We’d Go Nuts

I wonder how we would react if 50,000 of us got killed in one whack, as apparently has happened in the China earthquake. Or, God forbid, 121,000, which is the high estimate for the number of dead in the Myanmar cyclone.

Judging from our reaction to the terror attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which claimed 3,000 lives, I suspect we would go nuts. Back in 2001, it became Terror Week on television, so that we got to see the damage endless numbers of times. Politicians were scrambling for flag pins and trying to remember the words of the national anthem. Hardly a family pet could be buried without the TV cameras and the mayor showing up.

The president said it was our patriotic duty to spend money and then declared world war on terrorists everywhere, even though the 9/11 attackers had nothing to do with the others.

I infuriated one of the TV talkie boys one night. I accused him of being fearmonger because he was ranting about the ever-present menace of terrorism. I pointed out that while terrorists had killed 3,000 Americans, 17,000 had killed themselves in falls, 15,000 had been murdered by homegrown criminals and 109,000 died in accidents. He shouted and hung up.

Never let the news media set your priorities for things to worry about. They will be hopelessly wrong. Any one American’s chances of being killed by a terrorist is minuscule. The only thing you have to do to protect yourself from a bomb is be somewhere else, and in a country of 3 million square miles, the odds are that most of us will be somewhere else.

There is no worldwide network of terrorists. Al-Qaida is the only group we have to worry about, and it is small and not very influential. Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad have no quarrel with us. Their quarrel is with Israel. Colombia’s terrorists are trying to overthrow the Colombian government, and that goes for most guerrilla organizations in the world.

A sensible administration would have taken out Osama bin Laden a long time ago. It’s pretty embarrassing when you can’t find a guy who is 6 feet 6 inches tall in a country where most people are short.

We need to develop some stoicism, because it is possible that we could lose a large number of people. A powerful earthquake in Los Angeles or San Francisco at rush hour could kill a good number of people. We’re 30 minutes from 150 million people dead as long as nuclear missiles sit in silos in Russia and China. The most stupidly dangerous thing this administration has done is allow our relations with Russia to deteriorate. When the Russians needed our help, we tried to exploit them instead. Now they have become an energy superpower and have little or no use for us.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proved to be a smarter man and a better leader than George W. Bush. Russia’s economy is booming; ours is in decline. Russia is energy-independent; we are desperately dependent on energy imports. Russia’s power and influence are on the rise; ours are in decline. That’s what happens when we vote jovial dullards into office who surround themselves with ideologues. Other than throw out a couple of baseballs, what has Bush done right? I can’t think of anything.

I’m not excited about any of the possible replacements. I just pray that whichever one it is will have more brains and less arrogance than the present occupant. Forgive me for sounding cynical, but I’ve been listening to politicians promise to solve these same problems for 40 years, and the problems have all gotten worse, not better.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese458.html

I love the smell of coffee.

Double Espresso in this case.

To the People of the United States of America,

I am writing today because no one has asked my opinion in any poll. No candidate has sought my vote, and no lobbyist taken up my cause. It seems that of all of the “special interests” in America, mine is forgotten – unworthy of notice by politicians, activists, media commentators, and the press.

It may be because I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat, nor represented by lobbyists for the disabled, senior citizens, minorities, trade unions, nor any other lobby. In fact, I am not a member of any group whatsoever.

I am the individual. Our Constitution was written to protect me from the majority. I am the victim of Democracy, which has overwhelmed the safeguards of the old Republic and replaced the Republic with mob rule. I am raising my voice now, while I am still able to raise it, if for no other reason than to let posterity know that I was still here when the ruins of our Republic are examined.

I have lived my life in a country that proclaims itself to the world to be the “land of the free,” but have watched my freedoms erode. The most basic right I had – ownership of the fruits of my labor – has been taken from me. Now, politicians argue over what portion of my labor will purchase medical care for the poor and elderly, what portion will pay social security, what portion will educate other people’s children, and what paltry sum I will be allowed to keep so that I may go out tomorrow and work another day.

I once lived in a country which recognized my right to do as I pleased, as long as I did not violate the rights of others. Now, mountains of laws and regulations have been passed in the perverse effort to prevent me from having even the opportunity to commit a crime. As a result, I am rendered paralyzed, as there is almost no action that I can take, beyond rising from my bed, that cannot be construed by someone to be a crime or violation.

More of my property is seized to support grand adventures in foreign lands, where my government spreads “freedom” through the crosshairs of its guns. My government’s invasion of countries that pose no military threat to us whatsoever has made me hated throughout the world, merely for being an American, and helped enslave my children to unserviceable debts.

Most ominously, even the legal protections of my person have been revoked in the name of protecting my fellow citizens against “terrorism. ”

While the Constitution guarantees me sound money, as only gold and silver shall be legal tender, I am nevertheless forced to use the worthless paper notes of a private banking cartel that decreases their value daily, providing me no safe store of value to save for my future. To aid financial speculators who produce nothing whatsoever, the volume of these notes is increased out of all reason whenever these gamblers and thieves stand to suffer a loss. As a result, the purchasing power of this slave currency is constantly decreased, widening the gap between rich and poor, and destroying the middle class. I am left with no practical means to participate in free trade and civil society.

I give my fellow citizens the benefit of the doubt, and believe that they have merely forgotten what the true nature and purpose of government is. I remind them that government is nothing more than the collective use of force – and that the use of force is never justified except in defense. It is, by definition, a last resort. Government has almost limitless power, but very few rights. It has no right to do anything beyond protecting my life and my freedom.

Government has no right to provide for the needy with monies extorted at gunpoint from its citizens. I will gladly work with my fellow citizens to help those in need, once I have a choice. In the meantime, I demand that my labor cease to be taken from me without my consent.

Government has no right to bring freedom to the oppressed by initiating force. I remind my fellow citizens that all of the tyrants of history justified their conquests under the false guise of “liberation. “I will gladly stand with my countrymen to fight any foreign power that truly threatens us, but I demand that my government immediately cease to invade foreign countries in my name.

Government has no right to “manage the economy. “Trade is only truly trade when it is free – the result of exchanges between people by mutual, voluntary consent. There is no role for government in this whatsoever. I demand that my right to trade freely with my fellow citizens and citizens abroad be respected and no longer subject to inspection or interference.

Government has no right to “prevent crime. “It may only punish activities that are truly criminal, and those are relatively few compared to the ocean of laws and regulations that have been passed. I demand that any law prohibiting an act that does not directly harm another person be repealed, along with any law that prohibits unpopular thoughts or speech. Neither the threat of terrorism, poverty, natural disaster, nor epidemic justifies the surrender of one ounce of liberty. I demand that habeas corpus be restored.

Finally, government has no right to rob me of my property by forcing me to use paper currency whose value is subject to its whim. I demand that gold and silver no longer be taxed as capital gain if it rises in price relative to paper currency.

While I owe my fellow citizens nothing in return for heeding these demands, I nevertheless offer a thousand-fold in return. My fellow citizens are running out of fossil fuel – I will discover a new, renewable energy source. Our planet is growing crowded – I will unlock the secrets of traveling to others. The productive members of our society will soon be outnumbered by those less able or unable to produce any longer – I will feed them all. For it was I – the free individual – that gave you everything you have. It was I that invented the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, and the computer. It was I that devised methods to produce mass amounts of goods, making them affordable and available to everyone. It was I that devised a system of government where the rule of the jungle was replaced by the rule of just laws.

In return for restoring my rights, you will again free my creative power to give you more than you can possibly imagine, and solve problems which you are unable to solve without me. I ask nothing more in return, for it is no more my right to make claims upon my fellow citizens than it is their right to make claims upon me. I hereby waive any supposed “entitlement” to public welfare, medical care, retirement benefits, or any other benefit that requires coercion of my fellow citizens to provide it. In return I demand that my liberty be restored. As I believe that I am the last individual left on earth, I do not believe that my tax money will be missed. However, if there are other individuals besides me that would claim their freedom as well, I invite them to join me, and to them I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor.

Regards,

Publius

[…]

http://www.restoretherepublic.com/content/view/1165/71/

This is beautiful, but there is something crucial missing.

• I demand that my labor cease to be taken from me without my consent.
• I demand that my government immediately cease to invade foreign countries in my name.
• I demand that my right to trade freely with my fellow citizens and citizens abroad be respected and no longer subject to inspection or interference.
• I demand that habeas corpus be restored.
• I demand that gold and silver no longer be taxed as capital gain if it rises in price relative to paper currency.

