The people who run the Pirate Bay have decided to exit and hand the site over for money. Good luck to them, and thanks for the lulz.

Now we hear of a company that wants to make money off of TPB, by ‘paying people to share files’:

Cash for Pirate Bay file-sharers

The new owners of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay say users will be paid for sharing files.

Global Gaming Factory (GGF) paid 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over the site.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, GGF’s Hans Pandeya said that the only way to beat illegal file-sharing was to make something more attractive.

“We are going to set up a system where the file-sharer actually makes money,” he said.

According to Mr Pandeya, GGF’s chief executive, the business model for The Pirate Bay would be that it continued to be a file-sharing site. The only difference – at least in terms of content – would be that the files would be hosted legally, rather than stolen from copyright holders.
“We’re a listed company so everything we do has to be legal; content providers need to be paid and have their wishes and demands met,” he said.

Freebie beater
Mr Pandeya said that one of the biggest hurdles in overcoming illegal file-sharing was that there was zero cost to the users, while legitimate sites required users to pay for content. The only way to make something more attractive than free was to pay users to share files.

“More than half of all internet traffic is file sharing and P2P [peer-to-peer] traffic and buying Pirate Bay gives us one of the biggest sources of traffic.

“We can then use this massive network of file-sharers to help [internet service providers] reduce overload.

“Let’s say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site – which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP – we can take that song and put it out on P2P.

“The copyright holder still gets paid, the users still get their file, the ISP doesn’t have a million people all grabbing a file and – for the users who share that song – a payment for putting that file on the P2P network.”

Mr Pandeya said that while they would be paying content providers and file sharers, there was money to be made from helping ISPs cope with overload.

“We’ve been working with ISPs for over a year and we can cut their costs – when the system becomes overloaded – by 90%.
“All ISPs have this problem and it is one we can fix,” he said.

Computer grid
The company is also looking at harnessing the storage capacity and processing power of the file-sharing community, creating a powerful grid of P2P-linked computers.

“We’re talking about next-gen file sharing so you can create revenue from storage and internet traffic optimisation,” he said.
However, GGF said that the technology to drive this was still in its infancy.

“This technology is new. For now, we’re outlining our intentions and asking users to have faith,” said Mr Pandeya

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8128551.stm

Hmmmmm that sounds very familiar….

Those of you who are old (in internet time) will remember MojoNation. The leet amongst you will have run it.

Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow

Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow was a startup company founded by Jim McCoy et al. to create MojoNation. After several years, the company ran out of money and laid off most of its employees; Bram Cohen went on to create BitTorrent and Zooko created Mnet out of MojoNation’s source code. The company’s name comes from the game Illuminati by Steve Jackson Games.

[…]

Mojo Economy

Mojo was a digital cash currency that aimed to provide attack resistance and load balancing in a fully distributed and incentive-compatible way (see Agoric computing). Every pair of MojoNation nodes maintained a relative credit balance, with every EGTP request transferring some Mojo credit from the sender to the receiver. Once the absolute value of the debt between two nodes exceeded the size of a Mojo token, the side with the negative balance would transfer a token to the other, clearing out the debt. Because transferring a token was a relatively heavyweight event, tokens were worth 20,000 (?) Mojo. A MojoNation component called the token server acted as the mint, allowing MojoNation nodes to securely transfer Mojo.

In early versions of MojoNation, users were required to set prices for any services their node provided. Most users had no idea how to choose prices, so the Mojo layer was rewritten to use a second-price rolling auction. Each node maintained a queue of incoming requests that had not yet been processed, sorted by a bid field contained in each request. Requests were serviced in order, from highest to lowest bids. This shifted the burden of pricing decisions from servers to clients: each user could set a price he was willing to pay for services, and his node would offer that bid in outgoing requests. This scheme was intended to create a simple feedback loop: if the system is responding slowly, increase your bid and if the system is responding quickly, decrease it.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MojoNation

And there you have it. This has already been tried once.

At MojoNation where the creator of Bittorrent worked, a system was built that remunerated users of a P2P network for sharing their bandwidth and storage. The company ran out of money. Could it have worked if they had more users and deeper pockets? Who knows? What we DO know, is that if anyone is writing a system like this from scratch, they are insane, because much of the hard work on the server side has already been done, and the source code open sourced.

Whatever.

This is an interesting idea, interesting enough to be tried twice.

In 1939 1,800,000 children were moved out of London to escape the bombing of that great city.

How it all happened is relevant to us today, in the light of New Labour, and its infinitely repulsive, shocking and sickening disregard for what Britain is and was, and what it is meant to be.

London was being bombarded nightly. Londoners spent their nights in shelters or deep in the Underground on the platforms as the bombs hammered away.

It was decided that children living in the areas that were being Blitzed were to be evacuated to safe parts of Britain. The first evacuations began on Friday 1 September 1939, and was code named 'Operation Pied Piper'.

The evacuated children were put on trains in London, had tags pinned on their clothes stating their names, and were then despatched to different parts of the countryside.

