaber lives next to Beit Yehonatan in the home she was born in 61 years ago. The building was declared illegal 20 years ago, after it was extended to four storeys to accommodate her growing family. Today she and her six grown-up sons pay monthly fines of more than $1,000 (Dh 3,672) in the hope of warding off destruction.

Her son Amjad, 32, married with two young sons, said he did not dare miss a payment. “It’s simple: if you don’t pay, you’ll end up in prison.”

“What is there for the settlers here?” Mrs Jaber asked. “They are only here because they want to take this place from us. They won’t be happy till we leave.”

On the opposite slope across the valley from Beit Yehonatan, Mohammed Jalajil, 48, said he did not doubt that the municipality would demolish the 200 homes. He, his wife and five children have been crammed into a room in a relative’s apartment since their own house was demolished seven years ago.

Mr Jalajil, 48, said: “It was only months after they took our house from us that I saw the settlers building theirs nearby. My lawyer tells me that, even though my house is gone, I won’t have paid off my fines for another 10 years.”

If Mr Barkat follows through with his threat, the demolitions will prompt a rebuke from the international community. Last month, France and the United States joined the UN in denouncing more than 100 demolitions in East Jerusalem over the past three months.

The mayor’s decision, warned Meir Margalit, a Jerusalem city councillor, was comparable to the “price tag” policy of the settlers in the West Bank, who have attacked Palestinian villages in retaliation against official attempts to dismantle a few of the settlement outposts dotting Palestinian territory.

“But the difference here is that the price tag is being levied not by the settlers themselves but by the municipality and the government on their behalf,” he said.

Yesterday the municipality was due to issue a seven-day evacuation notice to the inhabitants of Beit Yehonatan, but the operation was cancelled at the last minute when police refused to co-operate.

Frictions have been growing in Silwan for several years over the activities of another settler organisation, Elad, which, with official backing, has been building an archaeological park known as the City of David in the midst of the Palestinian neighbourhood. As Palestinians have been pushed out, at least 80 Jewish families have moved into homes nearby.

As Elad entrenches itself in Silwan, Beit Yehonatan has proved more difficult to secure. “Usually the settlers present a façade of legality to what they do,” Mr Halper said. “The problem here is that they built in an overtly illegal manner, without a permit and way over the building height restrictions.”

Mr Barkat’s resistance to evicting Beit Yehonatan’s inhabitants was highlighted last month when he tried to stave off legal pressure by proposing a new planning policy to legalise unlicensed buildings in Silwan. The mayor proposed that the rules limiting homes to two storeys be revised to four.

The reform would have applied to Beit Yehonatan first, sealing its top three storeys but allowing the Jewish families to inhabit the rest of the building.

Although Mr Barkat promised that illegal Palestinian buildings would also be saved, Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights groups, dismissed the mayor’s claim.

The overwhelming majority of Palestinian homes would fail to qualify because land registry documents are missing for the area and a range of requirements on car parking, access roads and sewerage connections are “impossible” to meet, Orly Noy, a spokeswoman, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper last month.

She added that Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem lacked 70km of sewage pipes and that not a single new road had been paved in their neighbourhoods since Israel’s occupation in 1967.

A planning map of East Jerusalem drawn up recently by the Jerusalem municipality came to light last month, as Mr Barkat was promising to legalise buildings, showing that more than 300 homes — most of them in Silwan — were facing imminent demolition.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

© Copyright Jonathan Cook, Global Research, 2010

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17510

1,000 Architects & Engineers Call for a Real 9/11 Investigation

By Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth
2010-01-25

AE911Truth will hold a press conference on Friday, February 19, at 11:00 AM at the Marines Memorial Club and Hotel in San Francisco. We will announce and honor the milestone of our achievement of obtaining 1,000 architects and engineers (A/E’s) petitioning for a real investigation into the destruction of the 3 World Trade Center skyscrapers.

Invitations are being sent to more than 400 local AIA members, to many local, national, and international media outlets, and to more than 15,000 AE911Truth.org petition signers and supporters from around the world.

The press conference will include a large-screen scrolling display of all 1,000 A/E’s; statements by Richard Gage, AIA, founder of AE911Truth and several petition signers; and a short ten-minute presentation of “9/11: Blueprint for Truth” – the explosive evidence for the engineered destruction of the 3 World Trade Center skyscrapers. A press kit including the AE911Truth DVD will be made available to all attendees.

