1. As noted yesterday, Scientology comes under scrutiny tonight on BBC One's Panorama at 2030 after gaining a high profile from a shouting match between a BBC journalist and a Scientology person with a video of this placed on YouTube by Scientology. It's the actions by Scientology carried out in silence against the journalist which gives cause for concern. Why does Scientology feel the need to behave like this?
BBC News Monday, 14 May 2007, 11:19 GMT 12:19 UK
Editor defends Scientology report
 |  John Sweeney was filmed shouting at a Scientologist  |
Panorama's editor The editor of the BBC's Panorama programme has defended a documentary on the Church of Scientology in which a reporter shouts at one of its members.
Reporter John Sweeney lost his temper during the filming and shouted at Scientology representative Tommy Davis.
Panorama editor Sandy Smith said he was "disappointed" by Mr Sweeney's actions.
But he also said Scientology was an "extraordinary organisation" and had "no way of dealing with any kind of criticism at all".
Mr Smith said that: "As you go in as a journalist to try and deal with that, it's explosive."
Footage of the argument between Mr Sweeney and Mr Davis was posted on internet site YouTube in advance of the television broadcast of the documentary on Monday.
Editor defends Scientology report
2. I believe that there will be much coming out about the past decade of failures from this government. For me I view what has happened as the government equivalent of Enron with a similar collapse in the offing. The same kind of deceit has taken place with the same image management glossing over structural catastrophe. It's just a question of time before it all comes a cropper.
Here are examples of criminal tagging which has been abused by those so tagged committing crimes and the ballyhooed employment effort at the beginning with billions taken from business as an excess profit tax to finance this employment programme. The big problem with government spending is that image management takes over since there is always a need whether real or imagined to present a rosy scenario.
In the private sector such decisions have to produce real results, and criticism is taken seriously in most instances because problems have to be solved. When the government is involved, problems do not have to be solved. When image management takes over, it's like a fraud that has to be managed with layer upon layer of gloss added. Sooner or later it all collapses due to lack of substance underneath.
It looks like the government should be targeting these "tagged" offenders with brain wave monitoring and feedback surveillance technology. It's about time for the government to come clean on its experimental programme for this surveillance technology which has been carried out against me for six and one quarter years 24/7 since February 2001 including surreptitious medication. It works and would completely stop offending.
I wonder why the government uses this against the innocent while the guilty who are in effect imprisoned with tagging are not subjected to this kind of tracking and control? Seven crimes a day committed by tagged released prisoners is quite serious. I have never been arrested in my life let alone charged, tried and convicted for any crime ever.
Why is it that I am subjected to this total control by this surveillance technology 24/7 for all these years on an indefinite basis when those who have been arrested, charged, tried, convicted, sentenced and served a prison sentence are not also provided this "benefit" when they are released early on licence?
How can it be that the public is not being protected from known offenders released from prison who do commit crimes while being tagged while I am subjected to totally invasive surveillance tracking and control imprisonment 24/7 with extreme torture abuse including surreptitious medication when I have never done anything at all and am not a threat to anyone in anyway? How can this inversion be possible? And, why doesn't the government protect the public when it has the technology to do so?
BBC News Sunday, 13 May 2007, 23:07 GMT 00:07 UK
'Big rise' in tagging crimes - MP
 The tagging system was launched in 1999 |
Offenders released under the tagging system are committing, or being accused of, four times as many crimes as when the scheme began, a Tory MP claims.
Grant Shapps says one in 40 tagged offenders committed a crime when the project started in 1999, but by 2006 that had jumped to one in nine.
The new Ministry of Justice said the rise mainly reflected changes made in 2003 in the length of time of tagging.
It allows eligible prisoners to be freed 135 days early, instead of 60.
Mr Shapps, MP for Welwyn and Hatfield, obtained statistics by tabling Parliamentary Questions.
In a report, he said that on average nearly seven crimes were being committed every day by tagged offenders.
