The Third Leg of the New World Order: The Globalization of Religious Tolerance

By Tony Blair

Faith matters. Even if you are not of religious faith yourself. Over 4 billion people world-wide recognize themselves as religious. They may not attend an organized place of worship. But Faith plays a part in their lives. A recent poll found that religion is important for around 30-35% of people in Europe, 65% of Americans and for about 90% of people in most Muslim-majority countries.

I started the Tony Blair Faith Foundation because I believe the modern world cannot work unless people from different faiths and cultures learn to live in peaceful co-existence with each other. Understanding increases the possibility of peace. Ignorance increases the potential for division.

The reason this is so important today is that globalization is shrinking the space we live in, making us share it, pushing people together in a way that is unique in human history. Some dislike this process. Some, like me, are content and even welcome it. But, for sure, it is a fact.

In this world, if religious faith becomes a counter force to this process, one which pulls people apart, then it becomes reactionary and divisive. So if I define myself as a Christian in opposition to you as a Muslim, then just as we are forced to live together by globalization, so we are forced apart by a view of religious faith that is exclusionary and hostile to those of a different faith to our own.
Apostasy
The Tony Blair Faith Foundation works in a number of ways to prevent this happening. One way is an inter-faith encounter through action, which is why we are supporting the UN anti-malaria campaign, to mobilize the faith communities to become centres of distribution for bed nets and medicines in Africa. We work also for reconciliation where religion is a dimension in political conflict, as in the Middle East. A key part of our work is education. In partnership with Yale University in the United States we now have a 'Faith and Globalization' course which began last year. This is now being extended to four other universities world-wide.

Now we are adding a new dimension: an education program linking up schools across the globe and across the faith divide. Launching officially today is Face to Faith, the new global schools project from my Foundation, designed to encourage young people of different faiths to learn directly with, from and about each other. Through structured video-conferencing, an online community and a course syllabus, Face to Faith gets secondary school students from across the world working together, investigating big global issues; sharing their own opinions, values and beliefs; and exploring the reasons for similar and different views. In this way, Face to Faith encourages young people to recognize the similarities between faiths but also, importantly, to respect and deal with the differences between diverse and often conflicting worldviews, helping to equip them to live in a global society made up of different faiths and beliefs."...more

Tracking Chips are Coming:'RFID in all new mobiles by next summer'

"All new mobiles will be packing a RFID chip by summer 2010 - ultimately opening up the possibility of your phone also becoming the keys to your car or your house.

That's the prediction of Ericsson's VP of systems architecture, Håkan Djuphammar, speaking at the mobile infrastructure company's Business Innovation Forum in Stockholm on Tuesday.

He told delegates: 'A year from now basically every new phone that's sold will have [Near Field Communication]. It's a two-way, bio-directional RFID communication link that makes this device work as a tag or as a reader.'

Djuphammar said devices with RFID chips will have a secure environment on the SIM card where 'trusted identities' or 'secure elements' can be downloaded - enabling the phone to take on other roles, such as the keys for your car or house, or a credit card or concert ticket. He said Ericsson is currently working with a utilities company that has 700 separate unmanned facilities and around 15,000 keys - a logistical nightmare it wants to eliminate via the use of RFID-enabled mobile phones.

'They don't know really where those keys are,' he said. 'So they want to replace all the locks with RFID locks, put RFID-capable phones in the hands of all their personnel and then they can control the access to these sites.'

Using RFID in this way would enable a mobile to be assigned to open a door for a certain period of time only - meaning the company could better manage access to its facilities, while also replacing the hassle of dealing with thousands of physical keys.

'All sorts of things will be enabled by [RFID] - a small piece of technology but with an ecosystem around it that opens up tremendous opportunities for innovation,' he added.

Mobile phones could also soon become instruments of fraud detection. Djuphammar said credit card companies could make use of mobile user location data and IP mapping to ascertain whether a credit card transaction is taking place in the vicinity of the official card holder and thus judge whether that transaction is likely to be genuine or not.

'In some countries there's a lot of fraud with credit cards so therefore it's in the interest of the credit card issuer to be able to match the position of the phone that belongs to the person who has a credit card. If the phone's close to where the credit card is used the fraud risk is low but suddenly if the phone moves away from where the credit card is used they can be alerted to check that particular transaction - it's most likely fraud because now the phone and the credit card are separated,' he explained.

Another example of leveraging location data is to create real-time road traffic maps generated by analysing the speed of mobile phone base station hand-off to ascertain how fast cars are travelling on roads. This data could then be sold to GPS device companies enabling them to provide dynamic travel information to motorists." ...more

Worker ID cards expected to get a new look - Los Angeles Times

"A supporter of the cards, Sen. Charles Schumer, is expected to introduce a worker ID card bill this fall. Immigrants rights advocates see positives to the system, but they have some worries."

By Teresa Watanabe
2:25 PM PDT, June 15, 2009

As the immigration reform debate begins to heat up again, some immigrant advocates expect that one of the biggest and most controversial new elements will be a proposed national worker identification card for all Americans

A 'forgery-proof' worker ID card, secured with biometric data such as fingerprints, is a favored idea of the new chairman of the Senate immigration subcommittee, Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y). Schumer, who will lead the effort to craft the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform legislation, has publicly espoused the card as the best way to ensure that all workers are authorized.



'The ID will make it easy for employers to avoid undocumented workers, which will allow for tough sanctions against employers who break the law, which will lead to no jobs being available for illegal immigrants, which will stop illegal immigration,' Schumer wrote in his 2007 book, 'Positively American.'

'Once Americans are convinced that we will permanently staunch the flow of illegal immigration, they will be more willing to accept constructing a path toward earned citizenship for those who are already here.'

A Schumer aide said last week that the senator would probably present the worker ID card idea at a hearing this summer on employee verification systems. Schumer previously held a hearing on border enforcement and plans to hold three more this summer -- on future immigrant flows, legalization of illegal immigrants and worker verification -- before introducing a comprehensive bill in the fall, the aide said.

The idea of a national worker ID card has been around for decades, but the ascension of Schumer to head the immigration subcommittee has elevated its chances of becoming part of any reform legislation, many immigrant advocates believe. Some predict that debate over a worker ID card would be more heated than one over legalization.

The idea of a worker ID card is embraced by some business and community organizations. But it has touched off fears of civil rights violations and 'Big Brother' intrusion into private lives among many labor activists and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. In his book, Schumer proposed requiring every American worker, both citizen and noncitizen, to apply for an identity card.

Some activists also expressed fear that any ID card proposal could divide the immigrant rights community between those opposed to its perceived dangers and those willing to accept it as part of a broad compromise that would legalize many of the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

'The bottom line is that this would be really expensive, really invasive, and people will hate it,' said Chris Calabrese, consul for the ACLU's technology and liberty project.

Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, said she would not want employers to control any worker verification system because they could selectively use it to punish people pushing for labor rights or union organization. She and others also said that worker verification systems of all kinds remain vulnerable to mistakes. Immigration lawyer Peter Schey said it would be nearly impossible to monitor the nation's 26 million employers for compliance with any worker verification system. As a result, he and others argue that the best way to discourage illegal immigration is by strict enforcement of wage and hour laws, and serious penalties on employers who violate them.

For their part, business leaders say they want to be sure that they will not be saddled with high costs or liability for any new verification system.

Some business groups have opposed the idea of making mandatory the now-voluntary system known as E-Verify. The Internet-based system allows employers to check the citizenship status and work eligibility of newly hired employees. But U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesman Angelo Amador said employers never know whether the passports, driver's licenses or Social Security cards being presented are genuine.

But anyone presenting a worker ID card would be assumed legal, subject to confirmation by swiping into a national database similar to credit cards, he said.

'It sounds like a good idea, because it takes away the burden on employers of being ID experts,' Amador said. 'We do want a system, but we just want to make sure that it's accurate and fast, and that the liability for employers is minimal.'

Brent Wilkes of the League of United Latin American Citizens said one advantage of a worker ID card is that once it is issued, employees can feel confident that they are eligible to apply for any job. Under E-Verify, newly hired employees could lose their jobs if their identities do not check out. Most activists say they are waiting for details before weighing in on worker ID cards. But some say they may ultimately have to compromise.

'At the end of the day, if we're going to achieve legalization of a major share of the undocumented, we realize there will have to be some give and take over worker verification,' said Mike Garcia, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 1877 in Los Angeles. 'We're not against it necessarily if all of the other pieces of immigration reform fall into place.'

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com"

The Noose is Tighting: Canada to seek biometrics on every visitor - UPI.com

Canada to seek biometrics on every visitor - UPI.com: "OTTAWA, June 10 (UPI) -- Canada is moving to collect such biometric data as photos and fingerprints on every visitor from every country by 2013, the incoming spy chief said.

Speaking to the Parliamentary Immigration Committee, Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Richard Fadden said the program will be phased in between 2011 and 2013, the Globe and Mail reported.

'The intention is to capture everybody,' Fadden said Tuesday. 'The idea is to increase our capacity to know who is in Canada at a particular point of time.'

Fadden is set to become chief of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service June 27.

The technology was tested during a field trial from October 2006 to April 2007 in two undisclosed overseas visa offices and found to be reliable and effective at preventing fraud, the Globe reported.

Documents seen by Sun Media show the plan is to require fingerprints from 15 percent of prospective temporary residents by late 2011, increasing to 50 percent in 2012 and 100 percent by 2013"

DEFENDER PUBLISHING: ENTER THE ERA OF OBAMA

"Should the world continue, historians will undoubtedly record how the messianic fervor surrounding the election of the 44th president of the United States reflected not only widespread disapproval for Bush administration policies, but how, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 the American psyche was primed to accept expansive alterations in political and financial policy with an overarching scheme for salvation from chaos. Among these historians, a few will undoubtedly also argue that, as National German Socialists did in the years following World War I, Barack Hussein Obama appealed to the increasingly disenfranchised voters among American society by playing on their understandable fears in order to posture himself as the essential agent of change. What most of these historians are not likely to record, however, is the involvement before and after the U.S. presidential election by unseen shapers of the New World Order. If they did, the vast numbers of people would not believe it anyway, the idea that behind the global chaos that gave rise to Obama’s popularity was a secret network, a transnational hand directing the course of civilization. Yet no account of history including recent times is complete or even sincere without at least acknowledging the behind-the-scenes masters who manipulate international policy, banking and finance, securities and exchange, trade, commodities, and energy resources. Numerous works including scholarly ones have connected the dots between this ruling superclass and the integration of policy handed down to governing bodies of nation-states and supra-national organizations.

The Economist Newspaper in April 2008 pointed to research by academic David Rothkopf, whose book, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making documented how only a few thousand people worldwide actually dictate the majority of policies operating at a global scale. The Economist described this comparatively small number of elites as being “groomed” in “world-spanning institutions… [who] meet at global events such as the World Economic Forum at Davos and the Trilateral Commission or… the Bilderberg meetings or the Bohemian Grove seminars that take place every July in California.” [8] Long time radio host and author of Brotherhood of Darkness, Stanley Monteith says such persons are part of an “Occult Hierarchy” that rules the world and directs the course of human events. “The movement is led by powerful men who reject Christianity, embrace the ‘dark side,’ and are dedicated to the formation of a world government and a world religion,” he writes. “They control the government, the media… many corporations, and both [US] political parties.” [9] Interestingly, Pope Benedict XVI may have referred to the same group when in 2008 he warned United Nations diplomats that multilateral consensus needed to solve global difficulties was “in crises” because answers to the problems were being “subordinated to the decisions of the few.” His predecessor, Pope John Paul II may have acknowledged the same, believing a One World Government beneath the guidance of a ruling superclass was inevitable. Before his death, it was prominent American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington who brought the uber-echelon behind the push for global government up from “conspiracy theory” to academic acceptability when he established that they “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations.” [10] In other words, according to experts, international affairs, foreign and domestic politics and taxpayer funded investment economics are being largely decided by a privileged cadre of families who are dedicated to a New World Order and One World Government." ,,,more