The ban on liquids such as toothpaste and perfume being carried through airport security in hand luggage will be lifted at UK airports in November.

This is inadequate, either there is a (non-)credible threat from liquid explosives or there is not. As there is not, neither practically nor created by F.E.A.R. then there is no reason for the ban to lifted IMMEDIATELY. It took a matter of days to ease the total ban on hand luggage, why so long for liquids.

The banning of all-but-essential liquids in hand luggage was introduced after an alleged plot to blow up planes was thwarted last month.

Under a new Europe-wide agreement to be approved next week, passengers will be able to carry on board 100ml containers of liquid in a transparent plastic bag.

So despite the ‘lifting of the ban’ the impositions and subtle degredations of passengers will continue. People are supposed to feel grateful that they are now allowed a simulacrum of ‘normaility’?

Since the tightening of restrictions on Aug 10, passengers leaving UK airports for all destinations except the United States have been allowed to take liquids in carry-on luggage as long as the items were bought after travellers have passed through security checks.

But those travelling to America cannot take liquids on board even if purchased at “airside” outlets.

Good, good continue to shoot yourselves in the foot.

Earlier this week, US authorities said liquids could be taken on board flights leaving America if they were purchased from secure airport stores.

The UK’s deception still subject to junior role in the ‘special relationship’.

On Aug 10, all carry-on bags were banned, leading to huge queues at airports and numerous flight delays and cancellations.

After a few days, smaller hand luggage was permitted to be taken on board and last week the DfT announced that larger bags would once again be permitted on planes.

This is not the road back to normality. This is the road to the State increasingly defining/controllling perceptions of normality.

Civil liberties
“Let liberty stand up for the law-abiding”, Mr Blair insisted as he defended his record on civil liberties and ID cards. He said there was a fundamental dilemma: “How do we reconcile liberty with security in this new world?
“I don’t want to live in a police state or a Big Brother society or put any of our essential freedoms in jeopardy. Because our idea of liberty is not keeping pace with change in reality, those freedoms are in jeopardy.” […]
Independent

???!!!

Run that by me again?

‘Liberty’ is not a person. It is a property that human beings either have or do not have. It cannot stand for or against anything. Only people can stand up for something.

There is no ‘fundamental dilemma’ this is another Bliar lie. The world is no different now to what it has been in the past, and human nature has not changed over the last twenty years. We have clear evidence of this in Bliar’s predilection for lying, his lust for Orwellian ‘Police State on Crack’ superpowers and his total disregard for the rights of human beings both here and abroad.

The fact that he can even ask such a question, “How do we reconcile liberty with security” puts the badge of fascism on his breast. Security can never be paid for by anything other than humility and respect for other human beings. When you BOMB THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of other people’s countries, YOU MAKE YOURSELF INSECURE. This is obvious, to anyone who is a normal human being, and anyone with even a slight understanding of foreign policy in the twentieth century.

Liberty is the same as life itself for a human being. With that in mind, how can you possibly say, “how do re reconcile life with security?”. Its all nonsense on stilts of course. But you know this.

“I don’t want to live in a police state or a Big Brother society…”

That is a lie. His sons are going to have to live in such a place if nothing is done to undo the damage that Bliar has done to Britain. His own son was caught drunk on a bench in Leicester Square, and had it happened more recently, he would find himself on the DNA database, with a criminal record, just for being drunk. This is the very police state that Bliar has brought into being. For him to say that he does not want to live in such a place, can only mean that he intends to leave Britain, since he has no intention of fixing what was not broken and which he smashed with his communist hammer.

Because our idea of liberty is not keeping pace with change in reality, those freedoms are in jeopardy.

Your ‘idea of liberty’ is not the true face of liberty. Period. Liberty is fixed. It does not change over time, as human beings do not change over time. Liberty is a principle that is immutable. Our freedoms belong to US, and are not currency to be bartered while you experiment with foreign policy adventures (matches). Bliar is right that our freedoms are in jeopardy; in jeopardy from the likes of him and his slobbering mad dog successor, ‘the gargoyle turd’, Brown.

The final insult cam thusly:

in the years to come, wherever I am, whatever I do. I’m with you. […]
Full Text

Bliar puts himself in the position of GOD.

Good riddance to bad rubbish: Bliar.

The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the programme.

The former officials said the CIA interrogators’ refusal was a factor in forcing the Bush administration to act earlier than it might have wished.

When Mr Bush announced the suspension of the secret prison programme in a speech before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, some analysts thought he was trying to gain political momentum before the November midterm congressional elections.

The administration publicly explained its decision in light of the legal uncertainty surrounding permissible interrogation techniques following the June Supreme Court ruling that all terrorist suspects in detention were entitled to protection under Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.

But the former CIA officials said Mr Bush’s hand was forced because interrogators had refused to continue their work until the legal situation was clarified because they were concerned they could be prosecuted for using illegal techniques. One intelligence source also said the CIA had refused to keep the secret prisons going.

Senior officials and Mr Bush himself have come close to admitting this by saying CIA interrogators sought legal clarity. But no official has confirmed on the record how and when the secret programme actually came to an end.

John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, who was interviewed by Fox News on Sunday, said in response to a question of whether CIA interrogators had refused to work: “I think the way I would answer you in regard to that question is that there’s been precious little activity of that kind for a number of months now, and certainly since the Supreme Court decision.”

In an interview with the Financial Times, John Bellinger, legal adviser to the state department, went further, saying there had been “very little operational activity” on CIA interrogations since the passage last December of a bill proposed by Senator John McCain outlawing torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners.

