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Washington D.C. metro police are about to launch random bag checks on the D.C. metro system. A prominent D.C. blogger, who serves on the Riders’ Advisory Council, calls it "security theatre" that wastes money without stopping terrorists.

Nevertheless, the checks will go on with metro police using Sabre 4000 scanning devices. The devices are manufactured by Smiths Detection, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of UK-based Smiths Group PLC. Right smack dab in the middle of the Board of Directors of Smiths is non-executive director, David Challen. Non-executive means that he doesn’t work for Smiths, but was put on the board to keep an eye on what is going on at Smiths, for someone powerful. Who might want to do that? Well the way to get a sense is to see what Challen is doing when he is not attending Smiths’ board meetings.

He is Vice-Chairman of Citigroup Europe and director at Rothschild-controlled Anglo American. It’s not immediately clear how Citigroup and Anglo fit into the Smiths Group equation, but you can be sure there is a fit and that Challen wasn’t just picked for Smiths’ board because he may have a nice personality.

And so again, we see the banksters and the global elite lurking deep in the background of all this new surveillance equipment. They aren’t on the front lines, but if you dig deep enough they are always there. Always lurking.

Reprinted with permission from Economic Policy Journal.

December 20, 2010

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