Category Archives: Security

German Prison Break

The Deutsche Welle tries to make light of a simple escape from prison:

Taking the risk of being pulped into toilet paper over spending the next seven years doing time for drug dealing offenses, the savvy jailbird managed to evade all the security measures the prison had in place and escaped to freedom with the rubbish.

Now the police in the neighboring town of Viersen in North Rhine Westphalia are considering issuing an international arrest warrant for him.

Whether the warrant will be printed on recycled paper or not, the police wouldn’t say.

Ha ha.

SF ID cards approved

Residents of San Francisco are now able to get ID cards independent of their citizenship:

The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to issue municipal identification cards to city residents – regardless of whether they are in the country legally….

Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who authored the ID card legislation, said the program is a smart public safety measure because it would make residents living on the social margins of San Francisco more likely to seek the help of police and could give them more access to banking services.

“People are afraid to report crimes,” Ammiano said, referring to illegal immigrants who avoid local law enforcement authorities over fear of being arrested or deported by federal immigration officials.

The city will consider ID cards legitimate forms of identification for municipal work, and major banks are expected to accept them as well. Ammiano pointed out that people without IDs and therefore unable to open bank accounts are exposed to higher risk of theft.

Mumbai Terror

The battle between Indian commandos and terrorists in Mumbai is eerily similar to the situation Tom Clancy described as the post-Cold War battle-ground:

Police said 119 people were killed and 315 were wounded when a small army of gunmen — at least some of whom arrived by sea — fanned out across Mumbai to attack sites popular with tourists and businessmen, including two luxury hotels.

Commandos were fighting room-to-room battles in the two hotels to rescue people trapped by the militants, police said.

[…]

Police said they had shot seven gunmen and arrested nine suspects. They said 12 policemen were killed, including Hemant Karkare, the chief of the police anti-terrorist squad in Mumbai.

The plot of the novel Rainbow Six is described in detail on Wikipedia and is not far from the above horror. A subsequent video game by the same name allowed players to try and liberate hostages (as a member of Rainbow) from museums, ships, hotels, and similar venues.

Let Not Mankind Bogart Love

Willie Nelson in A Colbert Christmas sings of peace on earth. The graphics are excellent, as is his command of the lyrics:

What, no mention of biowillie (biodiesel)?

Feist’s rendition of “Please Be Patient…Due to Increased Prayer Amounts” is aslo amusing, especially the part where she explains that prayers will be taken in the order that they were received. Sadly, she does not reach the lyrical achievement of Nelson, but I think that is because of the format she was given. I wish (not pray, mind you) that Feist had been allowed more of her usual punchy rhythmic upbeat style instead of a syrupy formulaic hymnal, but I suspect Colbert was going for a different style of parody.