He claimed the figures showed the government was releasing unsuitable offenders early to relieve prison overcrowding.
'Big rise' in tagging crimes - MP
Just saying something has worked doesn't count. Evidence is required to back up the validity of statements. Those in government rely upon the power of their positions to maintain a general characterisation that is not valid and known to be not valid. The New Deal programme to get youth into work at a cost of £3.4 billion has left the country with 70,000 more unemployed youths today than in 1998 when the programme was implemented. Why hasn't this programme created a situation where youth employment has been permanently decreased? Are there more fundamental reasons for youth unemployment in the job market? Throwing money at problems is no solution although it can create a dramatic but superficial effect that has to be sustained with image management.
BBC News Monday, 14 May 2007, 09:04 GMT 10:04 UK
New Deal job scheme 'a failure'
 The scheme was set up to help young unemployed people |
A former government minister has made a stinging attack on the New Deal scheme to help young unemployed people - one of Gordon Brown's flagship policies.
In a report for think-tank Reform, former welfare reform minister Frank Field called its performance "woeful".
He said there were more young people out of work now than when the scheme began in 1998, despite £3.5bn funding.
The Department for Work and Pensions said the New Deal had been a "success" at helping young people into work.
Mr Field's comments come as Mr Brown continues his campaign for the Labour leadership.
His report for Reform rebuts government claims that youth unemployment has been "virtually abolished".
New Deal job scheme 'a failure'
3. Slave labour: a New Labour financing decision. Prisoners are employed to work on the railroad. That's a very convenient financing decision. Did that come from Gordon Brown? Look what slave labour has done to build the western world in the past, and we just had all the hoopla recently about Britain ending the slave trade 200 years ago. Why didn't anyone recognise this at that time? Slave labour has just taken on another form. It's not so much that they are not permitted to work at specialised tasks and are left to do the heavy lifting, what about sabotage of the railroad from the resentment this generates? What kind of rehabilitative training is this supposed to be?
Chain gangs at work on the public roads were an all too familiar sight in the South when I was growing up in Florida in the 1950s. Escaped convicts were part of our daily life. My friend and I were shot at by escaped convicts while riding a pony out in the woods one day. We saw a couple guys on the side of a hill in the middle of some pine trees and were riding up to see them when I noticed the white stripes down the sides of their trousers. We turned around and were riding away when the crack of a rifle went off and a bullet went whizzing by on the ground next to us. I can still see that scene and hear that bullet to this day. We did not look back and just kept on riding away in the middle of pine trees. There were no more shots.
Another guy at school told us how he looked out his window at 6:00 am one morning to see the recently reported escaped convicts walking by. Do these convicts working on the railroad have guards standing by with shotguns guarding them. Do they shout: "Water boss?" Remember Cool Hand Luke? That was based on Florida chain gang slave labour, and I swear the picture of their prison barracks in the film looked exactly like the one on route 28 heading west into Gainesville, Florida, in the 1950s and 60s.
Here's Water Boy recorded in a 1949 Moscow concert on a MySpace site. The site also provides an excellent short synopsis of his life along with a video montage of his albums. This is an incredible song that I first heard c 1960 in Oxford, Georgia, sung by the Oxford College of Emory University (then called Emory-at-Oxford for it was the original campus of Emory University some 35 miles east of Atlanta) Glee Club. Edgar Smith sang the solo when they performed one day in chapel. It was a Methodist school with compulsory chapel twice a week in those days. I was riveted by his singing on that day remembering this too as if it was yesterday. I was so struck by this first hearing that I've never forgotten the setting or the song. It was not until the 1980s that I first heard Paul Robeson sing it when I was listening to a tribute by his son broadcast on the radio.
