Chavez: Pull Reserves From US

Chavez Urges Latin American Allies to Move Reserves Out of US

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis.

Chavez made the suggestion as he hosted a summit aimed at boosting Latin American integration and rolling back U.S. influence.

“We should start to bring our reserves here,” Chavez said. “Why does that money have to be in the north? … You can’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

To help pool resources within the region, Chavez and other leaders launched a new development bank at the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Nations of Our America, or ALBA.

The left-leaning regional trade alliance first proposed by Chavez is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.

Chavez noted that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia in recent days, saying “that has to do with this summit.”

“The empire doesn’t accept alternatives,” Chavez told the gathering, attended by the presidents of Bolivia and Nicaragua and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.

Chavez warned that U.S. “imperialism is entering into a crisis that can affect all of us” and said Latin America “will save itself alone.”

Rice left Colombia on Friday after a trip aimed at reviving a free trade deal that has stalled in the U.S. Congress. She sidestepped an opportunity to confront Chavez, who accused Colombia and the United States of plotting “military aggression” against Venezuela.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega joined Chavez in his criticism of U.S.-style capitalism, saying “the dictatorship of global capitalism … has lost control.” Three days earlier, Ortega had shouted “Long live the U.S. government” as he inaugurated an American-financed section of highway in his country.

The ALBA Bank is “being born with the aim of boosting development in our countries,” Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Saturday as he and other officials gathered at the bank’s Caracas office for an inaugural ceremony.

Isea has said the bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

Chavez welcomed the Caribbean island of Dominica into the ALBA — an acronym that means “dawn” in Spanish — joining Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba. Attending as observers were the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, along with officials from Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Chavez said a new fund created by Venezuela and Iran to support projects in third countries would have links to the ALBA Bank.

[…]

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080126/venezuela_alba_summit.html

These people are not very smart.

They should have done this years ago before the Iraq invacion (yes ‘invascion’), when it would have made a huge impact. Now that we have a man who could actually become their greatest ally, they want to accelerate the destruction of the USA and trigger the neocon Final Push at the very point at which the whole world could be saved by Ron Paul. Yes, I typed that.

Peanut brained imbeciles!

Leaked memos reveal ‘confusing’ ID card plans

By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:14am GMT 28/01/2008

The future of the Government’s identity card scheme is in confusion as it emerged that plans for a national fingerprint database may be quietly dropped.

MAY be is not good enough, and an NIR without fingerprints is still a pernicious and evil thing, of a kind that the Soviets would have wet their pants over…if they had the power to conceive of such a system.

At the same time, it appears that ministers are considering introducing a compulsory ID scheme by stealth, with plans that would require young people to obtain a card before being granted a driving licence.

We have said many times before, a driving license is a document certificate that proves you are competent to drive at a certain level, certain classes of vehicle. It should be used for nothing other than that, and what this immoral degenerate government is doing is a classic example of feature creep. Driving licenses are about road safety and nothing more.

The proposals were disclosed in two leaked Home Office documents and expose the lack of agreement within the Government over the extent to which ministers should continue with the commitment to ID cards.

A confidential document produced by the Home Office Identity and Passport Service and revealed in The Observer said: “We should test for each group we enrol whether the cost of fingerprints is justified by the use to which they will be put.”

First of all, these are the documents that we know about; heaven knows what else they have been discussing in secret. And of course they are doing it all in secrete because they instinctively know that what they are doing is evil and immoral. If any of this were of benefit to the public it would be done in public.

Secondly, the cost of fingerprinting is irrelevant, and once they go into any database, the use to which they will be put will always lead to a secondary use. Secondary use is one of the major, and most significant complaints about the NIR and ID cards, and not surprisingly, it is missed by the venal monsters who are in charge of cooking the witches pot of this scheme.

Asking people for their fingerprints so they can get a driving license is absurd; having someone’s fingerprints will not increase their skill as a driver, and it will not prevent accidents. None of these ‘security’ measures reduce crime. This is now a well established fact.

If you want to reduce traffic accidents, you make it easier to get driving licenses. Remove the barriers to people taking lessons and getting a license. There will be more skilled drivers on the road, less unlicensed drivers and a safer road system. But of course, ministers don’t care about road safety, they are desirous only of control over the individual at the minute by minute level, and they are, by their own language, looking for any way to get everyone on the database.

I 100% guarantee you that other, yet to be disclosed, leaked, secret documents state the following:

“…it is not imperative that we take fingerprints now; if we hold off on that part of the scheme, we still get a complete database and we can them include universal fingerprinting when that technology has improved. The increase in efficacy of fingerprinting technology in the future will help us make the case for it, and of course, everyone will already be conditioned to being on the NIR”.

You see?

A separate memo obtained by The People appears to contradict Gordon Brown’s insistence that ID cards will remain voluntary for everyone but foreigners living in the UK.

Headed “Options Analysis”, it says: “Various forms of coercion, such as designation of the application process for identity documents issued by UK ministers (eg passports) are an option to stimulate applications in a manageable way.

You see how they use the word ‘coercion’? Not persuasion, but:

co·er·cion /ko???r??n/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[koh-ur-shuhn] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noub
1. the act of coercing; use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance.
2. force or the power to use force in gaining compliance, as by a government or police force.

This is what the NIR and ID cards is all about: the use of totalitarian government force to enslave the population.

“There are advantages to designation of documents associated with particular target groups, eg young people who may be applying for their first driving licence.”

The document adds that “universal compulsion should not be used unless absolutely necessary”.

Meaning that they need to have a pretext to bring it in? Like a ‘terrorist’ attack or some bogus emergency condition, or some crisis, like too many Eastern european people ‘clogging up the system’.

Once again, these problems can be solved without an NIR and ID cards. If you close the borders to all EU nationals, then the flow will be stemmed. But that is another question for another post.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “The Government has seen their ID card proposals stagger from shambles to shambles. Now they plan to use coercion in a desperate attempt to bolster a failed policy.”

And you are going to do what? We still have not heard a commitment to the abolition of the NIR and the repealing of all biometric passports from the Tories. Do correct me if I am wrong about that.

Shami Chakrabarti, of the human rights group Liberty, added: “So much for a voluntary scheme. This leaked memo confirms what we have already known – that compulsion is the ultimate ambition of this scheme.”

I am not in the fan club of Liberty I am afraid, but their website has an interesting piece of history:

Liberty was founded in 1934 as the National Council for Civil Liberties, principally to monitor the policing of protests.

NCCL (renamed Liberty in 1989) has campaigned to protect and promote rights and freedoms for over 70 years.

Our founder, Ronald Kidd, created the Council because he was concerned about the use of police agent provocateurs to incite violence during the hunger marches of 1932.

President of the first Council was E.M. Forster, with vice-presidents including Clement Attlee, Aneurin Bevan, A.A. Milne, J.B. Priestley and Bertrand Russell.

With the UK’s complicity with torture and threats to privacy, free speech and protest rights in the news daily, over 70 years later, Liberty’s work is far from over.

As we have seen, using agent provocateurs is a long standing technique used by the police to create a pretext for clamping down on protest. That is another reason why demonstrating in the street is not only useless, it is dangerous. In the past, where it was impossible for people to communicate to millions of citizens unless you were working on a newspaper (and hence effectively neutered) demonstrations were necessary to literally rally support and act as a show of strength; to connect people to each other, to spread information rapidly and efficiently. Now of course, all of that can be done without going anywhere, at no cost. You also take away the enemy’s opportunity to spark off fake violence and induct the leaders into the police information systems, mischaracterize the legitimate concerns of fed up citizens and deflate movement.

A Home Office spokesman said: “When developing policy, it is right and logical that our first priority is to consider where ID cards can be of greatest benefit to the UK and to the individual.”

[…]

Telegraph

And there you have the mentality of these monsters perfectly encapsulated in a single sentence. Note that the person who said it is unnamed, so fterrified are they that their words will come back to haunt them.

These people are unaccountable, working in secret, without a care for the rights of the people for whom they work and to whom they are responsible.

This scheme is doomed to failure. The number of people who are now saying that they will not comply with it is growing every day. That they are still wasting time and money on it is a scandal.

By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor
Last Updated: 2:04am GMT 26/01/2008

The security of the online computer system used by more than three hundred thousand people to view the private details of children is in doubt after HM Government admitted it was not secure enough to be used by MPs, celebrities and the Royal Family.

Thousands of “high profile” people have been secretly removed from the ContactPoint system amid concerns that their confidential details would be put at risk.

This provoked anger from consumer groups and accountants who said the same levels of security should be offered to all British children regardless of their perceived fame.

HMRC was responsible for losing 25 million child benefit records and the latest admission will concern millions of people entrusting the online system with their confidential financial records.

[…]

ContactPoint has a list of those excluded from the new rules who must have their records kept on hard copies for “security reasons”.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to use the electronic system to make the Jan 31 deadline this week.

ContactPoint records contain children’s names, addresses, parent details, doctor details and other sensitive personal information, – all valuable to paedophiles.

On Friday, senior doctors said they had concerns over the security of the system – apparently confirmed by the the Government’s secret policy.

Mike Warburton, of the General Medical Council, said: “Either ContactPoint is a system which can guarantee confidentiality for all or they should defer plans to roll it out. It is extraordinary that MPs and others can enjoy higher security.”

Mark Wallace, of the Dr. Barnardos charity, said: “This double standard is unacceptable. If the online system is not secure enough for MPs, why should ordinary taxpayers have to put up with it?”

The system was uncovered by the Tory MP Andrew Robathan, who received a letter saying his children’s records could not be found online. He challenged ministers.

“Given our discussions on the efficiency of HMRC recently, how come I have also been sent a letter from my doctor saying I cannot find my children online?”

Jane Kennedy, a Treasury minister, told him: “There are categories of individual for whom security is a higher priority. Not just MPs – there are several categories – and HMRC does not have the facilities for their children to be placed online.”

[…]

INTERRUPTION!

This statement means that Jane Kennedy believes that there is a way to create a higher security system for celebrities and MPs that depends only on facilities and not the nature of data or databases!!!!!!

[…]

In a statement to The Daily Telegraph, ContactPoint confirmed the policy. “ContactPoint services are designed with security as an integral part of the service. We use leading technologies and encryption software to safeguard data and operate strict security standards.

“A tiny minority of individuals’ records, including MPs, have extra security measures over and above the very high standards of confidentiality with which ContactPoint treats all childrens’ data.

“The separate arrangements mean their doctors are unable to use the online service.”

The extra security applies to those in the public eye. Their details are thought to be stored on a highly-restricted database with extra levels of security.

ContactPoint stressed that all childrens’ details were secure.

[…]

Telegraph

And there you have it.

LONDON — London’s East End is notorious for its criminals, from serial murderer Jack the Ripper to mobsters the Kray twins.

The latest candidate for this rogue’s gallery is Janet Devers, a 63-year-old woman who runs a vegetable stall at Ridley Road market. Her alleged crime: selling goods only by the pound and the ounce.

Ms. Devers, whose stall has been in the family for 60 years, faces 13 criminal charges stemming from not selling her produce by the kilogram and the gram. She stands accused of breaking a European Union-instigated rule that countries must use metric measures to standardize trade. The rest of Europe is metric.

But Brits drink their milk and beer by the pint. On the road they rack up miles. Imperial measurement “is what we know, how we are. Who’s to tell us to change?” said Scott Lomax, a fellow vegetable-stall owner.

Ms. Devers, who pleaded not guilty in a court appearance on Friday, is being lionized for her stand in Britain’s feisty tabloids. If convicted, she could be fined as much as $130,000.

“It’s disgusting,” said Ms. Devers of the charges. “We have knifings. We have killings,” she said. “And they’re taking me to court because I’m selling in pounds and ounces.”

And, equally illegally, in bowls. Ten of the counts against her relate to purveying produce, such as hot Scotch-bonnet peppers, by the bowl.

The United Kingdom wrote an exemption into its measurements law to meet the EU metric requirement in 2000, as Brussels allowed. It stated that traders must use metric weights, but they could use imperial measures as well. The problem is that Ms. Devers allegedly didn’t have metric prices on all of her produce when she was charged late last year, and two of her scales only measured in pounds and ounces.

The British imperial system dates back at least to medieval times. Notable holdouts still using it are Britain and the U.S. It doesn’t help that the metric system was created over 200 years ago across the Channel in France, England’s ancient archrival.

[…]

Ms. Devers faces fines of up to $10,000 per charge, or a total of about $130,000. “It would ruin me,” said Ms. Devers, who declined to detail her earnings. She says she canceled a planned trip to New York with her twin sister, because having a criminal record could make entering the U.S. difficult.

[…]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120097109796805629.html

Anyone who reads BLOGDIAL knows what I think about this.

It is beyond insane.

Hackney is riddled with crime, and they send TWO police to arrest someone who is MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS.

This woman is not guilty of anything, save living in the insane asylum called Modern Britain®™.

The UK Says It Shut Down 44,000 Pornographic Web Sites Last Year

The Associated Press

LONDON

The UK shut down 44,000 Web sites and arrested 868 people for Internet pornography last year, state media said Wednesday.

The UK’s Public Security Ministry launched a crackdown on Internet pornography last year, saying it had “perverted the UK’s young minds.”

Nearly 2,000 people involved in Internet pornography activities also were penalized, the official BBC News Agency said.

Separately, the BBC said 33 people were arrested in connection with a Web site that allowed customers, mainly in Scotland, to view live sex shows filmed at 12 separate locations in the northern British city of Grimsby.

The BBC said 23 of those arrested were performers who were ordered detained for 15 days, while the 10 others, including two Scots, were managers. It did not say when the arrests took place, but said the heavily trafficked site had been among those targeted in the crackdown last year.

Cash, computers and film equipment were also seized, the BBC said.

The UK forbids pornography and paid sex in virtually all forms, although prostitution is common and the government’s Internet police struggle to block pornographic Web sites based abroad.

The UK’s online population has soared to 21 million people and could surpass Greece this year to become one of the world’s biggest, the official UK Internet Network Information Center said earlier this month.

The government will increasingly concentrate on Web sites that have audio or video, blogging or send information to cell phones, the BBC said.

The UK recently said it wanted to exert more control over Internet videos and video-sharing Web sites.

The government regularly censors and restricts access to content it considers subversive or politically sensitive, and British Web sites often hire their own censors to eliminate certain content.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

[…]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4175590

Associated Press has another story. And there are many others.

Of course, these sorts of measure can never work. What will happen is this; someone will produce a list of al the sites that are being filtered, and then someone else will create a proxy gateway so that anyone that wants those sites can get to them without having to change any settings on their browser.

Jacqui Smith is yet another in the long line of imbeciles who have taken the job of Home Secretary. This list reads like a who’s who of evil monsters. Jultra had the best lines on Charles Clarke; sadly, he is not posting regularly anymore.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/story/0,,2240907,00.html

ID cards for foreigners within three years

… which is the modern-day, socially acceptable (to HMG) equivalent of the compulsory wearing of a Star of David. And the first step on the path to Idi Aminism, as you mentioned yesterday.

On BBQ they run HMG-approved, “ID-lite: it’s alrite” stories.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7186643.stm

But still quote BlindKid, telling it like it is:

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett, who introduced the initial identity card bill, said the scheme would not work unless everyone had to have a card. “In my opinion, without it being mandatory, there is little point in doing it,” he added.

And…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrights/story/0,,2241005,00.html

FBI wants instant access to British identity data

… which is just incredible. For those worried by such schemes there are simple steps to avoid it, as Blogdial has repeatedly pointed out:
1. Don’t give anyone your personal data
2. Vote Tory/LibDem and let them know why you are prepared to support them.
3. DON’T GIVE ANYONE YOUR PERSONAL DATA.

Then, of course, there is the Prum Treaty, which gives anyone in the EU with access to the right computer, indirectly or directly, access to all your personal government-collected information. Do you know anyone who has heard of it, mentioned it to you, expressed their concern? I don’t.
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.12/prum-treaty-eu

It’s the secret tunnel through which personal liberty escapes, dug in the depths of night with a stolen spoon, and hidden from sight behind a poster of a busty wench… it goes unnoticed until one day…

‘That’s not Personal Freedom! That’s a papier-mache model of Personal Freedom!?!?!?! Hang on… OMIGOD Personal Freedom has has been whisked away down the secret tunnel behind the busty wench! How did we not notice!?’

‘I dunno… I’ve been sleeping in the same room as Personal Freedom for years and didn’t have an inkling anything like this could happen… ‘

How many times will people ignore the scraping sounds in the night before they wake up?

On a similar vein, after a year or two of ‘Facebook is fab, you simply must join and be my “friend”‘ articles, there is now a plethora of bleating, indignant tripe being written about how bad Facebook is, and how shocked these commentators are that Facebook has a very convoluted privacy policy, exploits your personal data to the absolute limits, and exists purely to make profit for people who are already incredibly wealthy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/10/privacy.it
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/20/facebook.privacy

‘Hang on, you seem to be fucking me up the arse and have been doing for some time but I’ve only just noticed!’

No pity for fools here. Just contempt for what passes as insightful journalism.

Gah!

This afternoon, we went up to Notting Hill for a late lunch.

Sitting to the right of us was a softly spoken american couple. Many americans in London have loud voices where the letter ‘R’ is brutally over pronounced and the work ‘like’ is used liberally and inappropriately. These two were not of that type. The female was reading a Sunday Tabloid paper, and spontaneously started tutting loudly.

I bit.

“Thats why I don’t read newspapers in the UK”.

“Oh! I know, they are so TERRIBLE!”

Then it came to, via a circuitous route, to the 2008 election.

They did not know who Ron Paul Was.

It transpired that these two people are using ‘The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from, and How You Can Choose‘. as their method of deciding who to vote for.