When they arrived at the various train stations and evacuation centres, adults who were to take in the evacuees were waiting. The children were selected on the spot, by a point of the finger and words like, "I'll take the one with red hair just there", and taken away to their new homes; those who were not wanted, judged solely on the look of the child were simply left behind:

[…]

The whole school (Sellincourt Road Infants) marched through streets to Tooting Junction station. I was carrying a small rucksack for my luggage. I remember the cornfields en route and that we changed trains at Exeter. We stopped at several villages and at each stop we got off and lined up in the road so the villagers could take who they wanted. Those of us that remained then re-boarded and went onto the next village. Those of us not selected were then deposited at a commandeered camp belonging to NALGO (trade union).

[…]

BBC

[…]

“We were walked to the rail station at Clapham Junction and from there we caught the train to Waterloo, from Waterloo we travelled all the way to north Cornwall.

“After a short period of time, I was evacuated to a farmer and his wife who had no children, and I became part of the family.”
Children at the time would wait at temporary evacuee centres were they could be selected by a family who liked them. He felt he was one of the lucky ones who got a good home.

[…]

BBC

[…]

I suppose there was about 20 of us from class seven of Christ Church. The children from other classes went elsewhere to nearby villages. I remember standing in a line next to Kenneth, my friend, feeling hot, tired and somewhat unsettled. The long journey, just undertaken, left me slightly bewildered. Was it all a dream?

Standing opposite us in the hall was quite a large group of villagers. These people had agreed to take us into their homes and become our foster parents. They had, previously, signed the necessary forms and stated their preference for boys or girls. Soon a rather awkward process of selection began, and after, watching, waiting and wondering. My friend Kenneth and I found ourselves being paired up and being led along by a tall, kindly-looking gentleman, Mr Ware, the village postman. At that moment, to use the official term, he had become our foster father. Waiting outside, no doubt very interested to see what we looked like, were two of Mr Ware's daughters, Maureen and Barbara.

[…]

BBC

And so on and so on. What an incredible story!

Now, fast forward to 2009.

We have a government that wants to force everyone to carry an ID Card that is linked to a giant database of fingerprints and faces that can identify you in a fraction of a second from one of millions of CCTV cameras that are everywhere. A country where if you change your address and do not tell the government, you can be fined £1000, where you will not be able to buy wine or withdraw money from your bank account without presenting this card. Where you cannot even buy a teaspoon without showing ID. We have a government that believes that all parents are child abuse suspects, and as such, must be put into a database.

Just what the HELL has happened to Great Britain?

How has it come to pass that in a country where people were trusted and trusting by default, to such an extent that children could be given away to total strangers without any doubt whatsoever that strangers will have nothing but absolute concern and care for the welfare of their wards, in close to two million instances… that this trust is all but completely destroyed?

How is it that the people of this fair island have become so ground down, so inured to slavery and tyranny that when over 100,000 parents are accused in a most vicious and dastardly way, without a shred of evidence, of being potential child abusers, that almost nothing is said, and that there are even parents who AGREE with the totalitarian government responsible for the perverted claims and insane recommendations?

How is it that two men, named 'Balls' and 'Badman' can get away with such a thing, and no one thinks this combination of names is in any way odd, or unusual, or freakish, monstrous, sinister or nightmarish? Are we living as characters on the pages of an edition of 200AD?

What the HELL is wrong with everybody?!

Even if you accept that it is the role of government to organize education and protect children (which I do not), any reasonable person would require that there is evidence of a real problem before you legislate; in this case, the author of the review, the singularly unqualified Badman, admits that there is no evidence that Home Educated children are at risk and that Home Education is not being used as a 'cover'. Even by those standards the conclusions and recommendations of this scabrous review are completely illogical in that light.

The fact of the matter is, quite apart from the natural rights aspect of this, parents are the most trustworthy people when it comes to the care of their children. The vast majority of people are also completely trustworthy, as the example of the evacuees demonstrates. The only people who cannot be trusted are, CRB Checked, ‘trusted’ agents of the government; the social workers, local authority workers etc etc, who are a self selected group of control freaks whose only desire is to exert their will upon others. They never refuse new powers, are keen to enter into and interfere with the private business of every family, down to the food that is eaten in the home.

The men and women of the 1930s adn 40s would never have accepted a government like New Labour; in fact, they were willing to die fighting against a government just like it; a government that explicitly banned (and continues to ban) home schooling.

They did not need to check every adult against a database before they did the evacuation. Even if they had time and the means to do it, they would not have done it, just as in the 70’s ID Cards were rejected as ‘un-British’ when the IRA was attacking England and the attackers were visually indistinguishable from the attacked by virtue of both groups being ‘European’ in appearance.

The men of that era would never accept a government like New Labour:

Clarence Henry Willcock
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clarence Henry Willcock, (23 January 1896 – 12 December 1952) a member of the Liberal Party, was the last person in the UK to be prosecuted for refusing to produce an Identity Card.