And what if these ‘demands’ are not met?

What makes you think that demanding anything will be met with nothing more than silence?

Ask the two million people who marched in London against the mass murder campaign what the result of ‘demanding’ is.

The time of demanding is OVER. Like the Founding Fathers, you must TAKE what is rightfully yours, and no longer ASK for your freedom, otherwise, the red coats will simply come to your house and kill you and your family and steal what is left of your property.

You want to keep the fruits of your labor? KEEP THEM.
You want ‘your’ government to stop the war machine? KEEP THE FRUITS OF YOUR LABOR.
You want to trade freely with your fellow citizens? CREATE A LOCAL CURRENCY, STOP USING THE DOLLAR.
You want habeas corpus to be restored? MOVE TO ARIZONA.

The last one is just completely absurd. What gold you have or do not have is no one’s business in the first instance, and so it should not be subject to any tax whatsoever. The very fact that you acknowledge that there is such a thing as ‘capital gains tax’ and that someone has the right to levy it on you, shows that you are not yet awake. This is further demonstrated by your use of the phrase ‘my government’. That government has not belonged to the people of the USA for….a very long time, certainly, you and your father and his father never lived in a time when it belonged to the people.

What is nice about this is that people are slowly coming to the inevitable, inescapable conclusion that there is only one way out of their trouble. Once all of this demanding fails to work, they are going to have to put their feet down and say ‘THAT IS IT’, and then the showdown will come.

That is what the Arizona legislation is all about; they are at the point where they will not accept any further erosion of the tiny pebble shaped remnants of their freedom that was once a granite boulder. They have drawn a line in the sand and dared the federal government to cross it.

What ‘Publius’ needed to say is:

• I withdraw my labor and will no longer allow its fruits to be taken from me without my consent.
• I withdraw the fruits of my labor from this illegitimate government henceforth until it immediately ceases to invade and occupy in any way and to any extent, foreign countries in my name.
• I assert my right to trade freely with my fellow citizens and citizens abroad and shall longer submit to inspection or interference.
• I declare habeas corpus to be restored and put on notice all law enforcement that the citizens of this country will punish violators of habeas corpus.
• I withdraw my wealth from the fiat currency system and shall only transact in debt free currencies including but not limited to gold and silver, as I see fit.

Now, this would be something that has some teeth, and which will actually cause something to be DONE, instead of begging like a leper, bowl in hand, at the feet of war criminals and organized crime!

It cannot be long before someone somewhere does this, even at the legislative level. ‘The Arizona Event’, I am sure, is about to be followed by declarations of this sort, and in fact, they naturally flow from that legislation; if Arizona declares the federal government nullified, then all federal laws are simultaneously abolished and that laundry list is automagically done.

On May 15, the White House Moron, in a war-planning visit to Israel, justified the naked aggression he and Olmert are planning against Iran as the only alternative to “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

But the White House Moron has the roles reversed. It is not Iran that is threatening war. It is Bush. It is not Bush who is appeasing. It is Iran.

Iran has not responded in kind to any of Bush’s warlike moves and provocations. Iran has not sunk a single one of our sitting-duck ships and has not given the Iraqi insurgents any weapons that would easily turn the tide of war against the US.

It is Bush, not Iran, who sounds like Adolf Hitler blustering and threatening. It is Bush’s American Brownshirts, the neocons, who express the view: “what’s the good of nuclear weapons if you can’t use them.”

It is the US that is funding assassination teams inside Iran and using taxpayer dollars to fund dissident and violent organizations opposed to the Iranian government. Iran is doing no such thing here.

It is members of the Bush Regime and US generals who continue to lie through their teeth about Iranian support for insurgents, for which they can supply no evidence, and about Iranian nuclear weapons programs, for which the IAEA inspectors can find no sign.

It is the US print and TV media that serves the Bush Regime as propaganda ministry for its lies of aggression.

All the war crimes that are being planned are being planned by Bush and Olmert.

What would George Orwell make of the Bush Regime’s position that anything less than a direct act of naked aggression is appeasement?

The Chicago City Council has passed a resolution “opposing any US attack on Iran and urging the Bush Administration to pursue diplomatic engagement with that nation.” But the White House Moron says diplomacy is appeasement. He learned this false equivalence from the neocon Brownshirts whose control over his administration has made America despised throughout the world, with the exception of Israel.

After broadcasting false claims for weeks from US generals and Bush Regime spokespersons that the US has “definite proof” in the form of captured Iranian weapons that Iranians were “responsible for killing American troops,” the great free American media went silent when LA Times correspondent Tina Susman reported from Baghdad: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was cancelled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran.”

A people devoid of a media are sitting ducks for tyrannical government, which is what the US has.

What is the difference between Hitler’s concocted excuses for his acts of naked aggression and the Bush Regime’s plan to use a briefing by General Petraeus, with “captured Iranian weapons” as props, as proof of Iranian complicity in US deaths in Iraq as a means to break down public and congressional resistance to an attack on Iran?

Why has the Bush Regime suffered no consequences for this blatant attempt to orchestrate an excuse for another war?

Why have there been no consequences to the Regime for the blatant lies it told in order to attack Iraq?

Why has the Bush Regime suffered no consequences for its violation of US statutory laws against spying without warrants and against torture?

In the US criminal justice system, three strikes and you are out.

For the Bush Regime is there any limit on its lawless behavior?

How many strikes? A dozen? Thirty? Three hundred?

Is there a limit?

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts246.html

----------------------------------------------------------------
 ¦ REFERENCE TITLE: abolish federal government; state sovereignty ¦
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 ¦                                                             ¦
 ¦ State of Arizona                                            ¦
 ¦ House of Representatives                                    ¦
 ¦ Forty-fourth Legislature                                    ¦
 ¦ Second Regular Session                                      ¦
 ¦ 2000                                                        ¦
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 ¦                          HCR 2034                           ¦
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 ¦                       Introduced by                         ¦
 ¦              Representatives Johnson, Cooley                ¦
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A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

PROPOSING THE DISSOLUTION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IF CERTAIN CONDITIONS OCCUR.

(TEXT OF BILL BEGINS ON NEXT PAGE)

Whereas, on July 4, 1776, our founding fathers proclaimed that the people had the right to alter or abolish their government and declared thirteen British colonies to be free and independent, or sovereign, states; and

Whereas, on March 1, 1781, the thirteen states formed a central government they called the United States of America under a charter known as the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, which stated that “each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence”; and

Whereas, on September 17, 1787, the leaders of the Continental Congress signed the present Constitution of the United States, which was then transmitted to the thirteen states for ratification and the formation of a new central government; and

Whereas, several of the states delayed ratification of the Constitution and three states made clear their position regarding sovereignty by stating that “the powers of government may be resumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness”; and

Whereas, eventually all thirteen of the independent states ratified the Constitution of the United States and joined the new Union, while retaining their sovereignty as states. The states made the new central government sovereign only to the extent that the states delegated to it limited and specific powers; and

Whereas, the Constitution of the United States is merely a treaty among sovereigns, and under treaty law when one party violates the treaty the other parties are automatically released from further adherence to it unless they wish to continue; and

Whereas, the fifty current principals, or signatories, to the treaty have done well in honoring and obeying it, yet the federal agent has, for decades, violated it in both word and spirit. The many violations of the Constitution of the United States by the federal government include disposing of federal property without the approval of Congress, usurping jurisdiction from the states in such matters as abortion and firearms rights and seeking control of public lands within state borders; and

Whereas, under Article V, Constitution of the United States, three-fourths of the states may abolish the federal government. In the alternative, if the states choose to exercise their inherent right as sovereigns, fewer than thirty-eight states may lawfully choose to ignore Article V, Constitution of the United States, and establish a new federal government for themselves by following the precedent established by Article VII, Constitution of the United States, in which nine of the existing thirteen states dissolved the existing Union under the Articles of Confederation and automatically superceded the Articles.