They did not know that america is borrowing money from China to run the war in Iraq.

They did not know that the head of the GAO is, in an unprecedented move, sounding the alarm about america’s debt crisis.

I told them that it would be useful for their decision making process to look up Ron Paul on the internets.

The man sitting to our right said that he is supporting John McCain, because, “He (John McCain) is against the earmarks and pork spending of Washington.”

I pointed out that John McCain wants to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years. I also pointed out again that america doesn’t have the money to pay for this, and that america is borrowing money from China to run this ‘war’.

“Even if you agree with John McCain in principle, who is going to pay for this adventure?”, said I.

He said, “america needs to keep troops all over the world. The Soviet Union fell because of those troops, and they help spread democracy. I’ll pay for it.”, said the man.

And we petty much left it at that.

This is the level of insanity and pure ignorance that the american public is operating at, and these people were not the lowest common denominator, but very educated, well spoken types.

Then the female came out with, “what is the central part of Ron Paul’s platform?”.

“Obey the Constitution, small government, no nation building, don’t be the policeman of the world. You can see him talking about this all over the internet, and when you read up about him and his background you will see that he is not like any other candidate”, I replied.

“Does that mean he is for americans being able to own guns, because if he follows the constitution, that means he is for guns, and I am against guns”.

I’m not making any of this up.

This is a person who has just been told that america is about to go bankrupt, there is a dream candidate whose voting record is perfect, who wants to end the insane wars and hatred that is (rightfully) tilted against america, that america is borrowing from China to run its wars….and she is concerned about GUN OWNERSHIP.

That is like a rat being concerned about finding a warm place to sleep on the Titanic.

They both promised that they would ‘Google Ron Paul’, being intrigued as to why it was that they had not heard or read about a man who has just won second place in the Nevada caucus.

Once thing is for certain; american international adventurism is over. The question now is how is it going to end. The idiots who still believe in the lies and false reasoning of the type that John McCain spouts are going to get a nasty wake up call in the future if they do not wake up right now. In any case, the world is a much bigger place than the usa; there are more genius level people in China than there are people in the usa and there are more people learning English in China than the entire population of the US. The world will go ahead without america; she will become a dream, a thing of the past, with only a flag on the moon to remember her by…and that will be plucked out of the lunar soil by Chinese lunar colonists.

People like this charming couple have a choice. They either wake up and hunker down, or have america subsumed after a disastrous crash the likes of which they have not got the brains to imagine.

All of this in around ten minutes.

What a life!

The hosts of Fox & Friends are all worked up over a claim in the British press that al Qaeda may be recruiting Caucasian members to infiltrate Western societies.

“Have you heard about this new thing going on in Great Britain,” asked host Gretchen Carlson, “[where] Al Qaeda [is] rooting up all these Britons, essentially, 1400 strong, apparently, in a new, what’s being called a new ‘White al Qaeda Army.’ Tougher to detect, potentially …”

“Yeah, because they’re not Muslims,” co-host Steve Doocy commented. “They look just like regular British people.”

“This is what we’ve always talked about,” Carlson went on, “That if you have people in one country transplanting to another religion and they maybe aren’t exactly what you think they are, that can be more difficult to fight.

“Yeah. They’re converting them in prison, to, uh…” “To kill us!” “Yeah, great,” said co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy in turn.

Brian Kilmeade then brought on Mike Baker, a former CIA agent and professional counter-terrorism expert. “Mike Baker’s here — this word that al Qaeda’s building up a white terror army of up to 1500 operatives in the UK:” said Kilmeade. “How soon could they strike us here, and would they be trying to do something similar using convicted criminals?”

Baker told Kilmeade that al Qaeda looks for operatives who can fit in, just as the CIA does, saying, “If they can recruit a Scandinavian, that’s the holy grail for them.” He added, “They need people who can move around freely and do their bidding,” apparently implying that blue-eyed blondes are the people who blend most seamlessly into Western society.

However, Baker dismissed Kilmeade’s suggestion that al Qaeda would be particularly interested in recruiting in US prisons. “To go into a prison and try to recruit individuals — that person’s already tainted. What they really need, they need people who haven’t run afoul of law enforcement in the past. … Their problems are extreme in trying to recruit someone who can go out there and carry out their business.”

Baker also commented on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, saying, “You’re not going to sway the conspiracy theorists, and there are a lot of them, who exist on the anti-Musharraf side. … They just will not be convinced that the government was not involved in this.”

[…]

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Fox_hypes_terror_of_Al_Qaedas_0114.html

‘White al Qaeda’.

Is that like White Chocolate?

Hmmmm!!

So now we can extrapolate a mugshot of what one of these ‘White al Qaeda’ look like:

!!!!!!!

KALL TEH KOPZ!!!

The next UK Census will be in 2011. Help us stop it being run by an arms company with close links to the United States government.

What’s the problem?

The process of running the 2011 Census will be contracted out by the Office of National Statistics to a private company.

One of the two contractors in the final round of selection is the arms company Lockheed Martin, 80% of whose business is with the US Department of Defense and other Federal Government agencies.

This might concern you because:

• The Census rules mean that every household will be legally obliged to provide a wide range of personal information that will be handled by the chosen contractor.
• Lockheed Martin produces missiles and land mines which are being used in Afghanistan and Iraq and which are illegal in many countries.
• They also focus on intelligence and surveillance work and boast of their ability to provide ‘integrated threat information’ that combines information from many different sources.
• New questions in the 2011 Census will include information about income and place of birth, as well as existing questions about languages spoken in the household and many other personal details.
• This information would be very useful to Lockheed Martin’s intelligence work, and fears that the data might not be safe could lead to many people not filling in their Census forms.

Census Alert is therefore campaigning to stop Lockheed Martin from being given the contract.

The campaign is supported by the Green Party, politicians from Plaid Cymru, Labour and the Scottish National Party, and others opposed to the arms trade and concerned about personal privacy.

We are not opposed to the Census itself. Aggregated, the information collected is important in allocating resources to local authorities and public services.

But personal privacy is important too, and we are concerned that Lockheed Martin’s involvement could undermine public confidence in the process and lead to inaccurate data being collected.

What can I do?
There is still time to stop this happening and we are not calling for a boycott of the Census at this stage.
Before the final decisions on the contract are made, we are asking you to do the following:

Sign our petition opposing arms company involvement in the Census at:
Contact your MP and ask them to raise the issue in Parliament.
Contact your local Councillor and ask them to highlight their concerns about the allocation of local authority resources.

More about taking action on this issue

The 2006 Canadian Census campaign
Lockheed Martin were also involved in the 2006 Census in Canada, and a campaign calling for a boycott was organised by Vive le Canada and supported by progressive MPs in Canada’s parliament.

The campaign did not succeed in getting them removed. But it did achieve its aim of ensuring only civil servants handled the actual data, and a new government task force was set up to monitor privacy during the Census.

[…]

http://censusalert.org.uk/

and so on…

Of course, we on BLOGDIAL do not think you should fill out a census form at all, for many reasons.

By Bob Unruh

Homeschoolers need to be making plans to flee Germany en masse after a government document implied the advent of a coming crackdown that would target them, an advocate says.

The government letter is addressed to “School Administrations of State and Private Schools” and its subject line specifies “Custody withdrawal for violation of mandatory school attendance.”

“The [German] court determined that the parents’ refusal to send their children to either a state or a state approved private school is a misuse of parental custody rights, which violates the well-being of the child,” the letter, dated just a few weeks ago, said, “and which requires actions by the family court. …”

“We ask for acknowledgment and compliance,” the letter, signed by N. Hauf., director of school affairs, said.

WND has carried numerous reports of homeschooling families in Germany running afoul of that nation’s Nazi-era law banning homeschooling, and being fined or otherwise penalized. In recent days, however, the threats against homeschooling parents frequently have included loss of custody of their children, and several families already have fled.

The government letter was forwarded to the United States by a homeschooling advocate in Germany, who expressed his own personal fears for the safety of his family and contemplated leaving his home country himself.

“It is very likely that our family [will have] to leave the country this year. Maybe I have to bring my children and my wife to a place of safety within the next weeks or even days,” the advocate said in a personal message to the Home School Legal Defense Association, the world’s largest homeschool advocacy organization, which has been involved in a number of recent cases in Germany.

“The behavior of German authorities against families who homeschool goes against the very fiber of what free and democratic societies stand for – that governments exist to protect the rights of people not to take them away,” Mike Donnelly, a staff attorney for the HSLDA, said. “In Germany it appears that the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government do not care to protect the human right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children which includes the right to homeschool – a view shared by nearly all other western civilized countries.”

The government letter was from the State of Bavaria’s Ministry of Education and appeared to be directed to local school officials, essentially declaring an open season on homeschoolers in Germany.

It followed a recent Federal High Court decision, which now remains under appeal, that “schulverweigerung” – or those who “refuse” to give their children to public school authorities – actually are misusing their parental rights.

It calls for action against those people, and finishes with the phrase, translated into English, meaning, “To your attention.”

That, the German homeschool advocate said, is an encouragement for civil and criminal case authorities to act against such families.

“There was not yet an official reaction from our authorities, but the case of the Landahl family shows that they can act very quickly,” the advocate said. “So it seems to me the best to think about leaving Germany. The situation is horrible. Homeschoolers who are still here are fearful what happens next. Germany changes quickly into a brutal tyranny and dictatorship.”

Without help, he said, “All homeschool families must leave our country or even give up.”

The Landahl family recently reached England in its flight from Germany in the face of a court case assembled by the mayor of Altenschieg.

The government letter noted the federal court concluded “that the partial withdrawal of custody and the withdrawal of the parental right to determine the place where their children stay to be legitimate when the mandatory school attendance law is violated continuously.”

The letter advised local authorities, “to initiate appropriate action is generally the responsibility of Youth Administration (Child Protective Services). Long term violations of the mandatory school attendance law are to be reported by the schools to the Youth Administration …,” it said.

“The County Court Houses and the County-free cities have been informed by the government accordingly,” it said.

Government crackdowns, or pogroms, are not new in Germany. The most famous probably was Kristallnacht, perpetrated in Hitler’s buildup to World War II, when The Times of London concluded, “No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings … which disgraced that country yesterday.”

In one night, thousands of businesses owned by Jews and synagogues were destroyed, and tens of thousands of people jailed.

Homeschoolers fear the letter is part of a mechanism that would trigger a nationwide roundup of such “lawbreakers.”

“We are seeing what may be a severe crackdown against homeschoolers in Germany,” Donnelly said. This document “appears to send the message to local school officials that it is ‘open season’ on homeschoolers in Germany.”

He said there has been an increase in the number of families fleeing persecution in Germany, and “even American citizens in Germany are also being told that they must enroll their children in the public schools or an approved private school or else face the same measures that German families face.”

He said what’s startling is the absolute unanimity of judges’ opinions in recent cases. “Such unanimity amongst judges in Germany is itself hard to understand. I can’t imagine such unanimity amongst judges in our own country or any other free democratic society –which I suppose points out some of the important differences and why we are having these problems in Germany and nowhere else,” Donnelly said.

Even before the 2007 court ruling and the recent letter, Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, or Network for Freedom in Education, reported that German authorities were rigid in their interpretation of homeschooling bans, up to the point that they expressed plans to change the religious opinions of a family.

The group described a situation in which local police had picked up three children from one family and taken them physically to a public school.

WND reported when a German family wrote to object to such actions. “The minister of education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling,” said a government letter in response. “… You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers. …In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement.”

The European Human Rights Court earlier affirmed Germany’s homeschool ban.

That specific case addressed in the opinion involved Fritz and Marianna Konrad, who filed the complaint in 2003 and argued that Germany’s compulsory school attendance endangered their children’s religious upbringing and promotes teaching inconsistent with the family’s Christian faith.

The court said the Konrads belong to a “Christian community which is strongly attached to the Bible” and rejected public schooling because of the explicit sexual indoctrination programs that the courses there include.

The German court already had ruled that the parental “wish” to have their children grow up in a home without such influences “could not take priority over compulsory school attendance.” The decision also said the parents do not have an “exclusive” right to lead their children’s.

The family had appealed under the European Convention on Human Rights statement that: “No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”

But the court’s ruling said, instead, that schools represent society, and “it was in the children’s interest to become part of that society … The parents’ right to education did not go as far as to deprive their children of that experience.”

Government officials repeatedly have expressed a determination to stamp out “parallel societies” and that includes homeschooling. An American family of Baptist missionaries reports being threatened with deportation for homeschool, and a teenager, Melissa Busekros, eventually was returned to her family months after German authorities took her from her home and forcibly detained her in a psychiatric facility for being homeschooled.

“Even the United Nations has called on Germany to reform the way it treats homeschoolers.We appeal to the German people and German leadership to do what is right and to protect rather than attack families who choose to homeschool their children,” the HSDLA has noted.

In the case involving Melissa Busekros, a German appeals court ultimately ordered legal custody of the teenager who was taken from her home by a police squad and detained in a psychiatric hospital in 2007 for being homeschooled be returned to her family because she no longer is in danger.

The lower court’s ruling had ordered police officers to take Melissa – then 15 – from her home, if necessary by force, and place her in a mental institution for a variety of evaluations. She was kept in custody from early February until April, when she turned 16 and under German law was subject to different laws.

At that point she simply walked away from the foster home where she had been required to stay and returned home.

Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has commented on the issue on a blog, noting the government “has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole.”

Drautz said homeschool students’ test results may be as good as for those in school, but “school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens.”

[…]

World Net Daily

I feel very sorry for the Home Schooling Germans.

They need to understand that there is a huge population of Home Schoolers in the UK, and that they have the right to move here and live here whenever they choose. They can and should sell their houses and turn their backs on Germany.

That is exactly what they should do. The Germans are experts in rounding up people – everyone in the world know it. Germany has not been a free country before during or after the Nazis, and as this article vividly explains, it is just as Nazi now as it was in the 1930’s and Herr ‘N. Hauf’ is a Nazi, pure and simple.

It is also another clear example of how the German Constitution is completely worthless. Germans can let roll off of their tongues, phrases like, “misuse of parental custody rights”. Sound familiar? This is the same language that destroys every delineated right in their constitution.

All Germans today are clearly brainwashed against Home Schooling, otherwise there would be widespread outrage that their government was proposing to crack down on these people who are harming no one and simply minding their own business. Any nation of free people where the majority of people understand the principles of freedom would not sit down silently while a group of people were persecuted in this way…but then, we are talking about Germany, and they have a history of sitting down quietly while minorities are eliminated.

These are the facts.

Trying to make Germans and Germany into decent people is like trying to make dry water. Free people are anathema to the Germans and the national character of that country makes it easy for them to suppress or murder anyone that does not conform.

These Home Schoolers are very lucky; they can simply get on a train and arrive in St. Pancras a few hours later as free people. They can move their assets also. It would be difficult and painful to do, but it can be done, and once finished, they will be able to do exactly as they please. They can even go back to Germany whenever they like, to visit their relatives.

Other people who were put on trains by the German government were not so lucky.

No doubt the German government will try and stop the free movement of Germans and their assets to lock in Home Schoolers.

I know some German Home Schoolers, and they are perfectly pleasant people; not brainwashed, decent, friendly, considerate, good parents and exactly the sort of person you would like to have as a neighbor.

German culture is in fact the pure evil here; you can find decent people anywhere from any country – you know this – it is a case of a human brain running an operating system.

People running German culture OS, are running a closed source, non free OS like a certain Borg-like disease that we all love to hate.

People running any Free thinking OS are like Linux; open source, free, extensible, infinitely customizable, portable, unlocked, beautiful, useful and more human like.

Großbritannien wartet Sie deutsche Hauptschulefamilien!

Joseph Somsel
American Thinker
January 4, 2008

“There is nothing wrong with your thermostat. Do not attempt to adjust the temperature. We are controlling your power consumption. If we wish to make it hotter, we will turn off your air conditioner. If we wish to make it cooler, we will turn off your heater. For the next millennium, sit quietly and we will control your home temperature. We repeat, there is nothing wrong with your thermostat. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… SACRAMENTO!”*

Building codes and engineering standards are generally good things. Updating and improving codes and standards better protect us against earthquakes, for example, as we better understand the weak points and failure modes of existing construction techniques. Requirements that ensure proper handling of sanitary wastes can be largely credited with the increased life spans in industrialized countries through the reduction of communicable diseases.

In California, we have 236 pages of state-mandated standards for building energy efficiency, known as Title 24. This prescribes methods for calculating the sizes of your home windows, the capacities of your air conditioner and heater, the thickness of the insulation in your attic. A small cottage industry has sprung up to perform these engineering calculations that are required for any new commercial or residential construction or major change to existing structures. While I’ve never personally been involved in this branch of retail professional engineering, I’ve had colleagues who would moonlight doing Title 24 calcs. It is now just part of the mandated paperwork involved in the construction business these days in California.

A new revision to Title 24 is in the works for 2008[2] and it includes a number of improvements and enhancements that are largely good sense items and should be non-controversial. For example a new swimming pool will probably need larger diameter pipes between the pool, the filter and the pump than was former practice. This will reduce the fluid friction losses that your pump must overcome and hence reduce the pump’s consumption of electricity, albeit at a minor increase in first cost for the larger pipes and fittings. Another good idea is a requirement for lighter colored shingles, the “Cool Roof Initiative.” That is intended to reduce heat loss over cold winter nights by emission and heat gain on summer days by absorption. My neighbor and I both recently discovered that it is difficult to get roofers to NOT use dark colored shingles for some reason. Having a little state muscle behind us will help, especially for renters.

What should be controversial in the proposed revisions to Title 24 is the requirement for what is called a “programmable communicating thermostat” or PCT. Every new home and every change to existing homes’ central heating and air conditioning systems will required to be fitted with a PCT beginning next year following the issuance of the revision. Each PCT will be fitted with a “non-removable ” FM receiver that will allow the power authorities to increase your air conditioning temperature setpoint or decrease your heater temperature setpoint to any value they chose. During “price events” those changes are limited to +/- four degrees F and you would be able to manually override the changes. During “emergency events” the new setpoints can be whatever the power authority desires and you would not be able to alter them.

In other words, the temperature of your home will no longer be yours to control. Your desires and needs can and will be overridden by the state of California through its public and private utility organizations. All this is for the common good, of course.

[…]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/who_will_control_your_thermost.html

???!!!

One of the most important qualities a human being can posses is empathy:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) – Cite This Source – Share This
em·pa·thy [em-puh-thee] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

A human being that lives without a capacity for empathy is able to remorselessly torture dismember and kill other humans, in the way that mass murderers and serial killers do.

Ron Paul keeps asking the ‘Republican’ candidates running against him to imagine what it would be like if america was invaded by the Chinese, in a vain attempt to make them understand the true source of the bitter hatred that exists against america. He tries to get them to imagine that the Chinese occupy america with troops for the best of good reasons, and that they, in their occupation, say to all americans, “you must adopt our system of government and way of life because its for your own good”.

Any human being with an intact capacity for empathy with other people would shudder at the thought of invading another person’s country and telling them how to live. That Ron Paul even has to bring this example up is astonishing, (though hardly surprising given the low quality of his competitors).

They would also instantly understand the Iraq Freedom Fighters and their struggle to evict the invading american crusaders. Anyone with imagination problems should see the film ‘Red Dawn’ if they want a vivid example of how the americans would respond to a successful invasion of their country.

Americans resisting a colonizing army on american soil would blow up enemy vehicles with IEDs, snipe enemy soldiers with hunting rifles, blow up bridges, assassinate enemy officers, execute collaborators (puppet government traitors, ‘Quislings‘), take to the hills and then film it all, edit it into stirring calls to arms with amazing music and distribute it on DVDRs and over the internets to all loyal and patriotic americans.

This is EXACTLY what the Iraqis are doing; they are doing what the americans would do if their country were occupied by a foreign power. The Iraqis said time and time again that there were no WMDs in their country, and that the pressure being put upon them was unfair, unwarranted, immoral and motivated by the lust for oil. They were invaded anyway. Imagine if that happened to YOUR country? You would not just sit down and do nothing, you would do what the Freedom Fighters are doing, you would fight back with everything at your disposal. There was no justification for this attack, they knew it, even if everyone everywhere else did not. The pain they must feel at this injustice must be almost beyond understanding; its such an outrage though it should be easy for anyone to feel just a small part of it.

Anyone who does not understand this does not have an intact sense of empathy. He must, by definition, think that Iraqis are inferior to americans, and that they have less rights to self determination than americans do.

That is what the Fred Thompsons of this world cannot do. The Giuliani’s of this world are just insane warmongers, as an insane person, we cannot expect rational thought from his mind or reason to emanate from his mouth. Mitt Romney is a reanimated Richard Nixon. Mike Huckabee is the most terrifying prospect out of the bunch. I believe that he would be a worse president than ‘W’. And that is saying something.

Speaking of Mike Huckabee, I was curious to see wether or not he had ever travelled outside the USA; he seems to be an unexposed, parochial ‘never been out of the usa’ type of man. To find out, I used the googles, and stumbled upon one of his more outrageous and insane policies; he wants to stop americans with dual nationality from using their other passports, and he wants to forbid dual citizens from voting in the elections of other countries.

I’m not making this up:

Now, in the midst of a Republican nomination battle in which many voters seem strongly opposed to illegal immigration, Governor Huckabee has veered to the other extreme, and proposes to crack down on legal immigrants, as well as native-born Americans. Item 8 of his “[1]Secure American Plan” promises to:

Impose civil and/or criminal penalties on American citizens who illegitimately use their dual status (e.g., using a foreign passport, voting in elections in both a foreign country and the U.S.).

Let’s consider the second item first: a few countries (such as Italy) which recognize dual citizenship allow non-resident nationals to vote in their elections. Indeed, the Italian parliament even has [2]several seats which are elected by Italian citizens living abroad. It seems obvious that encouraging American citizens who can vote in foreign elections to do so would be in the strategic interests of the United States. A person who resides in America, and who is a citizen of both of the United States and Italy, is probably going to be a stronger supporter of Italo-American friendship than is an Italian-only citizen living in Italy.

[…]

Like I said before, this man is not qualified to be the president. This becomes more and more clear as you dig deeper and deeper into his insane ‘policies’ and his ‘Islamo Fascist’ war forever speak. Even the green Obama would be a better candidate than Huckabee; at least he will have SOME understanding of cultures other than america’s, and that is what is sorely needed in the White House.

After reading this dual citizen nonsense I didn’t bother to try and find out if that bumpkin had ever left the usa or if he even has a passport.

Some of the panelists on the recent ABC News Republican Debate From New Hampshire talked about fingerprinting all foreigners and giving them tamper proof ID cards, and being able to push a button and check someone out at ‘Homeland Security’ and employers being able to see if someone is employable upon presentation of a secure card. None of these people of course, say the words that we have been saying for ages; if you give one group of people ID cards, then EVERYBODY has to have them or the system cannot work. If an employer is required to check if you are legally entitled to work in the USA, then ALL workers must be verified in this way, and EVERYONE must be ‘in the system’ for it to work. That means a National ID card for all americans. Period. If any of them say otherwise, then they are LIARS and should not be in office or they do not understand the implications of what they are proposing and they should not be in office. Either way, anyone who proposes identity management as a solution to social problems is an enemy of Liberty. Full stop.

Our new Holford Myths site is launched today – this has been developed to counteract false information about Patrick Holford.

Anyone who challenges today’s drug-based medical paradigm effectively is a likely target for attack. Notably, since the publication of Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs by Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne, certain drug industry funded organisations and drug-oriented individuals have campaigned to discredit Patrick Holford by spreading false allegations. The main opponents have been Ben Goldacre in the Guardian, pharmacology professor David Colquhoun, the anonymous Holford Watch and certain dieticians.

The associations with the pharmaceutical industry and/or organisations funded by the pharmaceutical industry are explored in the free e-book Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, Quackbusters and Corporate Science by Martin Walker for those who want to understand the modus operandi of the organised lobby against alternative and nutritional approaches within medicine.

Responses to false allegations about Patrick Holford plus direct links to extracts about Ben Goldacre, David Colquhoun, Holford Watch and certain dieticians from the above e-book can be found on www.holfordmyths.com

[…]

Patrick Holford is a man who owns a company that makes and sells vitamins and dietary supplements. He writes books, and sells them.

This is an affront to people like Ben Goldacre and his ilk. The only food you should be eating is the food that SCIENCE says you should be eating. The only thoughts you should be thinking are the ones that SCIENCE says you should be thinking. Anyone who eats anything else, who thinks anything else, who says anything other than what they believe, who does not swallow the dogma is ANTI-SCIENCE and is to be…

BURNED AT THE STAKE

Rational people are not frightened of Vitamin Sellers or book writers. They make their case cleanly and then STFU. If the thinking behind Bad Science is so great, then let them write a diet book, sell it, and then make people thinner…[booming voice] WITH SCIENCE [/booming voice]; what need have you to personally attack, ridicule and seek to destroy other people? What do you gain out of it? Who appointed these sub human monsters the protectors of the general public? Once again, if they have something better to offer, OFFER IT, do not pump the world full of negative vibes (man [or is that hairless monkey?]).

The fact of the matter is, none of these people have anything to offer, other than rancid bile, calls to disbelief and personal attacks. It goes like this; you have posts on your blog about UFOs, therefore, ALL your stuff is garbage. That is a stupid skeptic trick. That is junk science. I say “God does not exist” and so you are a fool to believe anything else. That is how they work; they do not have a better diet for you, or a better set of supplements, a different, greater belief to follow (except their utterly fallable, incomplete, and downright deadly dogma) the only thing they have to offer is ‘DO NOT DO THAT’ ‘DO NOT BELIEVE THAT’ ‘DO NOT EAT THAT’, and of course, there is nothing that you can DO with that negativity, and the newspaper it is printed on is fit only to light up your fire.

I can tell you something straight – anyone who writes a column like ‘Bad Science’ is on my shitlist from the first speck of ink on the paper. Anyone who runs other people down, who uses Stupid Skeptic Tricks is a TOTAL SCUMBAG.

Lets be clear:

Should they be burned at the stake? No.
Should they be stopped from writing in that RAG the Guardian or any other rag? No.
Are they the worst examples of human trash ever? Yes!

The point is, these attacks on Vitamin Sellers are direct attacks on MY LIBERTY. They are an affront to decent people everywhere, who just want to mind their own business and who do not want to be told what to do, what to think and what to eat and who to trade with.

People who are against Patrick Holford are Fascists. They want to forbid you from taking vitamins, they want the law to ban the sale of dietary supplements. They want you to not read his books; in effect, they want to censor him, and prevent the free flow of information across the world. They are as bad as the Chinese Government, or those guys who burned books in the 1930s.

All free people have the absolute right to publish what they want, and free people have the right to read what they like. Free people have the right to control what goes into their bodies; that means that they can eat whatever they like, inject whatever they like, smoke whatever they like, and it is no one’s business. It is not the business of Ben Goldacre and the corprophiliacs at The Guardian. It is not the business of Bayer, GSL, Novartis, Monsanto, Uncle Sam, HMG or anyone else.

Anyone who tries to shut down writers like Patrick Holford are on the side of Fascists and Fascism. They are against Liberty and against the freedom to read and to learn (and no, learning does not mean only learning what is ‘right’).

I am fed up to the teeth of the attacks on vitamins and food supplements. I am tired of reading about the weasel words of the corporate shills defending the indefensible, trying to take away my right to interact with whomever I want in whatever way I want.

In the end, these people must be put down like diseased dogs. Fox news is learning what it means to defy the force of Liberty unleashed. Their stock has taken a dip thanks to the boycott that is now running against all the sponsors of that evil station. This can be done to any company, and certainly, if the vitamin eaters and supplement takers decide to boycott a newspaper that is attacking them, the effects will be felt. Newspapers can publish whatever they like, and everyone has the right to buy and sell whatever they like…including stocks.

Some may say that I go in too hard on these subjects; part of the style of this blog during its nearly seven years of operation is to go in with all guns blazing if thats what you like. Nevertheless, in the past, when people tried to take away the liberty of free men the result was war and killing and that is what The Guardian, Skeptics and corporate shills are doing; literally attacking millions of free people; trying to erase their liberty, poison them and destroy their lives. That they are subjected only to some bad language and shouting is very lucky for them; in another age they would lose their lives…in any case, they have lost. More people than ever are turning away from Industrial Pharmaceutical Medicine and The Medical Industrial Complex. This is why they bring out the big guns to try and shoot down people like Patrick Holford – though in the case of Goldacre we are talking about a .22 not The Guns of Navarone… but I digress; the publishers of that garbage had better think twice about running hit pieces against people who are doing nothing but mind their own business – there could be big economic consequences for them, just like Fox is feeling right now.

For those morons out there who say that vitamin sellers are defrauding the public, that is not your business. There is plenty of legislation dealing with poisoning and poisoners to take care of people who sell things that actually harm buyers under the guise that it is medicine. We have enough law on the books to take care of almost every possible situation. It is you baying and whining morons who create the monster governments that stop at nothing to control everything that you do down to how and when you piss.

Make up your own minds, eat what you want, publish what you want, read what you want, think what you want and DOWN with the anti vitamin fascists!

UPDATE!

a lurker sends this

> this snippet should have been in your post:
>
> At this point it is perhaps worth pointing out
> that Goldacre won a British Science Writers (BSW)
> award, in 2003. At this time, the BSW was funded
> by Glaxo Wellcome and called the Glaxo Wellcome
> BSW Award, the very year that he began working
> for the Guardian. The drug AZT was made by
> Burroughs-Wellcome, now GlaxoSmithKline.
>
> and check out this book:
>
> http://www.slingshotpublications.com/dwarfs.html

What a nasty, foul and loathsome piece of work!

An educated lurker writes:

>>From BBC reportage:
>
> For Mr Huckabee, the key word was “values”,
> with many Republican caucus-goers saying
> the former Baptist minister was someone
> “who shares my values”.
>
> His win was built on the support he got
> from evangelical voters. More
> than half of Republicans interviewed as
> they attended the caucuses said
> they were either born-again or evangelical
> Christians, the Associated
> Press news agency reported.

This report, and most brits have missed and are missing the big news of the campaign; Ron Paul.

Not everyone in the states is an ‘Evangelical’ and if it is the case that ‘more than half’ of the idiots who voted for Huckleberry are those types, then that caucus is skewed.

read this:

http://www.ronpaulnews.net

every day, and watch ALL of the videos on that site going back through the weeks. ITs worth the effort, because this man is causing a revolution in the usa, and its effects are spreading outside the usa also.

> This won’t be good for reasserting the
> separation of church and state,
> obviously.

Ron Paul advocates TOTAL separation of church and state.

> No more freedom of choice on abortion,

Ron Paul is for removing the federal jurisdiction on the abortion matter.

> but more people on
> death row.

Ron Paul is for abolishing capital punishment

> Less big government, but more diktats.

Ron Paul is for a constitutional sized federal government; ie, no diktats.

> And more ‘keeping up with the Muhammeds’

Ron Paul is for removing ALL of america’s 570,000 troops from ALL bases all over the world.

> when it comes to creating an indoctrinated
> population capable of supporting
> faith-based conflict (sick)

Ron Paul is for home schooling and the abolition of the Department of Education.

> in all
> aspects of trade, migration and power-grabbing.
> (Remember the nice lady pastor talking about
> creating an army to combat ‘The Muslims’ at the
> beginning of jesus camp? Heart-warming stuff)

Ron Paul is for open trade and cultural exchange on the personal level with all countries and all peoples without exception and without restriction.

> And the alternative?

Ron Paul!

> Blandness Inc., an everyman for the
> head-in-the-sand generation. A man as strong,
> stand-uppish and resilient
> as the celery sticks in my fridge no longer
> fit even for stock.

You mean Obama of course :)

> Gah!

Ditto.

America is undergoing a volcanic change, and now, even the Main Stream Media is beginning to get on board with the revolution, whereas before, they were entirely dismissive and even openly hostile to Ron Paul.

Why?

Because everyone of them knows that business as usual is off the table, and if America (with a capital ‘A’) is to re-emerge, then Ron Paul is the only candidate that they have who will do the job.

The media in Britain is completely clueless about what is happening over there. Just look at how The Times has been reporting it. Even British journalists in the USA are completely blind to it; read the amazingly blinkered writings of Justin Webb for a tea soaked taste.

Something BIG is happening in america; America is making a comeback, as I said it could, and its about time.

Mike Huckabee is a fraud. He is a two faced, opportunist, hypocritical, tax loving, preacher of false religion.

Of course, he is free to believe whatever he wants and he is free to preach it, but anyone who wants high office and who also wears his religion on his sleeve like a brat with a cold who keeps wiping his nose and showing it to you is simply unfit. The only thing the candidates should be talking about is The Constitution, nothing else; not morality, ‘values’ or any other bogus nonsense. Lets look at what this man is ‘for’:

Faith and Politics
My faith is my life – it defines me. My faith doesn’t influence my decisions, it drives them. For example, when it comes to the environment, I believe in being a good steward of the earth. I don’t separate my faith from my personal and professional lives.

That should make loud sirens sound in every americans head; the only thing that should GUIDE the presidents decisions is THE CONSTITUTION not your own religious beliefs. THat he explicitly does not separate his faith from his professional life(, in this case, his profession is politician and potential president of the united states, ) should signal his immediate disqualification as a candidate – this man is a religious leader who doesn’t understand the separation of church and state. People like Mike Huckabee are extremely dangerous, not because they are religious, but because they do not know what their job is meant to be and what its necessary constraints and limits are.

Marriage
I support and have always supported passage of a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. As President, I will fight for passage of this amendment. My personal belief is that marriage is between one man and one woman, for life.

Marriage is not the business of the state. Period. This is a perfect example of religious fanaticism creeping into policy. It is also a perfect example of why this man cannot be president; his own views and not the constitution are the basis of his policy decisions. Furthermore, he has the effrontery to want to change the Constitution to reflect his own religious beliefs. The president’s job is to protect our liberty, which includes our right to express our religious beliefs, even if you believe marriage means polygamy. This man is dangerous because he believes he knows what the absolute truth is, and hence, what is good for everybody; rather like a Communist or a Fascist Dictator.

Energy Independence
The first thing I will do as President is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence. We will achieve energy independence by the end of my second term.

Mike Hukcabee is a religious preacher, not a scientist. He doesn’t understand anything about the dynamics of energy supply (or judging by this statement, economics) and has no business trying to organize it for the entire usa. Only the market can correctly supply energy at the greatest efficiency and lowest cost. That is true for everything, and whenever the government gets involved in a market it creates a distortion and ruins everything. Mike Huckabee is dishonest because he is saying that he can solve something that he cannot. Government needs to get out of business and let people take care of themselves. It is presumptuous that he thinks he can solve this problem, and doubly presumptuous that he thinks he is going to get a second term as president.

National Security/Foreign Policy: Iraq
Iraq is a battle in our generational, ideological war on terror. General Petraeus and our troops are giving their all to provide a window of opportunity for the Iraq government to succeed, while the Democrats are running for the exit doors.