On 7 December 1950, Harry Willcock, 54 year old dry-cleaning manager was stopped while driving in Finchley, London by police constable Harold Muckle who demanded that he present his identity card at a police station within 48 hours. He refused, reputedly saying "I am a Liberal and I am against this sort of thing". He was prosecuted under the National Registration Act 1939, convicted and fined 10 shillings.

Willcock appealed, in the case Willcock vs Muckle. Although he lost the appeal, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Goddard, spoke out against the continued use of compulsory Identity Cards and commented that they "tend to make people resentful of the acts of the police".

As a result of the court case, Willcock became well-known and he founded the Freedom Defence Association to campaign against ID cards. In a publicity event he tore up his own identity card in front of the National Liberal Club, inspiring a later similar action for the press outside Parliament by the British Housewives' League. When the Conservative government elected at the 1951 general election decided to abolish identity cards in 1952, Willcock received hundreds of redundant cards through the post to auction for charity.

Willcock was the Liberal candidate in Barking in 1945 and in 1950. He came third in both contests, losing his deposit in 1950. He had been a councillor and magistrate in Horsforth, Leeds.

Willcock was born in Alverthorpe, Wakefield, Yorkshire and died, while debating at a meeting of the Eighty Club at the National Liberal Club.
Goddard's comments are thought to have influenced Winston Churchill's decision to scrap compulsory national Identity Cards in 1952.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Henry_Willcock

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

It is now your turn to defend your rights; the rights that people died to protect and give to you. If you give them up as if they were nothing, if you compromise one inch, go half way for a little peace, go along to get along, or sign up so that you can continue to get ‘free’ rail cards and other ‘benefits’…. then you are not fit to breath the air of this great country. You deserve whatever they put upon you. You lose your right to complain, to make a fuss or to whine about 'civil liberties'. You are already dead.

You are at the same time, very lucky. In this case, all that is required of you is that you refuse to comply. Refuse to register. Refuse to take the ID card. Refuse to engage in any way with anything that comes from ContactPoint. Never use or agree with weasel words of compromise and, 'seeing the other point of view'. Do not bow and scrape to anyone, and thank your oppressors for 'being on your side'.

I say to HELL with all of them.

I say the Home Educators by themselves are greater in number than the branches of the government that desire to violate them.

I say that there is nothing that they can do if no one turns up to their party.

I say that if Home Educators and free thinking parents everywhere all agree to rally around the one thing that binds them, that they are human beings and parents, then there is nothing that can be done against them – there are too many of them to control.

There is absolutely no reason why anyone should have to put up with the incessant abuses, violations, invasions, smears and the totalitarian apparatus that this government, New Labour, is pouring out on the land.

Enough is enough. Just as this venal and murderous government stubbornly refuses to submit to the will of the public, as it should, since it has no legitimacy (so the textbooks say) without the consent of the governed, so too can anyone also refuse to obey any illegitimate law or regulation.

Those of you who believe that you have a sacred duty to protect your family from evil are already on this page.

Those of you who have doubts, who are frightened about the consequences of 'going silent' or who are swayed by the soothing weasel words of men with an air of authority, or who are actually dumb enough to believe that what is planned is in any part a good thing; be warned – the reason why we are at this abysmal point is because the weak people between the days of the evacuees and today, allowed small concessions to their liberties year on year that mounted up to become the totalitarian state that now looms over you, and which is about to tip over and crush you, splitting open to unleash a torrent of aparatchick ants that will swarm over you and your family and bite you to death.

The only way to stop this is to draw a line in the sand and say, "this far, and no further" The power of the totalitarian state is derived directly from the cooperation of the people who are its victims. The aparatchicks who use ContactPoint (for example) will be sitting in offices on the phone, compiling lists and contacting people, trying to arrange interviews etc etc. If no one speaks to them or answers their letters, they will be completely stymied. If no one registers, they will have an intractable task on their hands of tracking everyone down, writing to them, chasing them up on foot… They will never be able to pull this off. And remember; all of this is going to happen whilst they are taking care of all their other duties, with which they are already overwhelmed. This is why it is important to make it absolutely clear; this report is rejected. We will not comply with any of it, should it become the law. You are wasting your time, and we will not waste any more of ours responding to you now, or in the future.

WE ARE DONE.

Now in the relations between man and man, the worst that can hapen is for one to find himself at the mercy of another, and it would have been inconsistent with common sense to begin by bestowing on a chief the only things they wanted his help to preserve. What equivalent could he offer them for so great a right? And if he had presumed to exact it under pretext of defending them, would he not have received the answer recorded in the fable: ‘What more can the enemy do to us?’ It is therefore beyond dispute , and indeed the fundamental maxim of all political right, that people have set up cheifs to protect their liberty, and not to enslve them. ‘If we have a prince,’ said Pliny to Trajan, ‘it is to save ourselves from having a master.’
Politicians indulge in the same sophistry about the love of liberty as philosophers about the state of nature. They judge, by what they see, of very different things, which they have not seen; they attribute to man a natural propensity to servitude, because the slaves within their observation are seen to bear the yoke with patience; they fail to reflect that it is with liberty as with innocenceand virtue; the value is only known to those who possess them, and the taste for them is forfeited when they are forfeited themselves. ‘I know the charms of your country,’ said Brasidas to a Satrap, who was compaing the life at Sparta with that at Persepolis, ‘but you cannot know the pleasures of mine.’