Therefore

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the State of Arizona, the Senate concurring:

1. That when or if the President of the United States, the Congress of the United States or any other federal agent or agency declares the Constitution of the United States to be suspended or abolished, if the President or any other federal entity attempts to institute martial law or its equivalent without an official declaration in one or more of the states without the consent of that state or if any federal order attempts to make it unlawful for individual Americans to own firearms or to confiscate firearms, the State of Arizona, when joined by thirty-four of the other fifty states, declares as follows: that the states resume all state powers delegated by the Constitution of the United States and assume total sovereignty; that the states re-ratify and re-establish the present Constitution of the United States as the charter for the formation of a new federal government, to be followed by the election of a new Congress and President and the reorganization of a new judiciary, similarly following the precedent and procedures of the founding fathers; that individual members of the military return to their respective states and report to the Governor until a new President is elected; that each state assume a negotiated, prorated share of the national debt; that all land within the borders of a state belongs to the state until sold or ceded to the central government by the state’s Legislature and Governor; and that once thirty-five states have agreed to form a new government, each of the remaining fifteen be permitted to join the new confederation on application.

2. That the Secretary of State of the State of Arizona transmit copies of this Resolution to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and each Member of Congress from the State of Arizona.

[…]

http://www.azleg.state.az.us/legtext/44leg/2r/bills/hcr2034p.htm

This is taken directly from the official web site of the Arizona State Legislature.

This time it’s for real. We are reaching a tipping point, where the number of awake people will outnumber the sleeping and their collective momentum will be so great that the media will not be able to re-somnabulize them.

This is one of the greatest things I have ever read!

Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first

By Bruce Schneier
The Guardian
May 15 2008

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you’re entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.

But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it’s a fact. So how do you protect yourself?

Encrypting your entire hard drive, something you should certainly do for security in case your computer is lost or stolen, won’t work here. The border agent is likely to start this whole process with a “please type in your password”. Of course you can refuse, but the agent can search you further, detain you longer, refuse you entry into the country and otherwise ruin your day.

You’re going to have to hide your data. Set a portion of your hard drive to be encrypted with a different key – even if you also encrypt your entire hard drive – and keep your sensitive data there. Lots of programs allow you to do this. I use PGP Disk (from pgp.com). TrueCrypt (truecrypt.org) is also good, and free.

While customs agents might poke around on your laptop, they’re unlikely to find the encrypted partition. (You can make the icon invisible, for some added protection.) And if they download the contents of your hard drive to examine later, you won’t care.

Be sure to choose a strong encryption password. Details are too complicated for a quick tip, but basically anything easy to remember is easy to guess. (My advice is at tinyurl.com/4f8z4n.) Unfortunately, this isn’t a perfect solution. Your computer might have left a copy of the password on the disk somewhere, and (as I also describe at the above link) smart forensic software will find it.

So your best defence is to clean up your laptop. A customs agent can’t read what you don’t have. You don’t need five years’ worth of email and client data. You don’t need your old love letters and those photos (you know the ones I’m talking about). Delete everything you don’t absolutely need. And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you’re at it, delete your browser’s cookies, cache and browsing history. It’s nobody’s business what websites you’ve visited. And turn your computer off – don’t just put it to sleep – before you go through customs; that deletes other things. Think of all this as the last thing to do before you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they’ve entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good idea if you can do it.

If you can’t, consider putting your sensitive data on a USB drive or even a camera memory card: even 16GB cards are reasonably priced these days. Encrypt it, of course, because it’s easy to lose something that small. Slip it in your pocket, and it’s likely to remain unnoticed even if the customs agent pokes through your laptop. If someone does discover it, you can try saying: “I don’t know what’s on there. My boss told me to give it to the head of the New York office.” If you’ve chosen a strong encryption password, you won’t care if he confiscates it.

Lastly, don’t forget your phone and PDA. Customs agents can search those too: emails, your phone book, your calendar. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do here except delete things.

I know this all sounds like work, and that it’s easier to just ignore everything here and hope you don’t get searched. Today, the odds are in your favour. But new forensic tools are making automatic searches easier and easier, and the recent US court ruling is likely to embolden other countries. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

[…]

http://schneier.com/blog/

We of course, have written about this before, September 12th 2006 to be exact, and the solution we give is more or less the same.

There is one solution however, that is not on the table in this great article; do not travel to places where these practices are in place. But that is a different blog post.

It is obvious to even the most stupid person that searching a laptop for pornography is TOTALLY STUPID. Pr0n travels over the internetz, and the really devious pr0n people use encrypted VPN to share their stuff. All these measures do is industrialize humiliation and violation. It is pointless, corrosive and the act of utterly incompetent and ignorant people.

This is a war that they will never win. Storage devices are getting bigger in capacity whilst shrinking in size, and people are getting more and more savvy about storing all their goods online; soon, many people will not use any office suites on their laptops, they will access an online office suite securely. That means they will have secure access to massive file storage, and if the files are encrypted before they are stored online, no warrant can cause them to be opened, and there will be no covert ‘sneak and peek‘ raids that obtain anything of value.

In the end, privacy will win, because the tools will make it happen. All of these insane measures simply accelerate the development of the tools and their byproduct: privacy.

Who would have thought that PGP would spread as far and wide as it has? And now, with articles like this appearing in even the shittiest of newspapers, it will spread even further, as companies demand that their laptops are locked down, and individuals start to protect themselves with these easy to use, military grade, transparent tools.

On a side note, you will see that Bruce has used a Tinyurl in this article. That is what smart people do. To my utter amazement, people who run email lists that are concerned with these issues STILL sent out alerts that have long line wrapped URLs, making them unclickable, and of course, because they are line wrapped, you cannot select them in one go, you have to select copy and paste twice. It is a minor annoyance, but it displays something about them and their attitude and level of competence. They certainly know about Tinyurl, so do they not use it because they are lazy? I think that actually, they are just plain dumb; as dumb as the people who think searching laptops at a border is a good idea, but they are batting for the other side.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was this guy named Aristotle. Pretty sharp fella; he thought up a lot of good things. But, occasionally he made a mistake.

One mistake he made was to toss an orange up in the air and watch it come straight back down to his hand. Aristotle reasoned that if he was moving, the orange would have flown off to one side as soon as it left his hand. Because the orange did not do so, Aristotle concluded he was not moving. On the basis of this one observed fact, and the assumption that there was no other explanation for what he observed, Aristotle concluded that the Earth does not move and that therefore the rest of the universe had to move around it.

Aristotle was a very sharp guy, but the fact is that there was another explanation for why the orange fell back into his hand, and it would wait about another 2000 years before another smart man, Sir Isaac Newton, explained just what it was Aristotle had overlooked, set forth in Newton’s laws of motion.

But for the early church, Aristotle’s conclusions fit in rather well with their theology, which had the Earth created as the center of the universe, unmoving, with the rest of the cosmos spinning about it.

Of course, there was empirical evidence available to all that cast doubt on the church-approved version of the Cosmos. One could see during eclipses that the Earth was not flat. The curved shape of the Earth’s shadow as it crossed the moon was the same no matter which place in the sky the eclipse took place.

A spherical Earth was the only shape that could produce such a result. Ships sailing over the horizon clearly vanished over a subtle curve (an observation which eventually inspired Columbus’ voyages). Nobody could explain the behavior of a Foucault’s Pendulum other than by the Earth spinning beneath it.

But by far the most troubling problem for the geocentric (earth centered) universe was the strange behavior of the planets. In an age before TV, or even books, the night sky was something every person was quite familiar with, even those who were not sailors or fortune tellers.

Watching the night sky over time, the paths of the planets were easily seen to occasionally pause, move in reverse for a time, then proceed forward.

This behavior was called retrograde motion. Ah, but this was a problem. The church did not have an explanation for this behavior. Indeed in the King James Version of the Bible, the word “planet” appears only once, and then only as an object to be sacrificed to.

There is a very simple explanation for retrograde motion. As the Earth, moving in its inner orbit, overtake an outer planet, it will appear to hesitate, reverse its path across the sky, then resume its normal path. But the idea that the Earth moved was contrary to Church Dogma and to Aristotle. What education was tolerated by the church was “encouraged” to find some way to explain retrograde motion in a way that did not conflict with the religious needs for a universe centered on an unmoving Earth. Rather than re-examine Aristotle’s basic claim, the learned men of the day grabbed onto a suggestion made by Claudius Ptolemy called “epicycles”. This theory explained retrograde motion around a motionless Earth by suggesting that the planets moved in large orbits called deferents, upon which were superimposed smaller orbits called epicycles which produced a “wobble” as seen from Earth.

Epicycles were extremely popular with the church, and scholars at universities with religious affiliations were “encouraged” to refine this theory. And it needed refinement, badly, because the epicycle theory did not accurately predict what was being seen in the sky. Generations of effort was expended trying to figure out why the models did not predict the actual motions of the planets. At one point, it was even suggested that the epicycles had epicycles. No matter how many times the observed results did not match the predictions, the approved course of action was to refine the theory, but never to question the basic assumption. Those who dared point to the evidence suggesting that Aristotle (and by extension the church) were in error in postulating a geocentric universe were “discouraged”. Galileo was tortured into recanting his conclusions that the Earth moved. Giordano Bruno was burned alive at the stake for suggesting that the sun was really just another star, only close up, and that the other stars had their own planets.

In recent times, our expanding technology has confirmed that Galileo and Bruno were right, and Aristotle and the church were flat out wrong. The Earth does move. There are no deferents or epicycles, or even epicycles on the epicycles. The models of the universe which are based on a moving Earth are quite accurate and able to predict the behaviors of the planets as evidence by the fact that we send spacecraft to those planets on a regular basis.

The theory of a geocentric universe and the theory of epicycles were not science. It was religious doctrine masked as science.

The church has never really dealt with the reality of the universe very well. They only apologized for their treatment of Galileo recently and still refuse to discuss Bruno. The Bible, presumed to be the perfect word of a perfect God, still teaches that the Earth is flat, rests on pillars (Job 26:11), and does not move (Psalms 19:5-6 93:1 96:10 104:5).

It seems that some mistakes are destined to be repeated again, despite our technological prowess.

In 1929, a Cal-Tech astronomer named Edwin Hubble observed that objects which appeared to be much further away showed a more pronounced shift towards the red end of the spectrum. Scientists building on Hubble’s discovery concluded that the farther an object was away from Earth, the faster it was receding, and calculated the relationship between distance and velocity, called the “Hubble Constant” and concluded on the basis of this one observed fact and the assumption that there was no other explanation for that observed fact that the universe was expanding.

[…]

Of course, since you read BLOGDIAL, you know that the subject of UFO’s and the non acceptance of the truth about them (that some of them are the spacecraft of Extraterrestrial Scientists) is subject to this same predilection for religiosity that plagues ‘scientists’. I put scientists in single quotes because REAL scientists accept that some UFOs are ET craft, and have no problem dealing with that undeniable truth.

Read on, for the rest of this brilliant article, snarfed from Whatreallyhappened.

Read the rest of this entry »

Am avid lurker writes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/13/aids.hiv

The most interesting thing I read today. It has significant implications regarding scientific funding, not to mention funding of public healthcare which she implies is worthless. Furthermore, it strengthens the argument that US ‘aid’ to ‘the Africa’ – that great nation! ;-) – is merely propping up the profits of drug companies by maximising and subsidising the market for ARVs. In South Africa this has come through voluntary licensing, which means Glaxo et al still get their cut without any manufacturing costs. Then there is the whole ‘faith-based’ aid agencies… and yet again today (Lebanon and Gaza, Burma and the whole HIV-infected sphere is highlighted in just one day) we see how the US just cannot keep its interfering dirty great stinking hooter out of other peoples business.

And I quoth:

“HIV is mostly about people doing stupid things in the pursuit of pleasure or money,” declares the cover on a proof copy of the book. “We’re just not allowed to say so.” She suspects she will never work in the Aids industry again for saying so. “But it’s true.”

Pisani, 43, spent 10 years working in the field of HIV, first for Unaids and then for a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Indonesia. As an epidemiologist, she quickly identified the risk of the virus spreading among drug injectors, gay men and the sex trade across Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe – underdeveloped countries with inadequate resources to prevent an epidemic. That placed 100 million at risk in Asia alone – equivalent to a third of the population of the Africa. But the data was clear: “HIV wasn’t going to rage through the billions in the ‘general population’. And we knew it.”

Like most of her colleagues, however, she also quickly realised that “governments don’t like spending money on sex workers, gay men and drug addicts”. So she put her skills as a former journalist to work, and began producing the sort of reports that persuaded politicians in Washington and the west that it is not “wicked people” but “innocent wives” at risk. “Aids couldn’t be about sex and drugs,” she explains. “So suddenly it had to be about development, and gender, and blah blah blah.”

The strategy was more successful than she could ever have imagined. “All these obsessively politically correct things started getting introduced.” HIV publications and conferences began devoting more time and attention to issues such as poverty, gender, development, vulnerability, leadership – what Pisani calls “sacred cows” – than to condoms and clean needles. “I’m just waiting for ‘climate change and Aids’,” she jokes sarcastically in her book – and sure enough, this week a headline appeared in an Australian newspaper: “Global warming set to fan HIV.”

[…]

As the veneer of political correctness starts to fade….

When people like this start to wake up and then go on to expose the nonsense, a large scale abandonment of brainwashing cannot be far behind.

Say goodbye to ‘hate speech’, political correctness, the surveillance mania, the terror fad, security theatre, cult environmentalism, [prefix] o phobia, [prefix] o fascism, the health and safety fad, the police state, and all the other garbage that has erupted like ear to ear scarlet acne on the beautiful face of Britain.

WHEREAS, The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies are engaging in a systematic campaign to convince the American people that the Islamic Republic of Iran poses an imminent threat to the American nation, American troops in the Middle East and U.S. allies, and

WHEREAS, This campaign bears a strong resemblance to that waged during the lead-up to the Iraq War and occupation, with the use of unreliable sources, exaggerated threat assessments, the selective use of information, unsubstantiated accusations about Iran’s nuclear program and its supply of weapons to Iraqi forces as centerpieces of their case to the American people for aggressive action against Iran, and

WHEREAS, Iran has not threatened to attack the United States, and no compelling evidence has been presented that Iran poses a real and imminent threat to the security and safety of the United States that would justify an unprovoked unilateral pre-emptive military attack; and

WHEREAS, We support the people of Iran who are struggling for freedom and democracy, and nothing herein should be construed as supportive of their government, the Islamic Republic of Iran, but a unilateral, pre-emptive U.S. military attack on Iran could well prove counterproductive to the cause of promoting freedom and democracy in that country; and

WHEREAS, A 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), representing the consensus view all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, concluded that Iran froze its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and an earlier NIE concluded that Iran’s involvement in Iraq “is not likely to be a major driver of violence” there, and

WHEREAS, An attack on Iran is likely to cause untold thousands of American and Iranian casualties, lead to major economic dislocations, and threaten a much wider and more disastrous war in the Middle East, and

WHEREAS, a pre-emptive U.S. military attack on Iran would violate international law and our commitments under the U.N. Charter and further isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world; and

WHEREAS, An attack on Iran is likely to inflame hatred for the U.S. in the Middle East and elsewhere, inspire terrorism, and lessen the security of Americans in Chicago and worldwide, and

WHEREAS, The Iraq war and occupation has already cost the lives of over 4,000 American soldiers, the maiming and wounding of over 38,000 American soldiers, the death and maiming of over one million Iraqi civilians, and

WHEREAS, According to the nonpartisan National Priorities Project, the Iraq War and occupation has cost American taxpayers more than $500 billion, the citizens of Chicago nearly $5.2 billion, and the citizens of each of Chicago’s 50 wards an average of $104 million.

WHEREAS, Any conflict with Iran is likely to incur far greater costs and divert more precious national resources away from critical human needs in Chicago and its 50 wards, now therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED, That the City Council of the City of Chicago does hereby urge the Illinois Congressional delegation to clearly express the will of the people of Chicago in opposing any U.S. attack on Iran, and urging the Bush Administration to pursue diplomatic engagement with that nation, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That suitable copies of the resolution be forwarded to President George W. Bush and all members of the Chicago Congressional delegation.

JOSEPH A. MOORE
49th Ward

ROBERT W. FIORETTI
2nd Ward

TONI PRECKWINKLE
4th Ward

FREDDRENNA M. LYLE
6th Ward

SANDI JACKSON
7th Ward

RICARDO MUNOZ
22nd Ward

EUGENE C. SCHULTER
47th Ward

MARY ANN SMITH
48th Ward

http://www.nowaroniran-chicago.org/resolution.htm

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080511_taking_a_stand_against_war/

[…]

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that any resident of the City of Chicago shall be indicted and charged with murder or as an accessory to murder should they participate in any way whatsoever with an attack on Iran.

Now it is complete!

By the way, have you ever read The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran?

The gipsy mother who forced her daughter of 13 to marry a 14-year-old boy yesterday dismissed British values as irrelevant to her.

Renata Gural said she was unconcerned by the outrage over the teenagers’ Romany wedding ceremony at a pub in East London.

Mrs Gural, 31, who is pregnant with her sixth child, said: “I’m not bothered what anyone thinks.

“I’ll be the one who decides if my daughter is old enough to marry. I got married when I was 14 in such a ceremony and it hasn’t done me any harm.

“Just because I live in Britain doesn’t mean I’ve got to behave the way you lot think is right. I’ll live my life the way I want and that includes the way I bring up my kids.

“I don’t care what the neighbours think, or social services. It’s not my problem people around here don’t understand our culture and values.”

I, of course, agree with her 100%.

The Daily Mail revealed earlier this month how her daughter, Bozena, married Bezo, the son of another gipsy family originally from Poland, in front of 150 guests at the Central pub in East Ham.

A community elder clasped the couple to his chest, bound their hands in a scarf, kissed them both on the lips and pronounced them man and wife.

The guests then danced all night as a Polish band played raucous gipsy music.

Sounds like fun!

No Coke for me thanks!

Bozena said yesterday she was “really happy” with married life, adding: “For the first time in my life I feel like a proper grown-up.

“Before I was just a little girl and then suddenly there I was – married. That’s every girl’s dream isn’t it?”

It is every decent girl’s dream, of course; many modern British girls are not decent, and the whirlwind of problems that have been whipped up by their poor upbringing are turning parts of Britain into violent, ‘no go’, prison-like pig styes.

Bozena continues to share a cramped two-bedroom terraced house in East Ham, with 14 relatives. Her parents do not make her, or any of her siblings, go to school.

Quite right too.

Neighbours say the family, who live on benefits and do not pay rent, are terrorising the street by playing loud music late at night, throwing rubbish into neighbours’ gardens and spitting on their windows.

Now, if that is true, that is bad.

IF it is true; remember, this is a newspaper story.

Bezo wants his young bride Bozena to move in with him and his parents two miles away in Manor Park.

But she wants to stay at home, saying she would miss her mother if she left.

Her mother insisted the young couple had not consummated the marriage and that she will not allow her daughter to have sex until she is 18.

Proper parental care. These people are decent, caring people, who look after their children with the sort of ferocity that is sadly gone from the average British heart, which is now more than likely to be pumping milk rather than blood. And skimmed milk at that.

Their marriage is not recognised under British law, but there are fears that similar underground ceremonies could become common as the number of gypsies in Britain rises following the eastwards expansion of the EU.

They are probably less likely to be divorced also, unlike the average brit, who is more likely to get divorced than anyone else in Europe.

Romania and Poland, which have large Romany gipsy (or Roma) populations, have taken a tough stance on such weddings by threatening prosecutions on underage sex charges.

Only because they want to be in the EU and are trying to ‘normalize’ ‘their’ ‘cultures’.

This has led to concerns that they may move to the UK instead.

Because Britian, amazingly, is still a free(er) country, and as long as these people do not spit on their neighbor’s windows, they will be left alone to get on with their lives and be happy.

That is the way it is supposed to be.

Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Nicholson, a long-time campaigner against child weddings, claimed the young couple would “be scarred for life” by the experience.

I took a quick look around for some facks (yes, ‘facks’) to smash Emma with; it seems she never married, has no children and was a computer programmer.

Any parent understands what it means to rear and nurture a child; Roma parents may want their children to grow up in a Roma culture. That is their absolute right, and Emma has no business saying that they will be ‘scarred for life’ by their own culture. It is patently absurd. Now, if these Roma adopted a 14 year old English Rose from Glostershire, and forced her to marry…well, that is a different story. Maybe.

They married on April 28 after a deal stuck between their fathers soon after they arrived in Britain three years ago.

There are estimated to be nearly 100,000 Roma in Britain, although no figures are available for how many have arrived from Eastern Europe. For centuries they have encouraged their children to marry young.

Often girls are “promised” to a boy from the age of seven or eight in return for a cash dowry. It is considered essential that the girl is a virgin.

Indeed. Just like it was considered essential that Diana was a virgin.

When you attack the Roma, you attack your own freedom to believe what you like and live the way you want to live.
Remember that when the outrage begins to well up as you read one of these stories.

Do you remember our first taste of Barak Obama? The speech that thrilled everyone in July of 2004?

There was a BLOGDIAL back then, and of course, we wrote about that speech, and this strange man who appeared out of nowhere with smooth and empty words, who now threatens to further dismantle The United States of America:

Now let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.

Now. This sort of totally absurd talk does not inspire one with confidence in the incoming US regime. Amercia has no enemies in the world. That is a fact. The American Government has bitter enemies, and it is that entitiy that is dragging the innocent American population into harms way, the way it did during Kerry’s youth.

There is no one out there that needs to be “pursued and defeated”; everyone in the entire world (including you, as in “But you know this”) except American politicians knows this. Perhaps this man should spend some time outside of America to re-acquaint himself with the real world. Spain will do; they are now off of the shit list because they, the Spanish population, have the common sense to elect people who will mind Spain’s business.

You know the song by Bread, the one with the lyric “Dreams are for those who sleep”; well, the American dream sounds like a dream of sleepers when it is spoken about in this way. They had better wake up to the real danger caused by the reckless, racist and insane foreign and internal policy that their government has put into high gear, and elect a government that will put the breaks on and do a u-turn before there is nothing left to save.

It would be much more comforting to have a candidate who had refused to go to Viet Nam rather than one that reveled in that pointless and illegal “war” … beggars cant be choosers.

Whatever happens, the entire world will still be faced with an unexposed and untraveled loose cannon congress, a society gripped by xenophobia and extreme paranoia rubber stamping their every misguided vote for aggression, and no real way out in sight.

Warm and fuzzy feel good speeches simply will not cut it. The world wants to know the answer to a very simple question; are you going to knock it off?!
posted by Irdial , 5:24 PM Þ

um, hey akin: the ‘world’ isn’t electing the new american president.

Perhaps if the whole world elected the american president, you might be given one that is reasonable. Certainly if a country is to be the policeman of the world, the very same world should have direct control over that country and its election process.

and this bullshit about ‘national security’ is what the american populous is currently most interested in.

Hence my point about the hysterical false concerns over security. The answer to this “problem” is clear, and has been demonstrated by Spain. Let me put it in terms anyone can understand; if you poke around in a hornets nest, you are going to get stung. There. Leave the hornets to do what the hornets do, and live life that you deserve, free, peacful, without fear and hopefully long.

i agree with what you have to say — honestly — but trust me, electability is just as important as being truthful right now.

So, the whole world should sit by and say nothing while one bunch of idiots replaces the last bunch? I think not. No one in the world would care if the americans voted Luke Skywalker of 2 Live Crew as their president (at least he has a passport uunlike half of the congressmen) if their government minded their own business, but it seems that they refuse to, and even intelligent people appear to be saying that we all have to put up with this hysteria and the interference that stems from it (and which caused it) “until we are done with it”. Not good enough.

after your whole tirade against nader, one would think ‘you would know this.’

I was responding to that template-made feelgood claptrap speech which did not impress or move me in the slightest bit. Bush has to go, at the very least, to cut off his freinds businesses from world access; we all know he will never face a war crimes tribunal, in the end, that wont matter, because its far more important that he will no longer be there pushing the world towards the precipice . We all want Bush to be replaced. Nader is insane for threatening this; thats just logic. Now, imagining that Kerry is going to win, we casually take a close look at him and find him utterly wanting, even on the surface. Still we would prefer him, just to see Bush and the Neocon armageddonite puppeteers thrown into the garbage where they belong.

kerry won’t get elected if he says our new foreign policy won’t include kicking ass. (and yes, i think thats despicable)

So, Kerry, to be elected, must promise to break international law, ignore treaties and pledge to continue america’s suicidal pre-emptive foreign policy just to be elected, and we must all put up with it in silence, because “its just like that”.

This is not reasonable.

And you know this.

At the very least, apologise for this dreadful state that the world has been deliberately thrown into, and beg forgiveness and forbearance from the civilized world while you clean your house out. It would be only words, but if that is all you have, we will gladly take them. Telling the world to “MYOB” about this election is just too outrageous for words!
posted by Irdial , 9:00 PM Þ

[…]
And I can tell you this; everyone everywhere is more tired of your warmongering government than you are of hearing how much we hate it.
[…]
posted by Irdial , 11:27 AM Þ

That was the way we did it.

Americans are now in the position of having a real choice in the presidential election; Ron Paul or anyone else (since all the other candidates represent the same faction).

They have the benefit of hindsight, a population that is more awake than it was in 2004 and an identical crisis on the horizon, in the form of an insanely murderous attack on Iran.

John McCain is promising more war “My Friends”; Hillary Clinton is using phrases like ‘obliterate Iran’ on television. Obama has an invasion of Pakistan on the cards. These people are INSANE.

Hillary is particularly offensive, because even in her own upside down reality of misremembered and misspoken events, she is a total idiot; this is the same monster who only a short time ago said that Obomba was “naïve” on foreign policy for his declaration on a hypothetical scenario involving Pakistan, yet this harpie uses phrases like ‘obliterate Iran’, when the whole world is watching.

All three of these people are so manifestly inappropriate for the job, how could anyone possibly get it wrong this time?

The answers are, in case you are too thick to understand:

• If you are going to vote, vote for Ron Paul and NOT Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama or John McCain.
• Do not under any circumstances permit Iran to be attacked.
• Do not march in the streets to try and prevent an attack on Iran.

Obomba has americans so deeply hypnotized that it might be hard to derail him.

As for preventing an attack on Iran, we now know definitively that marching in the streets and vigils and every other 20th century tactic is useless; that is how the illegal, immoral, insane Iraq invasion and mass murder was given license to happen. You now know this to be true. If you march again, or hold a candle lit vigil, or do ANYTHING that was done before and shown to be useless, you are a COMPLETE IDIOT.

Ron Paul received more donations from active military than all the other candidates combined. All of these military personnel swear an oath:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God“

How is it that they can sit around watching America being dismantled and do absolutely nothing at all? Surely they must understand, up to the highest levels that ‘enemies domestic’ are in full operation, and that it is their sworn duty to excise them? Why has not a single shot been fired, why has there not been a breaking of ranks?

It is BIZARRE.

They are on the edge of engaging in another war crime, in historical terms, a page turn after Iraq, and not one of them is acting? No one is that stupid.

I would love to read an explanation for this inexplicable silence, this immoral inaction, this nauseating inertia; there must be an explanation – even the act of a lone maverick would exonerate them, but there is not one soldier amongst them (it seems) that actually understands what America really was.

Even the Nazis had high ranking soldiers willing to kill their despot. In their failure, they achieved the greatest honor for being on the right side of history.

In fact, we see that the army is doing exactly the opposite of what their oaths demand; they are preparing to take over the country and put decent people into concentration camps.

If only it were all a bad dream…

This is a comment attached to this post, that I had to ‘promote’ to an entire post:

——-

The new wave of anti-organic propaganda: organic food is bad for the environment!

First, biased tripe masquerading as a magazine piece on BBQ. Previously they had this slightly more balanced piece.

And last week, the “7 Myths Of Organic Food” debunked by Robert Johnston, who claims to be an ‘environmental expert’ but I can’t find his credentials anywhere. “these foods are an indugence the world can’t afford, argues environmental expert Rob Johnston”.

“Robert Johnston is a doctor and freelance journalist. He was an executive producer for Lifetime Television in New York and medical adviser for the Millennium Dome Body Zone.”

His ‘article first appeared online before the Indescribablybad picked it up.

If these studies and articles have not been funded and placed by BigAgro then I’m a monkey’s uncle. The thrust of these articles is that only by intensive, chemical-driven farming can we save the world. And we’ll be healthier too.

Smacks of desperation, with a whiff of fear.

——-

It in fact, stinks.

When someone who has the brain of a researcher and who is honest turns the fire-hose of their logic onto these subjects, the shiny surface gets washed away to reveal the pure dirty evil underneath.

Note how it is the usual suspects who eagerly regurgitate the PR lies.

Swiss banks cannot be expected to police foreign clients’ tax affairs, one of the country’s top banking officials said Monday, rejecting German demands for greater cooperation to catch tax evaders.

The president of the Swiss Bankers Association laid the blame for tax evasion squarely at the feet of governments that demand too much of their citizens’ income.

“Countries which worry about tax evasion of their citizens should have a good think about the way they tax their people,” Pierre Mirabaud told journalists in Geneva.

The European Union, in particular Germany, has been pressuring Switzerland to crack down on EU citizens who hide money in Swiss banks in order to avoid paying higher taxes at home.

Switzerland, which is not a member of the 27-nation bloc, fiercely protects the privacy of banking customers, including foreigners who have deposited more than 1 trillion Swiss francs (US$950 billion; €640 billion) in its vaults.

“It’s necessary to clearly show Germany and the European Union where their sphere of influence ends and where our sovereignty begins,” Mirabaud said, adding that his members don’t regard themselves as responsible for their clients’ actions.

“We are not a tax authority and we are not a police authority,” he said.

Leading Swiss politicians and bankers reacted with outrage earlier this year when it was revealed that German intelligence had purchased confidential information on bank customers in neighboring Liechtenstein. Mirabaud said at the time that Berlin had used “Gestapo” methods to acquire the data, but later retracted his comparison to Nazi Germany’s secret police.

The information led to a series of high-profile raids against individuals and businesses in Germany, as well as further investigations by authorities in Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Switzerland, like Liechtenstein, provides no judicial assistance to foreign authorities in cases of tax evasion because it is considered an administrative offense subject only to fines rather than a crime punishable by a jail sentence.

A visit last week by German chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the tax issue failed to change Switzerland’s stance on the matter.

Mirabaud said criticism of Switzerland was misplaced, and largely driven by competitors jealous of the Alpine nation’s success as a leading center for international finance.

“For any Anglo-Saxon newspaper, it’s much easier to attack Switzerland than the United Kingdom or the U.S.,” he said.

Mirabaud insisted that Switzerland has some of the world’s strictest rules against money laundering and has done much in recent years to shake off its reputation as a safe haven for dictators to stash their funds.

Millions of dollars (euros) hidden in Swiss accounts by the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and Philippines strong man Ferdinand Marcos have been returned to their governments, and Swiss authorities are seeking to do the same for money deposited here by former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

But on the matter of tax evasion, Mirabaud said the solution is for countries to demand less from their citizens.

“Humans being what they are, if the tax burden becomes too high there will always be tax evasion,” he said.

[…]

IHT

My emphasis.

At last, some bankers with bottle!

Common sense from one of the best countries on Earth. Instead of copying the Swiss model, and reaping the benefits, the western police states insist on the slave model of insane taxation, war and waste, and expect everyone to simply put up with it.

City councillor Gavin Webb could be thrown off a school’s board of governors after making controversial calls to legalise heroin and prostitution.Liberal Democrat (Libertarian) councillor Gavin Webb’s position is being reviewed after publicly expressing controversial views.

Thistley Hough High School, in Penkhull, could now decide to sack him from its board of governors.

The chair of governors, Gill Miller, said she is seeking advice on Mr Webb’s position in light of complaints about comments he hasmade.

She said: “I have alerted the governing support unit at the city council and the governing body is currently considering Mr Webb’s position.”

Talking about drugs, Mr Webb said: “I believe we should legalise the lot, including the most harmful substance heroin.”

He has also described the police’s drug-busting Operation Nemesis as a “waste of money”.

He has also said: “The only person one can trust in protecting one’s own life, is oneself. That is why I also advocate that individuals should have the right to carry a handgun.”

Other controversial views expressed by Mr Webb include that drink-driving is not a crime, that brothels should be legal and that Britain’s borders should be opened up to anyone who wants to enter the country.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s Liberal Democrat group leader, Councillor Jean Bowers, said she was concerned about some of the comments Mr Webb has made in recent weeks. She said a member of the public had contacted her to complain about some of his views.

Mr Webb, pictured, said he is aware that some of his views were unpopular, and could even jeopardise his position as a governor.

He said: “I am getting flak from various people, but part of the role of politicians is to tell people to take responsibility for their own lives, instead of blaming other people.”

“At the end of the day, it’s up the board of school governors whether they support me or sack me.”

Many of Mr Webb’s controversial statements were made on The Sentinel’s website.

Mr Webb is also being investigated by the Standards Board of England after an alleged four-letter outburst at a fellow councillor.

What do you think of Gavin Webb’s views?

[…]

http://www.thisisthesentinel.co.uk/

What do I think?

I think this man is 100% correct!

Is this the beginning of a sea change in the UK? A return to sanity? An awakening from the nightmare of Bliar, Brown, Murder Inc. and all the horrors we have been putting up with?

Lets hope so!

MAY 1968 GRAFFITI

It is forbidden to forbid

Beneath the cobblestones, the beach

In the decor of the spectacle, the eye meets only things and their prices.

Commute, work, commute, sleep . . .

Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe and nobody can and many say, “We will breathe later.” And most of them don’t die because they are already dead.

Boredom is counterrevolutionary.

We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom.

We want to live.

Don’t beg for the right to live — take it.

In a society that has abolished every kind of adventure the only adventure that remains is to abolish the society.

The liberation of humanity is all or nothing.

Those who make revolutions half way only dig their own graves.

No replastering, the structure is rotten.

Masochism today takes the form of reformism.

Reform my ass.

The revolution is incredible because it’s really happening.

I came, I saw, I was won over.

Run, comrade, the old world is behind you!

Quick!

If we only have enough time . . .

In any case, no regrets!

Already ten days of happiness.

Live in the moment.

Comrades, if everyone did like us . . .

We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy.

Down with the state.

When the National Assembly becomes a bourgeois theater, all the bourgeois theaters should be turned into national assemblies. [Written above the entrance of the occupied Odéon Theater]

Referendum: whether we vote yes or no, it turns us into suckers.

It’s painful to submit to our bosses; it’s even more stupid to choose them.

Let’s not change bosses, let’s change life.

Don’t liberate me — I’ll take care of that.

I’m not a servant of the people (much less of their self-appointed leaders). Let the people serve themselves.

Abolish class society.

Nature created neither servants nor masters. I want neither to rule nor to be ruled.

We will have good masters as soon as everyone is their own.

“In revolution there are two types of people: those who make it and those who profit from it.”
(Napoleon)

Warning: ambitious careerists may now be disguised as “progressives.”

Don’t be taken in by the politicos and their filthy demagogy. We must rely on ourselves.

Socialism without freedom is a barracks.

All power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We want structures that serve people, not people serving structures.

The revolution doesn’t belong to the committees, it’s yours.

Politics is in the streets.

Barricades close the streets but open the way.

Our hope can come only from the hopeless.

A proletarian is someone who has no power over his life and knows it.

Never work.

People who work get bored when they don’t work. People who don’t work never get bored.

Workers of all countries, enjoy!

Since 1936 I have fought for wage increases.
My father before me fought for wage increases.
Now I have a TV, a fridge, a Volkswagen.
Yet my whole life has been a drag.
Don’t negotiate with the bosses. Abolish them.

The boss needs you, you don’t need the boss.

By stopping our machines together we will demonstrate their weakness.

Occupy the factories.

Power to the workers councils.
(an enragé)

Power to the enragés councils.
(a worker)

Worker: You may be only 25 years old, but your union dates from the last century.

Labor unions are whorehouses.

Comrades, let’s lynch Séguy!
[Georges Séguy: head bureaucrat of the Communist Party-dominated labor union]

Please leave the Communist Party as clean on leaving it as you would like to find it on entering.

Stalinists, your children are with us!

Man is neither Rousseau’s noble savage nor the Church’s or La Rochefoucauld’s depraved sinner.
He is violent when oppressed, gentle when free.

Conflict is the origin of everything.
(Heraclitus)

If we have to resort to force, don’t sit on the fence.

Be cruel.

Humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat.

When the last sociologist has been hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat, will we still have “problems”?

The passion of destruction is a creative joy.
(Bakunin)

A single nonrevolutionary weekend is infinitely more bloody than a month of total revolution.

The tears of philistines are the nectar of the gods.

This concerns everyone.

We are all German Jews.

We refuse to be highrised, diplomaed, licensed, inventoried, registered, indoctrinated, suburbanized, sermonized, beaten, telemanipulated, gassed, booked.

We are all “undesirables.”

We must remain “unadapted.”

The forest precedes man, the desert follows him.

Under the paving stones, the beach.

Concrete breeds apathy.

Coming soon to this location: charming ruins.

Beautiful, maybe not, but O how charming: life versus survival.

“My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I’m not selling bread, I’m selling yeast.”
(Unamuno)

Conservatism is a synonym for rottenness and ugliness.

You are hollow.

You will end up dying of comfort.

Hide yourself, object!

No to coat-and-tie revolution.

A revolution that requires us to sacrifice ourselves for it is Papa’s revolution.

Revolution ceases to be the moment it calls for self-sacrifice.

The prospect of finding pleasure tomorrow will never compensate for today’s boredom.

When people notice they are bored, they stop being bored.

Happiness is a new idea.

Live without dead time.

Those who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring to everyday reality have a corpse in their mouth.

Culture is an inversion of life.

Poetry is in the streets.

The most beautiful sculpture is a paving stone thrown at a cop’s head.

Art is dead, don’t consume its corpse.

Art is dead, let’s liberate our everyday life.

Art is dead, Godard can’t change that.

Godard: the supreme Swiss Maoist jerk.

Permanent cultural vibration.

We want a wild and ephemeral music.
We propose a fundamental regeneration:concert strikes,
sound gatherings with collective investigation.
Abolish copyrights: sound structures belong to everyone.

Anarchy is me.

Revolution, I love you.

Down with the abstract, long live the ephemeral.
(Marxist-Pessimist Youth)

Don’t consume Marx, live him.

I’m a Groucho Marxist.

I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires.

Desiring reality is great! Realizing your desires is even better!

Practice wishful thinking.

I declare a permanent state of happiness.

Be realistic, demand the impossible.

Power to the imagination.

Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking.

Imagination is not a gift, it must be conquered.
(Breton)

Action must not be a reaction, but a creation.

Action enables us to overcome divisions and find solutions.

Exaggeration is the beginning of invention.

The enemy of movement is skepticism. Everything that has been realized comes from dynamism, which comes from spontaneity.

Here, we spontane.

“You must bear a chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star.”
(Nietzsche)

Chance must be systematically explored.

Alcohol kills. Take LSD.

Unbutton your mind as often as your fly.

“Every view of things that is not strange is false.”
(Valéry)

Life is elsewhere.

Forget everything you’ve been taught. Start by dreaming.

Form dream committees.

Dare! This word contains all the politics of the present moment.
(Saint-Just)

Arise, ye wretched of the university.

Students are jerks.

The student’s susceptibility to recruitment as a militant for any cause is a sufficient demonstration of his real impotence.
(enragé women)

Professors, you make us grow old.

Terminate the university.

Rape your Alma Mater.

What if we burned the Sorbonne?

Professors, you are as senile as your culture, your modernism is nothing but the modernization of the police.

We refuse the role assigned to us: we will not be trained as police dogs.

We don’t want to be the watchdogs or servants of capitalism.

Exams = servility, social promotion, hierarchical society.

When examined, answer with questions.

Insolence is the new revolutionary weapon.

Every teacher is taught, everyone taught teaches.

The Old Mole of history seems to be splendidly undermining the Sorbonne.
(telegram from Marx, 13 May 1968)

Thought that stagnates rots.

To call in question the society you “live” in, you must first be capable of calling yourself in question.

Take revolution seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously.

The walls have ears. Your ears have walls.

Making revolution also means breaking our internal chains.

A cop sleeps inside each one of us. We must kill him.

Drive the cop out of your head.

Religion is the ultimate con.

Neither God nor master.

If God existed it would be necessary to abolish him.

Can you believe that some people are still Christians?

Down with the toad of Nazareth.

How can you think freely in the shadow of a chapel?

We want a place to piss, not a place to pray.

I suspect God of being a leftist intellectual.

The bourgeoisie has no other pleasure than to degrade all pleasures.

Going through the motions kills the emotions.

Struggle against the emotional fixations that paralyze our potentials.
(Committee of Women on the Path of Liberation)

Constraints imposed on pleasure incite the pleasure of living without constraints.

The more I make love, the more I want to make revolution.
The more I make revolution, the more I want to make love.

SEX: It’s okay, says Mao, as long as you don’t do it too often.

Comrades, 5 hours of sleep a day is indispensable: we need you for the revolution.

Embrace your love without dropping your guard.

I love you!!! Oh, say it with paving stones!!!

I’m coming in the paving stones.

Total orgasm.

Comrades, people are making love in the Poli Sci classrooms, not only in the fields.

Revolutionary women are more beautiful.

Zelda, I love you! Down with work!

The young make love, the old make obscene gestures.

Make love, not war.

Whoever speaks of love destroys love.

Down with consumer society.

The more you consume, the less you live.

Commodities are the opium of the people.