There is no ‘war on terror’. Huckabee saying this means that he is committed to war without end, thats what ‘generational’ means in this context. Mike Huckabee is a suicidal maniac who wants to keep america at war, in other peoples business, and he wants americans to continue to pay for it in blood and cash…only there is no more cash to do it; america has to BORROW money or fraudulently PRINT IT to run its insane wars and 300+ bases around the world. There is also no more blood available, meaning that there is going to have to be a draft to replenish the soldiers for his insane quasi religious war.

National Security/Foreign Policy: War On Terror
I believe that we are currently engaged in a world war. Radical Islamic fascists have declared war on our country and our way of life. They have sworn to annihilate each of us who believe in a free society, all in the name of a perversion of religion and an impersonal god. We go to great extremes to save lives, they go to great extremes to take them. This war is not a conventional war, and these terrorists are not a conventional enemy. I will fight the war on terror with the intensity and single-mindedness that it deserves.

We are NOT engaged in a world war. That is a lie. If Huckabee believes that, he is delusional and unfit for command. There is no such thing as a ‘Radical Islamic fascist’ and no one has ‘declared war on the american way of life’. No one has sworn to annihilate those who believe in a free society. These are the words of the fantasy prone, warmongers, the ignorant and imbeciles. This sort of talk is the talk of Neoconservatism and insanity, and Mike Huckabee is clearly insane for believing it. A promise to fight the war on terror is a promise to destroy america utterly, by eliminating the last vestiges of its Constitution, cementing soft fascism, and murdering millions more innocent people round the world as Bush, Cheyney, Blair and Brown just have.

Cuba Policy
As President, I will enforce and implement all provisions of U.S. law governing policy toward Cuba including the Libertad Act. I will continue President Bush’s policy of pursuing indictments against any Cuban officials, including Raul Castro, responsible for crimes against U.S. citizens.

He really IS insane!!!!

Crisis Management
You need to know that your President will calmly and confidently lift you up in a crisis. During the massive emergency of Hurricane Katrina, when local, state, and federal governments were in melt-down, I stepped forward and directed the rescue and relief of 75,000 victims. Our island of success in a sea of failure was one of the reasons Time magazine named me one of America’s five best governors.

No, we need to know that our president is there defending our LIBERTY and nothing more you idiot!

Vertical Politics
Vertical Day is here and I want you to be a part of it.

Straight up to heaven?

All of this from Huckabee’s website.

If you didn’t think so before, now it must be absolutely clear; Huckabee is a totally INSANE and unfit candidate!!!!!

Barak Obama is no better; all we need to know about him is that he would invade Pakistan to find OBL. Another business as usual big government warmongering nutcase. His website’s issue page is full of meaningless twaddle, and on his foreign policy page, the word ‘constiution’ only appears once, in reference to Iraq’s Constitution.

I think that says all we need to know about that very young man.

America continues to be in VERY BIG TROUBLE. They and thanks to them, the entire world has been in a nightmare for decades. Now, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Mike Huckabee and Barak Obama want not only to blow up the tunnel, but they want to douse the light as well.

What a life!

‘Riders told they face having their homes raided and bikes confiscated if they post clips of speeding bikes on the web’

Riders who post clips of themselves speeding on the internet face having their homes raided and computer equipment and even motorcycles seized police have warned.

They say that are monitoring film sharing sites such as YouTube and will leave no stone unturned in the search for culprits.

The warming came after a clip emerged of a motorcyclist hitting an indicated 180mph.

The clip on the website LiveLeak.com appears to show a Kawasaki ZX-10 at 110mph over he national speed limit on a dual carriageway in Buckihghamshire. It is thought to be the most serous speeding offence ever recorded on UK roads.

The rider overtakes one car with 170mph on the clock and wheelies past others at over 140mph. It has been viewed more than 112,000 times.

The police warning came after officers raided the home of a man who posted a 176mph clip on the same site.

[…]

He denies being the rider.

He said, “I had it on a CD that was given to me with other motorcycle clips on it. After seeing clips on Liveleak.com I thought I would share it.”

His home was searched after he volunteered to cooperate with a police investigation.

[…]

South Yorkshire Police said, “As part of the investigation we traced the person who had uploaded the footage on the internet and siezed the computer for examination.”

[…]

Last year a man whose home had been searched by police over yet another clip told MCN he felt he had been treated like a peadophile or murderer.

John Parrott said police had told him to either admit to being the rider in the clip or, “We rip your house apart, seize your computer, your motorcycle, and your video camera.”

[…]

Motorcycle News

I’m not going to type any more of this article, it is SO OUTRAGEOUS it is dirtying my hands transcribing it.

The police cannot raid a person’s house because they upload a clip of someone speeding; uploaded clips do not constitute sufficient evidence that the uploader was the speeder.

Its almost as if the police are running under one set of laws and the public are running under another. Do the police have such a light caseload that they can actually spend time ‘monitoring’ YouTube and LiveLeak for speeding offences? I can scarcely believe the words as printed.

There is no speed limit in Germany. The same sort of speeds on a German road would not raise an eyebrow, but here, people are THREATENED by the police; not after being caught speeding, but because they have FILM OF MOTORCYCLES SPEEDING IN THEIR POSSESSION. It is totally absurd that there should be speed limits on any highway anyway; are German drivers better than drivers from other countries ones? Use the googles and read for yourself.

In any case, this is not about wether or not speeding is good or bad; this is about the rules of evidence, the rule of law and the police making up the law as they go along.

Here are two clips of the police doing just that; making up bespoke law on the spot to suit their mood. In that case, the cameraman knew his rights. This guy knew his rights, but was arrested anyway.

The police do an amazing job. There are countries in the world where you cannot just pick up the phone, call the police and then five minutes later they turn up to help you. They should be paid more money, and have better perks. The majority of the police are decent people, doing a hard job with an intact sense of duty. They are harassed, put in danger, sometimes killed, vilified and disrespected by all sides as thanks. What is entirely wrong is that they are used badly by the state, made to enforce laws that are at best petty and at worse completely insane. It is a waste of their time, and a part of the reason I am sure, many of them act like they are completely ga-ga.

What they should not be doing, is making things WORSE by engaging in stunts like this ‘YouTube Racer’ farce.

MAJOR UPDATE

CNN says:

China limits Internet video to state-controlled companies

HONG KONG, China (AP) — China has moved to restrict videos online, allowing only state-controlled sites to post any — including those shared by users — and requiring Internet providers to delete and report a variety of content.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the new rules would affect YouTube and other providers that host Web sites based in other countries that are accessible from China.

A spokesman for San Bruno, California-based YouTube said the restrictions “could be a cause for concern, depending on the interpretation.”

Tudou.com, which claims to be China’s largest video sharing Web site, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail requesting comment.

The new regulations, which take effect on January 31, were approved by both the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Ministry of Information Industry and were described on their Web sites Thursday.

Under the new policy, Web sites that provide video programming or allow users to upload video must have a permit and be either state-owned or state-controlled.

The majority of Internet video providers in China are private, according to an explanation of the regulations posted on Chinafilm.com, which is run by the state-run China Film Group.

Video that involves national secrets, hurts the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promotes pornography will be banned. Providers must delete and report such content.

“Those who provide Internet video services should insist on serving the people, serve socialism … and abide by the moral code of socialism,” the rules say.

The permits are subject to renewal every three years and operators who commit “major” violations may be banned from providing online video programming for five years.

Adhering to the new rules could be daunting for YouTube, where about 10 hours of online video covering a wide range of topics is uploaded to the site every minute.

The video-sharing site, which is owned by Google Inc., already faces allegations that it should do more to block the distribution of clips that infringe on copyrights.

None of YouTube’s video-hosting computers is in China, but the government there could still block access to the site from within China.

YouTube hopes the rules won’t cut it off from the rapidly growing number of Chinese residents with Internet access, spokesman Ricardo Reyes said.

“We believe that the Chinese government fully recognizes the enormous value of online video and will not enforce the regulations in a way that could deprive the Chinese people of its benefits and potential for business and economic development, education and culture, communication, and entertainment,” Reyes said.

China ranks as the world’s second largest Internet market with a total audience of about 164 million, including people who surf the Web from public computers, according to the research firm comScore Inc.

Only the United States, with about 182 million Internet users, boasts a larger online audience.

YouTube says people around the world watch more than 200 million videos on its site each day. It declined to specify how much of its traffic comes from China.

[…]

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/03/china.internet.video.ap/index.html

I am not for or against what the Chinese do in their own country; that is their business, and good luck to them. What that country does, if it were to apply to me however, is another matter, and any government that emulates them in a country where I have interests is pure evil.

This YouTube Racer / motorcycle story is yet another sign that US/UK is desperate to move to a Chinese style of government, where they simply ban anything they do not understand, do not like, or think is a threat to their absolute power.

And today on El Reg, there is a story saying that UK wants to outlaw “Hacker Tools”:

By John Leyden
The Register
2nd January 2008

The UK government has published guidelines for the application of a law that makes it illegal to create or distribute so-called “hacking tools”.