We will also be inviting various leaders in the 9/11 Truth movement to this milestone event. We are working with We Are Change and other 9/11 Truth organizations to deliver hardcopy petition evidence press kits to every member of Congress.

A fund-raising and working luncheon will be held after the press conference in the hotel. It is open to all who RSVP to an imminent email invitation. Join us on February 19 in San Francisco to honor this remarkable achievement and meet some of those who have made AE911Truth one of the most respected voices in the 9/11 Truth movement.

Following the above events we will host a professional conference open to our architect and engineer petition signers. RSVP and join us from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. for this critical get together of fellow professionals to further organize strategy for AE911Truth. We will be reviewing our existing evidence content and programs as well as employing our expertise and energy in amplifying and disseminating the AE911Truth message. Our goal: a real WTC investigation.

Mr. Gage, said “It’s an extraordinary statement that more than 1,000 architects and engineers have put their credibility and reputations on the line to demand a new investigation into 9/11. Compare this number to a dozen or so that are willing to publicly support the official NIST findings. We expect big breakthroughs in 2010.”

Michael Newman, NIST Media Relations, when asked if NIST had any comments on the fact that over 1,000 architects and engineers have signed the petition, said that “NIST stands behind its reports.” Its position is the same as it always has been, and that “NIST saw no evidence of explosions or melted steel whatsoever.”

NIST will have another wake-up call soon. The voices of thousands of petition signers of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and everyone who supports a new investigation grow louder and louder. Soon our irrefutable evidence in support of a new investigation will no longer be ignored. We now have the solid foundation of 1,000 A/E petitioners. We are launching the effort to force NIST to retract their flawed and fraudulent reports. Using all avenues available, whether through the Office of the Inspector General, or through Congressional investigations, factually correct findings based on the evidence must become the official position. The American public must come to see such public statements of denial by NIST as being totally unacceptable.

© Copyright Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth, Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth, 2010

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17507

Microsoft’s Craig Mundie Wants Driver’s Licenses for the Internet

The company wants to be able to tell whether it’s a human or a dog using the Internet

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor
Softpedia
February 8th, 2010

Microsoft wants to be able to tell whether it’s a human or a dog using the Internet. And the solution is rather simple according to Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. The man that replaced Bill Gates at Microsoft along with Ray Ozzie (now chief software architect) proposed that users have the equivalent of driver’s license for the Internet at a panel discussion about Internet security (via CuriousCapitalist). What Mundie is proposing is that users need to authenticate themselves while online.

Such a proposition, and especially coming from one of the Redmond company’s top executives will undoubtedly face a barrage of criticism from the Internet freedom and anonymity front. Mundie envisions a world in which just as in the case of driving a car, people would need a driver’s license to get on the Internet. But not necessarily a proof of their abilities to navigate the web, but rather as a means to authenticate the person sitting behind the computer. Such an initiative is obviously designed to curb cybercrime.

There’s an extremely famous cartoon authored by Peter Steiner and published by The New Yorker on July 5, 1993, in which two dogs are sitting in front of a computer, and one tells the other: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” The proposal from Mundie is set up so that authorities would be able to differentiate between Internet users.

Mundie essentially sees the current paradigm of identity extended to the Internet in a three tier ID concept: for people, for machines and for programs. Specifically, there would be parts of the internet where presenting an ID, or authenticating would not be necessary, such as visiting google.com or bing.com. But just like when attempting to withdraw money from a bank, users would also have to own Internet authentication in order to do financial transactions online.

It is important to note that the details above are not part of a plan already set in motion, but simply of a discussion. To get Internet ID to function, the governments across the entire world would have to work together in a singular initiative. And of course, the impediments that prevent such a concept from becoming a reality might simply not be resolved.

It is simply quite unlikely that a single framework for Internet ID could be put together, have entire countries, entities, organizations and companies adhere to the same standards, and ultimately have end users renounce the illusion of Internet freedom and anonymity. Because let’s face it, Internet anonymity is an illusion. Users can easily be tracked, hacked, monitored. And then, there are markets such as China where Internet freedom is defined by the government.

At the same time, the flaw in Mundie’s concept comes from human nature. The people that are today able to hide themselves completely from authorities on the Internet will find ways to circumvent any ID system put in place. Driver’s licenses can be forgotten after all. So will Internet IDs.

Personally, I don’t see the author, or authors of the Conficker (Downadup) worm starting to use Internet ID when attacking computers, spreading malware or managing botnets. Do you? And just as John Dillinger failed to produce any ID when “withdrawing” money from banks, so will cybercriminals continue to work to keep their anonymity while performing illegal activities online.

While legislation needs to be put in place to bring “the law” to the Internet, and will probably also happen one day, that time has not yet come. Furthermore, I think it’s safe to say, that users won’t see a global Internet ID system set in place anytime soon. And even more, when the global Internet ID system will be live, cybercriminals will find ways to bypass it. Because after all, how many times did you, as a driver, broke the law? How many times did you speed, didn’t wear a seatbelt, didn’t respect a stop sign? And how many times were you actually caught? Simply passing legislation and imposing Internet IDs will do nothing to impact cybercrime, without an Internet authority to impose the rules. But a global Internet authority starts to sound a little too 1984 for me. How about you? I’d rather not be able to tell when dogs are using the Internet.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Craig-Mundie-Wants-Driver-s-Licenses-for-the-Internet-134360.shtml

Time Magazine Pushes Draconian Internet Licensing Plan

Establishment mouthpiece calls for web ID system that would outstrip Communist Chinese style net censorship

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
February 3, 2010

Time Magazine has enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.

As we reported earlier this week, during a recent conference at the Davos Economic Forum, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.

His proposal was almost instantly advocated by Time Magazine, who published an article by Barbara Kiviat – one of Mundie’s fellow attendees at the elitist confab. It’s sadistically ironic that Kiviat’s columns run under the moniker “The Curious Capitalist,” since the ideas expressed in her piece go further than even the free-speech hating Communist Chinese have dared venture in terms of Internet censorship.  See:

Driver’s licenses for the Internet

http://theglobalrealm.com/2010/02/10/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet/

Driver’s licenses for the Internet, Part 2

http://theglobalrealm.com/2010/02/10/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet-part-2/

“Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be reality,” writes Kiviat. “Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can hear the worldwide scream go up: “But we’re entitled to anonymity on the Internet!” Really? Are you? Why do you think that?”

Kiviat ludicrously compares the necessity to show identification when entering a bank vault to the apparent need for authorities to know who you are when you set up a website to take credit card payments.

“The truth of the matter is, the Internet is still in its Wild West phase. To a large extent, the law hasn’t yet shown up. Yet as more and more people move to town, that lawlessness is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. As human societies grow over time they develop more rigid standards for themselves in order to handle their increased size. There is no reason to think the Internet shouldn’t follow the same pattern,” she writes.

“The people in charge—as much as anyone can be in charge when it comes to the Internet—are thinking about it,” Kiviat barks in her conclusion, seemingly comfortable with the notion that shadowy individuals and not the Constitution itself are “in charge” of deciding who is allowed free speech

Despite Kiviat’s mealy-mouthed authoritarianism and feigned reasonableness in advocating such a system, Mundie’s proposal is little different to a similar system already considered by officials in Communist China to force bloggers to register their identities before they could post. At the time the idea was attacked by human rights advocates as an obvious ploy “by which the government could control information” and crack down on dissent.

Indeed, the proposal was deemed too severe and the Chinese government eventually backed down. So a system considered too authoritarian and too much of a threat to freedom in Communist China is seemingly just fine and dandy in the “land of the free,” according to Kiviat and her ilk.

Unfortunately for her, Kiviat was immediately reminded about what makes the Internet such a threat to the ruling elite for whom she is a well-trained apologist – almost every comment below her article disagreed with her.

“No. A thousand times no. This benefits no one but “the people in charge,” wrote one respondent.

“Drivers’ licenses ensure a basic level of driving competency, so that 13-year-olds don’t get drunk and drive into a schoolbus. That kind of stupidity doesn’t happen on the Internet. Enough security theater! Focus on actual security. Truly awful idea, Barbara.”

“I, for one, welcome our new internet overlords. It will be a comforting time when “the law” comes along to protect people from themselves on the net, because gosh darn it, freedom is dangerous,” quips another. “Not to mention, standards only ever come about through coercive government action, and never through private parties responding to their own incentives.”

I think bloggers ought to be fingerprinted, DNA tested for abnormalities and have the information safely stored in a government vault. That way when some authoritarian ruler of pit, decides you have broken his self made tyrannic law he can prosecute you,” jokes another respondent. “For being a journalist you sure are s—-d, anonymity protects the right of free speech especially when the scary internet is most dangerous in a nation that prosecutes freedom of speech and opinion. The biggest thugs and criminals you mentioned are corrupt governments. I bet you love China’s safe internet measures huh? But there are worse than China.”