Burn commodities.

You can’t buy happiness. Steal it.

See Nanterre and live. Die in Naples with Club Med.

Are you a consumer or a participant?

To be free in 1968 means to participate.

I participate.
You participate.
He participates.
We participate.
They profit.

The golden age was the age when gold didn’t reign.

“The cause of all wars, riots and injustices is the existence of property.”
(St. Augustine)

Happiness is hanging your landlord.

Millionaires of the world unite. The wind is turning.

The economy is wounded — I hope it dies!

How sad to love money.

You too can steal.

“Amnesty: An act in which the rulers pardon the injustices they have committed.”
(Ambrose Bierce)
[The definition in Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary is actually: “Amnesty: The state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.”]

Abolish alienation.

Obedience begins with consciousness;
consciousness begins with disobedience.

First, disobey; then write on the walls.
(Law of 10 May 1968)

I don’t like to write on walls.

Write everywhere.

Before writing, learn to think.

I don’t know how to write but I would like to say beautiful things and I don’t know how.

I don’t have time to write!!!

I have something to say but I don’t know what.

Freedom is the right to silence.

Long live communication, down with telecommunication.

You, my comrade, you whom I was unaware of amid the tumult,
you who are throttled, afraid, suffocated — come, talk to us.

Talk to your neighbors.

Yell.

Create.

Look in front of you!!!

Help with cleanup, there are no maids here.

Revolution is an INITIATIVE.

Speechmaking is counterrevolutionary.

Comrades, stop applauding, the spectacle is everywhere.

Don’t get caught up in the spectacle of opposition. Oppose the spectacle.

Down with spectacle-commodity society.

Down with journalists and those who cater to them.

Only the truth is revolutionary.

No forbidding allowed.

Freedom is the crime that contains all crimes. It is our ultimate weapon.

The freedom of others extends mine infinitely.

No freedom for the enemies of freedom.

Free our comrades.

Open the gates of the asylums, prisons and other faculties.

Open the windows of your heart.

To hell with boundaries.

You can no longer sleep quietly once you’ve suddenly opened your eyes.

The future will only contain what we put into it now.

[…]

http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/graffiti.htm

Wednesdays 23 of April

legalize the drug consumption in Argentina the International – (10:00 hrs.)

A court of Buenos Aires annuls thousands of cases in proceedings of defendant to have marijuana

They consider that consuming they are the factor of a chain that finishes in the narcotics trafficker The Financier in line Buenos Aires, 23 of April.

A federal court of Buenos Aires legalizeed the individual drug consumption in the Argentine capital, with which they would be annulled thousand of cases in proceedings of people accused to have small amounts of marijuana, according to the failure that publishes the press of Buenos Aires today.

The failure indicates that Room 1 of Federal Camera of Appeals declared the article unconstitutionality of the law that punishes the drug users, promulgated in 1989.

The questioned norm punishes the consumers to consider that they are the base of a chain that finishes in the narcotics trafficker. But the court considered that such single presumption generated “an avalanche of files destined to consumers without managing to ascend in the links of the chain of the drug traffic”.

The failure was applied to the case of two young people stopped by the Police by cigarette possession of marijuana and tablets of éxtasis when they went to a celebration of electronic music in Buenos Aires, in May of 2007.

Although the question must be dissolved in the Supreme Court of Justice, the failure of the court of Buenos Aires is in line with the policy of the Government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in reforming the laws to legalize the drug consumption.

During the 51 Extraordinary Session of the Economic and Social Council of the UN, celebrated the month last in Vienna, Argentine minister of Justice and Seguridad, Aníbal Fernandez, noted the “absolute failure” of the policy to punish the drug users.

Of this form, and for the first time in 30 years, Argentina the consumer left his adhesion to the American position to persecute so much to the drug dealer like a. (With EFE/MVC information)

[…]

http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/

At last, the prohibition era is starting to disintegrate.

How long will it be before other countries realize the emperor has no clothes, and abandon this absurd edict from the evil empire?

The americans have more people in prison (2006) than China (2008).

That culture, where breasts cannot be shown on television, has exported its neanderthal ideas of justice and how to deal with medical and social ills to countries that to their eternal shame, simply obeyed like sheep. The fact of the matter is, Marijuana should never have been made illegal, just as alcohol should never have been made illegal, and the same goes for all other ‘drugs’. The countries with sensible approaches to ‘drug’ taking were the most peaceful, most civilized countries, with very small prison populations and low crime rates. This evidence was ignored throughout the twentieth century and the result, in america’s case, is an exploding prison population, one of the most violent countries on earth, and a culture of criminality that stretches from the drug dealer in the street right up to the CIA

Once again, this demonstrates how important an independent judiciary is to the workings of a free country. Intelligent judges with a free hand can interpret the law correctly. In a country where the judiciary is broken or corrupt or puritanical or insane, like the the USA, the country can be destroyed.

This is a comment on an article that appeared in The Telegraph about the highly offensive spying of Poole council on an innocent family, who were judged to be guilty before proven innocent:

Just ponder for a moment. Ten short years ago, nobody in the world would have thought that the once proud British people could, by self infliction, descend to a debt ridden proletariat, with possession and use of the instruments and trappings of a quasi Stalinist dictatorship, in the incompetent, arrogant hands of what are supposed to be servants of the public.

You have corrupt politicians, with their fingers consistently in the till, above the law, and ears ever deaf to the electorate which put them where they are. A current chancellor who lacks the fiscal competence to add up his wage slip, because he never had one before he got this job as a convenient stooge for the previous carrier of the budget box. A plethora of ‘employment’ Ministers, who have proved to be anything but employment ministers for the intrinsic population, crying ‘skills shortage, skills shortage,’ like demented parrots, justifying the cry for the bird seed of the ever cheaper labour of mass unskilled immigration, to sustain their bankrupt policies. An ‘elf Minister, presiding over the third largest ‘employment’ factory in the world, with a large proportion of the ‘employees’ putting their wages above patient care. An anti English Egyptian born ‘Kulture Minister’ performing like a latter day Beria, systematically eradicating the history and soul of everything a country, once in the vanguard of what freedom stood for. A Home Secretary divided by two, because the job is now too big for a single NULabour politician to cope with, with an avalanche of foreign laws imposed on the British, without referendum promised in two elections. A part time defence secretary, and a military with no kit, because the armed forces never did figure in Labour, other than as an accountants cost saving exercise. This trough fed entourage crowned with an unelected Prime Minister, who fiddles his TV License, and whose revealed former capabilities, with ten years of ‘growth,’ but nothing in the bank, are now staring everybody over there, squarely in the wallet. But by far and away the biggest crime of all, was the calculated erosion of educational standards for the masses, to the point where a sixteen year old state sink school ‘graduate,’ could not compete against the abilities of a nine year old from the former colony of Singapore. Education, Education, Education? More like Educashun, Educashun, Educashun, with a ‘so what’ ‘Minister’ most aptly demonstrating the zenith of NULabour teachings. If Britain continues down this path, it is guaranteed accelerated descent into a third world satellite banana republic of the EUSSR.

With this ‘leadership’ at the helm, it is little wonder that the sub Stalins of local government have got the green light to misuse anti terrorism legislation, to intrude on every aspect of your lives. You already have Zampolits of the rubbish police, chipping your dustbins. Now you have the state machine commissars tailing three year olds, presumably in a flasher mack driving a Russian Fiat copy. I assure you, that to the rest of the free world you have become a very sick joke. It would be comical if it were not tragic. You are now a United Kingdom in name alone. It is hoped that if you ever get the chance of another election, and your Ministers have not worked sufficient overtime to convert it to the Zimbabwe variety, you will remember when NULabour again makes promises in a manifesto, that, to avoid their obligations to the people, they went to the time and trouble of a court case to have it legally declared to be not worth the paper it was printed on. Be careful which library books you read, the fact that you are still reading books, instead of dosing your brain with state Television soap, may attract the unwelcome attention of a Kulture Zampolit.

Posted by Michael Barningham on April 11, 2008 12:25 PM

Judging by the comments to this article, we are quickly approaching the tipping point in the UK, where everyone will, seemingly, spontaneously cry, “enough is enough” and the whole system will be explosively reconfigured so that it looks more like the Real Britian^™ that we all knew and loved.

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV“). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.

First, the new media — particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) — have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world — even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned — call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.

Secondly, Botros’s broadcasts are in Arabic — the language of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature — much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations — and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.

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