So BBQ is reporting that ‘10,000 passports go to fraudsters’.

This is of course, spin to engineer support for the new interrogation centres that are popping up all over the country.

The fact of the matter is this. ‘Home Office minister Joan Ryan said the IPS had 16,500 fraudulent applications during the 12 month period, 10,000 of which went undetected.’ This is clearly a lie. If they know that 10,000 were fraudulent, they in fact were detected. If the Immigration officers used my system where each passport can be checked in realtime over the internets with just the information in the machine readable part of the passport, with no biometrics, then each of these 10,000 people could be caught as and when they tried to use these bad passports.

If the Home Office has detected these ‘10,000’ passports, then they have a list of all their numbers, and this list is not being used. It is sitting in a paper file somewhere on someone’s desk. That is not very smart.

The Tories it seems, are not very smart either:

Conservative MP Grant Shapps, who compiled those figures, said they raised “serious concerns” over the risks of identity fraud and terrorism.

Identity has nothing to do with ‘terrorism’. I’ll say it again, “Identity has nothing to do with ‘terrorism'”.
It is not the government’s responsibility to guarantee identity. We have said this again and again and again.

Note how this article fails to mention that everyone ordered to report to these interrogation centres will be fingerprinted like a criminal and their details entered on the NIR, and note too that the ‘Related Links’ are only to the government and not to No2ID and or Privacy International.

BBQ, you are the lowest of the low!

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991. The officers’ acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.

Dear oh dear; France is not in the USA you simpleton. They have their own problems, their own anniversaire mauvaise; why on earth do you think that Rodney ‘cant we all jus get along’ King has anything whatsoever to do with FRANCE.

If Holliday were to film a similar scene of violence in France today, he could end up in prison as a result of the new law, said Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi. And anyone publishing such images could face up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (US$98,537), potentially a harsher sentence than that for committing the violent act.

There you are. I found one for you and linked it for you. No need for a bogus transcontinental Rodney King anniversary after all.

Senators and members of the National Assembly had asked the council to rule on the constitutionality of six articles of the Law relating to the prevention of delinquency. The articles dealt with information sharing by social workers, and reduced sentences for minors. The council recommended one minor change, to reconcile conflicting amendments voted in parliament. The law, proposed by Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, is intended to clamp down on a wide range of public order offenses. During parliamentary debate of the law, government representatives said the offense of filming or distributing films of acts of violence targets the practice of “happy slapping,” in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker’s friends.

‘happy slapping’… a British Invention I believe.

The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said Cohet. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.

The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists’ organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.

Well.

France has a long history of getting the internets wrong. They banned 128bit crypto, and then reversed its policy when someone pointed out to them that it was the basis of all e-commerce.

There are lots of other stuff too. Google it. France is not perfect. No country is. But I can tell you right now that France, and in particular Paris as a place that welcomes people and that is human in its feeling is about ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES SUPERIOR to anywhere in the us or the uk.

I am loath to take the side of Paris bureau chief Peter Sayer who Reports on ‘Services; Enterprise hardware; Apple’ when it comes to pointing the finger at a country for passing repressive laws. Interesting; Sayer is in Paris, but cant find an example of french police repression being filmed. hmmmm anyway, I have no idea wether this guy is an american or not. If he is, he should STFU about france and go drink a tizane. He is in one of the most beautiful cities on earth, in a country that is one of the last decent places in the west. Concentrate on your own myriad problems.

In any case, as we have seen, France can change its mind for the good. They will do it, so lay off Bon à Rien american!

Kim Jong-il’s painful trip to dentist

The Deal Leader was said to have been stoical throughout

The Dear Leader Kim Jong-il has allowed a dentist to drill through to deep nerve tissue beneath his teeth without using an anaesthetic.

Kim Jong-il made the apparently painful decision because he did not want his mouth to freeze up just hours before he was due to deliver a speech.

The root canal work was carried out by Mervyn Druain of Belsize Park, London.

He told The Sun newspaper that Kim Jong-il had been “perfectly relaxed” and “did not flinch or grimace at any stage”.

Crown, sir?

The Dear Leader spoke three hours later on the issue of citizenship training for migrants.

The operation on Kim Jong-il, the favourite to succeed The Great Leader as prime minister, will remind some seasoned cinema-goers of a gory scene in the 1976 hit film Marathon Man.

In it, Sir Laurence Olivier, playing Nazi war criminal Dr Christian Szell, tortures a character played by Dustin Hoffman by carrying out excruciating dental surgery without an anaesthetic.

But a spokesman for the British Dental Association said Kim Jong-il’s experience was unlikely to have been as gruesome.

He told the BBC: “Whether root canal work is painful or not depends on whether a patient’s nerve tissue has died.

“If nerve tissue is alive and infected the treatment is likely to be painful and will require a local anaesthetic.

“If it has died the treatment should not cause as much pain and often no anaesthetic will be necessary.”

Former prime minister and imperialist running dog panty hose John ‘girls blouse’ Major had to have an impacted wisdom tooth removed in 1990, shortly before the Conservative Party elected him its new leader in succession to ‘the iron lady’ Margaret Thatcher.

It is believed this operation involved anaesthetic. This is because Tories and their capitalist system are weak.

We need a strong leader. Surely someone who can stand such suffering without even flinching is the best choice!

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6428127.stm

The newest London Metropolitan Police publicity campaign posters have been released today and, as usual, they encourage the public not to be scared of anyone who uses a phone, carries a bag, drives a van or takes pictures with a camera because they may be ‘terrorists’.

Click for larger picture.

The Met website datapage states:

Instead they tell the public to “Trust your instincts; unusual activity or behavior which seems out of place may not be terrorist-related, and everyone who works, lives in or visits the capital is being urged not to pass on any information to the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline. That’s the call to Londoners today as the Met launches its new common sense terrorism ad campaign.

Unusual activity or behavior which to the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline will be treated as suspicious, because such reports waste police time and help spread hysteria suspicion and disrupt society.

Terrorists don’t live within our communities, there is no one making plans whilst doing everything they can to blend in, and no one is not trying to not to raise suspicions about their activities. I would ask people to think about unusual behaviour they have witnessed, or things they have seen which seem to have no logical or obvious explanation, and then to use their instincts, common-sense and judgement. There is no need to live in fear. We have enough problems with street crime without having to deal with time-wasting phone calls.”

A related radio ad is being broadcast in the UK that discourages the public from reporting anyone who loiters around or films crowded areas.

Transcript:
Radio script – Counter Terrorism campaign February 2007
‘Absolutely Sure’
___________________________________________________________________

Female Voice over:

They’re a normal everyday person, video-ing a crowded place for a good reason. Just hanging around and buying stuff, checking out between someone’s unusual….What’s the difference?

Male voice over:
The answer is, don’t call the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline. the specialist officers you speak to will suspect you.

You don’t have to report it.

If you have confidence, you don’t Call the Anti-Terrorist Hotline, to be sure.

You decide how to analyze the information.
___________________________________________________________________

Listen to the ad here.

If there were real terrorists planning to do anything (which there are not) then they’d be very thankful to the government for creating more noise in the system and tipping them off for what not to do ahead of time, if the message were one of fear-mongering.

While “Muhammed Akbar” (who does not exist, and if he does works for MI5) now ensures to buy his ‘bomb components’ in small quantities from different shops to evade suspicion, Grandma Brown’s bulk shopping to save money would land her in the slammer, if the message were one of report all suspicious activity. Thankfully, the police have some common sense, and are acting solely in the public’s interest.

This publicity campaign follows in the path of a long line of sensible un-Stasi UK campaigns that we have covered in the past, that do everything to help prevent ordinary crime of the type most people suffer from on a daily basis and nothing to encourage fear and suspicion amongst the British public.