“The internet is the only thing preventing total tyranny right now, and they are trying everything they can to chill free speech. There is NO grass roots movement anywhere calling for government intervention in the internet. It is not broken. It works too well, that is a problem for tyrants,” points out another.

Shortly after Time Magazine started peddling the proposal, the New York Times soon followed suit with a blog this morning entitled Driver’s Licenses for the Internet? which merely parrots Kiviat’s talking points.

Of course there’s a very good reason for Time Magazine and the New York Times to be pushing for measures that would undoubtedly lead to a chilling effect on free speech which would in turn eviscerate the blogosphere.

Like the rest of the mainstream print dinosaurs, physical sales of Time Magazine have been plummeting, partly as a result of more people getting their news for free on the web from independent sources that don’t feed at the trough of the military-industrial complex. Ad sales for the New York Times sunk by no less than 28 per cent last year with subscriptions and street sales also falling.

“The Internet, where newspapers are generally free, has siphoned off circulation and advertising,” conceded an October 2009 NY Times article, which is precisely why establishment publications like the Old Gray Lady and Time are pushing proposals that would strangle the blogosphere and in turn eliminate their competition – while devastating free speech all in one foul swoop.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/time-magazine-pushes-draconian-internet-licensing-plan.html

Driver’s licenses for the Internet, Part 2

by Barbara Kiviat
Time
February 8, 2010

Part I:

http://theglobalrealm.com/2010/02/10/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet/ 

The conversation about where to draw the line between privacy and security is as old as society itself. I didn’t mean to so forcefully insert myself into the middle of that debate when I wrote about a Microsoft executive ruminating on the possibility of driver’s licenses for the Internet. Alas, here I am. That original blog post is already one of the 15 most-read of all time on the Curious Capitalist (it warms my heart that the top post remains “What if oil weren’t priced in dollars?”), and I am being assailed up and down the Internet for backing what one commentator calls a “web ID system that would outstrip Communist Chinese style net censorship”—at times even being personally threatened.

And yet here I go again. More thoughts on driver’s licenses for the Internet.

First, a recap: about a week ago I attended a panel discussion entitled “Securing Cyberspace.” Panelists included the CEO of a company that routes about 20% of all Web traffic, the head of the U.N. agency for information technology, a U.S. Senator and member of the Committee on Homeland Security, the CEO of a Swiss company that does security work for digital media, and Microsoft’s head of research and strategy. It was the sort of group you’d expect to be sure-footed on a topic like cyber security, and yet the panelists were visibly on edge. Cyber attacks—whether from individual fraudsters, organized cyber gangs, or nation-states undertaking espionage—are getting exponentially worse, they said. Protection, let alone retaliation, is incredibly complicated by the fact that even moderately sophisticated attacks can be difficult to impossible to trace. Yes, computers have IP addresses but crooks don’t use their computers, they remotely hijack yours.

Since the baseline anonymity of the Internet provides refuge to so much criminal activity and spying, one way of starting to tackle those problems, suggested Microsoft bigwig Craig Mundie, would be to take away some of that anonymity. Hence driver’s licenses for the Internet.

As careful readers can tell you, I did not endorse driver’s licenses for the Internet. I think it’s a fascinating construct, but the idea as expressed by Mundie and repeated by me is not much more than a sound bite. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to know the details and logistics of an idea before I come out with a strong opinion about it. I’ve been trying to get back in touch with Mundie to have that conversation—to have it explained to me how, exactly, licensure keeps my home computer and bank account safe from cyber criminals while at the same time preserving my civil liberties (not to mention those of Iranian dissidents). Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to catch up with each other and the best I’ve been able to do is peruse this Microsoft white paper (PDF) about establishing trust on the Internet. It says some comforting things—e.g., “Any regime should not only seek to provide greater authentication to those that want to provide it or consume it, but also provide anonymity for those who wish to engage in anonymous activities”—but leaves me with plenty of questions.

To be clear, I’m not saying that more Internet transparency is necessarily a bad idea either. One of the most jarring moments at that panel came amid a discussion about the possibility of international cooperation in going after cyber threats. Some U.S. officials in the room pointed out that a large stumbling block to any such effort would be the U.S.’s own intelligence agencies, which have a vested interest in the Internet’s anonymity. As my colleague Mark Thompson recently wrote:

What U.S. officials don’t like to acknowledge is that the Pentagon is hard at work developing an offensive cyber capability of its own… The Air Force wants the ability to burrow into any computer system anywhere in the world “completely undetected.” It wants to slip computer code into a potential foe’s computer and let it sit there for years, “maintaining a ‘low and slow’ gathering paradigm” to thwart detection.

Internet anonymity helps enable free speech, that is true. But it also helps enable plenty of other things, like espionage and crime. We’ve long talked about how mass anonymity online breeds a lack of civility. The tech-review site Engadget recently had to turn off its comments because the tone had grown so “mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening.” Cyber bullying is another example of what anonymity inculcates. Here is a story about some kids who have killed themselves as a result.

My point is simply this: the issue of anonymity on the Internet has many dimensions. That’s why I was floored by the almost entirely one-note, vitriolic response to my original post. Yes, a few voices presented other opinions. One commenter said that more accountability would help keep our children safer. Another pointed out the benefits to honest commerce.

But overall the reaction was much closer to emotional than to reasoned, perhaps an example of what Net pioneer-turned-worry-wart Jaron Lanier calls hive thinking. Contemplating the extent to which the Internet should remain anonymous is, to me, a fascinating endeavor. But maybe the anonymous Internet isn’t the place to do it.

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/02/08/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet-part-2/

Driver’s licenses for the Internet

by Barbara Kiviat
Time
January 30, 2010

I just went to a panel discussion about Internet security and let me tell you, it was scar-y. Between individual fraud, organized crime, corporate espionage and government spying, it’s an incredibly dangerous world out there, which, according to one panelist, is growing exponentially worse.

These are incredibly complex problems that even the smartest of the smart admit they don’t have a great handle on, although Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and technology officer, offered up a surprisingly simple solution that might start us down a path to dealing with them: driver’s licenses for the Internet.

The thing about the Internet is that it was never intended to be a worldwide system of mass communication. A handful of guys, all of whom knew each other, set up the Web. The anonymity that has come to be a core and cherished characteristic of the Internet didn’t exist in the beginning: it was obvious who was who.

As the Internet picked up steam and gathered more users, that stopped being the case, but at no point did anyone change the ways things worked. The Web started out being a no-authentication space and it continues to be that way to this day. Anyone can get online and no one has to say who they are. That’s what enables a massive amount of cyber crime: if you’re attacked from a computer, you might be able to figure out where that particular machine is located, but there’s really no way to go back one step further and track the identity of the computer that hacked into the one that hacked into you.

What Mundie is proposing is to impose authentication. He draws an analogy to automobile use. If you want to drive a car, you have to have a license (not to mention an inspection, insurance, etc). If you do something bad with that car, like break a law, there is the chance that you will lose your license and be prevented from driving in the future. In other words, there is a legal and social process for imposing discipline. Mundie imagines three tiers of Internet ID: one for people, one for machines and one for programs (which often act as proxies for the other two).

Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be reality. Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can hear the worldwide scream go up: “But we’re entitled to anonymity on the Internet!” Really? Are you? Why do you think that?

Mundie pointed out that in the physical world we are implicitly comfortable with the notion that there are certain places we’re not allowed to go without identifying ourselves. Are you allowed to walk down the street with no one knowing who you are? Absolutely. Are you allowed to walk into a bank vault and still not give your name? Hardly.

It’s easy to envision the same sort of differentiated structure for the Internet, Mundie said. He didn’t get into examples, so here’s one of mine. If you want to go to Time.com and read all about what’s going on in the world, that’s fine. No one needs to know who you are. But if you want to set up a site to accept credit-card donations for earthquake victims in Haiti? Well, you’re going to have to show your ID for that.

The truth of the matter is, the Internet is still in its Wild West phase. To a large extent, the law hasn’t yet shown up. Yet as more and more people move to town, that lawlessness is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. As human societies grow over time they develop more rigid standards for themselves in order to handle their increased size. There is no reason to think the Internet shouldn’t follow the same pattern.

Though that’s not to say it’ll happen anytime soon. Governments certainly have been talking to each other about this (almost by definition, any effective efforts will have to be international in nature), but even in Europe, where there is a cyber security convention in effect, only half of the Continent’s nations have signed up.

One stumbling block that was mentioned at today’s panel discussion: governments’ own intelligence agencies are huge beneficiaries of the Internet’s anonymity. We managed to spy on each other before the Web, but how much easier it is now that we can cruise around cyberspace without anyone even knowing we’re there.

So don’t expect any changes in the short term. But do know that the people in charge—as much as anyone can be in charge when it comes to the Internet—are thinking about it.

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/01/30/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet/