Courtesy of the Financial Times, the latest news on the financial sector's most self-allegorizing activity: death hedging.  Or more prosaically, the develpment of 'longevity derivatives' and associated indices, through which fund managers can hedge against the risk that people (not to speak of broker-dealers) might not die soon enough.  In this update, Deutsche Börse has introduced live (so to speak) data feeds from undertakers to find out the age of the bodies they bury.

Death data drive new market

From Private Eye, a brief update on the lie detector system soon to be used across the UK on suspected 'benefit thieves'*, i.e. all claimants.  The system comes from Mossad, but what's really alarming is that it is administered by scorched-earth PFI war machine Capita.
*NB. Readers with no sympathy for 'benefit thieves' have come to the wrong website.

Outsourcing
LIE OF THE LAND

Lie–detector technology developed by Mossad for interrogating suspeted Palestinian terrorists is being used in British Jobcentres.

In Mute 2.6 fictitious capital collided with hypermetrical verse distemper[*].  What follows makes matters worse by further entangling these things with forthcoming Mute subject matter: baby biometrics, tax credit tagging for Hard To Let Families, etc.

[* See also: QUID 18: créateur d'intérieurs (£4 incl. P&P, from Keston Sutherland, Arts B, University of Sussex, Flamer, Brighton BN1 9QH, or http://www.barquepress.com/quid.html)]

Soft hands from Baby Bonds

As HM Revenue & Customs loses 25 million confidential records in the post, the programme to introduce a centralised NHS database slouches on, only delayed by a classically wasteful PFI project. Total data transparency may be good for corporations and security obsessed governments, but what does it mean for the recipients of ‘joined-up care’?, asks Damian Abbott

Just over a week ago, doctors in the north west of the UK became the first to be able to access 'The Spine'.

This extract from an unfinished text by Angela Mitropoulos, posted on archive : s0metim3s (http://archive.blogsome.com/2007/08/07/indigenous-land/#comments), gives part of the historical background (which some European readers may have overlooked) to the current military-medical invasion of Aboriginal land in Australia's Northern Territory.  Most importantly, the text explains the concrete connection between intervention in the name of 'health' and 'ed

This Anarchist Federation analysis of the National (UK) ID Database, parts of which are already up and running with no need for cards, needs to be read as widely as possible.  A terrifying account of how much more than abstract 'privacy' is at stake, and FOR WHOM.

Strong analysis of state repression from A Murder of Crows (http://www.geocities.com/amurderofcrows1/), via libcom.org.  Makes the crucial connection between spectacular 'emergency' measures (SWAT teams, anti-terror laws etc) and the racially differentiated class war waged every day as 'community policing'.  

Repression as state strategy - A Murder of Crows

Repression is a topic that is often discussed in the revolutionary milieu, but unfortunately it is a subject that is not well understood.

The Australian government is thinking of formalizing its de facto power to close the border to medical undesirables, in this case those with 'HIV or leprosy'.  No nation-state seems more determined to demonstrate the literal validity of Agamben's biopower-concentration camp thesis.  Here Mute contributor Angela Mitropoulos notes the source of John Howard's theatre of outrage in the 'normal' regulation of labour and its reproduction.  More proof if it were needed that bio-identity tracking (eg health profiling) is not a mere 'civil liberties' issue of abstract 'privacy'.&