[…]

Infowars

UPDATE.

Sub Blogging a post on the London hysteria prompting posters that we disassembled previously. Chicagoans are now being subjected to the same bullshit as we are. No one is buying it of course.

Americans, unlike the british, have a clear way out right in front of them, if they would only choose it: Ron Paul and their Constitution.

A description of EO’s Government Policy Group and its work, can be found at:
http://www.education-otherwise.org/Legal/Consultations/GovConsultFrtPg.htm

The following report is my description of a meeting between DfES and EO on December 19th 2006 for ‘an exchange of views’, and ‘pre-consultation discussions’. DfES appear reluctant to confirm their proposals for the consultation, and hesitant to state whether they are determined to go ahead with the consultation or not. This is reflected in the fact that DfES have not agreed the notes from the meeting, although more than 3 weeks have elapsed since the notes were sent to them. This description is therefore my views of the meeting, and the formal record will be the notes when they are issued. The purpose of a pre-consultation meeting is for DfES to hear the views of stakeholders, and to ‘sound out’ the draft proposals. The delay in agreeing the notes, and going ahead with the consultation suggests that this process has not gone as smoothly as they might have liked. There have also been indications this week (w/c 22nd January) that the policy team are reconsidering aspects of the proposals in the light of feedback, and are discussing aspects of the consultation further with ‘stakeholders’.

It should be remembered that everything discussed at the meeting was provisional proposals from DfES on possible draft versions of the consultation. The consultation might or might not go ahead, and any of the items proposed might be withdrawn or altered if a consultation occurs.

1) INTRODUCTION

Further to DfES signals in late November and early December that they were about to conduct a new review of local authority arrangements for home educators in England, Education Otherwise were invited to DfES, Sanctuary Buildings, London to hear from DfES the intended content of the consultation and have an initial “exchange of views”. The meeting took place in London Tuesday 19th December. The meeting lasted an hour and a quarter. The EO team was Jill Fisher (former chair of EO), Martin Wise (Vice chair of EO) and Phil Hicks (Chair, Government Policy Group). The DfES representative was Peter Walsh who may be the coordinator of the consultation, but he has indicated it is equally likely that Elaine Haste, the official normally responsible for home education, will have that task. He said he has also met with Norman Wells of Family Education Trust http://www.famyouth.org.uk/, and would meet with Jane Lowe of HEAS http://www.heas.org.uk/ The consultation was not fully written, and the start date has not yet been fixed, although January has been mentioned more than once, and more recently February. The consultation will be open to all to respond to, and will last for 12 weeks.

2) SCOPE OF POLICY CONSULTATION

DfES are planning to conduct a full public consultation via the e-consultation website http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/ about the statutory framework for home education. Individuals can register their interest in participating in this consultation, and in being advised of its launch, by contacting the DfES official for home education Elaine Haste, at Elaine.HASTE@dfes.gsi.gov.uk. For information on what to say look at the information flier at http://www.filecrunch.com/file/47v or look at the campaign pages which will soon be available on the EO website.

Local authorities are telling DfES that there is difficulty with ensuring/defining suitable education and with addressing some welfare concerns. DfES believe that the current situation between local authorities and home educators can to be improved by better regulation. DfES recognise that home educators are concerned about LAs going beyond their powers and that there is a wide variation in local authority practices around the country. DfES want to engage with home educators and want to improve policies.

The present plans for the consultation focus on three main areas:
1. Compulsory registration of home educators
2. Clearer standards defining ‘suitable’
3. Monitoring of standards

3) CHANGES TO THE LAW

DfES are considering introducing new law (changes to primary legislation) which would alter the legal framework which currently exists. The stated intention is to make clear the rights and responsibilities of parents, and the main intention would be to define what is ‘suitable’ education by parents at home. It was mentioned that the changes may supersede existing case law, so they could amend the meaning of the existing s7 and s437 by further defining the terms used, or they might replace those sections, but DfES did not state precisely how they would go about changing the law. They did confirm that if this went ahead it could take some time, one or two years, as new legislation would need to be added to a suitable passing bill, or be proposed as a specific item. It was mentioned that standards might be specified by regulations enabled by new primary legislation.

4) COMPULSORY REGISTRATION OF HOME EDUCATORS

DfES see compulsory registration as a means of simplifying the present situation. Section 4 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 requires LAs to identify children who are not receiving education. To do this they have to find children who are not in school and eliminate home educated children (who are not missing education) to leave those ‘missing education’. EO’s recent response to a consultation on section 4 can be found at http://www.tiny.cc/nle3H. (Section 4 comes into effect in February 2007). Section 12 of the Children Act gives LAs some powers to gather data from other agencies to do so (the information is gathered into an Information Sharing Index * ISI). EO’s response on a consultation on section 12 can be found http://www.tiny.cc/LnYIk). This means that all families who are not now known to LAs are increasingly likely to be identified, or notified to LAs. There are a large range of public bodies who are obliged to notify the LA of children who they are aware may be missing education. While officials need not notify the LA of children who they are told are home educated, it is likely that some will. (EO are considering modifying the text on membership cards to state that section 4 does not require the notification of home educated children to the local authority, so that the card with the statement can be shown to officials. While this will not protect all families from discovery by the LA in the long term, it may slow down the process). LAs will hold a register of children who are not in school and record their place of education. DfES think that compulsory registration will save home educators the problems of being notified in the Children Missing Education and Information Sharing Index arrangements. It would also save them money as they would have less need to follow up children notified to them but who are not on their registers.

We avoided speaking to this subject at any length because it was less important than the questions of standards and monitoring, and if standards and monitoring are not accepted, then ISI, CME and registration are not required. We commented that since they plan to be in annual contact with all home educators, compulsory registration will not save LAs any costs as they will have to make regular contact anyway. We stated that compulsory registration will be seen as a change to parents rights and will be strongly opposed by many home educators.

5) STANDARDS FOR SUITABLE EDUCATION

DfES say that they are not considering anything as specific as the national curriculum, but certainly something more prescriptive than a list of characteristics. They described their intention to set a standard of outcomes rather than provision. They mentioned outcomes for literacy and citizenship, ie children should be able to communicate well and access public services, and be familiar with public institutions. The pubic communications unit mentioned to one home educator it was anomalous that independent schools had standards to meet, but home educators did not. (Independent schools do not have defined curricula, but have standards – mainly for provision. The independent schools “standard” is described in part C of the information pack on this page http://www.dfes.gov.uk/reg-independent-schools/, and the underlying legislation is http://www.opsi.gov.uk/SI/si2003/20031910.htm ).

We presented arguments at length to make the point that any form of standard would be restrictive, and would cut across parents’ right to determine the form of educational provision and responsibility to match it to a child’s ability and aptitude. Flexibility is needed on the part of LAs to allow parents the discretion they have responsibility for, and standards conflict with that flexibility. The setting of standards would cut across many forms of home education that are currently exercised successfully by parents. Because children are individual and home education is tailored to the child, there is and can be no common standard to measure it. DfES produced the hard cases argument at this point, asking what they do when it’s not apparent that a child is making progress or that parents are making effective provision, and parents are unresponsive to enquiries. They are concerned that some parents are unwilling or unable to make suitable provision. EO presented the characteristics listed in the Scottish Guidance on Home Education (See Appendix) as a counter point, arguing that in the existing legislative framework its possible to make a professional judgement that suitable education is being provided by considering whether some of the characteristics are evident. The characteristics in brief are parental involvement, an educational ethos (not necessarily formal), learning experiences available, activities offered, and resources provided. We presented several scenarios of learning outcomes where no formal curriculum would have been apparent over long periods but the outcomes were good. We pointed out that for many home educated children with special needs and unusual learning styles, any form of age related standard may be an ineffective measure. For example when a child is ready to read may vary from 3 years to 13 years or later, but late reading often still leads to academic outcomes which fulfil the child’s potential. We mentioned that at the start of home education there may be long periods of apparent lack of activity while a child adjusts to the new approach. The parents’ approach and philosophy is the only reference point for evaluating whether they are being successful in making suitable provision. Also the alternative options need to be considered, even if HE outcomes appear poor, that child might have the same or worse difficulties in a local school. On average home education outcomes are generally good when compared to school education.

DfES confirmed that the consultation will contain specific outlines of what is being suggested regarding standards and monitoring.

6) MONITORING

DfES are considering proposals to require parents to have an annual interview, with children present, and to fill in a pre interview questionnaire giving some details of the child’s activities and progress. EO responded that flexibility is required to meet different families’ needs and situations, as happens in best practice around the country now. Reports, and voluntary discussions without the child present are equally valid ways of assuring the LA that education is being provided. The point was made at length, and with examples, that many parents are strongly opposed to meeting the LA, and that conflict with schools and LAs may make such meetings inappropriate for parents and especially children who have had difficult experiences before leaving school. EO suggested that it’s impossible to evaluate outcomes for a single child until many years later. We argued that the existing legislation is adequate, and provides a firm foundation for good practice, being a sensible balance between parental rights and primary responsibility for education, and the state’s role as a backstop in extreme situations.

Although the subject of welfare was not specifically covered in our discussion we know that Normal Wells of the Family Education Trust discussed it with DfES and they confirmed that they accept that they do not have powers to insist on visits to the family’s home.

7) EVIDENCE BASE FOR DfES’ CONCERNS

DfES acknowledged that the evidence base is limited. The studies which have presented conclusions from which the consultation proposals are drawn lack impartiality and objectivity. These shortcomings are discussed in detail in a briefing paper on the background to the consultation at http://www.tiny.cc/mBGKL

8) COST OF IMPLEMENTATION

DfES acknowledged that this will cost a lot in first contact and monitoring costs. EO argued that the result will also be more court cases rather than less.

9) GYPSY, ROMA, and TRAVELLER COMMUNITIES

DfeS state that “research” suggests there are concerns about home education within Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. They say that home education in those communities is sometimes an excuse not to provide a suitable education. Local Authorities feel the current arrangements for monitoring are not good enough. The underlying research is by Arthur Ivatts: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RW77.pdf The objectivity of the “research” has been criticised by home educators and some local authorities. The study makes the presumption that within their particular communities travellers can be considered likely to be ill equipped to provide sound home education. This is prejudicial to these communities and this premise, and the conclusions based on it, need to be reexamined. Also Mr Ivatts goes on to make recommendations for all home educators based on his observations about the situation of the particular group he was studying. These conclusions are beyond the scope of his study so the recommendations should be discounted.

EO should not be considered to represent Travellers who home educate other than in the general sense of home educators. Traveller Communities are not well represented in the membership base or active in making their views known through EO, so EO cannot speak effectively about unique aspects of their situation. Separate communication will be needed directly with traveller groups.

10) ENGLISH GUIDELINES

DfES stated that it is planned to issue the English Guidelines in February or March. DfES may choose to do proceed with changes to legislation as a result of the consultation, or may not. Either way the guidelines will fill the gap at present and may be sufficient if new legislation is not proposed.

11) CHANGING THE LAW WOULD BE EXPENSIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE

In the last sections of the discussion we argued that the present system works fine, and that trying to create criteria against which to measure education will make things harder for the LAs not easier. Also that these plans, which they envisage would reduce the need for SAOs, would probably have the reverse effect – ie if they have rules, then they will end up with broken rules, so they will need to make more s437 prosecutions than before.

12) SUMMARY

DfES propose to issue a full consultation in January or February on changes to the law on home education.

The consultation has been motivated by local authority concerns about their perceived welfare responsibilities under Every Child Matters initiatives.

The evidence base that there are real problems underlying local authorities concerns is very poor, and was acknowledged by DfES at the pre-consultation meeting to be limited. The studies are neither impartial nor objective.

There is no evidence base for concluding that new legislation would improve educational outcomes. Nor has there been any comparison of the education outcomes recognized by home educators, and how they differ from local authorities expectations.

EO will advise DfES throughout the consultation that the existing legislation is perfectly adequate. Introducing new regulations will seriously damage outcomes for a proportion of home educated children, and put others at increased risk. It would not offer any significant positive benefits, and the cost of monitoring and of prosecution when provision is deemed unsuitable will be enormous.

APPENDIX 1

Typical characteristics of an efficient and suitable education are included in section 5 of the Statutory Guidance on home education issued by the Scottish Executive in 2004

• Consistent involvement of parents or other significant carers * it is expected that parents or significant carers would play a significant role, although not necessarily constantly or actively involved in providing education.
• Presence of a philosophy or ethos (not necessarily a recognised philosophy) * it is expected that the parents have thought through their reasons for home educating, showing signs of commitment and enthusiasm, and recognition of the child’s needs, attitudes and aspirations.
• Opportunities for the child to be stimulated by their learning experiences.
• Involvement in activities * a broad spectrum of activities to cater for wide varieties of interests appropriate to the child’s stage of development.
• Access to resources / materials required to meet the objectives of the parents * such as paper and pens, books and libraries, arts and crafts materials, physical activity, ICT and the opportunity to interact with other children and other adults.

(Improved versions of these characteristics were proposed in section 3.15 of the EO response to the draft English EHE Guidelines 2005. http://tinyurl.com/3c7m22 ).

I wrote about the German Police enforcing Nazi Laws on home schoolers a month ago.

Now it seems that the rest of the world is catching up, and are rightfully horrified. My emphasis:

Earlier this month, a German teen-ager was forcibly taken from her parents and imprisoned in a psychiatric ward. Her crime? She is being home-schooled.

On Feb. 1, 15 German police officers forced their way into the home of the Busekros family in the Bavarian town of Erlangen. They hauled off 16-year-old Melissa, the eldest of the six Busekros children, to a psychiatric ward in nearby Nuremberg. Last week, a court affirmed that Melissa has to remain in the Child Psychiatry Unit because she is suffering from “school phobia.”

Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since Adolf Hitler outlawed it in 1938 and ordered all children to be sent to state schools. The home-schooling community in Germany is tiny. As Hitler knew, Germans tend to obey orders unquestioningly. Only some 500 children are being home-schooled in a country of 80 million. Home-schooling families are prosecuted without mercy.

Last March, a judge in Hamburg sentenced a home-schooling father of six to a week in prison and a fine of $2,000. Last September, a Paderborn mother of 12 was locked up in jail for two weeks. The family belongs to a group of seven ethnic German families who immigrated to Paderborn from the former Soviet Union. The Soviets persecuted them because they were Baptists. An initiative of the Paderborn Baptists to establish their own private school was rejected by the German authorities. A court ruled that the Baptists showed “a stubborn contempt both for the state’s educational duty as well as the right of their children to develop their personalities by attending school.”

All German political parties, including the Christian Democrats of Chancellor Angela Merkel, are opposed to home-schooling. They say that “the obligation to attend school is a civil obligation, that cannot be tampered with.” The home-schoolers receive no support from the official (state funded) churches, either. These maintain that home-schoolers “isolate themselves from the world” and that “freedom of religion does not justify opposition against the obligation to attend school.” Six decades after Hitler, German politicians and church leaders still do not understand true freedom: that raising children is a prerogative of their fathers and mothers and not of the state, which is never a benevolent parent and often an enemy.

Hermann Stucher, a pedagogue who called upon Christians to withdraw their children from the state schools which, he says, have fallen into the hands of “neo-Marxist activists,” has been threatened with prosecution for “Hochverrat und Volksverhetzung” (high treason and incitement of the people against the authorities). The fierceness of the authorities’ reaction is telling. The dispute is about the hearts and minds of the children. In Germany, schools have become vehicles of indoctrination, where children are brought up to unquestioningly accept the authority of the state in all areas of life. It is no coincidence that people who have escaped Soviet indoctrination discern what the government is doing in the schools and are sufficiently concerned to want to protect their children from it.

What is worrying is that most “free-born” Germans accept this assault on their freedom as normal and eye parents who opt out of the state system with suspicion.

The situation is hardly better at the European level. Last September, the European Court of Human Rights supported Hitler’s 1938 schooling bill. The Strasburg-based court, whose verdicts apply in the entire European Union, ruled that the right to education “by its very nature calls for regulation by the State.” It upheld the finding of German courts: “Schools represent society, and it is in the children’s interest to become part of that society. The parents’ right to educate does not go so far as to deprive their children of that experience.”

While it is disquieting that Europeans have not learned the lessons from their dictatorial past — upholding Nazi laws and sending dissidents, including children, to psychiatric wards, as the Soviets used to do — there is reason for Americans to worry, too. The United Nations is also restricting the rights of parents. Article 29 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that it is the goal of the state to direct the education of children. In Belgium, the U.N. Convention is currently being used to limit the constitutional right to home-school. In 1995 Britain was told that it violated the U.N. Convention by allowing parents to remove their children from public school sex-education classes.

Last year, the American Home School Legal Defense Association warned that the U.N. Convention could make home-schooling illegal in America, even though the Senate has never ratified it. Some lawyers and liberal politicians in the states claim that U.N. conventions are “customary international law” and should be considered part of American jurisprudence.

[…]

Washington Times

Wow.

As you can see, there are many people who understand perfectly that the right to educate your child is fundamental to your freedom and to the health of ‘society’. A society full of people educated out of a single system is one where everyone is not compliant like sheep, one where a totalitarian government cannot easily take hold, because everyone thinks differently on a fundamental level.

This is directly analogous to the times in the UK where there were only two television channels being watched by millions of people. It was easy to get a single message across to everyone simultaneously, and to herd thought in this way. Now, with many different outlets for thought, it is much harder to steer opinion. The Muslims watch their news on The Islam Channel which has a distinctly different take on reality and what is and is not news.

By eliminating home schooling on a wide scale, you make it much harder for a group of outsiders to exist and to have any sort of voice, and as we know, in the age of the internets, it takes a very small number of outsiders to completely change everything.

German schools are used, overtly, to control and shape society keep everyone in thrall. That is why the Germans (and the populations of Belgium, Italy and other EU states for that matter) accept ID cards without question. That is why they have no understanding of human rights. I have been saying this since 1995, when I wrote a lightweight analysis of the German Constitution, which gives rights and then takes them away with the same breath.

Now these Nazis are breathing down our necks via the EU and the UN. We won’t have it.

The philosophies that are injected into the minds of children in the state sector are simply horrifying. Completely artificial concepts like ‘Hate Speech’ are taking hold in the previously (more) free thinking west because the teachers are drilling this drivel into the young, who take it on faith that indeed there is such a thing as ‘Hate Speech’.

The same goes for all of the other lies and molten lead doublethink that gets poured into the minds of young students – and it doesn’t just happen in the classroom. Schools that are requiring students to be fingerprinted to get books out of the library or to eat lunch are softening up the students to accept this method of criminal control, this violation, as normal and acceptable. The indoctrination runs across the most innocent of actions and activities, and we have the absolute right to say ‘no’ to it and to educate our children to our own standards and in our own philosophies, whatever they may be.

By Paul Craig Roberts

The Bush-Cheney regime is America’s first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America’s moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.

This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues—principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by “scholars” in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.

The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie.

Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an American puppet was installed in Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of mass destruction that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded Iraq under totally false pretenses and with totally false expectations. The regime’s occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense, but the neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year President Bush began blaming Iran for America’s embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents in Iraq.

Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts regard as improbable. The Iraqi insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi’ites, who are closely allied with Iran, which is Shi’ite. Bush’s accusation requires us to believe that Iran is arming the enemies of its allies.

On the basis of this absurd accusation—a pure invention—Bush has ordered a heavy concentration of aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran’s coast, and he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and other US bases in countries contingent to Iran.

In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to orchestrate a “head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.” He said a plausible scenario was “a terrorist act blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran.” He said that the neoconservative propaganda machine was already articulating a “mythical historical narrative” for widening their war against Islam. [Testimony in PDF]

Why is the US spending one trillion dollars on wars, the reasons for which are patently false. What is going on?

There are several parts to the answer. Like their forebears among the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and the National Socialists of Hitler’s revolution, neoconservatives believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the rest of the world. Neoconservative conquests began in the Middle East because oil and Israel, with which neocons are closely allied, are both in the Middle East.

[…]

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070228_lost.htm

Like I have said before, if any country can turn around from a situtation like this, the usa can. It will however, cost nothing less than trillions of dollars in reparations and literally, the heads of the conspirators listed above.

Nothing less will set the balance right, and even that may not be enough.

Someone Clever Said:

Mr. Porter,

Interesting piece on WTC 7. We’re all hoping it is only a bit of doctored footage.

If it is not, please do let us know what is about to happen in or around Iran. And be so kind as to give us more than 20 minutes notice.

A classic comment from The Editors Blog where a totally retarded liar and propagandist tries to wiggle out of the complete fiasco of the ‘documentary’ and subsequent ‘911’ lost footage scandal.

We and many others have said for years that BBQ is a totally controlled, propaganda pumping, palace of prostitutes, and now the whole world knows it.

Their imbecilic staff don’t even have the self preservation common sense to simply say, “we messed up”, which would be far more believable than the ‘daddy knows best’, ‘there there’ pat on the head tone that scumbag Richard Porter takes.

They all have this attitude, from Dimbumblebee down; snot nosed, supercilious and condescending. Listen to the slimy Guy Smith slither around as Alex Jones questions him about his odious piece of shit ‘documentary’. This is what your license fee goes for; the salaries of liars and bastards who spit in your face as they collude in dismantling this great country.

It is completely impossible that they have lost the original tapes. Broadcasting industry standards make it impossible. This is why:

“I’m an archivist with the CNN News Library in Atlanta, and I can tell you with absolute certainty, the mere idea that news agencies such as ours would “misplace” any airchecks from 9/11 is preposterous. CNN has these tapes locked away from all the others. People like myself, who normally would have access to any tapes in our library, must ask special permission in order to view airchecks from that day. Multiple tapes would have been recording their broadcast that day, and there are also private agencies that record all broadcasts from all channels – constantly – in the event that a news agency missed something or needs something. They don’t just have one copy… they have several. It’s standard procedure, and as soon as the second plane hit, they would start recording several copies on other tapes machines all day long.”

What they are claiming is simply impossible. It is a lie.

As can be seen from above, private agencies will also have copies of that days footage. The totally insulting line of Porters:

So if someone has got a recording of our output, I’d love to get hold of it.

Simply beggars belief. So we are supposed to supply you with the footage? IF someone has a recording of it? Surely he must know at least what that CNN guy knows about what happens to live footage of a big event – if he does not, he should be SACKED.

Note his tone, like the details don’t matter, as if he doesn’t really work there, and has no special knowledge of the workings of the BBQ…and he is one of the editors.

This really is astonishing, not that they are lying but that they are lying so badly.

and finally, a taste of what is spreading all over the internets:

I’m not a conspiracy nut. But this footage of your reports of WTC7 collapsing a full 20 minutes prior and repeatedly discussing it’s collapse is highly suspicious.

If you were talking about a building that never did collapse, well then you’d just look imcompitent. But as we all know, building 7 did, in a feat that suspended all laws of physics and logic, collapse spontaneously due to fires on floors 7 " 12.

You can’t possibly expect us to believe this. Let’s look at all the pieces here.

1. BBC reports for 20 solid minutes that WTC7 has collapsed when even in the live shot it stands as sturdy as the day it was built.

2. The idea that WTC7 would collapse spontaneously due to minor fires and minimal damage to the north face is laughable and an insult to intelligence. But it did, approximately 5 minutes AFTER BBC’s report….or at least 5 minutes after Jane Standley’s live shot was disconnected.

3. BBC loses all of it’s 9/11 footage so this cannot be reviewed or explained. My nephew still has all his VHS tapes from that day. He recorded almost every news station for 24 hours straight. He’s 19 now. He was 13 when it happened.
So, a 13 year old can be more responsible with his VHS tapes than one of the largest news organizations?

4. The archive footage is mysteriously pulled off of youtube and google video repeatedly and without provocation or explanation.

5. BBC’s response is, ‘there is no conspiracy. it was a mistake.’

Grant us logical thinkers at least one thing. This is highly suspicious. The BBC needs to reveal what source they drew the conclusion that WTC7 had collapsed.

Oh, and the ez-out phrases like ‘it appears’ and ‘we’re receiving reports that..’ were not used throughout this footage.

Especially when the anchor starts talking about the (lack of) body count since there was so much time to evacuate since the collapse of WTC1-2.

The BBC needs to reveal what source they drew the conclusion that WTC7 had collapsed. I do not necessarily think the BBC is a witting participant in some 9/11 conspiracy, but it’s definitely looking like you were a pawn. Revealing who/where the BBC received the information that WTC7 had collapsed would be a good start in clearing your name.

Its over BBQ; you have LOST!

Here we have top sleeping policeman at BBQ trying to slow the momentum of the anti road pricing rage. He uses a straw man argument to try and pull it off. Lets see…

Here’s an old economist conundrum about queues.

Here we go.

Suppose there is a water fountain in a park. It’s a hot day and lots of people want to drink from the fountain. Being awfully British and civilised, they form an orderly queue at the fountain.

Now, if the number of thirsty people strolling past the fountain is large enough, the rate at which people join the queue will exceed the rate at which people satisfy their thirst and leave the queue. So the queue will get longer and longer.

So what. The point is that everyone has an expatiation of when they are going to be served. They choose to queue up for the water. It is fair. It is efficient. There is no problem here. Anyone can leave the queue at any time to seek another source of water…or even a coke.

But at some point, thirsty people will reason to themselves that the displeasure of waiting in the queue is not worth the pleasure of the drink at the end. They’ll avoid the wait, and the queue will grow no longer.

The market solves its own problems. Order emerges from chaotic systems automagically. There is no need for interference, tweaking and other salary addict tactics. People work out problems for themselvs, and their interactions constitute a dynamic system that is self balancing and self ordering.

So far so good. That’s how life works in many ways.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But this simple account has a devastating implication.

Are you a thespian or an economist?

If there are people who are not joining the queue because it’s not worth it, then the people who do join the queue are probably barely getting any positive benefit out of their drinking fountain experience at all.

This is bullshit. There is no such thing as ‘drinking fountain experience’. These people are thirsty. When they get to the end of the queue their thirst will be quenched. That is all there is to it. Your input, meddling and nanny stating is not needed to make this magic happen.

They enjoy the drink, but for them, it is only just worth the wait. It’s a close run thing between bothering to drink or not.

More dramatic nonsense. People are able to weigh for themselvs the cost benefit of joining a queue. In the UK, people learn to do this from a very young age. The fact that they have waited for the water means that they are satisfied with the trade off. They know perfectly well that they can go elsewhere and get water. You are simplifying the dynamics to fit your bogus argument. Well, we expect nothing less from BBQ staffers, the largest concentration of paid liars deceivers and opinion steerers in the UK.

In fact, you might as well not have a drinking fountain on the hot day, as no-one can enjoy it without paying a time penalty that more or less wipes out the benefit.

In your humble opinion the benefit is wiped out. Its a hot day. They get free water. Its up to them and not you, to decide what that is worth. This is a classic error made by people like you; you think you know what is good for other people. And its completely STUPID to say that, “you might as well not have a drinking fountain on the hot day”. If some people get satisfaction from it, it should be there. It should not have to exist according to your idiotic standards of ‘efficiency’. Typical; you would rather people suffer from dehydration than allow an ‘inefficient’ distribution system to continue unregulated. You Swine!

I hope I’ve explained this properly. It’s a simplified account, and it relies on all the people in the park having a similar taste for drinking and not queuing.

Its completely bogus. Like most arguments made by hack economists, they create totally false idealized models of human behavior and then start to write garbage about it. Nothing wrong with that, but when you do it on the licence fee payers back, its a different proposition altogether, especially when you use this false reasoning to justify evil like orwellian road pricing, by direct order of Bliar and his contractors.

But it shows that when queuing does the rationing, it does a really bad job.

No, it doesn’t show that at all. It shows that you are not very good at making an argument. You are admitting that its a simplified model, not fit for purpose, but then in the next line, you say its good enough for the argument! Holding two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. You are a model citizen!

In the park, if you could get a warden to ban people from queuing, and who instead insisted that only random people could drink, (people whose surname begins with A to K for example), the fountain would give more benefit, (although that benefit would be distributed a little unfairly).

The police state option. The first line of choice from a BBQ animal. No surprise there.

There is another alternative that’s a little more equitable. If it’s practical, you can charge people to use the fountain.

‘Tax them’. Another ‘let the state control it’ ‘solution’. BBQ are the most unimaginative people out there. Its sickening.

Now, those who do pay, have the benefit of drinking without queuing,

NOW HOLD ON A MINUTE THERE BUSTER.

There are many other options to knock down this straw man problem:

• Put up a sign showing people alternative sources of water.
• Put in more fountains.
• Allow vendors to sell water in the park.
• $insert_your_solution_here

I have always hated the ‘this or that’ style of posing an argument that journalists are so fond of; it precludes any other, perhaps better options and arguments. It narrows the dialogue. Constrains thought. Its bad.

but they have the cost of paying. So on balance they are better off using the fountain, but probably only just better off. As far as they’re concerned, we haven’t improved things much over the queuing situation: we’ve just changed the pain of queuing by the pain in the purse.

The state of being ‘well off’ depends on who is being asked. What a biased BBQ ‘economist’ thinks is better for you and I is, I assure you, not what is actually better for you and I. And that is a fact.

The difference is though, that the money they’ve handed over can be of benefit to someone else, or the population at large.

But the population at large will never know, because their monies are routinely misdirected and never properly accounted for.

There is an upside to the drinkers’ displeasure, unlike in the case where the queue does the rationing.

Or to put it another way: when you queue – I get no benefit from your pain. When you pay, I probably do.

Now that is a pretty good argument against the use of rationing by queues.

It may not be a good argument for road pricing, but it does explain why economists tend to think of the price mechanism as a better method of rationing things than congestion.

[…]

The Reporters at BBQ

This is a concatenation of utter gibberish.

What this moron leaves out is the fact that the road pricing scheme is more about surveillance than it is about relieving congestion. HMG already has plans to put cameras on every inch of road, “to deny criminals the use of the roads”. What that means is that the criminals will use the roads as they have done before, and all ordinary, non criminal drivers will have their every movement recorded by a Big Brother system.

This couldn’t be more far removed from a water fountain in a park could it?

If you want to eliminate congestion in any place, you simply have to take cars off of the roads.

Think about a pint glass in your local. The beautiful brown haired bar maid starts pulling your pint. As the golden nectar reaches the top, she stops pulling. If she were to keep pulling, the bitter would start to spill everywhere, the publican sees his money spilling onto the floor, and you have to wait longer for your pint, which will still have only a pint of beer in it when it is handed to you.

Now think about London. London has a finite road capacity. Lets say that it is 200,000 cars on the road, plus all parked cars that have the potential of getting on the road at any time. When London is full, it should be closed off to incoming traffic. That means that on every road around the whole of london, barriers come down and no more cars are allowed in.

Cars are allowed out of course, and for every car allowed out, one is allowed in.

There is no need to take down the license numbers of each car. This is a case of simple counting, and capacity, just like the pint glass. There is no need to count in every sweet molecule of brew as it enters the glass; gravity takes care of it for you automagically. What cars do when they get into London is their business. As long as the capacity of London is not exceeded, the mission is accomplished. The quality of life for all Londoners improves dramatically, no one is disadvantaged by an iniquitous Congestion charging scheme, there is no opportunity for a Big Brother surveillance system of absolutely hideous cameras despoiling the city and making its inhabitants feel like prisoners in their own town, and if each of the entry points is manned, well, its jobs for the boys. And economists like jobs don’t they?

The simple solutions are the best. Take your lead from Beer. It almost always works.

Now there are those who say that such a scheme would cause chaos. So what. There is a cost to driving that has been ignored for decades. Everyone has to understand that there is a limit to the number of cars that can be on the roads, and there is a limit to the number of roads that are possible in any country. By setting the capacity of cities and roads and then cutting off access, people will have to think hard before they take their car out. There will be many systems that will grow out of this method of flow control; imagine the GPS navigation systems overlaid with the capacity of the roads and cities in real time. You could use a system like that to plan your journey. As you approach, say, London at 7:45 in the morning, the capacity left would be shown. If there is no chance of you getting there before ‘LonCap’ reaches 100%, your GPS will tell you to get off of the M4 NOW and park so that you can get a train.

This is the sort of solution that is preferable to the orwell style Blair Brother ‘options’. All you need to do is THINK about the problem correctly, with the rights of people uppermost as you consider what needs to be done.

Without beer, its harder to do.

It feels so different watching an aircraft carrier group coming toward you than watching it sailing away from you toward another part of the world.

I’m an American who used to live in New York City. All my life, when I heard about warships, it was US warships going places far away. I never even imagined hostile warships sailing toward New York. Now I’m in Tehran, and aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis is heading our way. And as it sails, people are discussing Israel and/or the US bombing Iran as if my family and 69 million other people weren’t even here. I’m getting scared.

Most Iranians that I know don’t worry about this as much as I do, though they’re wondering how the sanctions will affect the economy. Khomeini had a famous saying that we actually saw on a sign yesterday in another town: “America can’t do anything to us.” Some friends here speculate that Bush just needs an enemy so that he can continue his programs in the US, and that Iran is the enemy du jour. I wish I could believe that.

The way I see it, somebody has to stop the US president right now, and it’s very upsetting that the Congress isn’t doing it. My frustration is greater because I’m in a country where the Internet is not completely available. For example, I tried to send a donation to Dennis Kucinich, but PayPal wouldn’t take it because of the embargo. I tried to write to my Congressperson, but the Islamic Republic blocked the communication, presumably because it was with the US government. (Sometimes news stories that I want to read are blocked, too, but there are ways around that.)

If the US and/or Israel attack Iran, it will be a war based on lies, just like the Iraq war. Iraq didn’t have WMD, but Iraqis died in the hundreds of thousands. The lies about Iran seem intended to, first, make Iran look like the new Nazi state that must be bombed so as to avoid a new Holocaust, and second, make Americans fear that Iran will hurt our soldiers in Iraq or give nuclear weapons to terrorists who will hurt us in “the homeland.”

History shows that Americans are very susceptible to demonization of particular leaders of countries that the US wants to attack. Remember Castro? Noriega? Saddam? Now it’s Ahmadinejad. Whatever people think of views attributed to Ahmadinejad, it remains the case that it’s not morally acceptable to kill people because of their president, whether that president be Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or George Bush.

I want to discuss six big lies we are hearing to justify expanding the war to Iran.

LIE NUMBER 1: President Ahmadinejad “has repeatedly threatened to wipe Israel off the map.”

Even Al Jazeera English version based in Qatar keeps saying that. Why hasn’t this mistranslation been corrected after it’s been thoroughly exposed? (in the Guardian and prisonplanet.com)

Juan Cole, in Informed Comment, explained how “wiped off the map” was a mistranslation; Ahmadinejad was restating the official Iranian policy that the government system based on Zionism must end. And why the heck can’t newscasters learn to pronounce the man’s name? Anyone who knows Farsi could teach them in a minute. Why should we think they know what he said, in Farsi, if they can’t even say his name?

LIE NUMBER 2: The Iranian government is run by 1930s-style anti-Semites.

Last Spring, a story was planted that the Iranian parliament had passed a law forcing Iranian Jews to wear yellow badges. “Fourth Reich,” screamed a banner headline on one of the New York City tabloids. In a few days, the neocon source was disclosed and the story was completely retracted by the Canadian paper in which it was first published. The New York paper never apologized. When I mention the “yellow badges” to people here in Iran, they look incredulous. “But … that didn’t happen.” I know. But I’ll bet there are some Americans, and Israelis, who actually believe Jewish Iranians are walking around wearing yellow badges.

LIE NUMBER 3: Iran is bent on wiping out the Jews.

Maybe Americans should have a little humility and remember how recalcitrant the US was about accepting Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler during WWII. Iran has a very good history, under Cyrus the Great, of protecting the Jews. The long history of Jews in Persia is indicated by a monument to the Jewish prophet Daniel in the south of Iran. As for the European Holocaust deniers who were among the speakers at the Holocaust conference in Tehran, I just can’t figure it out, unless Ahmadinejad is trying to win popularity points with pro-Palestinian regional populations by appearing to be unafraid of Israel and the US. Or he could be a fool and/or a religious fundamentalist (like some other presidents who shall go unnamed).

LIE NUMBER 4: Iran is causing trouble in Iraq and threatening Arab states.

Everyone should be very clear: Who’s meddling in Iraq, who’s flying thousands of missions shooting at Iraqi citizens, who attacked whose diplomatic mission, who is detaining whose citizens, and who has announced that it is supporting subversive operations inside whose country and across whose border (from Iraqi Kurdistan)? Most likely some of the undemocratic and unpopular rulers in the Middle East are afraid that their own citizens may be attracted to the Iranian model. That may concern the US oil men and financiers who have business and military ties with them, but it’s not a reason for Americans to back destruction of Iran.

LIE NUMBER 5: Iran is dangerous to humanity because it’s trying to get nuclear weapons.

Other people who know more than I are writing about the nuclear issues. But regarding threats by Israel and the US to bomb Iranian nuclear research sites, that’s a violation of international law, not to mention a danger to innocent civilians. Regulating nuclear activities is the responsibility of the IAEA. So far, the IAEA has declared that Iran does not have nuclear weapons and is in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That’s more than we can say about the USA, which is supposed to be actively disarming its 10,000 warheads, not refurbishing them and developing new kinds of nuclear weapons. Though there are good reasons to think Iran does not want nuclear weapons, let’s imagine, just for the sake of argument, that Iran would someday acquire them. Humanity has managed to live with other countries having nukes. The only reason Iran’s having nukes would be of greater concern would be if the lies spelled out above were true. But they’re lies.

LIE NUMBER 6: Iranians are looking to the USA to bring them democracy, just like the USA has brought democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq.

I’m living here in Tehran, Iran, now, with my family, as are many other Americans, Europeans, Asians, and other foreigners. We are inviting friends and relatives to come and visit. The skiing’s fine. More democracy and more civil liberties would be better, but there are elections and there are laws and there are non-governmental organizations and you can approach public officials. Whatever’s not right with this country is the business of the people here to work on. Some Iranians living in other countries want the US to “save” Iran. I don’t know, but I suspect people like that would like the US to magically bring back the good old days when the US-allied Shah sat on his throne and the well-off classes had a fine life. If anyone finds any overseas Iranians who actually are willing to see Iran bombed, I hope the reporters ask them if they have any relatives currently living in Iran. I hope Americans don’t take these has-beens too seriously.

Rosa Schmidt Azadi is a long-time peace activist, an anthropologist, and a retired civil servant who’s also a wife, daughter, sister, aunt, great-aunt, godmother, and the mother of two college students. After walking out of the smoke of the 9-11 attacks in New York City and returning to participate in the recovery effort, Rosa began working to prevent further death and destruction in other countries at the hands of the U.S. government. Participating in a peace vigil at the World Trade Center site for more than three years gave her the privilege of talking with thousands of people from all over the world about things that matter most. Dr. Azadi has earned two advanced degrees and is still learning. Currently, she’s splitting her time between Tehran, Iran, and upstate New York.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_rosa_sch_070202_six_lies_you_shouldn.htm

Introduction

On February 18, 2007, the BBC broadcasted an hour-long episode which it claimed would examine and answer the questions of the 9-11 truth movement. However, both the episode and the written Q&A turned out to be attacks on the skeptics rather than a true investigation. The public was presented with a heavily controlled and edited discussion, which was rigged in favour of the official story. Worse yet, propaganda techniques were used to portray the opponents of the official story unfairly. Techniques included: manipulative camerawork, personal attacks and a show which focussed on only the weakest evidence presented by the opponents of the official story.

The aim of this article is to address the inaccurate rebuttals offered by the BBC, as well as to analyse the propaganda techniques and reiterate the questions that the BBC failed to address.

[…]

http://debunking-bbc.blogspot.com/

I saw this programme; it was truly bad, in every possible way.

The programme makers must live in a paralel universe, where there is no internet.

This programme will bring more shame on the BBQ; more people have watched ‘Lose Change’ and Terrorstorm than will ever watch a BBQ propaganda piece.

The shit-storm has already begun, and the programme makers are all running for cover no doubt.

Idiots.

Now listen to the person who made this atrocity get grilled by Alex Jones.

The build up to “Operation Persian Freedom” (sic) (sick) continues apace. Today, BBQ headline with:

US accuses Iran over Iraq bombs

… by which you would assume the resident Whitehouse demi-Klingon had sent official word to Tehran. Not quite…

US claims the bombs were smuggled from Iran cannot be independently verified.

The US officials, speaking off camera on condition of anonymity,

!!!

More propaganda served up as ‘news’ by our public servants. It’s only going to get worse.

Contact: Ilona, Urban, Blakeley – Press Secretary to Aaron Russo
Company: All Your Freedoms, Inc.

Website: http://www.freedomtofascism.com

Winner of numerous Awards, Aaron Russo, announces documentary milestone:

“America: Freedom To Fascism” a groundbreaking non-partisan political documentary jumps overnight to #1 on “Google Video United Kingdom” and #4 on “Google Video Worldwide”.

“America: Freedom to Fascism”, the Grassroots-driven, underground documentary by Writer/Director/Producer, Aaron Russo is a full length feature film with a 5 star “highest rating” on Google Video.

Overnight, the film jumped in rank to #4 on Google Worldwide and to #1 on Google United Kingdom. As of the morning of February 5, 2007 “America: Freedom to Fascism” has been viewed a total of 1,522,097 times since it was first uploaded to Google on October 20, 2006.

Mr. Russo is gratified with the public success of the film despite the fact it has not received a single review from any mainstream television or major media organization.

The American people are to be congratulated for waking up to the fact their Government has shirked its responsibility to coin money, and instead handed it over to a private banking cartel, the Federal Reserve, which charges the government interest on the paper they print.

This fact explains the American government’s burdensome debt which falls squarely on the shoulders of every working American. Yet no Politician is addressing this issue.

Mr. Russo’s previous films have received 6 Academy Award nominations, and he personally has won an Emmy, Tony, Grammy, Golden Globe and an NAACP Image Award for Best Film of the Year; AND is credited with the all-time classics: The Rose with Bette Midler and Trading Places with Eddie Murphy.

The amazing success of this film illustrates the power of the internet and grassroots word of mouth activism.
This compelling documentary has captivated grassroots audiences worldwide since its Fall theatrical and internet release.

“America: Freedom to Fascism” chronicles the history of the Federal Reserve System, the resultant income tax, and leads the viewer into the imminent future of our soon-to-be controlled, way of life. Russo has brilliantly written a documentary about a seemingly “dry” topic and turned it into a riveting masterpiece. This is one history lesson you’re not likely to forget anytime soon.

Russo affirms, “The People are ready for this. They know something isn’t right, and this explains it all. They are hungry for this information”. People want the truth. Aaron is ready, able and willing to deliver it. Perhaps Mr. Russo is on to something.

LONDON, England (CNN) — A woman was injured Wednesday when a suspected parcel bomb exploded at government agency in western Britain, the third such incident in as many days, police said.

The bomb detonated at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea, south Wales. (See Map)

“One female has been taken to hospital with injuries, which are not believed to be life-threatening,” a police statement said.

“A cordon has been put in place and nearby residents are being evacuated as a precautionary measure.” The DVLA said the injured woman dealt with the company’s mail.

On Tuesday, two people were injured when a similar device exploded at a business center in Wokingham, southwest of London, police.

The bomb targeted Vantis, a company involved in processing speeding fines.

On Monday, a padded envelope exploded at an office belonging to Capita Group, which administers the $16 daily fee meant to cut down on traffic in central London.

Police have yet to say whether the explosions were linked, but Britain’s Home Secretary, John Reid, has expressed concern.

“Naturally, these incidents are worrying. It is important that we allow police to get on with their investigation without undue speculation,” he said.

Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper quoted police saying the bombs could be the work of a “militant motorist.

An anti-speed camera campaigner identified as “Captain Gatso” said his Motorists Against Detection organization was not responsible for the bombs, the Daily Mail said.

[…]

CNN

First the Congestion Charging offices, then Vantis who make speed cameras and now the DVLA.

Up and down the country, from John O Groats to Lands End people are saying….

Well, what do you expect?

Using The Google:

UK: Captain Gatso Declares War on Speed Cameras
Motorists Against Destruction declare a zero-tolerance policy for speed cameras in the UK.

Captain Gatso The mysterious leader of Motorists Against Detection (MAD), an anti-speed camera group, has declared a “zero-tolerance” policy for photo enforcement in light of statistics that show the devices have caused an increase in accidents. Captain Gatso, a Tony Blair mask-wearing family man in his 40s asserted his group would begin stepping up attacks.

“This will be civil disobedience on a grand scale,” he told the Sunday Express newspaper. “We are planning to target any and all cameras until the government sees sense and re-thinks its road safety policy. Before we had speed cameras we had the safest roads in Europe. Since their introduction this is no longer true.”

The group, which claims two hundred members, has been responsible for the destruction of between 600 and 1000 speed cameras since 2000. Newly developed technologies allow for camera destruction within a matter of seconds.

“Most of the organizing group are just ordinary blokes with families who are sick of us heading towards a police state,” Captain Gatso said. “There will be a zero tolerance policy towards all cameras. We need to focus attention on what the cameras are about.”

In Liverpool, an eighteen year old was arrested around midnight on June 14 for using a hammer to smash a speed camera on New Chester Road in Birkenhead.

Source: Gatso gang return (Sunday Express (UK), 6/18/2006)

This is just the beginning. If they DARE to try and introduce ID cards, there will be civil disobedience on a huge scale. Enough is enough!

Militant motorists are well on target for achieving their initial aim of wiping out 1,000 speed cameras. Their current score is 700+ and rising daily. Cameras costing £24,000 to replace have been battered down, blown up and shot to bits from southern England to the highlands of Scotland and from Norfolk to west Wales.

Chief constables all over Britain have raised public anger levels to unprecedented heights through their policy of raising cash with speed cameras while ignoring the types of crime which have the biggest impact on people’s lives, such as burglary.

Perhaps burgled citizens need to take the same sort of affirmative action adopted by the motorists. Insisting on a personal apology from the chief constable for every unsolved home invasion would be a good start, and having their noses rubbed in their own mess might help some senior coppers to focus their minds on their failure to do the job that the customers want done.

At last.

Like I said in another post, the Congestion Charge system has to be next. It would be best (as always) to be clever about it and take them out with microwave weapons. Failing that, imagine paying the feral youths of London to climb up the poles and tape plastic bags over the cameras. There are so many ways to disrupt that system…but the most important one is a simple refusal to pay. Millions of people refusing to cooperate will destroy it utterly. The knocking out of the cameras with plastic bags could be the catalyst to wake up the motorists out of their compliant slumber.

And finally, this is why mass-like action is preferable, not only because no one gets hurt, but because there are new tools that are being used to disrupt any civil disobedience:

[…] “They just seemed to come from nowhere and they didn’t know anyone. They had rigs [lorries] but they were very clean and they didn’t look as if they’d been used.”

The new recruits spent a lot of time arguing against taking any action and spreading doubts about the need for it. “They were saying things like: ‘Think of the hospitals, what happens if it goes like 2000?'” says Gatso.

GATSO suspects someone has been in his house. “My computer disks in my study at home have been gone through. They are in a different order from the way I left them,” he says. “My paperwork is in the same drawers but not in the same order. One of the locks feels like it has been interfered with.”

Members of the group have complained that they are being followed by the same cars for long periods. Gatso says he was stopped by two men in an Audi on the A1 near Hatfield. They told him they knew what he was up to.

If these claims are true, the work is likely to have been done by local Special Branches and a secretive, Scotland Yard-based police taskforce called the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). Few have heard of it, but its role in controlling dissent is central.

Established by the Blair Government in 1998 to monitor “politically motivated disorder”, in the words of the Inspectorate of Constabulary, the NPOIU, says the Home Office, “provides critical support to forces across the UK in maintaining a strategic overview of public order issues”.

MI5’s website describes the unit as dealing with “Right and Leftwing extremists, animal rights extremists and other militant single-issue protesters”. In its seven-year history, according to the Metropolitan Police Authority accounts, its budget has steadily grown. […]

Find Articles

My emphasis.

Well. You know for sure that NO2ID Phil and all his crew are on that list.

Something tells me that this shadowy group is not powerful enough to poison the internets. The mass cannot be poisoned, it eats poison, and then collects it in a gland, where it is pointed at and laughed at. You have seen the posts everywhere, the ones by anonymous glove puppets that say “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” in any forum discussing ID cards (there are LOTS of those on BBQ btw).

They have learned nothing from the Soviet era. It doesn’t matter how many secrete disruption groups you set up, the fact of the matter is, once the momentum is there, it is unstoppable, and today, with the internets, the build up of momentum is very fast.

This is absolutely hilarious!

Makes you think that the hip, young advisors at the Home Office are suggesting  these things to Dr Reid just to make him look like the idiotic, out of touch dinosaur we all know and abhor.

The BBQ ‘expert’ speaks…

“He said the government’s move was a step in the right direction and the industry would co-operate – but opportunities would arise for organisations to market “premium” – allegedly untraceable – e-mail accounts.

If everyone had a single internet identity for life, like a National Insurance number, this would make it far easier to track people, he said.” Mwah hahahahahahaha!!! PMSL.

===

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq’s parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed’s seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq.

U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki’s government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, whom it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as “a conduit for weapons and political influence.”

Repeated efforts by CNN to reach Jamal Jafaar Mohammed for comment through the parliament, through the ruling Shiite Muslim coalition and the Badr Organization — the Iranian-backed paramilitary organization he once led — have been unsuccessful. (Watch how a convicted terrorist became an Iraqi lawmaker Video)

A Kuwaiti court sentenced Jamal Jafaar Mohammed to death in 1984 in the car bombings of the U.S. and French embassies the previous December. Five people died in the attacks and 86 were wounded.

He had fled the country before the trial.

Western intelligence agencies also accuse Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of involvement in the hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner in 1984 and the attempted assassination of a Kuwaiti prince.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed won a seat in Iraq’s Council of Representatives in the U.S.-backed elections of December 2005. He represents Babil province, south of Baghdad, in parliament.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman said officials are actively pursuing Jamal Jafaar Mohammed’s case with Iraqi officials. Al-Maliki has urged American intelligence officials to share their information with Iraqi lawmakers, who could strip Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of his parliamentary immunity.

“We don’t want parliament to be a shelter for outlaws and wanted people,” al-Maliki told CNN. “This is the government’s view, but the parliament is responsible. I don’t think parliament will accept having people like [him] or others currently in the parliament.”

Al-Maliki’s political party, Dawa, claimed responsibility for the Kuwait bombings at the time but now disavows them. The Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim party was forced into exile under former dictator Saddam Hussein, who was executed in December.

The prime minister says the situation is embarrassing — not only to his government but to a U.S. administration that holds up Iraq’s government as a democratic model for the region. […]

The CNN

So. A ‘Terrorist’ turned law-maker…just like George Washington.

This man has turned from ‘Terrorism’ to democracy. What more can you want? If all the ‘terrorists’ turned from blowing up stuff to sitting in parliament, would that be a bad thing?

Some people just will not be satisfied!

BBQ has an (shock) article by a named author on The Great Satan’s lust to be able to destroy everything:

The declassified document is called “Information Operations Roadmap”. It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

[…]

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

All these are engaged in information operations. […]

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military’s psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

“Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience,” it reads.

“Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” it goes on. […]

“In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States – even though they were directed abroad,” says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive. […]

Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories – all supportive of US policy – were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon. […]

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

“Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will ‘fight the net’ as it would an enemy weapons system,” it reads.

The slogan “fight the net” appears several times throughout the roadmap. […]

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to “provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum”.

US forces should be able to “disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum”.

Consider that for a moment.

The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

The fact that the “Information Operations Roadmap” is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military’s ambitions for it.

[…]

The article. The paper.

Now you know for sure that the worldwide ID / Biometric Net project is being cast in these terms by the Pentagon. Mark My Mords™ the documents exist.

This document states clearly that everyone other than those at the Pentagon is the enemy. ‘The Mass’, in the Baudrillard sense, is the enemy. YOU are the enemy.

But you know this!