Mr Bellinger said the secret prisons remained empty for the moment. But he defended the US position that use of such prisons did not contravene international conventions as some in Europe have argued. He also said that, theoretically, the Pentagon as well as the CIA had the legal right to run such facilities. The CIA declined to comment.

Key figures among the 14 prisoners transferred to Guantánamo, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had been held in secret centres for three years or more. […]

Financial Times

“You do not know these men. You may have looked at them, but you did not see them. They are the wind that blows newspapers down a gutter on a windy night… and sweeps the gutter clean.”

If only….

The truth is, these CIA torturers KNEW that they could be sacrificed to placate the international community should the whole facade fall to pieces. Bush would get away with ordering the war crimes because all presidents give unconditional pardons to their predecessors. Someone would have to pay, and that would be the people who did the dirty work.

This means that they (the CIA) believe that it is possible that everything can change and that civilization can indeed re-assert itself and that the USA will be made to back down.

They are frightened.

We can win!

One of the greatest leaders of any country today is His Excellency President Perves Musharaf.

We have just had confirmed what we suspected all along; The Great Satan threatened to obliterate Pakistan if they did not go along with the bogus, illegitimate, murderous and totally insane ‘war on terror’.

What is interesting is the pathetic simpering denial by Murder Drone Richard Armitage; does this demonic minion REALLY think that his phone call to Pakistan WAS NOT RECORDED?! Should he continue his denial, this tape MUST BE RELEASED, to prove once again, as if it needed proving, that these people are the most violent uncivilized bunch of venal lying murderers ever to hold the reigns of a modern nation.

His Excellency President Perves Musharaf is a great strategist and leader. He has kept Pakistan off of the Neocon radar, kept his nuclear weapons, kept his relations with whomever he wants, AND he is finally making peace with India. He has his cake and is eating it.

After this storm, this Terrorstorm is over, and civilization re-asserts itself, Pakistan will have weathered it intact, and they can then forge ahead into the clean future. Iranians I am sure, are looking at this very carefully. The Gardens of Isfahan should not be burned up over a short term dispute over nothing…over ‘honor’. Iran should weather this storm intact….how can they do it?

If you have seen any of the ‘interviews’ with His Excellency President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (like the appalling one that recently appeared on CNN where the human vermin ‘interviewer’ quipped that he worked in a country where there is a ‘free press’ after His Excellency President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked him wether he asked questions that he wanted to ask or wether the questions were given to him by someone else) you will see that despite being 100% in the right, with all moral authority, His Excellency President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ruins the perception of Iran every time with his poor PR skills. His Excellency President Perves Musharaf has these skills and more. That is why Pakistan is in such an enviable position. Not only do they have all of the above, but now, they have TGS on the defensive, and The Times of London on their side; the side of an Islamic nation!

Its astonishing actually.

Reading about John Reid’s visit to Waltham Forest, and it’s ‘critical reception’ I couldn’t help but think of other authoritarian scum, ahem, political figures who have gone to ‘immigrant areas’ in East London.

The Battle of Cable Street or Cable Street Riot took place on Sunday October 4, 1936 in Cable Street in the East End of London. It was a clash between the police, overseeing a lawful march by the British Union of Fascists, on one side and anti-fascists including local Jewish, socialist, and communist groups on the other. The majority of both marchers and counter-protesters travelled into the area for this purpose.

In spite of the East End at that time having a large Jewish population, and the anti-Semitic nature of the B.U.F., the government refused to ban the march.

The anti-fascist groups erected roadblocks in an attempt to prevent the march from taking place. Although the police attempted to clear the road to permit the march to proceed, after a series of running battles between the police and anti-fascist demonstrators, the march did not take place, and the B.U.F. marchers were dispersed towards Hyde Park instead.

(Wikipedia)

Some memories:

Solley Kaye

[…]

The fascists had their strongholds in places like Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, South Hackney, parts of Poplar, all of which were on the edge of Stepney where the large Jewish population lived. So that they could involve people on the basis of envy fear, or whatever, by saying “OVER THERE the Jews, they’ve got your houses, OVER THERE the Jews, they’ve got your jobs.” Even though we were living in bloody poverty with bugs crawling all over us in the night.

[…]

Charlie Goodman

Charlie Goodman’s arrest on 4 October 1936 was notable for two things – the sheer brutality of the police and the guts of this 16 year-old kid who faced up to them.

At one point in the battle at Gardiner’s Corner, when after literally hours of police charges the crowd retreated a bit, Charlie climbed up a lamp post and shouted at the top of his voice: “Don’t be yellow bellies, forward, we are winning”. The police eventually caught up with him in Commercial Road and he was clubbed, punched and kicked all the way to Leman Street police station. (Things have not changed much. How many Asians have suffered similarly at that police station in the last 15 years?)

[…]

“The names change, the streets are the Same, and so are the problems. The glorious struggle of 1936 must be remembered today.”

There will be the 70th anniversary events on the 8th October. What would be an appropriate way to remember it?

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

America Freedom To Fascism

There are many great documentaries out there today. We are finally seeing the critical mass of both near zero cost distribution and  super cheap filming and editing equipment coming together in a runaway chain reactoin of information that is literally changing the world before our eyes.

Now all we need is the next element to go critical; the mass refusal of the population to engage with the global insanity that has gripped this world. A world-wide chain reaction of non cooperation with the nonsense, warmongering, waste and unrefined sleaze that makes all of our lives less pleasant than they should be.

Violent protests at UK’s ‘lying PM’
(Filed: 19/09/2006)

Caught on tape, prime minister who admitted lying

Protesters have clashed with police and stormed the headquarters of the BBC in West London after a leaked recording caught the UK’s prime minister admitting the government “lied morning, evening and night” about ‘security’.

Rescue services said at least 50 demonstrators and 102 policemen were injured as police fired tear gas and water cannons at rock-throwing protesters, who have been demanding the government resign.

The calls for Mr Blair to step down follow the leak on Monday of a recording in which he could be heard admitting that his government, which became the first in post-cThatcherist Britain to win re-election, had lied about the terrorist threat — keeping it afloat through “hundreds of tricks” and thanks to “divine providence.”

Several thousand police reinforcements were called to the capital from across the country at the height of the violence, which peaked when protesters set fire to the BBC television studios.

Police succeeded in retaking the TV building and driving out protesters only after 3 a.m., more than five hours after the unrest started.

By 7:45 a.m, London was in flames and there was no sign of ministers inside parliament.

The protests were sparked when a recording made in May was leaked to local media. On it, ‘Ex-communist’ Home Secretary John Reid admitted officials lied about terrorist threats to impose legislation.

According to a snap poll of 500 people yesterday, 43 per cent of people thought Mr Blair should be shot immediately, while 47 per cent said he should hang and 10 per cent wanted him electrocuted.

But despite the surge in violence and low approval ratings, Mr Blair said that he had no plans to resign.

“The street is not a solution, but instead causes conflict and crisis,” the prime minister told BBC News 24, the state news service. “Our job is to resolve the conflict and prevent a crisis.”

Smaller anti-government protests were also held in other cities around England, but violence was minimal.

Socialist members of Labour voted unanimously to install Gordon Brown and the government called for an emergency session of the cabinet on this morning.

“Sausages” – As Punch said to Judy

British Army expert casts doubt on ‘liquid explosives’ threat, Al Qaeda network in UK Identified

Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, has suggested that the police and government story about the “terror plot” revealed on 10th August was part of a “pattern of lies and deceit.”

British and American government officials have described the operation which resulting in the arrest of 24 mostly British Muslim suspects, as a resounding success. Thirteen of the suspects have been charged, and two released without charges.

According to security sources, the terror suspects were planning to board up to ten civilian airliners and detonate highly volatile liquid explosives on the planes in a spectacular terrorist operation. The liquid explosives — either TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), DADP (diacetone diperoxide) or the less sensitive HMTD (hexamethylene triperoxide diamine) — were reportedly to be made on board the planes by mixing sports drinks with a peroxide-based household gel and then be detonated using an MP3 player or mobile phone.

But Lt. Col. Wylde, who was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit in 1974, described this scenario as a “fiction.” Creating liquid explosives is a “highly dangerous and sophisticated task,” he states, one that requires not only significant chemical expertise but also appropriate equipment.

Terror plot scenario “untenable”

“The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable,” said Lt. Col. Wylde, who was trained as an ammunition technical officer responsible for terrorist bomb disposal at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Sandhurst.

After working as a bomb defuser in Northern Ireland, Lt. Col. Wylde became a senior officer in British Army Intelligence in 1977. During the Cold War, he collected intelligence as part of an undercover East German “liaison unit,” then went on to work in the Ministry of Defense to review its communications systems.

“So who came up with the idea that a bomb could be made on board? Not Al Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is interested in success not deterrence by failure,” Wylde stated.

“This story has been blown out of all proportion. The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed.”

Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes. “The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to develop.” The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is “very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to premature detonation,” said Lt. Col. Wylde.

If there was a conspiracy, he added, “it did not involve manufacturing the explosives in the loo,” as this simply “could not have worked.” The process would be quickly and easily detected. The fumes of the chemicals in the toilet “would be smelt by anybody in the area.” They would also inevitably “cause the alarms in the toilet and in the air change system in the aircraft to be triggered. The pilot has the ability to dump all the air from an aircraft as a fire-fighting measure, leaving people to use oxygen masks. All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths.”

Government silent on detonators

Even if it was possible for the explosive to have been made on the aircraft, a detonator, probably made from TATP, would be needed to set it off. “It is very dangerous and risky to the individual,” Wylde said. “As the quantity involved would be small this would injure the would-be suicide bomber but not endanger the aircraft, thus defeating the object of bringing down an aircraft.”

Despite the implausibility of this scenario, it has been used to justify wide-ranging new security measures that threaten to permanently curtail civil liberties and to suspend sections of the United Kingdom’s Human Rights Act of 1998. “Why were the public delicately informed of an alleged conspiracy which the authorities knew, or should have known, could not have worked?” asked Lt. Col. Wylde.

“This is not a new problem,” he added, noting that ‘shoe-bomber’ Richard Reid had attempted to use this type of explosive on a plane in December 2001. “If this threat is real, what has been done to develop explosive test kits capable of detecting peroxide based explosives?” asked Wylde. “These are the real issues about protecting the public that have not been publicised. Instead we are going to get demands for more internment without trial.”

Lt. Col. Wylde also raised questions about the criminal investigation into the 7th July terrorist attacks in London last year. He noted that police and government sources have maintained “total silence” about the detonation devices used in the bombs on the London Underground and the bus at Tavistock Square. “Whatever the nature of the primary explosive materials, even if it was home-made TATP, the detonator that must be used to trigger an explosion is an extremely dangerous device to make, requiring a high level of expertise that cannot be simply self-taught or picked-up over the internet,” Wylde stated.

The government’s silence on the detonation device used in the attacks is “disturbing,” he said, as the creation of the devices requires the involvement of trained explosives experts. Wylde speculated that such individuals would have to be present either inside the country or outside, perhaps in Eastern Europe, where they would be active participants in an international supply-chain to UK operatives. “In either case, we are talking about something far more dangerous than home-grown radicals here. “

[…]

Raw Story

Yes indeed. My emphasis.

What we are talking about that is ‘far more dangerous’ is a cabal of Murderers who have taken control of this country by stealth. These animals will go to any length to bring about their Soviet on Steroid UK, with its planned radical dehumanizing slave grid, all pervasive CCTV (now with bullhorns) and everything else that is monstrous, inhuman and un-British.

So the question is Mr. Wylde…

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Are you going to get some of your armed buddies and stage a coup? Are you going to make a citizens arrest? Are you going to have a cup of tea and write a letter to ‘The Times’?

Its all very well saying that the whole thing stinks; welcome to the club, we all know it stank to high heaven the day they announced it. We knew that they had been watching these morons for over a year, we knew that subhuman John Reid’s announcement was a stage managed piece of bullshit….we are WAY ahead of you. What are you, personally, going to DO about this problem. You undoubtedly know where this problem is coming from, with great precision; what are you and the other people who have responsibility for keeping Britain Britain going to do about this? What will it take for you to finally act? What sort of outrage do they have to commit before you say, “enough is enough”?

Clearly British citizens being murdered on busses by these evil creatures is not enough to stir you away from your tea. The wholesale cynical and diabolical erasure of every hard fought right of the British is not enough to motivate you to action, so I wonder…

JUST WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO GET YOU OFF OF YOUR ARSE?

The British army is all over the world minding other people’s business, causing this great place to be the third most despised country in the world. While you all follow orders like sheep, the Britain you are meant to be protecting is being MURDERED in your absence.

You aren’t very SMART are you?

Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported that:

“A vast database containing a file on every man, woman and child is being planned by the Government in a ‘sinister’ expansion of the ‘Big Brother’ state.

Personal information containing details of every aspect of an individual’s life will be available to 400,000 Whitehall civil servants and council workers.

Lord Falconer has ordered privacy laws to be watered down to allow the plans to be forced through.

The plans would allow anyone working for a public body to monitor everything from an individual’s driving licence record to whether they had paid their council tax on time. ”

Who is this installed noxious toad Falconer to be ‘ordering privacy laws to be watered down ?’ You would tend to think, as useless as they have proved themselves in other ways, what feeble laws are there, are there for good reason.

“Critics warned that allowing sensitive financial information to be viewed by all public bodies would leave it wide open to identity fraud. And pensioners who take stands against soaring council tax bills by refusing to pay could have their rights to pension credit withdrawn”

One reason the UK is so vulnerable to this sort of crap, is that opponents of tyranny are not capable of arguing against it thanks to the crippling poisonous socialism that New Labour and its instruments of torture like the BBC have so corrupted political thought with.

People have been so bludgeoned into being terrified plebs by the regime, they can no longer argue in a principled way as human beings, but feebly; only against the trivial practicalities of tyranny as stupified slaves which is of course worse than pathetic and useless. […]

What’s more, appalled citizens who the state serve, have a responsibility to put their foot down when the state becomes this malignant.

The question civil servants, various council workers, the police, security services and military have to ask themselves is should we really be listening to a faction that Clare Short recently described as a coup ? That former Foreign Office officials are openly saying is putting the country in danger, and that the Telegraph describe as ‘Nazis’ ? (although it’s a tough one to choose, I think the better analogy is communists).

Are these people going to take orders like pitiful shamed automatons to hurt the population on behest of a truly wretched criminal government that instead of confronting it’s own abnormalities becomes sicker and more perverted by the day, and is permitted to do so by a largely worthless collection of coward backbenchers who are more concerned with masturbating over a pre-soiled gargoyle like Gordon Brown than doing their job ?[…]

Jultra

Another classic post from Jultra, and I agree with everything in it.

Now all we have to do is do nothing about it. Yes, thats right, do nothing, i.e.,

DO NOT apply for a new passport.
DO NOT renew your driving license.
DO NOT enter the NIR for any designated document or any other reason.
DO NOT answer any correspondence to do with this or registration in any database.

That is where we start.

It’s true. It’s weird. It’s nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against … Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo.

Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a “critical national security structure” in Louisiana.

On August 22, for LinkTV and Democracy Now! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It’s been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW’s (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere. One resident, Pamela Lewis said, “It is a prison set-up” — except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes.

To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nation’s second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth.

So we filmed it. Without Big Brother’s authorization. Uh, oh. Apparently, the broadcast of these stinking smokestacks tipped off Osama that, if his assassins pose as poor Black folk, they can get a cramped Airstream right next to a “critical infrastructure” asset.

So now Matt and I have a “criminal complaint” lodged against us with the feds.

The positive side for me as a journalist is that I get to see our terror-busters in action. I should note that it took the Maxwell Smarts at Homeland Security a full two weeks to hunt us down.

Frankly, we were a bit scared that, given the charges, we wouldn’t be allowed on a plane into New York last night. But what scared us more is that we were allowed on the plane.

Once I was traced, I had a bit of an other-worldly conversation with my would-be captors. Detective Frank Pananepinto of Homeland Security told us, “This is a ‘Critical Infrastructure’ … and they get nervous about unauthorized filming of their property.

Well, me too, Detective. In fact, I’m very nervous that this potential chemical blast-site can be mapped in extreme detail at this Google Map location

What also makes me nervous is that the Bush Terror Terriers have kindly indicated on the Internet that this unprotected critical infrastructure can be targeted — I mean located — at 30º 29′ 11″ N Latitude and 91º 11′ 39″ W Longitude.