[…]

We cannot therefore , from the serility of nations already enslaved, judge of the natural disposition of mankind for or against slavery; we should go by the prodigious efforts of every free people to save itself from oppression. I know that the former are forever holding forth in praise of the tranquility they enjoy in their chains, and that they call a state of wretched servitude a state of peace: miserrimam servitutem pacem appellant. But when I observe the latter sacrificing pleasure, peace, wealth, power, and life itself to the preservation of that one treasure, which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see free-born animals dash their brains out against the bars of their cage, from an innate impatience of captivity; when I behold numbers of naked savages, that despise European pleasures, braving hunger, fire, the sword, and death, to preserve nothing but their independence, I feel that it is not for slaves to argue about liberty.

Jean-Jaques Rousseau, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

I read a few lines. There was not a single line of stereotyped abuse that had not been drummed into me for years till I was sick and tired of it.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t bother me. I was used to it long ago. Now and again I have expressed the opinion that every nation, and even every person, would do better, instead of rocking himself to sleep with political catchwords about war-guilt, to ask himself how far his own faults and negligences and evil tendencies are guilty of the war and all the other wrongs of the world, and there lies the only possible means of avoiding the next war. They don’t forgive me for that, for, of course, they are themselves all guiltless, the Kaiser, the generals, the trade magnates, the politicians, the papers. Not one of them has the least thing to blame himself for. Not one has any guilt. One might believe that everything was for the best, even though a few million men lie under the ground. And mind you, Hermine, even though such abusive articles cannot bother me any longer, they sadden me all the same. Two thirds of my countrymen read this kind of newspaper, read things written in this tone every morning, and every night, are every day worked up and admonished and incited, and robbed of their peace of mind and better feelings by them, and the end aim of it alll is to have the war over again, and it will be a good deal more horrible than the last. All that is perfectly clear and simple. Anyone could comprehend it and reach the same conclusion after a moment’s reflection. But nobody wants to. Nobody wants to avoid the next war, nobody wants to spare himself and his children the next holocaust if this be the cost. To reflect for one moment, to examine himself for a while and ask what share he has in the world’s confusion and wickedness – clearly nobody wants to to do that. And so there is no stopping it, and the next war is being pushed on with enthusiasm by thousands and thousands day by day.[…]’

Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

In the age of the internets, with the vast experience of VietNam Veterans and their stories being told and retold a thousand times in every possible way, and everyone (we would imagine) being on the same page about what it means to join the army, It is absolutely staggering that there are people who are still SO STUPID and UNINFORMED about what the military really means:

(CNN) — A U.S. soldier who deserted to Canada will not face persecution if he returns to the United States, Canada’s refugee agency ruled Wednesday.

National Guard Sgt. Corey Glass, 25, says he fled to Toronto in 2006 after serving in Iraq because he did not want to fight in a war he did not support.

“What I saw in Iraq convinced me that the war is illegal and immoral. I could not in good conscience continue to take part in it,” Glass said Wednesday. “I don’t think it’s fair that I should be punished for doing what I felt morally obligated to do.”

Glass, who’s still on active duty and is considered absent without leave, applied for refugee status at the Canadian border in August 2006 on the grounds of objection to military service.

But Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board denied his application for refugee status Wednesday, prompting the Canadian Border Services Agency to issue a June 12 deportation order.

The agency says it evaluates each case on its own merits to determine whether the applicant faces a “well-founded fear” of persecution or cruel and unusual punishment if he returns to his home country.

“All refugee claimants have a right to due process,” said Danielle Norris, a spokeswoman for Customs and Immigrations Canada. “When they have exhausted all legal avenues, we expect them to respect our laws and leave the country.”

Glass, of Fairmont, Indiana, says he joined the National Guard believing that he would be deployed only if the United States faced occupation. After he returned from his first tour of duty, he said, he tried to leave the Army but was told that desertion was punishable by death.

Penalties for desertion range from a demotion in rank to a maximum penalty of death, depending on the circumstances, said Maj. Nathan Banks, an Army spokesman.

“The first thing we try to do is rehabilitate and retrain the soldier to see if we can keep him,” he said. “Remember, we’re at war, so everybody counts. When you decide to desert, you let everybody down.”

Banks said that it is up to the deserter’s commanding officer to decide on an appropriate punishment if the soldier refuses to return.

Members of War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada, which is providing transitional support to Glass and at least 13 other deserters in Canada, are holding out for a political avenue of appeal through the Canadian House of Commons.

In December, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration adopted a motion calling on the Canadian government to initiate a residency program for conscientious objectors who have left military service “related to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations.”

The motion has yet to receive approval from the entire House of Commons.

Norris says the agency has received about 40 applications for refugee claims from U.S. deserters since the Iraq war began in 2003. Of the claims that have been addressed in public, only five have made it to the country’s Federal Court of Appeals, a venue of last resort.

All five appeals were rejected, according to Norris.

The high court has yet to rule on its sixth challenge of this kind from Army combat engineer Joshua Key, who fled to Saskatchewan with his wife and four children in 2005.

“This has been our home for three years now. It’s a lot like the U.S., and it’s as close to the U.S. as you can be,” said Key, who served on the front lines in Falluja before he returned to the United States in 2002.

Key said that fleeing to Canada was a difficult but obvious choice when faced with returning to Iraq.

“There was nothing but violence and innocent civilians dying in our hands for no justification,” Key said. “We became the terrorists.”

[…]

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/05/21/guardsman.deserter/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

First of all, when you are going to desert, know where you are going to go, and be sure your host country is not on the side of your enemy:

“Dodging the draft will be more difficult than those from the Vietnam era remember. College and Canada will not be options. In December 2001, Canada and the US signed a ?Smart Border Declaration,? which could be used to keep would-be draft dodgers in. Signed by Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Manley, and US Homeland Security Director, Gov. Tom Ridge, the declaration involves a 30-point plan which implements, among other things, a ?pre-clearance agreement? of people entering and departing each country. Reforms aimed at making the draft more equitable along gender and class lines also eliminates higher education as a shelter. Underclassmen would only be able to postpone service until the end of their cur-rent semester. Seniors would have until the end of the academic year.* [….]

http://community.nbtsc.org/wiki/DraftEmail2;1.1

http://www.irdial.com/blogger/archive/2004_05_09_blarchive.html#108412107391695186

You get both sides of the story BEFORE you enlist:

Had this numbskull done his homework (or read BLOGDIAL), not only would he never had joined the ‘National Guard’, but had he done so, he would know better than to go AWOL and then TURN HIMSELF IN.

Once again, a simple search of the Google will turn up the fact that many Draft Dodgers WENT INTO HIDING in Canada; in other words, they just dropped off the face of the earth. The border between Canada and the usa is extremely porous; there is no reason to go through a border and declare that you are AWOL. How dumb can you BE?

And while we are at it, oh for the days of the old Canada, a country with some backbone….its own backbone:

Trudeau opens the door to draft dodgers

Broadcast Date: March 25, 1969
At the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Prime Minister Trudeau fields questions on the subject of draft evaders. He characterizes them as good, orderly students who have aroused the sympathies of many Canadians. The dodgers have been coming across the Canadian border as landed immigrants. Others pretend they are visiting the country as tourists and do not follow the formal channels of immigration.

• Immigration and Citizenship Canada estimates that between 30,000 and 40,000 draft dodgers and deserters were admitted into Canada over the course of the conflict.
• Following a serious debate, Prime Minister Trudeau extended his open door policy to military deserters. It is estimated that roughly 1,000 deserters took sanctuary in Canada.

http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/vietnam_war/clips/348-1928/

And there you have it.

Corey Glass is an idiot. He is a perfect example of the cause of all our problems; he is a poorly educated, half witted drone without a shred of common sense, but with a vote in the idiocracy. He cant even go AWOL and do it right. No wonder america is being so easily dismantled; if these are the sorts of people who are the future, then all is truly lost. Even if his type are not the majority, there are enough of them in the population to cause total havoc across the entire world.

This is the problem we face.

Let this be a lesson to all those moral people who genuinely signed up to protect and serve their country, and who find themselves unable to obey immoral orders and who want to find a way out.

Use the fucking google you idiots:

The countries which have neither diplomatic relations nor extradition treaties with the U.S. are: Bhutan, Iran, North Korea, and Taiwan (which the United States does not consider a country under the One-China policy).

Don’t play by the rules and expect to be treated correctly. When you go AWOL, all bets are off, and you are going underground for the duration.

Forget Canada. And if you INSIST on going there, be prepared to go completely underground, enter by foot, and be ready to live like a hunted fugitive.

And for those of you who say that this man is honorable, and by making his stand in this way he is brining attention to the problems of the illegal Iraq occupation, you are completely wrong.

The protest methods of the 20th century no longer work. Turning yourself in and making a martyr of yourself is just stupid; people are so brainwashed today that they turn on martyrs and truth tellers with chants of “tase him! tase him!”.

The problem with these people is that they are too quick to obey. They think that there are rules, somewhere, and that there is justice somewhere. There IS no justice, there ARE no rules, especially at this level, and now that you have been on ‘the CNN’ Mr. Glass, you are going to be treated to the most unimaginable cruelty at the hands of your government. But I digress.

There is nothing honorable about what this man is doing. It would have been far better for him and the cause of ending the american empire gracefully if he had secreted himself into Canada unnoticed, and then began an ‘AWOL Soldiers Blog’, telling the world of his fugitive adventures in Canada, his Iraq horror stories, the horror stories of other soldiers and other juicy pieces of writing. But that would take some intelligence, something clearly missing in this case.

What this man’s witless actions do is undermine the efforts to dismantle the war machine; it telegraphs to all soldiers with grave doubts and thoughts of escape that, “there is no escape for you. We will hunt you down and prosecute you to the full extent of the law.” Imagine the message that would have been sent, had he done it correctly. His influence would have been global. He would have been a real hero.

Now I feel pity for him.

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…

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

On the afternoon of 27th March I received a telephone call, at work, from a ‘journalist’ working for the London Evening Standard. He introduced himself as Joshua Neicho, apparently partly responsible for the Letters section of that newspaper. Joshua told me he had found my details from Teh Internets after reading our postings on Blogdial concerning Heathrow T5 and the implications of design on security issues.

Now, tracking me down via Blogdial isn’t so hard to do. I’m sure Joshua would have preferred to contact Irdial, the first author of those posts, but Irdial isn’t silly enough to leave a simple trail to their private telephone number pasted all over the web.

Anyway, Joshua asked me to provide 200 words on T5, security and architecture within about 4 hours. Since this is a nice Blogdialian topic, I agreed. Fitting this writing into the last few hours of my already crowded work day was a shit, but here’s what I came up with. Not thrilling by Blogdial standards, just a concise resume of the position:

Much attention has been focussed on the architecture and security measures of Heathrow T5, but unfortunately not at the same time. Design and security at T5 are not only intimately linked, but invasive security measures (fingerprinting and photographing every passenger) are necessary precisely because of the architectural design.

BAA and the architects must have agreed on a non-segregated floorplan where passengers for domestic and international flights mix. Obviously, BAA (and HMG, who work closely with BAA on airport security) must have understood the security issues arising from this design. One may conclude that the design was intended to generate exactly this situation – a wonderful opportunity for testing biometric scanning procedures and public compliance on millions of people per year. Not only this, but that BAA, the architects and the government were complicit in the entire process!

Unbelievable? The alternative is that the architects design is flawed, but this went unnoticed by the architects, BAA and HMG until one day during the build itself! ‘Hang on! If we mix up internal and external… oh no! Now we’ll have to fingerprint everyone!’ Can one imagine Lord Rogers making such a big mistake in designing T5? I can’t.

I duly mailed this to Joshua Neicho (Old Etonian; Oxford University) asking to be kept informed of any use, and haven’t heard a peep from him since – something other bloggers have also reported. And blogged. I’m not sure what they teach students at Eton and Oxford, but I’m surprised simple manners isn’t included in the curriculum.

However, this post is to show ‘Why Print Journalism Is A Rotting Corpse’.

On 28th March, when T5 was in chaos on its opening day, here (and linked here) are the two letters chosen for the T5 design/security issue:

One, an analysis of design. The other, a tirade against invasive security. What is wrong with this picture? Forgoing my usual modesty (ahem!), may I just remind you of the first sentence of our unused letter.

Much attention has been focussed on the architecture and security measures of Heathrow T5, but unfortunately not at the same time.

The published viewpoints, editorially chosen by people like Joshua Neicho, are like having your face pressed up to a cinema screen by a long-dead shuffling zombie, swathed in the stench of nepotism, laziness, corruption and self-interest. Not to mention a lack of manners! And for putting up with that disgusting experience all you get to see is the tiny bit of the picture thats right in front of your face, distorted and given a disproportionate importance.

But you’re reading Blogdial.

Best seat in the house!

The Ideals of Liberty, Long May They Reign!

When we submit our ideas and inner thoughts to the judgment of others, we stake ourselves upon both the common passions and therefore the criticisms of those who consider our opinions, be they right or wrong.

Thus, in my opinion, the present disposition of this government toward the People, in matters of their ability to both determine and maintain their own lives within the confidence of Liberty, is that of complete and abject opposition. Under the disease of widespread complacency, We have surrendered our combative Right of Dissent and indeed the Right of Defense against any and all onslaughts of Our Freedom by the very institution designed and pledged to protect such Freedom.

We have, to Our own demise and degradation, provided allowance after allowance to those, whose primary purpose is to govern solely at Our Pleasure and by Our Consent, and they have taken full advantage of Our lack of the Spirit of Opposition to fundamentally change the manner in which they govern this confederation of State Republics. At one time in this country, those who would be called, by election, to represent and serve this People did so in a manner forced upon them by Our Consent and the Consideration of the stated Honor of Office. That Honor of Office has now been debased to the point that Corruption is commonplace and there are few that could exculpate either their intentions or deeds. Those who hold Office, which once held Honor Intact, now seek no enforcement of the Sentiments of the People, but devise legislation based upon their own consent and opinions, or worse, those of external corporate influences.

Many of our Politicians would have the People believe that their government is completely disposed and indeed determined to have all Grievances of the People redressed, and that they abide by the traditional Order of the Constitution to assure such Compliance to the Law of the Land, yet they continually subvert the very Document by which they Govern under such Despicable Pretenses. They prefer Our Silence to Our Consent and would, if it left to their own devises, leave no quarter to our Rights and no ear to Our Complaint. They exercise their Pretended right to both Power and Authority over the lives and livelihoods of the People; indeed they endeavor to scheme and create all manner of regulation, under the posed Power of Law, to inhibit the possibility of real and effective dissent to their rule.

They are well aware of the Sentiments of the People and yet still, with that knowledge, they have chosen to continually ignore those Sentiments and govern by the counsel of their own Consent and Will instead of Proper Legislative Discretion and the Good and Proper Will of the People. If we continue to acknowledge their right and power to make laws binding upon us and its assumed sovereignty over us to determine Our fate and the direction of Our Nation, then we will suffer the fate of others who have been bent into the mold of compliancy.

What manner of People have we become to allow such cavitations of reckless power and authority to rule over us? What have We become that we now assume to only hold the place of servant to the will of the State with the designs of Arbitrary Power?

Once again, We find ourselves in the Struggle for American Liberty and I, for one, am glad that Dr. Paul is leading the fight. Though it may be long and arduous, in the end we must prevail over the forces that seek to subjugate this nation.

Chester M. Mcateer

[…]

An Amazon comment attached to the forthcoming Ron Paul Manifesto

For the record, only the foolish and ignorant accept as binding the laws of these monstrous despots and no decent person assumes that they have sovereignty over us.

But you know this!

I’m stuck in bed with a vomiting bug…. yes, you’re glad you’re not here. Surfing… searched the Blarchive (for what, I no longer remember) with keyword ‘simple’. Got this result about the life of a research scientist… In the end, I got a grant for £250K, but, 4 years later, this post only needs a few simple substitutions:

My contract is up in [March]. And I am sick and tired of the method of employment for researchers. I’m [older now], a good record, [9] years of post-doctoral experience, and there is almost zero chance of getting a permanent job in basic research. It shouldn’t be this way. I am expected to write grants to provide another 2 or 3 years of funding, after which I am expected to write grants to provide another 2 or 3 years of funding, after which… There is no observed value of basic research by the public, and the government know we have no choice but to put up with the system as it stands simply because they will not provide backing for permanent jobs. In fact, they are being cut.

It depresses me, truly it does, and not just on a personal level. It is exploitation of the nature of scientists (those who I work with, at any rate); we want to do science, we want to do good science very very much, it is in our hearts. And it is this ‘weakness’ that means we can be exploited.

So. I am fed up with it. I need some security, or at least a sense of worth, some feeling of support by those that hold the readies. And these things are lacking – note the substantial reliance of British science on charitable donations. This is not The Way It Should Be.

La plus ca change… n’est pas?

Anyway, I just read the entire Blarchive page and it cheered me up, took my mind off my stomach for a while, brought a glow to my sallow cheeks.

Merry Christmas, Blogdialians! (Once a blogdialian…)

The extra serendipity, the Blarchive page encompasses today’s date!

And finally… peace and love to all Blogdialians. Your wisdom is still working its magic.

Da BAWMB the Bass .. … … Diarrhoea and Vomiting Bug Powder Dust

On the cover of every newspaper in the UK is this news, which should come as no surprise to anyone:

Revenue & Customs loses personal details of 25m people
Deborah Summers and agencies
Tuesday November 20, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

The chancellor, Alistair Darling, today admitted the personal details of 25 million individuals had been lost by HM Revenue and Customs.

The information includes the names, dates-of-birth, national insurance numbers and in some cases the bank details of those claiming child benefits.

Paul Gray, the chairman of HM Revenue and Customs, today resigned over the “extremely serious failure” of security.

In a Commons statement greeted by gasps of astonishment from MPs, Darling told the Commons that two discs containing details of the 7.25 million families claiming child benefit, sent to the National Audit Office, failed to reach the addressee.

[…]

The Guardian

I hate to say it, but I TOLD YOU SO.

The personal details of TWENTY FIVE MILLION PEOPLE contained on TWO DVDRs is now missing.

Here are some obvious questions you would ask of a person who is not incompetent:

What the hell are you doing sending data by post? THAT IS WHAT TEH INTERNETS ARE FOR.
What the hell are you doing burning data onto DVDs?

Data sets the size of DVDs are downloaded MILLIONS OF TIMES A DAY. Are these people really THAT INSANE?

Now.

Is there anyone left ON THIS PLANET that thinks the government should take your fingerprints and photos and use them to administer a national ID card? Is there anyone left IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE that thinks ContactPoint is a good thing?

I should think not.

Even if they get those discs back, this is a vivid demonstration of how two very small objects can hold the details of the lives of MILLIONS of people. If this information was not held on computers, it would not be possible for the government to create and then misplace such discs, and that is the way it should be, since they are amongst the most incompetent organizations in this or any other universe.

A database of convicted criminals is another story, but these databases of ordinary people must be COMPLETELY OUTLAWED so that it is impossible for data breaches of this kind to take place. Just read the absolute STUPIDITY of these people:

The chancellor told MPs the information went missing after a junior official in the department failed to follow standard procedures and sent a “full copy of the data” to the NAO by courier – not by recorded or registered mail.

When it became clear the discs had not arrived, the same official sent the information again – this time by registered post.

What this article does not mention is wether or not the data on these two, sorry, FOUR DVDRs was encrypted or not.

Had the data been encrypted with GPG, it would not matter if the discs went missing, because it would be impossible to get anything off of them.

But then, using GPG is something COMPETENT people do, not the likes of Citizen Brown and his bumbling buffoons.

Amazingly, this incompetent government has just invoked RIPA against an animal rights activist, threatening her with gaol if she refuses to provide the password to the encrypted data on her hard drive.

You cant make shit like this up.

These people REALLY ARE BUFFOONS.

Think about it. Those discs are worth literally MILLIONS of pounds to a large number of people, criminals being far down on the list.

Finally, this is the insult above all insults:

Campaign group Action on Rights for Children (Arch) warned that children could have been put in danger. “It’s a simple and vital precaution which any self-respecting government agency should be practicing,” its director, Terri Dowty, said.

“This appalling security lapse has placed children in the UK in immediate danger especially those who are already vulnerable.

“Child benefit records contain every child’s address and date of birth. We are not surprised that the chair of HMRC’s board has resigned immediately.”

Arch accused the government of ignoring warnings over the dangers of creating “large centralised databases” of sensitive information about children.

ARCH are a group that is rightly skeptical about ContactPoint.

Now that everyone can see what a TOTAL NIGHTMARE these systems are hopefully this will add tremendous momentum to their absolute abolition.

If you go along willingly with any of this, ID Cards, NIR, ContactPoint, then you can count yourself amongst the stupidest people in the history of mankind.

Once again, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

UPDATE:

The Telegraph echoes BLOGDIAL:

The disks are now either languishing in the bottom of a postbag in the bowels of a London sorting office or are in the hands of organised criminals somewhere in Africa or Asia.

It is an astonishing, almost grotesque, failure that will come to symbolise the gradual collapse of Whitehall’s Rolls Royce reputation into the equivalent of an old heap ready for the scrap-yard.

The only benefit that might possibly come out of it is that surely, now, the Government cannot proceed with the ID card project.

Can it?

[…]

Telegraph

Momentum indeed!

Now we have this:

Schoolgirls to get ‘cancer jab’

HPV causes most cases of cervical cancer

Schoolgirls in Britain will be vaccinated against the virus that causes cervical cancer from September 2008, ministers have announced. This goes further than recommended by experts, with all aged 12-13 eligible, and a catch-up campaign up to 18.

It is thought that vaccinating against human papilloma virus (HPV) could save hundreds of lives in the UK each year.

The vaccine is given in three injections over six months at a cost of around £300 a course.

Note the syntax, that schoolgirls WILL BE VACCINATED. Not, ‘parents will be offered vaccination for their children’. And all that this difference implies.

Note also that ‘Boys will not be vaccinated under today’s announcement, after the JCVI said it was not cost-effective.’ Not cost-effective. There you go, the ultimate deciding factor is cost. Not health. Which is bizarre, as this will cost 100-200 million of your GB pounds per annum to save around 300-700 lives, depending on who is giving the figures. Cost-effective?

Note finally that the vaccine to be used has not been chosen. Imagine the lobbying going on! This is multi-multi-millions over many years… Do you trust our politicians not to be ‘influenced’ in any way, and to come to the best decision for spending your taxes? Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?

We would say this is a piece of Public Heath Theatre. Are you clapping along in the audience?

——

Below are excerpts from emails relating to the previous En Gardasil post. They are a lesson in trust. Trusting your source, or not, and remembering that ‘good’ lies are no better than ‘evil’ ones. An open, curious mind is a very sharp weapon.

……..

May I burn down that straw man?

Aspirin is safe; that is the difference between it and Guadakill. Aspirin was initially prepared from the bark of trees. It is a naturally occurring medicine, unlike Guardakill which is a man made poison.

There is *no straw man here*. Aspirin and STW are used, in my context, to denounce your point on alum, i.e. that just because you don’t understand how something works doesn’t mean it must be distrusted. One could apply this to all homeopathy, I just picked SJW at random. According to ‘the science’ SJW is no more effective than a placebo.
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/stjohnswort/#science
And that from the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

St Johns Wort is also a naturally occurring plant, and is therefore much safer and preferable as a medicine. It also has a long history of safe use.

Now, HERE is a straw man. I would guess there are many more deaths from digitalis than Gardasil will ever manage, despite also being a plant with a long history of safe use. Aspirin kills 500 people in the US per year, apparently. Just a stat, and probably through misuse, but its still a killer. One can twist anything… omigoditsachemical! …. its all about context.

Alum has been used for /just/ 60 years and has recently been ‘proven’ safe on paper, when anyone who has used it has known it is safe in vivo. And yes, I’ve used it and taken it.
http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=49797-alum-given-clean

Together we could say “Who do you trust?”. