Oh what fun it is to travel!

With full see-through body scan x-rays being introduced at airports around the world - or otherwise be confronted with a full physical body search - travel has become even more unpleasant.

CommonDreams takes up the issue and the case of one man who wasn't to be cowed by the process.

"Much buzz over the video made by John Tyner, a 31-year-old software engineer who refused to undergo a full-body scan at the San Diego airport, then refused what he calls the requisite "groping by a government official" - as in, "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested" - all the while using his iPhone to record the encounter with increasingly hostile security agents. Now some legislators may ask Congress to reconsider the use of the scanners. All just in time for the busy travel season and next week's National Opt Out Day. Because, organizers say, "You should never have to explain to your children, 'Remember that no stranger can touch or see your private area, unless it's a government employee.'"

"I don't think that the government has any business seeing me naked as a condition of traveling about the country." - Tyner."

Meanwhile, this from Wired:

"A leading privacy group is urging a federal appeals court to suspend the government’s program of introducing full-body imaging machines at airports across the country."

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here? Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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