http://www.nydailynews.com/…

The NYPD wants to cloak midtown with the same security blanket it rolled out for lower Manhattan: camera license plate readers, and radiation and bio scanners.

Those measures covering Manhattan south of Canal St. will slowly be applied to midtown, from 34th to 59th Sts., river to river, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the City Council Public Safety Committee.

“We want to take that model, protecting the 1.7 square miles south of Canal and replicate it in midtown Manhattan,” Kelly said after the hearing Tuesday.

The NYPD wants $21 million in federal homeland security dollars to put toward the midtown project, estimated to cost $58 million.

Modeled after London’s “Ring of Steel,” the NYPD opened its coordination center last November, with cops monitoring feeds from 300 cameras and 30 mobile license plate readers in lower Manhattan.

The 24-hour center, based in a nondescript Broadway building, keeps tabs on high-profile terror targets such as the World Trade Center site and Wall Street.

Plans are underway to have some 3,000 cameras, public and privately owned, and as many as 96 fixed license-plate readers feeding into the center south of Canal St.

The NYPD is also looking to install permanent license plate scanners at each of the 20 crossings into Manhattan as part of an elaborate new safety scheme.

Police also want to install sensors to detect biological and radiological weapons.

The lower Manhattan plan costs an estimated $92 million. The department has already invested about $84 million to secure Manhattan south of Canal St., river to river.

It’s getting ridiculous in Manhattan. They recently opened the new 1, R, W station downtown at the South Ferry. Since then the NYPD has had a table set up to search people at least 50% of the time I’ve left work. Far more often than the old 1 station. I’ve yet to be stopped but mostly because I come in from behind them and they focus on the new entrance rather than the opened area coming from the R,W entry. I still plan on pressing my luck by informing the officer that since I’ve been denied entrance to the 1 I’ll take the R.

http://news.sky.com/…

Around lunchtime, riot police had to be sent in after activists attacked a uniformed officer and stormed a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland in the City.

A handful of men with black scarves obscuring their faces and hoods over their heads smashed a hole in the windows with a metal pole and crawled in.

Protesters removed equipment, daubed graffiti on the walls, threw a chair through a window and started a small fire.

Police entered the branch at around 2pm and shortly afterwards began driving demonstrators away from the branch, which had earlier been closed by RBS.

Officers on foot backed up by a line of mounted officers lined up outside the building as smoke bombs were thrown by a baying crowd.

More than 4,000 demonstrators, most of them peaceful, gathered near the Bank of England to demand action from world leaders ahead of the G20 summit.

But several hundred clashed with police, who were pelted with eggs, paint bombs and empty beer cans.

One of the videos on Sky I saw showed a young woman saying that the march was to show solidarity for the homeless. Why not go out and help them clean themselves up, create a resume and submit it to businesses. Or get together with others and start a business. Showing solidarity doesn’t feed, cloth or shelter people. Instead of bitching why don’t you act?

http://www.cnn.com/

Scuffles were reported outside the Bank of England Wednesday, as thousands of protesters, including anti-capitalists, anarchists, and environmental campaigners, gathered in the heart of London’s financial district a day before the G-20 summit. Eleven people were arrested for being in possession of police uniforms, a police spokesman said. They had earlier been stopped while riding in an armored personnel carrier near Bishopsgate, near the Bank of England, and the vehicle will now be examined by police, the spokesman said. Protesters occasionally lunged forward against the police line, and one masked protester hit out at polices with a long black pole. One police officer was whisked to the side after apparently being hit. Police held their line and occasionally pushed protesters back with their hands. Organizers of the protest insisted their intentions are “theatrical,” promising “mirth, merriment and the love in our hearts” and urging participants to “bring food to share, water, tea making facilities, something to sit on, a pop up tent if you plan to stay late.” But activists also published a map Tuesday with the details of scores of banks, financial companies, law firms and trading exchanges with offices in the City, prompting fears that symbols of capitalism could be targeted. “It is believed that the majority of the protesters intend to conduct a peaceful demonstration,” the police said in a statement. “Businesses should however, remain vigilant at all times and ensure that buildings are secure. Banks and financial premises are the targets of the protest although this could extend to all premises in the city.”

