Your Neighbour Is a Terrorist if He uses Cash, Keeps to Himself and Keeps his Curtains Closed.

The Insanity Continues...

Full body scanners introduced at Heathrow and Manchester airports as Lord Adonis seeks to allay the SHEEPLE'S privacy fears

• Travelers chosen for scan must cooperate - or face flight ban
• Airport bosses: Race, religion or ethnicity not a consideration
• 60 passengers scanned at Manchester 'without incident'

The introduction of full body scanners at Heathrow and Manchester airports has today caused outrage among civil liberty campaigners who say that they are an invasion of privacy.

Campaigners claim the scanners, which act like a mini radar device 'seeing' beneath ordinary clothing, breach privacy rules under the Human Rights Act.

The exemption of under 18s from being scanned, which was in place during the trial of the machines in Manchester amid fears the scanners could breach child protection laws, has also been removed.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) also warned that using profiling techniques to single out Muslims, Asians and black people for scanning at airports could breach race and religious discrimination laws introduced by the government."
 
It was also revealed yesterday that air passengers who refuse to submit to a full body scan at Heathrow and Manchester airports will be barred from taking their flights.

The scanners have been introduced in the wake of a failed attempt by 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a transatlantic jet on Christmas Day.

Airport bosses at Manchester and Heathrow said those selected for scanning are not being chosen on the basis of race, religion or ethnicity.

They will instead scan passengers if they raise the suspicion of security officers following a hand search or unsolved metal detection alarm.

They will also go through if explosive or vapour trace detection equipment causes an alarm to sound or if they request a private search prior to or after passing through the walk-through metal detection equipment.
The first passengers at Manchester Airport who used the scanner backed the controversial measure.

In the first hour after the machine was made compulsory around 60 people were scanned at Manchester.
Andrew Mark, 46, from Wolverhampton, was among the first to be selected.

Mr Mark said: 'We have nothing to hide so it's not a problem. It didn't seem to hold us up either as it only takes a few seconds.'...more

"Big Brother" in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones on citizens | UK news | The Guardian

"Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ­'routine' monitoring of antisocial motorists, ­protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.

Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act." ...more

THE INSANITY CONTINUES TO GROW: Crack New Scanner Looks for Bombs Inside Body Cavities

"The “underpants bomber” has renewed calls for new and more invasive security measures. Already, there’s a push to install scanners that show travelers’ naked bodies through clothing, using either millimeter wave or backscatter X-ray imaging. But even those scanners might not have caught the terrorist who nearly brought down Northwest flight 253.

That’s why one company is trumpeting a sensor that can supposedly “detect substances such as explosive materials … hidden inside or outside of the human body.” First step: Actually build a human-sized machine.

There has already been one report of a suicide bomber carrying explosives internally. Many sources, including the BBC, carried an early report suggesting that Abdullah Hassan Al Aseeri adopted the new tactic of “carrying explosives in his anal cavity” for an attack in September. The target, a Saudi prince, survived, but Aseeri was reportedly blown in half by the blast. Later reports suggest the explosives were actually sewn into his underwear, but security experts believe there is a real danger of “internally carried” bombs, a technique used for years by drug smugglers."...more

Who's Getting Rich From the Naked Full-Body Scanner Boom?

"The TSA has a dismal record of enriching private corporations with failed technologies. Will the 'digital strip search' device just bring more of the same?"

Scan, baby, scan. That’s the mantra among politicians at all levels in the wake of the thwarted terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet. According to conventional wisdom, the would-be “underwear bomber” could have been stopped by airport security if he’d been put through a full-body scanner, which would have revealed the cache of explosives attached to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s groin.
Within days or even hours of the bombing attempt, everyone was talking about so-called whole-body imaging as the magic bullet that could stop this type of attack. In announcing hearings by the Senate Homeland Security Commitee, Joe Lieberman approached the use of scanners as a foregone conclusion, saying one of the "big, urgent questions that we are holding this hearing to answer" was "Why isn’t whole-body-scanning technology that can detect explosives in wider use?" Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told the Washington Post, "You’ve got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren’t easy to get at. It’s either pat downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven’t figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out."...more

Video of what  the 'digital strip search' device shows

 

2010: Welcome to Orwell’s World

"In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that 'passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.’'

Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that 'extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan' to 'disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.' He called this 'global security' and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which America has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: 'We have no interest in occupying your country.'"...more

Brain scans could detect future criminals

"Someone makes you a promise that seems too good to be true: they sound persuasive – but if only you could look inside their brain, you would know whether to trust them.

Scientists from universities in Zurich and Konstanz, Germany have uncovered how brains behave in people who make promises they know very well they are going to break.

The researchers, economists and neuroscientists, discovered that although to all outward appearances trustworthy and untrustworthy people behave the same way, the ones who do not keep their word show increased activity in the areas of the brain that play important roles in processes of emotion and control.

More importantly, the research showed that patterns of brain activity make it possible to predict whether a person is likely break a promise.

Applying the results of the research could “in the (distant) future” help prevent fraudulent and criminal intrigues, Zurich University said in a press release."...more
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Democracy Going Dark: The Electronic Police State

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation's budget request for fiscal year 2010 reveals that America's political police intend to greatly expand their high-tech surveillance capabilities.

According to ABC News, the FBI is seeking additional funds for the development of 'a new 'Advanced Electronic Surveillance' program which is being funded at $233.9 million for 2010. The program has 133 employees, 15 of whom are agents.'

Known as 'Going Dark,' the program is designed to beef up the Bureau's already formidable electronic surveillance, intelligence collection and evidence gathering capabilities 'as well as those of the greater Intelligence Community,' ABC reports. An FBI spokesperson told the network:

'The term 'Going Dark' does not refer to a specific capability, but is a program name for the part of the FBI, Operational Technology Division's (OTD) lawful interception program which is shared with other law enforcement agencies.'

'The term applies to the research and development of new tools, technical support and training initiatives.' (Jason Ryan, 'DOJ Budget Details High-Tech Crime Fighting Tools,' ABC News, May 9, 2009)

Led by Assistant Director Marcus C. Thomas, OTD describes the office as supporting 'the FBI’s investigative and intelligence-gathering efforts – and those of our federal, state, and local law enforcement/intelligence partners – with a wide range of sophisticated technological equipment, examination tools and capabilities, training, and specialized experience. You won’t hear about our work on the evening news because of its highly sensitive nature, but you will continue to hear about the fruits of our labor...'

According to OTD's website, the Division possesses 'seven core capabilities': Digital Forensics; Electronic Surveillance; Physical Surveillance; Special Technology and Applications; Tactical Communications; Tactical Operations and finally, Technical Support/Coordination.

Under the heading 'Electronic Surveillance,' OTD deploys 'tools and techniques for performing lawfully-authorized intercepts of wired and wireless telecommunications and data network communications technologies; enhancing unintelligible audio; and working with the communications industry as well as regulatory and legislative bodies to ensure that our continuing ability to conduct electronic surveillance will not be impaired as technology evolves.'

But as we have seen throughout the entire course of the so-called 'war on terror,' systemic constitutional breeches by the FBI – from their abuse of National Security Letters, the proliferation of corporate-dominated Fusion Centers to the infiltration of provocateurs into antiwar and other dissident groups – the only thing 'impaired' by an out-of-control domestic spy agency have been the civil liberties of Americans." ...more
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"It's a Brave New World" FLorida hospital uses RFID to monitor employee hand washing

"The University of Miami UM-JMH Center for Patient Safety at Jackson Memorial Hospital is testing a new system of monitoring employee hand washing using RFID and infrared technologies.

The program uses tiny IR-RF sensors installed in soap dispensers that read staff ID badges and record the location and duration of hand washing. The hospital then uses this data to identify which employees are not washing their hands for an adequate amount of time.

The system, developed using the technology of Versus Tech. and Dynamic Computer Corp., can also function as a kind of alarm, alerting employees in real time when they forget to wash their hands." RFIDNews
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Glenn Beck Agrees US Needs Another Al Qaeda Attack To Protect Us From Immigrants

Glenn Beck nods and agrees with his guest Michael Scheuer that the only way to "save" the US (from illegal immigrants, of course) is for Osama bin Laden to succeed in detonating a major weapon on America.

It must be '1984': 'Big Brother' snoops and Britons don't mind

LONDON — In an era when security is the top concern for officials in many countries — reinforced by November's deadly attacks in Mumbai — it takes a lot to be labeled 'the most surveilled democracy in the world.' In the case of Britain, the label is not necessarily meant as a compliment. Some — including the European Court of Human Rights — fear that the snooping has run amok.

Video cameras are ubiquitous. An average Londoner is captured on video hundreds of times a day as he walks the streets, rides the 'Tube,' visits the bank or drives a car.

Including private cameras in shops and banks, there may now be more than 10 million video cameras operating in a country with a population of about 60 million, according to David Murakami-Wood, a specialist on surveillance issues at Newcastle University. This is more than double the number earlier this decade."

He argues that the supposed benefits of Britain's vast surveillance network don't justify the growing costs and infringement on freedom.

"Britain is regarded as the society to avoid" for its pervasive surveillance and disregard for personal privacy, said Colin Bennett, a British-born author and academic at the University of Vancouver in Canada. He contends the surveillance culture is "out of control," targeting not just suspected terrorists and criminals but millions of ordinary people.

Yet a visit to Compton Square in Islington, the north London neighborhood where the author George Orwell wrote his novel "1984" six decades ago about an omnipresent "Big Brother," suggests that many Britons grudgingly accept having their movements watched closely. They cite the string of bombings that hit London as recently as July 2005.

"Most people ignore it" when new surveillance cameras go up in their neighborhoods, said Fabien Cox, a 48-year-old consultant to the international water industry. Holding a pint of beer as he stood at the bar of Orwell's favorite pub, the centuries-old Compton Arms, Cox admitted he was more accepting since a double-decker bus traveling his normal route to work was blown up during the 2005 attacks.

Trevor Lloyd, a 32-year-old broadcast engineer who lives in the area, got seven traffic tickets — each about $90 — within a week of moving to London after being caught on surveillance camera parking just inside the city's restricted "congestion charge" zone. "You become criminalized yourself quite easily, and there's no right of appeal," Lloyd said.

Lloyd added, however: "The flip side is the terrorist thing." Given security threats, he found the video cameras around the city "reassuring." And he's not greatly disturbed by a new plan for everyone in Britain to carry a government-issued biometric identity card, which will include dozens of pieces of personal information, including fingerprints. They will be "expensive" and "a bother," he said.

The acquiescence of ordinary Britons troubles civil liberties advocates.

"It's remarkable that there is no general protest" over widespread surveillance, said Simon Davies, a director with the advocacy group Privacy International.

Many of Britain's neighbors in continental Europe consider Britain heavy-handed in its use of surveillance tools. When even the "most law-and-order mayor in France" visits Britain, "they feel like it's a horror film," said Sebastian Roche, a political scientist at the University of Grenoble in France....source

Could Soldiers Be Prosecuted for Thought Crime?

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding a number of technologies that tap into the brain's ability to detect threats before the conscious mind is able to process the information. Already, there is Pentagon-sponsored work on using the brain's pattern detection capabilities for enhanced goggles and super-fast satellite imagery analysis. What happens, however, when the Pentagon ultimately uses this enhanced capability for targeting weapons?

This question has led Stephen White to write a fascinating article exploring the implications of a soldiers' legal culpability for weapons that may someday tap into this "pre-conscious" brain activity. Like the Minority Report notion of "pre-crime," where someone is convicted for contemplating a criminal act they haven't yet acted upon, this article raises the intriguing question of whether a soldier could be convicted for the mistake made by a pre-conscious brain wave....more

ZENIT - Bush Says He Sees God in Eyes of Pope

"WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 13, 2008 (Zenit.org).- U.S. President George Bush said that when he looks into Benedict XVI's eyes, he sees God.

The president made this affirmation Friday when he answered the last question posed him during an interview with Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) anchor Raymond Arroyo.

Arroyo noted that Bush is planning an all-out welcome for the Pope, who arrives in the United States on Tuesday for a five-day visit. Most notably, Bush will go to the airport to receive the Holy Father, a courtesy he has never extended to any visiting leader.

The president says he plans to do this 'because [the Pope] is a really important figure in a lot of ways. One, he speaks for millions. Two, he doesn't come as a politician; he comes as a man of faith. And, three, that I so subscribe to his notion that [...] there's right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of undermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies, that I want to honor his convictions, as well.'

The Holy Father, Bush said, 'represents and stands for some values that I think are important for the health of the country, and when he comes to America, millions of my fellow citizens will be hanging on his every word. And that's why it's important.'" ...source



President Bush Sees GOD in Eyes of Pope Video



Popes claiming to be God on Earth

"The Pope is not simply the representative of Jesus Christ. On the contrary, he is Jesus Christ Himself, under the veil of the flesh, and who by means of a being common to humanity continues His ministry amongst men ... Does the Pope speak? It is Jesus Christ Who is speaking. Does he teach? It is Jesus Christ Who teaches. Does he confer grace or pronounce an anathema? It is Jesus Christ Himself Who is pronouncing the anathema and conferring the grace. Hence consequently, when one speaks of the Pope, it is not necessary to examine, but to obey: there must be no limiting the bounds of the command, in order to suit the purpose of the individual whose obedience is demanded: there must be no cavilling at the declared will of the Pope, and so invest it with quite another than that which he has put upon it: no preconceived opinions must be brought to bear upon it: no rights must be set up against the rights of the Holy Father to teach and command; his decisions are not to be criticized, or his ordinances disputed. Therefore by Divine ordination, all, no matter how august the person may be — whether he wear a crown or be invested with the purple, or be clothed in the sacred vestments: all must be subject to Him Who has had all things put under Him." -Evangelical Christendom, January 1, 1895, pg. 15, published in London by J. S. Phillips.

Transportation Lab Seeks Radical Change “tunnel of truth”at Airport Checkpoints

LOS ANGELES — Transportation Security Laboratory Director Susan Hallowell would like to see the day when airline passengers no longer have to take their shoes off after standing in a long line at airport security checkpoints.

To that end, she would like to combine the line and an array of sensors into what she calls a “tunnel of truth.”

The concept — with the somewhat Orwellian name — would have passengers stand on a conveyor belt moving under an archway as various sensors scan them for weapons, bombs or other prohibited items. By the time they step out of the tunnel, they have been thoroughly checked out, she said at a homeland security science and technology conference sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association.

“You’re in line anyway … why not enclose that in a little glass thing and do your analysis there?” she asked. The lab has given a grant to Penn State University to study the concept, she added.

The lab, located in Atlantic City, N.J., is responsible for testing current screening devices and developing new technologies for both airports and for other public transportation.

Among the new technologies that could be placed in the tunnels are backscatter X-ray machines, which peer underneath clothes, and passive and active millimeter wave sensors that can see the outlines of concealed metal objects. These technologies are already being used in pilot programs.

Puffer machines are also in use and dislodge molecules from the residue gathered during the manufacture of explosives. The human body also gives off a heat signature, and sensors could follow the thermal plume coming off the body as the passenger moves through the tunnel, she noted. Actual bombs, if they are hidden on the body, give off their own heat signatures, and could be detected as well.

Before the concept can move forward, the laboratory will have to perfect all the sub-systems that would go into the so-called tunnel, she said. Meanwhile, the lab continues to test machines designed to check shoes for explosives without passengers having to take them off. So far, it has not found an acceptable solution.
“We’re still working on shoes. We’re not there yet,” she said.
Source

FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd.

The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government. For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees, which are stored separately.

The Department of Homeland Security has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks and who want to move through lines quickly. The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs. The DHS already has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas, and from visa applicants abroad. There could be multiple records of one person's prints.

"It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."

If successful, the system planned by the FBI, called Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.

In an underground facility the size of two football fields, a request reaches an FBI server every second from somewhere in the United States or Canada, comparing a set of digital fingerprints against the FBI's database of 55 million sets of electronic fingerprints. A possible match is made -- or ruled out--as many as 100,000 times a day.

Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters will also compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe. If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.

More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government, and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said. Currently those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed. But the FBI is planning a "rap-back" service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees' fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are ever arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.

Advocates say bringing together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances to catch criminals. The Pentagon has already matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI's criminal fingerprint database. The FBI intends to make both criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said. There are 900,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers who can query the fingerprint database today, they said.

The FBI's biometric database, which includes criminal history records, communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center's database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI's master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects.

The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), 45 minutes north of the FBI's biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people's irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.

Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.

Think of a Navy ship approaching a foreign vessel, said Bojan Cukic, CITeR's co-director. "It would help to know before you go on board whether the people on that ship that you can image from a distance, whether they are foreign warfighters, and run them against a database of known or suspected terrorists," he said.

Skeptics say that such projects are proceeding before there is evidence that they reliably match suspects against a huge database.

In the world's first large-scale, scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not yet effective enough to allow its use by police. The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers' faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.

To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening measures, the report said.

Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's biometric services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to "fuse" fingerprint, face, iris and palm matching capabilities by 2013, she said.

To safeguard privacy, audit trails are kept on everyone who has access to a record in the fingerprint database, Del Greco said. People may request copies of their records, and the FBI audits all agencies that have access to the database every three years, she said.

"We have very stringent laws that control who can go in there and to secure the data," Bush said.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the ability to share data across systems is problematic. "You're giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate," he said.

In 2004, the Electronic Privacy Information Center objected to the FBI's exemption of the National Crime Information Center database from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate. The group noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001 found that information in the system was "not fully reliable" and that files "may be incomplete or inaccurate." FBI officials justified that exemption by claiming that in law enforcement data collection, "it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete."

Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information. "Unlike say, a credit card number, biometric data is forever," said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. He said he feared that the FBI, whose computer technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data's security. "If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can't just get a new eyeball," Saffo said.

In the future, said CITeR director Lawrence A. Hornak, devices will be able to "recognize us and adapt to us."

"The long-term goal," Hornak said, is "ubiquitous use" of biometrics. A traveler may walk down an airport corridor and allow his face and iris images to be captured without ever stepping up to a kiosk and looking into a camera, he said.

"That's the key," he said. "You've chosen it. You have chosen to say, 'Yeah, I want this place to recognize me.' "FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics

All school pupils to get a behaviour mentor |

The government will today promise every pupil a dedicated tutor to support them through their secondary schooling and act as a personal contact point for parents who are worried about their child's progress.

Pupils will be assigned one member of the school staff to act as behaviour mentor and to meet their parents, to allow swift action should their grades begin to slide.

Parent-run school councils and a national parent panel to advise ministers on policy will be established under plans that ministers said should redraw the boundaries between home and school for the 21st century....read more

Baby tax needed to save planet, claims expert

A WEST Australian medical expert wants families to pay a $5000-plus "baby levy" at birth and an annual carbon tax of up to $800 a child.

Writing in today's Medical Journal of Australia, Associate Professor Barry Walters said every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child's lifetime.

Professor Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, called for condoms and "greenhouse-friendly" services such as sterilisation procedures to earn carbon credits.

And he implied the Federal Government should ditch the $4133 baby bonus and consider population controls like those in China and India.

Professor Walters said the average annual carbon dioxide emission by an Australian individual was about 17 metric tons, including energy use.

"Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society," he wrote.

"Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a 'baby levy' in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the 'polluter pays' principle."

Australian Family Association spokeswoman Angela Conway said it was ridiculous to blame babies for global warming.

"I think self-important professors with silly ideas should have to pay carbon tax for all the hot air they create," she said. "There's masses of evidence to say that child-rich families have much lower resource consumption per head than other styles of households.

But the plan won praise from high-profile doctor Garry Egger. "One must wonder why population control is spoken of today only in whispers," he wrote in an MJA response article
Baby tax needed to save planet, claims expert | NEWS.com.au

Elderly set free, but children shackled

Here's an eye-catching initiative for you: the Government wants to nationalise the child-rearing business. Not for nothing was the old ministry for education renamed the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Clearly, its scope is going to extend far outside the classroom. Its Secretary of State, the chief Brownite Ed Balls, having lost confidence in the private sector distribution of discipline, psychological stability and social behaviour, is to bring the free market in domestic responsibility under centralised supervision.

According to the advance leaks, tomorrow's announcement of the Brave New Childhood will be what they call far-reaching: it will reach right into the living rooms of every household that the ministry believes to be failing the nation.

It isn't just schools that will have targets now: the performance of parents will be monitored and assessed on detailed goals for their children's achievement set by Whitehall.

Children from "disadvantaged" (euphemism for delinquent) homes may be whipped away to state nurseries as young as two, presumably in order to remove them forcibly from the influence of their useless families.

And parents who do not demonstrate sufficient "engagement" with their child's academic performance will be... well, we haven't heard all the details yet.

Bizarrely, this Orwellian package of state-monopoly child production is being announced at the same time as a quite antithetical new approach to the way elderly people are to be treated by the Government.

From next April, it seems that old people are to be given quite unprecedented freedom to spend the care allowances which are provided for them as they see fit, rather than as social workers believe is best for them.

If this plan turns out to be as radical as it is cracked up to be - always an open question with this Government - it will be a genuine step away from the most pernicious aspects of welfare dependency: passivity and the loss of self-determination.

According to advance reports, old people are to be given the money, the actual money, to which they are entitled, and permitted to use it to purchase more or less food or nursing or cleaning help if and when they want.

They will be free to choose their home helps and carers and to decide the priorities of their domestic lives. Imagine that. Grown-ups being able to decide for themselves who is to help them and how much care they require.

Of course, they may occasionally make eccentric or unwise choices, as adults - especially elderly ones - sometimes do. They may even be prey to grasping relatives if they are in possession of cash rather than simply on the receiving end of administrative judgments.

But that is a risk that needs to be taken, says the Blairite Health Secretary Alan Johnson, if older people who wish to live independently, but need some assistance to do it, are to be given the control over their own lives which they have a right to expect.

Sounding for all the world like a Tory think-tank report or, dare I say it, a commentator on this newspaper, Mr Johnson hails this move as a "radical transfer of power from the state to the public".

Everyone, he says, has the right to "self-determination and maximum control over their own lives".

Except parents, apparently - since Mr Johnson's colleague over at the Department for Interfering in Family Life is busily laying out his blueprint for 24/7 surveillance of parenting techniques and a kind of Maoist re-education programme for families who do not subscribe to the official view of what is good for them and for society. Some contradiction here, surely?

No coincidence, of course, that these two distinct and contradictory philosophical tendencies are emanating respectively from the most high-profile Brownite and Blairite exponents in the Cabinet.

While Mr Balls is constructing more Brownian mechanisms of central control over his area of social policy, Mr Johnson is beavering away at dismantling overweening state controls in his.

I think we have a right to ask where this Government thinks it is going. Are we still in the (Blairite) business of reforming public services and welfare programmes to give more power to people over their individual conditions?

Or are we heading for a galvanised (Brownite) commitment to the belief that the state can and should intervene in every aspect of national life which is thought to be unsatisfactory?

Does Mr Balls (as we might be inclined to think) bear the true imprimatur of his Prime Minister which Mr Johnson is mischievously subverting in the name of the ancien régime? Or is Mr Brown simply trying to have it all ways up by having one of his ministers enunciate Tory rhetoric while the other plays to the Labour centralising lobby?

Now let me do the Government official spokesman's job here for a moment and try to put a credible rationale on this apparently schizophrenic pair of announcements. A plausible account of this difference in approach might go something like this: children are different from grown-ups (even elderly and infirm ones).

Adults have a right to be responsible for their own fate - even if they are inclined to make mistakes and take risks - but the responsibility for children must be taken by others. If parents are incapable or unwilling to carry out that responsibility conscientiously, then the society as a whole - in the person of the mandated government - must step in.

The consequences of not doing so in terms of criminality, anti-social behaviour and waste of human potential are too great, and children themselves too vulnerable, for us to ignore.

Yes, that sounds persuasive - until we try to agree on the detail. Is it a failure of parenting not to put pressure on a child to complete academic exams, or aim for higher education? If so, a lot of working-class parents in the post-war period would have been penalised.

Is it criminally negligent to allow adolescents to bunk off school and roam free at night? Possibly - but there used to be far greater police vigilance to support parents in the difficult business of supervising the young.

Arguably, if the state - in the form of its schooling and criminal justice systems - had not fallen down in its traditional duties to uphold standards of social behaviour, there would not be so many parents left hopelessly adrift.

And if the state did not respond to this vacuum which its own "progressive" attitudes have created by taking on more responsibilities that should belong to self-respecting grown-ups and communities, it might not find itself facing in two directions at once.

Elderly set free, but children shackled - Telegraph