After I assured Detective Pananepinto, “I can swear to you that I’m not part of Al Qaeda,” he confirmed that, “Louisiana is still part of the United States,” subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser.

Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations. [See “A Well-Designed Disaster: the Untold Story of the Exxon Valdez.“]

So I rang America’s top petroleum pusher-men and asked their media relations honcho in Houston, Marc Boudreaux, a simple question. “Do you want us to go to jail or not? Is it Exxon’s position that reporters should go to jail?” Because, all my dumb-ass jokes aside, that is what’s at stake. And Exxon knew we were journalists because we showed our press credential to the Exxon guards at the refinery entrance.

The Exxon man was coy: “Well, we’ll see what we can find out…. Obviously it’s important to national security that we have supplies from that refinery in the event of an emergency.”

Really? According to the documents our team uncovered from the offices of Exxon’s lawyer, Mr. James Baker, the oil industry is more than happy to see a limit on worldwide crude production. Indeed, the current squeeze has jacked the price of oil from $24 a barrel to $64 and refined products have jumped yet higher — resulting in a record-busting profit for Exxon of nearly $1 billion per week.

So this silly “criminal complaint” has nothing to do with stopping Al Qaeda or keeping the oil flowing. It has everything to do with obstructing news reports in a way that no one would have dared attempt before the September 11 attack.

Dectective Pananepinto, in justifying our impending bust, said, “If you remember, a lot of people were killed on 9/11.”

Yes, Detective, I remember that very well: my office was in the World Trade Center. Lucky for me, I was out of town that day. It was not a lucky day for 3,000 others.

Yes, I remember “a lot” of people were killed. So I have this suggestion, Detective — and you can pass it on to Mr. Bush: Go and find the people who killed them.

It’s been five years and the Bush regime has not done that. Instead, the War on Terror is reduced to taking off our shoes in airports, hoping we can bomb Muslims into loving America and chasing journalists around the bayou. Meanwhile, King Abdullah, the Gambino of oil, whose princelings funded the murderers, gets a free ride in the President’s golf cart at the Crawford ranch.

I guess I shouldn’t complain. After all, Matt and I look pretty good in orange.  […]

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/palast.php

Oberman sums up why we loved America

Crooks And Liars

Here is a sketch for a short season of tv programmes focused on surveillance. In it, there is an episode of ‘The Outer Limits’ called O.B.I.T.. You REALLY need to see this. It is of the type that Oberman talks about, from the era when america was America, and the people there were really different than they are today.

And this is the episode that Oberman is referring to in is piece, ‘The monsters are due on Maple Street’:

“Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines…throw them into darkness for a few hours and then sit back and watch the pattern. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find and it’s themselves.”

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts… attitudes… prejudices. To be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone.”

Rod Serling. A smoker.

The government of Sudan started seizing and quarantining laptop computers for inspection last week, ostensibly to stem the import of pornography and seditious material. Official assurances that the inspection of each laptop will take no more than 24 hours have done little to assuage fears of foreign visitors. Many are understandably reluctant to hand over collections of business and personal information for Sudanese officials to pore over in search of hostile or titillating tidbits.

Like many government policies across the globe, this directive was apparently drafted with a clear social goal in mind, but with little understanding of the use and pace of technology. Surely anyone serious about transporting intelligence information or treasonous material will use methods of encryption and obfuscation that would take more than a few hours of inspection to discover. Likewise, pornography has a way of finding its way to interested consumers no matter how it’s hampered. In any case, one would think the low-wattage beacons of leadership in Khartoum would have more pressing business in Darfur.

While the Sudanese government has been on spin cycle for half a century, the country’s leaders have been able to stabilize certain technology and energy-related aspects of the economy over the past few years. Recent ventures away from an otherwise solidly agrarian market have brought an increase in the number of affluent nationals and foreign businesspeople traveling in and out of the country — each carrying little devices with lots of data. Apparently it occurred to government officials that they didn’t understand what was in the devices and that the devices might be the conveyance for objectionable material. […] Computer World

Its clear that people are going to have to use tunneling and disposable laptops for travel. The scenario is this; you don’t want anyone to look at your private stuff. You need to be in another country on business, and you need to access your email / docs when you are there. You cannot bring your laptop with you, because some fascist will confiscate it, mirror the drive and then return it to you with a hardware keystroke logger installed. You need have a cheap terminal that you take with you, that runs a cut down version of hardened linux, the image for which you can download from a server at your HQ. When it unpacks and you install it, it sets up an SSH tunnel to your server, through which all your communication takes place. This laptop needs to be tamper evident, i.e., it uses anti tampering technology to let you know if the swines have opened up your box to put a keylogger in. If there are signs of tampering, then you simply discard it, and you have no email for this trip. If the box is intact, you go ahead and download your image and then start work once its up and running. You can even keep this image on a USB key. Anyone can have a copy of this image it is the credentials that you provide to your server at HQ that makes this image yours and allows you to access your stuff through the secure tunnel….

Read the rest of this entry »

• Stop JonBenet Overload; Remember the REAL News
• Irdial/ What your Senator said about Rumsfeld
• What did we accomplish, anyway?
• Irdial/ Here’s what your Rep. had to say on Iraq
• Follow the money
• VICTORY … If we can keep it. Act Now.
• Stop Fake News
• IRAQ FOR SALE/ The War Profiteers Screening
• TODAY/ Stand Up to Rumsfeld
• Federal Budget PRIORITIES Campaign is Rocking
• Enough JonBenet!
• Success on Fake News – Now on to the Budget
• On Hiroshima day, send an e-card that will stop the madness
• Keep the Internet Free
• Israel, Lebanon and America/ Tell Rep. Nadler to get involved
• LAST DAY/ Keep this Show on the Road
• Last Chance — IRAQ FOR SALE/ The War Profiteers Screening
• It’s not too early for a good idea

That is a list of the recent subjects sent out to all ‘TrueMajority’ subscribers. Lets go through some of them.

Stop Fake News
Information is the life blood of democracy. If we lose trust in the news, how can citizens possibly make informed decisions at the polls?

Some TV stations air “news segments” that look like everyday journalism but that are actually produced by the federal government or large corporations and are designed to promote a political position or product.

The Federal Communications Commission must enforce rules stating that TV stations “must clearly disclose” when they air news segments produced by the government or other entities.

To send a message (text below) to FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin urging him to ban fake news, click here.

Instead of whining, why don’t you START YOUR OWN NEWS CHANNEL like Alex Jones has? He has reached millions of people with his films and websites with a small team, and had a global influence.

What did we accomplish, anyway?
[…]Tax Breaks for Millionaires. The polls are clear, and the citizens let Congress have it: diverting billions to those who don’t need it by raising the deficit and further reducing spending on human needs is bad policy. The House did pass a giveaway to millionaires, but the Senate won’t touch it because now they don’t have the votes to pass it. So far so good.[…]

[…]America’s Occupation of Iraq. American troops are still dying in Iraq. But thanks to ongoing pressure from citizens like you, Congress is finally starting to discuss our course in that country, and many who originally supported the invasion have come out in opposition to the war. TrueMajority launched an online innovation to let you know what your congressmember said during a heated daylong debate about Iraq. Thousands of you contacted your lawmakers to thank them for standing up or to tell them to get it right. We even heard back from some congressmembers themselves who weren’t happy that we exposed their usually hidden pronouncements to public scrutiny. We got a lot of feedback from you on this. Here’s one example:[…]

[…]Save Public Broadcasting. PBS and NPR are again under attack by those who would silence public broadcasting’s alternative to commercial media. The House Appropriations Committee voted to slash funding for NPR and PBS by $115 million, but TrueMajority members joined tens of thousands of others who objected. The Senate subcommittee in charge of that money just voted to restore funding…we citizens may have turned this one around.[…]

Firstly, Sour grapes bullshit doesnt stop wars or reform society. YOU, you fucking morons, ARE THE BILLIONAIRES, with your MASSED DOLLARS. As a group, you are more powerful and wealthy than any single man. This jealously driven garbage is so twentieth century, so childish, irrelevant and pathetic I can scarcely believe people still talk like this.

Secondly, Nothing you say will change what is going on in Iraq. The embassy they YOU are building in Iraq, the biggest one on earth, indicates that you are going to be there for a very very long time. Wake up you idiots.

Thirdly, and once again, Start your own TV station if you want free TV. Don’t rely on Uncle Sham to finance it and support it, and if you want your money to be spent on that, well, spend it on that and not war you imbeciles which neatly leads us to…

the final inslut (yes, ‘inslut’):

Follow the money
Already presidential hopefuls for the 2008 elections are trooping thru Iowa and New Hampshire. And TrueMajority organizers are on the ground working to make sure that this time they are forced to take a stand on how the federal budget pie gets sliced up. We want more money for education, healthcare and energy independence, without raising taxes or increasing the deficit. And we can get it with your help. We’re off to a great start – the plan, with the backing of congressmembers, big-time business executives and even retired generals and admirals, is beginning to make headlines.

The idea is simple: America fritters away billions of taxpayer dollars every year on maintaining 10,000 nuclear bombs and other obsolete Cold-War weapons. According to President Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of Defense1, we could save $60 billion (out of the $460 billion Pentagon budget) by getting rid of those dinosaurs. Polls show a big majority of our fellow citizens already agree with the idea – all we have to do is start the discussion.

And we’re doing it in a way which is fun, entertaining, and engages regular people.

What these people need to do is something we have been saying for ages, others have been saying for longer and some have just said. They need to ‘follow the money’ right back into their own pockets, where these insane wars, Orwellian police state, barbarism, international adventurism, Hegemonic contamination and bullshit starts.

I have said it before; begging will get you nowhere. Petition writing, mass telephoning, letter writing…all of these are meaningless gestures at best, and at worse, tools to deflate and disempower the masses; redirecting and even sapping their energy as the war machine trundles on, gaining momentum every day that it is fed. These people are as bad as the enemy; they, through their actions, do nothing to stop the war machine, do nothing to educate their members and as they do this, in no way hider the monsters plotting our total enslavement to war.

StopWar are of the exact same type of course.

There can be no Iraq ‘war profiteering’ if there are no dollars to buy weapons. There is actually nothing wrong with selling arms; what is criminal is that all these nincompoops blithely pay for these arms instead of paying for infrastructure, like their beloved PBS.

If they had a single brain cell between them, and followed the course of total permanent success, then there would be no begging, no pleading…there would be a quiet, and startling sunrise on a new democracy, a fine grained democracy where warmongering is impossible, there is an abundance of funding for everything imaginable that is purely beneficial, and multi generational peace and prosperity that will be the envy of the world. It would mean the end of the fear that is soaking into the bones of all americans. It would mean a return to the real America. Those missing buildings in NYC would symbolize the birth of this new era of peace, and not the point at which everything turned bad.

Nothing less than this will do. Nothing less than the cutting off of the blood supply to the vampires will solve this problem. It needs to be done now. No more pointless elections. No more faith in politicians. No more begging and whining. A return to true democracy, where choices are local and the effects are global, where the constitution is not ‘just a piece of paper’ but the foundation of a true and beneficial way of life.

Or…

You can continue whining, writing to congress, emailing your many members, making flash animations explaining that ‘we are paying WAY too much to the military’.

And nothing will change, and your sons will be drafted for war, and your rights will melt away and evaporate like ice dropped on an Arizona street in the middle of summer. You will be treated like cattle to be milked and sheep to be fleeced, and you will deserve it, because you are behaving like domesticated animals instead of human beings.

Three Bills Threaten the Constitution and Your Privacy

In the Senate, the Cheney-Specter Bill (S. 2453), would enshrine in federal law the president’s claim of inherent, exclusive power to set government spies loose on your phone calls and emails at will, without any individualized warrant or independent check.  It would also give officials complicit in the government’s illegal spying program a “get out of jail free card” by re-writing the criminal code after the fact, exempting the government from FISA.

The Cheney-Specter bill would make individualized warrants optional while allowing a secret court to rubber-stamp the wholesale surveillance of Americans, without even knowing the names of the Americans to be wiretapped or whether they’ve done anything wrong.

Also in the Senate, Senator DeWine’s “Terrorist Surveillance Program Act of 2006” (S. 2455) makes judicial review of wiretaps optional and permits government spies to engage in surveillance for several weeks without any court order or oversight at all.  Even after spying on potentially innocent Americans for 45 days, the Bush administration could bypass judicial approval, deciding for themselves if they want to follow the Constitution or not.

In the House, the Cheney-Wilson Bill (H.R. 5825) would allow the president to secretly search Americans’ homes, businesses, conversations and e-mails without warrants for months at a time if there were an attack.  The bill would also make judicial review “optional” for wiretapping Americans after 90 days of warrantless surveillance, and obviously optional rules providing a judicial check do not square with the mandatory check required by the Constitution.  Both the Cheney-Specter bill and the Wilson bill also redefine the meaning of electronic surveillance to allow more warrantless surveillance of Americans through the back door.

It would literally put our rights in the hands of terrorists, allowing an attack on any US territory to suspend our constitutional right to have a warrant issued before the government searches our homes and offices, or secretly listens in on our conversations.

Your calls today and in the weeks to come will help make sure your elected officials know you are counting on them to stand up to the Bush-Cheney White House and protect your rights by voting against these bills.

One of the underlying problems with any legislation on the NSA warrantless wiretapping program is that Congress has yet to hold any real, substantive investigation into the issue and get any commitment from the president that he will actually follow any laws on the books, let alone new laws.  Lawmakers must not legislate in the dark on an issue with such broad implications for our fundamental privacy rights.  Just recently, a federal judge in Detroit found the program to be illegal and unconstitutional.  The court, in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, noted that, “there are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.”  No president has the power or the right to break the law and disregard the Constitution. […]

ACLU

There are no hereditary Kings in America.

Bush brands Iran leader a ‘tyrant’

WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (AFP) Sep 05, 2006
US President George W. Bush on Tuesday branded Iran’s president a tyrant and compared leaders in Tehran to Al-Qaeda terrorists who cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.

“America will not bow down to tyrants,” he said in the second of a series of election-year speeches defending his handling of the war on terrorism and Iraq. “The world’s free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.”

Bush accused Iran of funding the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and other groups “to attack Israel and America by proxy” and said Hezbollah was second only to Al-Qaeda in the number of US citizens it has killed.

“Like Al-Qaeda and the Sunni extremists, the Iranian regime has clear aims. They want to drive America out of the region, to destroy Israel, and to dominate the broader Middle East,” said the US presidents.

But, he said, Shiite extremists have done something Al-Qaeda only dreams of by taking over Iran in 1979, “subjugating its proud people to a regime of tyranny and using that nation’s resources to fund the spread of terror and to pursue their radical agenda.”

“The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies have demonstrated their willingness to kill Americans, and now the Iranian regime is pursuing nuclear weapons,” said Bush.

The US president quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying, in an August 15 speech, “If you would like to have good relations with the Iranian nation in the future, bow down before the greatness of the Iranian nation and surrender.”

“If you don’t accept to do this, the Iranian nation will force you to surrender and bow down,” he quoted the Iranian leader as saying.

“America will not bow down to tyrants,” he replied.

Spacewar

Yes indeed. More of the same inverted speech that we have come to know and love from ‘The Great Satan’. Lest we forget, lets look yet again at why there is an Islamic ‘regime’ in Iran, and just who precisely is responsible for putting one there:

Operation Ajax (1953) (officially TP-AJAX) was a covert operation by the United Kingdom and the United States to remove the nationalist^[1] cabinet of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh from power, to support the Pahlavi dynasty and consolidate the power of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The idea of overthrowing Mossadegh was conceived by the British. They originally asked President Truman for assistance, but he refused. When Eisenhower became president in 1953, the British proposed the idea once again, and this time, the Americans agreed to help.

Rationale for the intervention included Mossadegh’s socialist political views and his nationalization, without compensation, of the oil industry which was previously operated by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which later changed its name to The British Petroleum Company) under contracts disputed by the nationalists as unfair. A particular point of contention was the refusal of the Anglo-Iranian Oil company to allow an audit of the accounts to determine whether the Iranian government received the royalties it was due. Intransigence on the part of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company led the nationalist government to escalate its demands, requiring an equal share in the oil revenues. The final crisis was precipitated when the oil company ceased operations in Iran rather than accepting the Iranian government’s demands.

The newly state-owned oil companies saw a dramatic drop in productivity and, consequently, exports; this resulted in the Abadan Crisis, a situation that was further aggravated by its export markets being closed. Even so royalties to the Iranian government were significantly higher than before nationalization. Without its own distribution network it was denied access to markets by an international blockade intended to coerce Mossadegh into reprivatization. In addition, the appropriation of the companies resulted in Western allegations that Mossadegh was a Communist and suspicions that Iran was in danger of falling under the influences of the neighboring Soviet Union. But Mossadegh refused to back down under international pressure.

For the U.S., an important factor to consider was Iran’s border with the Soviet Union. A pro-American Iran under the Shah would give the U.S. a double strategic advantage in the ensuing Cold War, as a NATO alliance was already in effect with the government of Turkey, also bordering the USSR.

In planning the operation, the CIA organized a guerrilla force in case the communist Tudeh Party seized power as a result of the chaos created by Operation Ajax. According to formerly “Top Secret” documents released by the National Security Archive, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had reached an agreement with Qashqai tribal leaders in southern Iran to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and intelligence agents could operate.

Operation Ajax was the first time the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in a plot to overthrow a democratically-elected government. The success of this operation, and its relatively low cost, encouraged the CIA to successfully carry out a similar operation in Guatemala a year later.

Widespread dissatisfaction with the oppressive regime of the reinstalled Shah led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the occupation of the U.S. embassy. The role that the U.S. embassy had played in the 1953 coup led the revolutionary guards to suspect that it might be used to play a similar role in suppressing the revolution.

The leader of Operation Ajax was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior CIA agent, and grandson of the former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. While formal leadership was vested in Kermit Roosevelt, the project was designed and executed by Donald Wilber, a career contract CIA agent and acclaimed author of books on Iran, Afghanistan and Ceylon.

As a condition of restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the U.S. was able to dictate that the AIOC’s oil monopoly should lapse. Five major U.S. oil companies, plus Royal Dutch Shell and French Compagnie Française des Pétroles were given licences to operate in the country alongside AIOC.

[…]

Operation AJAX

Now, look at the text properly inverted to show what it REALLY should say:

TEHRAN, Sept 5 (AFP) Sep 05, 2006
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday branded America’s president a tyrant and compared leaders in Washington to Al-Qaeda terrorists who should not be allowed to posess nuclear weapons.

“Iran will not bow down to tyrants,” he said in the second of a series of election-year speeches defending his position on the ‘war on terrorism’ and Iraq. “The world’s free nations should not allow America to posess a nuclear weapon.”

Ahmadinejad accused America of funding the Israel government and other groups “to attack the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah by proxy” and said America was second only to Al-Qaeda in the number of US citizens it has killed.

“Like Ohlmert and the Israeli extremists, the American regime has clear aims. They want to remove democracy from the region, to destroy Iran, and to dominate the broader Middle East,” said the Iranian president.

But, he said, Americans have done something Al-Qaeda only dreams of by taking over Iraq, “subjugating its proud people to a regime of tyranny and using that nation’s resources to fund the spread of terror and to pursue their radical agenda.”

“The American regime and its terrorist proxies have demonstrated their willingness to kill Iraqis, and now the American regime is pursuing our nuclear weapons,” said Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian president quoted American president Bush as saying, in an August 15 speech, “If you would like to have good relations with the Amercan (sic) nation in the future, bow down before the greatness of the American nation and surrender.”

“If you don’t accept to do this, the American nation will force you to surrender and bow down,” he quoted the American leader as saying.

“Iran will not bow down to tyrants,” he replied.

And there you have it. Not difficult to do, and certainly not as difficult as a W.S. Burroughs cut up where you can, “find out what it REALLY says”.

And now, from the IHT:

Some Americans didn’t support my decision to remove Saddam Hussein. Many are frustrated with the level of violence. But we should all agree that the battle for Iraq is now central to the ideological struggle of the 21st century. We will not allow the terrorists to dictate the future of this century, so we will defeat them in Iraq. […]

And when we multiply by 1/x:

…

The question is, can YOU multiply that by 1/x?

An Iraqi asylum seeker who was cleared yesterday of making a video identifying potential terrorist targets in London faces being issued with a government control order, the Guardian has learned.

Rauf Abdullah Mohammad, 26, sunk his head into his hands as he was found not guilty at Woolwich crown court of four terrorism charges related to making the tape. The crown had alleged the video was a film of “high-profile targets” made to help Islamist terrorists plot and commit an attack on the capital.

But the jury, with their not guilty verdicts, appeared to accept Mr Mohammad’s case that the hour-long film was a souvenir of his time in London […]

So let’s get this straight. The Home Office isn’t even bothering with an appeal but the opinion is that the Home Secretary will be able to dish out ‘punishment’ simply because of government suspicions.

If anyone from the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” camp can argue their case after this I’d be amazed. Because they are essentially arguing that the whole basis of UK law is worthless and can be bypassed by a politician. Traitors that they are.

You may be thinking, okay this time MM has really lost it, but that isn’t my sentiment, rather it is that of ‘New Rpublic’ magazine (which says a lot) and some guy who appeared on the Toady programme’s regular 08:48(ish) F.E.A.R. slot. It was reported (yet again) that trrrrrrrrrrrrsts are exploiting the UK’s freedoms to plot terror antics against the US and may exploit the Visa Waiver Programme to board planes and blow up your family into bite sized bits of fish food whilst their dead souls cavort with pretty maidens (I’m paraphrasing). In any case this is clearly as softening of the ground for either removal of the Visa Waiver Programme AFTER insisting on access to PNR and biometrics in PURELY order to maintain the VWP, or to veal crate the population into giving over more information to prime the NIR database, or more likely BOTH.

btw Murdoch approves