Archive for the 'Links' Category

Preventing an attack on Iran: Real solutions

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

In order to prevent an attack on Iran, the american people must be made to understand that the Iranian people are ‘just like them’. They have to come to the realization that Iranians are not inhuman monsters, but that they are gentle, intelligent and perfectly normal human beings, living in a beautiful country, doing for the most part, the things that everyone else in the world does.

To make this happen, americans and Iranians need to talk to each other on a peer to peer basis, without any interference or filtering. They have to discover the humanity of each other, through a transparent medium that has no preconditions and no agenda other than to connect people so that they can get to know each other.

How can we do this?

Firstly cities and towns in america must twin with cities in Iran. Twinning of cities and towns has been done before, and it is a good idea, but we need to go further. The families in each town and city must also twin, and enter into regular communication.

When each ‘side’ sees that there are actually pleasant human beings on the other side of the globe, and not monsters, it becomes impossible for normal people to say that they must be bombed, or killed or made in any way to suffer. In effect, we will be de-demonizing and re-humanizing these populations.

It will be much harder for the american air force to bomb Esfahān when there are literally millions of americans intimately connected to the 3,430,353 people who live there. Not only will the americans feel total outrage that their friends are being murdered, but for the first time, many americans will know exactly where the bombs are falling and what the place looks like. They will be able to equate these places and people directly to their own places and people, and they, as decent moral folk, will not stand for it.

Now that we have the internetz, we can take this idea up to 11, organizing and fostering fine grained twinning down to the level of the family through a richly featured matching website, where each town and its residents can find people in the twinned town to connect with.

Think of it as ‘Peace 2.0’.

The unrepresentative and destructive Psychopaths that run the american government must have their plans for war short circuited. When americans feel, not by force, but by simple human contact, the pain of seeing their friends and acquaintances murdered, the insane pre-emption doctrine will implode. The vast majority of americans are completely decent, moral, generous and good people. They have been brutally mislead and tricked into a vicious cycle of hate by a small number of very bad people. But you know this.

There is nothing we can do about the myriad crimes that have been committed in the past; what we can do, is put a permanent stop to this headlong rush to endless war, and in particular, the war that is being planned right now against Iran.

Now, where can we find a Rails developer to build it?

. . . . . . .

>>>>>>> UPDATE!! <<<<<<<

Someone has their thinking hat on:

Call Iran/Call America: People to People Diplomacy to Prevent War

Submitted by admin on Mon, 2007-10-08 07:29.

It is time that the people of America and Iran let our leaders know: we’re ready to talk, and if they won’t take that first step, we will take it for them.

The Enough Fear campaign seeks to link people across borders to halt the march to war between the US and Iran. By creating connections between people, we will demonstrate our common commitment to a negotiated settlement to the current crisis and show that dialogue between Iranians and Americans is possible.

To facilitate people-to-people diplomacy, we have designed an action that will link Americans and Iranians who otherwise would never have the opportunity to talk with each other.

You can find out more about our past events in Boston and New York, and read press coverage of this campaign.

How it works:

A phone bank, made up of 4-5 old-style red desk phones (like the ones used for direct emergency talks during the Cold War), is set up in a public space in the US. A phone call from each phone in the US is placed to a volunteer in Iran. The phone calls run continuously for 2 hours, and during that time, we invite passers-by in DC to have a 5-minute chat with someone in Iran. Iranian volunteers are welcome to invite friends and family to join them so they can pass their phone around as well. Each phone in the US has a second line to be used by a translator. Iranians and Americans are welcome to talk about anything they like – the only requirement is that people be respectful.

Needed: volunteers in the US and Iran

If you’re in the US, you can help us set up and volunteer at the events (and we especially need people who can translate between Persian and English on the calls). If you’re in Iran, you can volunteer to participate in one of our calls. To volunteer, or if you have any questions, please email contact@enoughfear.org.

For information on upcoming phone events, please sign up for our email list.

Photo by James Felder/SnapshotArtifact.org

We want to thank The Lee + Gund Foundation for their financial support. And thank you to everyone who made donations to make this event possible.

[…]

http://enoughfear.org/en/call

Something human

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

York Stories

Local interest… but in the writing of this York resident I find a relaxing, interesting, sensitive persona with a true and deep empathy for the city and what it can mean to live somewhere one finds so special. In particular, the reviews of walks in coutryside around the city have been inspiring. Every time I visit the site, I think this person would be nice to bump into and chat with in a pub, after a nice, relaxing wander by the river.

You Don’t Like School? You are a PsYcHo!

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

The day before Christmas, the German newspaper, Erlanger Nachrichten published a picture of the eight-member Busekros family standing happily together around an advent wreath. The title of the accompanying article was “Only families open the way for new perspectives“. On the first of February this year, the Busekros’ oldest daughter was torn from her family by force, thanks to a judge’s ruling : Compulsory admittance to the Klinikum Nuremberg-Nord, a psychiatric clinic for children and young people and loss of parental custody.In summer 2005, 15 year old Melissa was told that she would have to repeat the 7th grade at the Christian Ernst Hig Gymnasium (a high school where one can obtain the Abitur, the highest German high school diploma) due to her bad grades in math and latin. The situation in the class played no small part in creating this state of affairs – the high noise levels and cancelled classes prevented her from receiving the educational assistance she needed during school hours. As Melissa had good grades in all the other subjects, repeating the whole year would be mostly a waste of her time, as well as the fact that she would now be in a class even more problematic than the previous year’s. Thus, it was decided by Melissa and her parents that she would be tutored individually at home to meet her specific needs. At her own wish, Melissa only took part in Music and sang in her school choir. The school and the local school authorities were not satisfied with this solution, and consequently expelled Melissa from the school, allocating her to the local Hauptschule (the lowest in the German three-tier high school system.The Busekros continued educating their daughter at home, with their other school-age children still attending school. At the end of the school year 2005/2006, Melissa was no longer subject to full-time compulsory schooling. In spite of this the Youth Welfare Office (Jugendamt) in Erlangen appealed to the local Family Court, which ordered Melissa and her parents to appear at a hearing, which was consequently attended solely by her father. Melissa was overseas at that point. However, the authorities didn’t relent and wanted to know in detail where Melissa was, resulting in an unannounced visit to the family by the Judge of the Family Court.

The Busekros family is known and much loved by all their neighbours. Their willingness to be photographed for an article in the local newspaper demonstrates that they have nothing to hide. That was not good enough for the officials. On Tuesday 30th January just after 7am, Mrs Busekros and her children – Mr Busekros had already left for work – were startled by the appearance of social workers and police officials who demanded that Melissa be handed over to them immediately. They had as authorisation a decision by the Erlangen Court (case no. 006 F 01004/06) of the 29th of January. It stated “The relevant Youth Welfare Office is hereby instructed and authorised to bring the child, if necessary by force, to a hearing and may obtain police support for this purpose.”

Melissa was brought into the Child Psychiatry Unit of the Nuremberg clinic and was subjected to an interrogation in the presence of the specialist Dr. Schanda. After this interrogation, about three and a half hours after she was coerced into the clinic, Melissa was returned home. Her relieved parents and her five younger siblings, who didn’t know when they would ever see Melissa again, as well as Melissa herself didn’t know that the worst was still to come.

On the afternoon of the 1st of February, the judge of the Family Court, representatives of the Youth Welfare Office, along with fifteen police officers, marched up to the Busekros home, to haul Melissa off to the Child Psychiatry Unit of the Nuremberg clinic. The judicial decision authorising this also removed Melissa from her parents’ custody, according to her father, Hubert Busekros.This treatment was justified by the psychiatrist’s finding, two days previously, that she was supposedly developmentally delayed by one year and that she suffered from school phobia. […]

http://www.netzwerk-bildungsfreiheit.de

Home schoolers get a really hard time in Germany. It is ILLEGAL to school your children at home, because, as the European Human Rights Court confirmed:

…that society has a significant interest in preventing the development of dissent through “separate philosophical convictions.” WND

The law against home schooling was introduced by the Nazis it is incredible that this law has not been removed from the statutes, and its even more amazing that the EU says its all ‘OK’.

Do I really have to spell out your right to educate your children in whatever way you want?

Hmmmm I wonder if these laws apply to Koran schools, or Catholic schools, or any other religious schools? Surely these institutions foster “separate philosophical convictions”.

And separate philosophical convictions to what exactly? Where are these convictions written down for you to follow?! Its all nonsense on sticks obviously.

Web Of Evil

Wednesday, November 15th, 2006

I’ve been meaning to tell you about Web Of Evil for ages. Well worth reading. Insightful, witty, and best of all, not an idiot. I think he works at Hansard or some governmental agency.

Exile

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

It’s been a long time. I shouldn’t have left you… I’ve been reading from afar, but haven’t really had much to say, as you all say it much better. I just came across this though:

Conet mentioned on Wil Wheaton’s blog

Hello again.

iHenge

Friday, October 13th, 2006

Druidstreet. Easy on the i.

The Blue Touchpaper is set. Your mask is in the post!

Tuesday, August 15th, 2006

The Transatlantic Airplane Bomb Plot Armageddon – DON’T TALK ABOUT IT !

So the Guradian reports “Media must stay silent on suspects

In a joint statement, The Home Secretary John Reid (and PM in waiting – Our Saviour and our Strength) and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith have called for the media to show “considerable restraint” to avoid prejudicing any future trials.

This presumably relates to the fact that no flight tickets had been bought by the cold blooded (but evidently not well prepared killers) and indeed some of the suspect suicide bombers had not got round to getting a passport (well a real one , maybe they had dud ID)…or that most of the suspects were known to the SIS / Police before 7/7 and had been under surveillance with phone taps, photography – even to the comical level that “suspects stepped up their Internet searches for possible U.S.-bound flights, etc.,” .. master planners at work, evidently REALLY WELL PREPARED AFTER 12 MONTHS OF PLOTTIN’ AND A PLANNIN’. Make the Miami 7 look like professionals.

It is evident that this whole crock of shit is now falling apart – See the Miami 7 , see the “Ricin ” gang, see Forest Gate a raid of 250 cops based on “solid intelligence”, see the rapid release of so many “arrested” under the Terrorism Act.

The truth is that there is not the slightest shred of evidence produced anywhere to put any of these people on trial for attempting to bomb anything, anywhere.

They are just a bunch of infiltrated wannabes who have been exposed for that, to further the career of John Reid at the expense of the travel industry , BAA, and passengers. All these people were known about for over 12 months. The “exposure” discussed and planned on both sides of the Atlantic was aimed to ;

1. Introduce even more draconian measures for controlling the population.
2. To increase the element of fear and justify notching up the new “Critical” threat level.
3. To boost John Reid’s grab for the Premiership (revealed here over 4 weeks ago) and fuckover Gordon Brown’s chances of the top job slot.

The Wise men say (Under dire threat of The Contempt of Court Act 1981 ) “We must avoid the publication of materials which may impede or prejudice the complex and ongoing investigations by the police and avoid the risk of prejudicing potential future legal proceedings or prejudging their outcome.”

It was of course the persistence of Bridget Dunne and many others in demonstrating the absurdity of the published Timeline for the 7/7 bombers – ie that they had jumped on a train at Luton that did not exist which led one of the wise men,The Home Secretary John Reid (and PM in waiting – Our Saviour and our Strength) to tell the Police to correct the record. The Met’s response (AKA Dumb Ox Clarke, Heard of Terrism at the Yard ) was, to say it was the Home Office who stated the time of the train the “suicide bombers” caught from Luton … hmm…er..er the Police are actually part of the Home Office .. do they ever talk to each other in there ? Evidently not. Not Fit for Purpose and yet they pull this stroke.

Far from the chance to “impede or prejudice the complex and ongoing investigations “ it will be entirely helpful if there is the widest public discussion of this whole farrago and charade of incompetence.

The Daily Torygraph report that John Reid (PM in waiting – Our Saviour and our Strength) himself has “prejudged the trials for some of the members (of the plot).” according to David Davies the Tory spokesman, who is quoted from a remark he made on Sky TV. Reid is also embroiled in an argument with Gordon Brown and the Treasury about the publication of the names of suspects (required when their assets are frozen) under UN inspired legislation – which simply underlines his grab at the Prime Minsitership , and his ill concelaed contempt for the fellow Scot from the Lang Toon.

MEDIA ACCURACY

The Sunday Times has a leader on the usual lines, abour disaffected muddle class Muslims and youth etc etc.,it also claims ….

When an undercover reporter from The Sunday Times visited Beeston in Nottinghamshire, where three of the July 7 bombers came from, he found either a denial that they had been involved or, perhaps more alarmingly, respect for them as Muslim martyrs.

Please note Mr Murdoch , there is a Beeston in Nottinghamshire , but the Beeston that the three Muslims carrying the bombs on 7/7 came from is in West Yorkshire.100 miles away.

PS. Of course it would be a Godsend if the trial could not be held as if it had been prejudiced, by say the publication by the Bank of England of their names, addresses etc., … wouldn’t it? […]

http://postmanpatel.blogspot.com/

When critical mass is reached, there will be no turning back. there will be no outrage that can be performed, no staged attack, no real attack, that will persuade the British public to eat any more bullshit.

In fact, if a new attack DOES happen, it might just provide the catalasys needed to start off the chain reaction that will blow the whole system to smithereens. The bigger the outrage the more likely people will say ‘enough is enough’. This will only happen however, once the critical mass of refusal is reached in advance. Everyone needs to be primed. If it happens before the mass is prepared, we may still have enough deployed sheeple to absorb the neutrons of change.

Yes, sheeple are like carbon rods in a nuclear reactor; remove them and their dampening effect and a runaway reaction of freedom explodes and contaminates everything.

Watching America

Wednesday, May 10th, 2006

News from non English speaking news sources, translated into English:

http://watchingamerica.com/index.shtml

for free.

We like the tone!

Monday, March 20th, 2006

Charles Clarke: Hog-wild UK regime liar

Charles Clarke liarCharles Clarke, the porcine liar and doublespeaking attack-swine, paid off to impliment the scorched-Earth, Orwellian society-rewriting policies of that other infamous fabricator Blair, again displays his true bacon-flavoured colours, this time in assaulting the father of 7/7 victim who dared to actually ask the tinpot regime for an official inquiry into the events of last July that injured his daughter.

Clarke’s distressed and desperate response of “You’re insulting me. Go away. I don’t need to be insulted by you” is of course highly reflective of his disposition and why he’s in the job to begin with.

Underneath those bristly flapping jowls that deliver so many appalling lies is a prissy sissy little ego loyal to his sociopathic regime master.

Of course he had to apologise for snorting this out, and indeed one has to speculate very sincerely, at quite why the regime is so sensitive, petrified and desperate to avoid a full public inquiry into the ‘worst act of terrorism on British soil’, but are more than happy to grandstand off it’s results and use their version as a rationale for delivering their Earth-shattering philosophy of tyranny and enslavement. […]

http://jultra.blogspot.com/

Oh yes!!!

The Guardian’s New Blog

Friday, March 17th, 2006

The Guardian has a new ‘group blog’ , called “comment is free”. Instant impressions:

  • It is very Guardian-like
  • It is very newspaper-like; Its editors pick what is to be given front page prominence (like they know better than the readers what is or is not interesting). That is so 2005/Slashdot. The users decide what is cool and what is not cool.
  • It is not blog like
  • Its stuck to the left
  • It is set in three columns
  • No user feedback, other than comments, ie no moderation of stories or comments or user tagging

Read the introduction:

Welcome to Comment is free, the first collective comment blog by a British newspaper website. It will incorporate all the regular Guardian and Observer main commentators, many blogging for the first time, who will be joined by a host of outside contributors – politicians, academics, writers, scientists, activists and of course existing bloggers to debate, argue and occasionally agree on the issues of the day.

Why are we launching it now? Because it’s obvious to us that our major competition for opinion and debate is moving online, and unless we move with it, we’re failing our journalists and future generations of readers. […]

Translation; everyone is getting their news from the blogosphere. They are reading our stories and then spinning them. We are losing influence. The Empire must strike back.

We need to expand and deepen the debate which takes place every day in our newspapers and for which we have an unrivalled reputation. We need to ensure that the Guardian and Observer remain at the heart of the liveliest liberal-left discourse (although we’ll continue our long tradition of carrying voices from across the political spectrum). How? Not only by doing so much more than we can in print, and much more immediately, but by putting our own writers where their real rivals are. Readers, too, need to be at the heart of the conversation, and much more engaged than print allows. […]

The debate is already deepened, thanks to the blogosphere. The fact that it has taken The Guardian so long to do this proves that brontosaurus media is on the way out. Now, had they cloned Digg, this would be an entirely different matter, they might have had their Jurrasic Park style second chance at life, but they did not, and they have missed the next phase of news aggregation, without good reason either. “Readers, too, need to be at the heart of the conversation” Un oh, dinosaur speak spilling out.

Comments will only be allowed with a valid e-mail address and registration, to try and keep the standard of the debate as high as possible.

Why? If the readers are to be at the heart of this mythical paleo babble “conversation” why should we obey this absurd command when we can set up our own blog in 5 minutes and then publish and be read? If everyone wants to read rants, let them, and if not, let the readers moderate themselvs. Editors no longer have a job; this is what the tectonic shift is all about, and its frighetening the shit out of these people.

Please tell us what you think. Post your comments below or email us at comment.is.free@guardian.co.uk.

or how about “post on your own blog and link to us” heh, of course not, because they are for centralized control of thought and agenda, the top of the pyramid being the grand poohbah editor. Posting to your own blog means accepting that other blogs are the equal of any Guardian Blog, diminishing their importance, which is happening quite nicely and naturally wether or not they like it.

Some of the comments on this post are interesting, the first saying “just what is your job Ms editor” the others saying that they dont like their location being attached to their names The editor, finally weighed in with an apology for not commenting on the comments with this amazing text:

Hello again – apologies for not coming back earlier to answer some of your points but it’s been a bit busy today.

Say what? You just launch a new blog, you are the ‘editor’ and you leave your keyboard while the comments are flooding in? You have to pay attention to your blog if you are going to rul0rz it, and to not be there in the first few hours, I mean, honestly, do you KNOW anything about what you are doing?

My role as editor. The central role, as with any editor, is to try and make the site the most lively, diverse, engaging, surprising comment site around.

You arent needed for that. Look at Digg. Be like Digg. Or die. The users make the site lively, they provide the diversity (which is not true diversity if there is a black crow school marm hovering over everyone making sure you dont say ‘Fuck’) they also provide the surprising comment. All of that has nothing to do with editors.

We (the team) will try and ensure that we have a broad range of opinion and that means doing some direct commissioning of particular people on particular subjects, while encouraging a wide range of contributors to blog as and when they want on whatever subject they want. I won’t be doing what I’ve spent my life as an editor on the paper doing – close copy editing and going back and forth to writers working with them to change their pieces, improve their pieces or think about arguments they haven’t thought about. The nature of the blog is that we will have to try and let go a bit and let peple say what they want within the bounds of libel and the constraints of our blogging guidelines.

Pointless. Either let go and destroy the death star, or be a newspaper, not some half assed hybrid snore-fest. We have everywhere else to read; why should we read anything with even the slightest bit of control imposed upon it?

Commenting on pieces taken from the paper: this is something we’ll introduce as soon as possible. It’s purely a technical issue, and we’re keen that everything that appears on the site can be commented on.

Computer illiterates!

Comments: yes, we’ll keep a close eye on these.

WHY? You are not responsible for the comments that users make, if you are legally in the UK, then you need to spin off the blogs to a company in another jurisdiction whose job it is to run the your free speech wing, insulating you from prosecution. You simply cannot do this in the blogosphere, because we will go and read something else, where people are totally free to express themselvs, on the exact same stories, even stories from your own newspaper. This is pretty basic.

We hope registration will help keep up the standard of the debate, but we’ll watch for the ususal libel issues or breaches of our talk policy code.

What a monumental waste of resources; indeed someone has already asked the question:

Does this mean we are finally going to be allowed to comment on the Jowell-Mills saga, or are you going to close down that debate like you did on the Newsblog?

And there you have it. It will be stillborn in terms of doing something really groundbreaking and worth a repeat visit.

Discussions with authors about their articles. I’m encouraging our contributors to re-blog on the reaction to their articles and comment on the comment. Some will, some won’t, and I’m not insisting on it.

‘I’m not insisting on it’. Brava!

‘re-blog’?? ‘conversations’?? ‘upper-positive plates‘??

When Digg launches its ‘other than tech news’ site, it will be very interesting to see how it gets taken up. I have to say that my first impressions of Newsvine were a little dampened. It is completely beautiful design wise, modern, fast etc, but I found that the blogs that people are wrting there interfere with my search for news.

I use blogs to read the facts about news, and for the most part I use news sites to collect the stories initially; bloggers dont have the resources to get many stories together in one place, and so in my mind, I keep these two resources separate; people with the means to gather thousands of stories, and people with a free reign to tell the absolute truth on any subject. Where these two liquids meet in an emulsion is where the interesting things are happening, and what I need is a tool to navigate that emulsion, like Digg.

Newsvine tries to mix oil and water; news sources and blog writers. There is no distinction between the two in that site, and so to me, it is a mess; ‘News Type: Opinion’ is an example of this mess. An opinion is not a news type. Opinions are opinions and news is news; oil is oil and water is water. Digg gets the balance just right, the users set the agenda, control what gets seen, can say whatever they like, and you get to read the news and the first line of cobweb sweeping comments all in one place. It is extremely simple to use, easy to look at and navigate, and fast to get what you need out of it. Newsvine, though beautiful, is a little labrynthine, the headlines are not given equal weght on each page (there is a big headline, and then lots of smaller – read less signifigant – ones, one story has a photo, and thes su stories do not).

It feels like its energy is spread out too much, wheras on Digg, the energy flows neatly down the page from headline to headline into the comments and back again. You can take it all in, and there is lots of it, and it seems like you never miss anything important, since all the tech sites repeat Digg stories after they have been dugg. This is crucial; I feel like I am keeping up to date when I read Digg, whereas with Newsvine, I feel like I am missing something, and the blogs there only reinforce that feeling, because they are taking up space that should be spent on news source fed articles.

Snarfed from 990000

Saturday, February 25th, 2006

Activeair Zabriskie absenter, bluejake, catherinespita, carte blanche, clarsen, forota, hchamp, heif, karacanal, kottke, lackadaisical, lauraholder, meccapixel, milov, orbit1, positive-negative, rion, sasha frere-jones, sharonwatt, subinev, travelersdiagram, waytoblue, weewonderfuls, witoldriedel, wvs.topleftpixel, zabriskie point 40h, alainastruc, bams, donteverplaywithguns, dyswis, exp, expresstrain, freedelivery, infrangible, itwontf*ckingkillyou, myopic, overshadowed, quarlo, satanslaundromat, shotage, slower, spaet, toshikomi, traenengas, viewfrombaxter lightra, linkdup, newstoday, pixelsurgeon activaire, designbybuild, electromusic, hfredriksson, jordanmattos, k-stop, kayrock screenprinting, lightningfield, lisalevinejewelry, neourbanite, noahkalina, no-sleep, overstated, projekt2, ruffsketch, suction, swissmiss, toujourstoi, uneven foundation, version city records

Sucked up from http://990000.com/ 

So you can browse through them at will.

A new blog for you to examine

Tuesday, February 21st, 2006

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/

Just sent to me via email, this blog has some very tasty photo montages in it.