Billboard finger tickles and teases

 Artist Chris O'Shea's installation in Liverpool, England brings more pleasure than apprehension...



Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

Thanks, Gizmodo!

170,000 stops, 6 arrests, zero convictions?

I don't understand what's going on with civil rights in the U.K. Civil libertarians in the U.S. still have a lot to criticize; although I want to think things are getting better, I have a few examples that will have you shaking your head....but the U.K. seems headed off the deep end.

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act in the U.K. has allowed London Metropolitan Police to stop and search people every three minutes-- that's `70,000 stops last year, with an arrest rate resulting from those stops of a whole 65 people-- and no convictions to which any public official can point. BBC.

People who attend anti-war rallies in the U.K. are finding themselves stopped and questioned because of a new system to tracking license plate numbers through a going-national CCTV surveillance system. BoingBoing.

At least some U.K. school kids are standing up for their rights to not be surveilled. when CCTV cameras were hooked up in Davenant Foundation School, students staged a three week walk-out. BoingBoing.

Back in the U.S.A., although this may seem less serious, apparently law enforcement personnel in Massachusetts have been using the Criminal Offender Record Information system (CORI) to look up personal information on Matt Damon, James Taylor, and Patriot and Celtics stars. CORI records are only supposed to be accessed by trained personnel for specific purposes. Other flaws in the CORI system (though surely not all) were identified in a state audit. Boston Globe.

In Baltimore, a couple who were the victims of a mistaken "No Knock" warrant have found themselves facing a $50 trash ticket for the door that police destroyed when they broke it down!! (Wrong address.) The victims are trying to get the city to pay for replacing the door. Don't Tase Me, Bro.

And check out Photography Is Not a Crime for some astounding examples of officials thinking they have some power they don't have, and then enforcing laws that don't exist. Example: an Akron, Ohio man had his cellphone confiscated and then the video on it deleted by a police officer because he was recoding the rescue of a five year old from a revolving door. He'd been planning to sell the video to a local TV station.

Photo from Publik15's photostream at Flickr.

22 points of view: Homeless bloggers speak out

Once a year, at Christmastime, housed people give homeless people a little more thought-- and a little more charity-- than usual.

As appreciated as that charity is, the end of December and the beginning of the New Year is sometimes bitter and sometimes sweet for homeless people and their closest allies.

On or near the longest night of the year, cities and towns around the country commemorate the lives of homeless people who have died. The Nashville Homeless Power Project lost one of their own leaders this year so their memorial on Dec. 13 was especially poignant. The New Hampshire Under the Bridge Project has a list of people who have died in New Hampshire every year since 1994. This year's list has 36 names.

Many homeless groups are organizing and fighting back against community antipathy. In Sacramento CA, the People Project reports on a Deccmber 23rd march organized by the homeless themselves against discriminatory laws that make their lives miserable. Take Back the Land in Miami, FL is reveling in some good publicity about their movement, has been liberating public and foreclosed land and homes since 2006. The 13th Juror reports on a lawsuit filed in Laguna Beach CA charging the city with a campaign of harassment against homeless people. Ordinances prohibit homeless people from sleeping out anywhere within the city yet Laguna Beach only provides an overnight shelter between december and March. Save Feral Human Habitat is supporting an effort by the homeless and advocates to seek an extension to the city's planned January 23rd ordinance forbidding the city's homeless from sleeping out on the grounds they have nowhere else to go. Victoria BC,'s A Room of My Own is posting the minutes of organizing meetings to get a tent city established. But in the tradition of "One step forward, one step back," Chosen Fast lambasts Des Moines IO's destruction of wooden huts built by Hope Builders and the homeless themselves, because one of the huts was slightly damaged by fire.

Again, this time of year, homeless blogs pull their thoughts together to think about the policy-- and lack of policy-- that affects homelessness. Diane Nelin at Invisible Homeless Kids discusses a new report on the increase in child and youth homelessness. Wandering Vets has the 2nd part of an in-depth look at homeless veterans. SLO Homeless has a painful look at increasing family homelessness. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty analyzes how Ontario's government "has led the way in the deterioration of income adequacy for people on assistance. "

Is passing out $13,000 in $10 bills to residents of LA's Skid Row doing people any good? Joel John Roberts at LA's Homeless Blog doesn't think so, and he explains why. Tim Harris at Apesma's Lament remarks on how policymakers just have to stay positive about the progress being made to end homelessness, even when they have to stretch the truth, and the Homeless Family's Blog isn't buying the line that homelessness is decreasing, either.

Last but not least, this is at least one time of the year when homeless people allow themselves to wax philosophical about the ending of the old and the beginning of the new. At The Adventures of Homeless Girl, the author thinks about the pursuit of happiness and what it takes to catch it. Kevin Barbieux at The Homeless Guy is not feeling too good about his life these days. Jamie's Big Voice from London has a poem to share, as does an anonymous author at Stone Soup Station. Ryan Garou at On Homelessness in America looks at an article about how to democratize powerwhile Homeless in Abbotsford BC explores the idea of generosity. Finally, the author of Homeless Man Speaks posts the plain words of his homeless friends and paints a picture with them.
Please take the time to learn something directly from homeless people by visiting these incredible blogs. Remember that thoughtful comments are always appreciated. It means somebody is listening.

Photos: Tony shoveling snow from Homeless Man Speaks; mourners from Nashville Homeless Power.

Internally displaced: refugees abound in rich and poor countries

You can hide the homeless and internally displaced for a while, but not forever.

Four years ago the government forcibly removed 36,000 families living in a slum in New Delhi, India and promised them land and a fresh start in a "model resettlement community" in Bawana, 40 kilometers away. But the government counts only 9,000 families in need of help; 27,000 additional families were evicted and no one seems to know where most of them they are.Most of the internally displaced relocated to Bawana still don't have running water or electricity.

Barbados has divided its country into residential and non-residential areas in an effort to reduce the risk of water pollution in water catchment areas. But squatters continue to live in water catchment area; five of their communities have been bulldozed but hundreds of people find their way back to the area because they have nowhere else to go.

In the U.S., a tent city in Ontario, CA was set up as a temporary refuge for the area's homeless, but grew so quickly that in May, public officials removed anyone who could not prove they were originally from the area. In Seattle, WA an intentionally-designed tent city called "Nickelsville" after the city's Mayor Nickels is on its third home, currently in the parking lot of the University Christian Church, and housing 90 people.

In the UK, a website called the Advisory Service for Squatters post listings of vacant property in the UK and helps match British people as well as Eastern Europeans and others with the properties.

Nearly one-sixth of the world's population live in squatter communities or otherwise unorganized townships and parking lots. As long as the economic disparity between the world's weathiest and poorest citizens continues to grow, the numbers of internally displaced persons will grow also.

Today, November 10, hundreds of bloggers at Bloggers Unite, a project of BlogCatalogue, are writing about the dilemma of refugees around the world. I'm encouraging everyone to take a look in our own backyards: refugees are not just in faraway countries but everywhere among us. Figure out what you can do to help and then-- take action. Go to Refugees Unite to learn more, and check out the posts at Bloggers Unite.

Photo: A squatters' flag from the International Institute of Social History

Three stories: water stories: dead zones, fish kills and toxic lakes

Lest we forget and think that global warming is our only environmental issue, three stories:

• Life may have been completely wiped out in the Sixmilewater and Ballymartin Rivers in Glengormley, NEWTOWN ABBEY, UK by a discharge of toxic chemicals from an as yet unknown source. More than 300 incidents of fish kill have been reported in the last five years. Someone's not doing good detective work! Newton Abbey Times.
• If you were a mining company in Canada with lots of toxic tailing to get rid of, and you wanted to get around laws prohibiting destruction of fish habitat, what would you do? How about getting the Canadian government to reclassify 16 pristine lakes as toxic dump sites? The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland. In northern B.C., Imperial Metals plans to enclose a remote watershed valley to hold tailings from a gold and copper mine. The valley lies in what the native Tahltan people call the "Sacred Headwaters" of three major salmon rivers. It also serves as spawning grounds for the rainbow trout of Kluela Lake, which is downstream from the dump site. CBC News.
• Forrest Gump would not fare too well at shrimp fishing in Louisiana this summer. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which covered more than 6,000 sq.mi.last year, this year was expected to equal an area the size of Massachusetts-- some 10,000 sq.mi.However, that estimate was made before the midwest floods washed an incredible amount of fertilizer down the Mississippi. The dead zone is created by agricultural practices hundreds, evebn thousands of miles away. Time magazine.

Photo: Kerry St. Pe