The controversial measure is among amendments to the Computer Misuse Act included in the Police and Justice Act 2006. However, the ban along with measures to increase the maximum penalty for hacking offences to ten years and make denial of service offences clearly illegal, are still not in force and probably won’t be until May 2008 in order not to create overlap with the Serious Crime Bill, currently making its way through the House of Commons.

A revamp of the UK’s outdated computer crime laws is long overdue. However, provisions to ban the development, ownership and distribution of so-called “hacker tools” draw sharp criticism from industry. Critics point out that many of these tools are used by system administrators and security consultants quite legitimately to probe for vulnerabilities in corporate systems.

The distinctions between, for example, a password cracker and a password recovery tool, or a utility designed to run denial of service attacks and one designed to stress-test a network, are subtle. The problem is that anything from nmap through wireshark to perl can be used for both legitimate and illicit purposes, in much the same way that a hammer can be used for putting up shelving or breaking into a car.

[…]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/02/hacker_toll_ban_guidance/

This is the same inept, computer illiterate and incompetent government that lost two DVDRs of of peoples personal and sensitive data. The first image that poops into their minds when you use the word ‘web on computers’ is a TV screen with cobwebs all over it.

But I digress.

China is trying to make water run up a waterfall; once they are on the internets, and everyone has a mobile phone, there is going to come a point where viral propagation will make it impossible to stop information flowing. They might be able to execute a couple of people for being seeders or introducers, but once the idea is out, they can never get it back. Trying to control video sites like this is simply absurd, and will do nothing to stop the flow of information that will eventually topple that country’s leaders – that is the tactical error they are making, if their aim is to maximize the amount of time they are able to stay in control as a group.

As for Britain, their government is already universally despised by anyone with a single brain-cell, which is the majority of the country. They are despised precisely because of measures like the one above, and the countless other betrayals and interferences that they have initiated, Chinese style, on this beautiful island.

Or:
Paedophiles must guard Children
Fire must guard Gasoline
etc etc

MPs say losing computer data should be made a crime

Tania Branigan, political correspondent
Thursday January 3, 2008
The Guardian

Recklessly or repeatedly mishandling personal information should become a criminal offence, a committee of MPs urges today in the wake of the child benefit fiasco.

no, the COLLECTION of personal information under certain circumstances, should become a criminal offence.

A report from the justice select committee says there is evidence of a widespread problem within government and expresses concern that further cases of data loss are still coming to light, adding that concerns about systemic failings were raised two years ago by the man now in charge of the government’s review of security. The committee says that companies should be obliged to report information losses.

They have been warned repeatedly about the problems inherent in centralized databases which are in fact, not needed to improve services or provide greater ‘security’ of documents. These people, these computer illiterate dimwits are the criminals; they push on ahead at the urging of vendors without any care about the consequences or the wishes of the electorate, in a deliberate and evil bid to do this ‘Transformational Government’ magic trick, which will increase their power by orders of magnitude and enrich their friends. Yes indeed, these people are the criminals, and there are no two ways about it.

“The scale of the data loss by government bodies and contractors is truly shocking, but the evidence we have had points to further hidden problems,” warned Alan Beith, chairman of the committee. “It is frankly incredible, for example, that the measures HMRC [HM Revenue & Customs] has [now] put in place were not already standard procedure.”

What is frankly incredible, is that they have been warned about this specifically and everyone in both houses has read the details written in crystal clear english. There is no way that they can claim that they did not understand the consequences of this diabolical plan hatched by the vendors to make victims of the virtuous villigers of England by the voratious vacuuming of their vital data. They are guilty of not heeding the warnings, and going along with it in an act of flagrant negligence.

The committee says the government must find ways to minimise the risks inherent in maintaining large databases to which a large number of people have access and suggests that new offences might strengthen security procedures.

All the comittees and white papers that they can sit at and print will not stop this headlong rush into disaster. All centralized databases of innocent people must be destroyed. All planned databases like ContactPoint and the NIR must be stopped. Everyone everywhere must refuse to cooperate with any document or process that has been derived from an unreasonable use of their personal data. Everyone everywhere must refuse to allow their biometric data to be harvested for collection into these databases. That means no fingerprinting for any reason, no iris scans and no DNA swabs for anyone except those convicted of a violent offence.

Criminal offences under the Data Protection Act – such as unlawfully obtaining or disclosing personal data – only apply to people who are not the “data controller”. That means that although third parties who misuse the details can be prosecuted the people holding the information, such as large businesses or government departments, cannot be held responsible for breaches. Beith said: “Clearly, criminal sanctions are not the only ones you want to use. But perhaps the issue would be taken more seriously if there was a criminal offence at the end of the line.”

These are the words of a total imbecile.

Once the data is out, no criminal sanction can make it private again.. Its like trying to put an egg back together once it has been broken, you know the story Beith, Humpty Dumpty? Does that make this easier for you to understand?

The report also argues that the information commissioner needs more resources. At present his office’s budget is just £10m a year.

[…]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2234448,00.html

Well, what a surprise. They want MORE MONEY from the TAXPAYER to solve a problem that THEY CREATED out of THIN AIR by using the TAXPAYERS MONEY.

These people really are the criminals, that is absolutely clear.

Karen Selick

An open letter to Rob Nicholson, Canada's Minister of Justice

Dear Mr. Nicholson,

On January 21, 2008, an extradition hearing will begin in Vancouver for Marc Emery, Canada’s pre-eminent activist for the legalization of marijuana. Marc has been charged in the U.S. with conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana, and conspiring to launder money. If convicted under U.S. law, he faces possible life imprisonment without parole.

Should Marc be extradited to the U.S.? The Canadian court will almost certainly say yes. It has little choice under the Extradition Act. Marc
openly admits selling marijuana seeds over the Internet to customers around the world, including the United States, for years. His conduct would have been grounds for criminal charges here, although Canadian authorities never chose to charge him. But that’s enough under the Act to make it mandatory for the judge to commit him for surrender to U.S. authorities.

That’s where you come in, Mr. Justice Minister. Once the court has ruled, the Extradition Act gives you discretion to refuse to surrender Marc if it “would be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances.”
Here are some of the circumstances you might consider relevant.

From 1999 until he was arrested in 2005, Marc declared on his income tax return that his occupation was “marijuana seed vendor.” He paid $578,000 in income taxes into federal and B.C. government coffers. He gave Canada Revenue Agency access to his bank statements and explained all his cash flows to them. The CRA graciously accepted his money without ever taking any action to put a stop to all this criminal activity.

If you believe that all Canadians benefit from taxes being collected and governments spending that tax money (I don’t, but most Canadians do), then logically you will have to concede that Marc has been a huge benefactor to the Canadian people.

As for the money laundering charge, maybe all Canadians should face U.S. indictments for having conspired with Marc to transform Americans’ outlays on recreational drugs into Canadian outlays on health care, roads, schools, etc.

Marc has helped Canadians in other ways, too. When Canada was compelled in 2000 to legalize medical marijuana by the R. v. Parker decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, confusion reigned. Although the court had said that individuals suffering the daily pain of illnesses such as epilepsy, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS could use marijuana with their doctors’ approval, there was nowhere they could legally acquire it.

Authorized users who asked Health Canada how to get their marijuana were given the suggestion that they purchase it online from Marc Emery.
For eight years, Marc sent every federal Member of Parliament a free subscription to his magazine Cannabis Culture. Every issue included a copy
of his seed catalogue. Every single MP and all of their office staff turned a blind eye to his activities, just as Canada Revenue Agency and Health Canada had done.

The prohibition against selling marijuana seeds in Canada went unenforced for years, but the benefits of those seed sales were accepted unhesitatingly by Canadian authorities. It would be the height of hypocrisy and injustice for this country to now hand over its benefactor to a foreign government for a prosecution it declined to pursue itself.

But there’s more. Go to any internet search engine and enter “marijuana seeds.” You’ll find many seed vendors still operating without prosecution in
British Columbia and other Canadian provinces. Why is the U.S. government not seeking the extradition of these vendors? Why just Marc and his two employees Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams?

I think the answer is obvious. The so-called “BC3” have taken a principled, public stand against the U.S. government’s war on drugs. Marc in particular is a highly effective spokesman for his cause. He was never in this business primarily for financial gain, and generally kept only enough of his marijuana seed profits to live on. Instead, he has donated over $4-million and countless hours to fund court challenges, establish compassion clubs for medical marijuana users, pay medical bills for activists, sponsor conferences and protests, fund ballot initiatives, fund political campaigns and so on. For over a decade, he has been a huge thorn in the side of politicians and bureaucrats who disagree with him on the political issue of legalizing marijuana.

The Extradition Act requires you, Mr. Justice Minister, to refuse to surrender a person if the request for extradition is “made for the purpose
of prosecuting or punishing the person by reason of their…political opinion….” Please consider Marc’s long history of idealistic activism and
tell the U.S. government that you won’t let them haul this politically motivated Canadian hero off to one of their jails.

Karen Selick is a lawyer in Belleville, Ontario. kas@karenselick.com

[…]

National Post

The year starts off with a bang and a puff of smoke.