Water Boy is one of the most powerful chain gang/prisoner work songs there is with part of the lyrics that go:
"I done bust this rock boys
From here to Macon
All the way to the jail boys
Yes, a back to the jail"
That's Macon, Georgia, where the chain gang was a Deep South institution. Paul Robeson, the son of a slave, became a world wide institution himself, and as occurs to such people like him who genuinely advocate freedom, he ran afoul of the US Government's anticommunist witch hunt led by Senator Joseph McCarthy who sought to keep him from speaking in foreign countries about the plight of black people in the US. In 1950 the State Department took his passport away from him because he refused to sign a statement that he had not been a communist. His passport was not returned until 1958 after a US Supreme Court ruling. He was also forbidden to travel to Canada where such travel was permitted without a passport. Instead, he performed concerts on the border facing Canada where tens of thousands heard him until later when he did travel into Canada. He never recovered from this abuse, became a broken man, retreated to seclusion and eventually died.
Paul Robeson attempted to resume his career after 1958, but he was destroyed. It's ironic that Scientology has a blanket condemnation against psychiatry because it appears that Paul Robeson might very well have suffered at the hands of the psychiatric profession. The following comment comes from the PBS website about his life: "After several bouts of depression, he was admitted to a hospital in London, where he was administered continued shock treatments. When Robeson returned to the United States in 1963, he was misdiagnosed several times and treated for a variety of physical and psychological problems." He never recovered and retired permanently after this. There is a very distinct possibility that the malignant forces who sought his demise continued after 1958 when his passport was returned. This kind of abuse by psychiatry might very well have destroyed him.
If I was not experiencing the same kind of abuse in London in a most malignant way, I would not even begin to understand the perniciousness of such activity by those in the US government who operate as they please in London without any restraint. This is wholly conceivable for the post WWII period as a result of the US/UK relationship during WWII. It's not the official policy, but it reflects the attitude and character of those people within government who are warped in the extreme. Using psychiatry as a weapon along with its treatments to destroy the ability of a targeted human being to function is a significant reality in this world. Those who are not liked for their liberal views and human rights advocacy are targeted by those in government who believe that the actual practise of democracy is a threat to democracy.
Paul Robeson ran afoul of the right wing demagogues during the McCarthy period. All of his magnificent works as a performer were removed from circulation and suddenly became unavailable. He could not be heard on recordings in the US until the late 1970s. This explains my ignorance of this man and his work. These are the same right wing kooks that now threaten the US government and the world today in the guise of George Bush and his neocon ilk like former US Marines Lt Harry Bird, Colonel Vine and their thug cronies who have brought such delight to my life since February 2001 claiming that George Bush, the White House, Tony Blair, Number Ten and others were behind them. I am deeply honoured to be so persecuted by these kinds of people.Gordon Brown has plans for affordable homes. Will he build these with convict slave labour? Is this what this Labour government is all about? Empty the prisons and put them to work on the railroads, highways and in the construction industry? What a magnificent, cheap labour pool. Why do they need to tag anyone. Just put them to work in the chain gang slave labour market, keep them in barracks nearby and guard them with shotguns while at work. The next thing you know New Labout under Gordon Brown will come up with boot camp chain gang slave labour camps for the unruly youth who fill the unemployment rolls. The New Deal will take on another whole dimensional meaning.
BBC News Sunday, 13 May 2007, 14:16 GMT 15:16 UK
Prisoners carry out rail repairs
 Unions have raised safety fears |
Serving prisoners are being used to carry out maintenance work on Britain's railways, Network Rail has confirmed.
Union boss Bob Crow has reacted angrily, accusing the firm of deviousness and likening the practice to the US chain-gangs of the 1950s.
The RMT boss also suggested safety standards could be compromised.
But Network Rail said all workers were properly trained and vetted, adding that offenders would be doing "heavy lifting" rather than "specialist work".
A spokesman for the firm said one of the agencies that supplies workers takes part in a government scheme to help prisoners in the low-risk Category D reintegrate into society.
"Like many large employers, Network Rail uses agencies from time to time to plug gaps in its labour force.
"Anyone who works on the railway is properly accredited, trained and supervised at all times."