I’m not seeing any stories yet but I see on the office TV on CNN that there are individuals throwing items through windows of banks or local businesses. Looks like we have vandarchists, not anarchists. At least not American, libertarian anarchists but European, leftist, anti-establishment ‘anarchists.’ Which I prefer to describe, as above, vandarchists. They give us real free market anarchists a bad name. I’d also like to correct the article. The banks, financial companies, law firms and trading exchanges which are in London are not symbols of capitalism. They are symbols of fascism, corporatism, neo-merchantillism, or at minimum state-capitalism which really dissolves into those former names. It is just as wrong to call the UK or the USA capitalist as it is wrong to call the old Soviet Russia, Cuba, or China ‘communist.’

Update:

Looks like there were a few free marketeers out and about.

http://www.startribune.com/…

China’s premier didn’t say it in so many words, but the implied warning to Washington was blunt: Don’t devalue the dollar through reckless spending. Premier Wen Jiabao’s message is unlikely to be misunderstood at the White House. It is counting on Beijing to help pay for its stimulus package by buying U.S. bonds. China already is Washington’s biggest foreign creditor, with an estimated $1 trillion in U.S. government debt. A weaker dollar would erode the value of those assets.

“Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I’m a little bit worried,” Wen said at a news conference Friday after the closing of China’s annual legislative session. “I would like to call on the United States to honor its words, stay a credible nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets.”

The appeal suggested the outlines of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s stance when he meets with President Barack Obama at an April 2 summit in London of the Group of 20 major economies on possible remedies for the global crisis.

Wen gave no indication whether Beijing wants changes in U.S. policy. But economists said his comments reflect fears that higher U.S. budget deficits from Washington’s $787 billion stimulus package could drive down the dollar and the value of China’s Treasury notes.

Makes you wonder if that whole “FEDS GRANT EMINENT DOMAIN AS COLLATERAL TO CHINA FOR U.S. DEBTS” stories are true to some degree.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/…

The Met Police got a short sharp rap over the knuckles yesterday, as the Office of the Information Commissioner questioned what looks very much like a blanket policy to force CCTV onto public houses in certain parts of London.

The story begins with a letter to the Guardian last week, from Nick Gibson. He is currently renovating Islington pub The Drapers Arms, after its previous owners allowed it to go insolvent and then disappeared.

In his letter, he argues that if he had merely taken over an existing licence, the police could not have imposed any additional conditions. However, because this was now a new licence, the police were able to make specific requests, including one particular request in respect of installing CCTV.

Mr Gibson wrote: “I was stunned to find the police were prepared to approve, ie not fight, our licence on condition that we installed CCTV capturing the head and shoulders of everyone coming into the pub, to be made available to them upon request. There was no way that they could have imposed this on the previous licence holder.”

We spoke to the Police and to Islington Council. The Council were clear that this was not their policy: they would look at individual licence applications in the light of representations made to the Licensing Committee and decide on a case by case basis.

It was left to the Met to confirm the existence of a blanket policy for some parts of London. A spokeswoman for the Met said: “The MPS overall does not have a policy of insisting CCTV is installed within licensed premises before supporting licence applications.

“However, individual boroughs may impose blanket rules in support of their objectives to prevent crime and disorder and to assist the investigation of offences when they do occur.

“Islington is one of the most densely populated districts for licensed premises in London and the borough’s licensing authority is committed to providing a safe environment in which to socialise.

“To this end, Islington police recommend all premises are required to install CCTV and make those images available to police upon request before a licence is granted.”

http://climateandcapitalism.com/…

The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the future, which will have its world premiere in London on March 15 and then be released in UK cinemas on March 20, followed by other countries.

• “Every single person in the country should be forcibly made to watch this film.” Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London
• “I defy anyone to come out and not feel like they’ve got to make a difference.” Caroline Lucas, Leader of the UK Green Party
• “It is not a film to make you happy. It’s a film to make you sit back and think ‘What is my role on this planet?’“ Ashok Sinha, Director of Stop Climate Chaos coalition
• “The most powerful piece of cultural discourse on climate change ever produced.” Mark Lynas, author of “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet”
• “It is a captivating and constantly surprising film: the first successful dramatisation of climate change to reach the big screen.” George Monbiot, journalist & author

Sorry to lob an ad-hominem comment but… I’m not going to trust anything at face value that the likes of those listed above rave about. They don’t exactly have the most neutral background on the global warming / climate change topic. I don’t see anything in the trailer that implies this is anything more than a stereotypical eco-statist / leftist diatribe attempting to appeal to emotions rather than truth.

The Age of Stupid? Rather harsh. History will show who was ignorant, close minded, and/or short sighted. For all our sake I hope its those who made and agree with the premise of this film. I fear the outcome of the proposed statist solutions far more than the actual outcome of any global warming. Anthropogenic or otherwise.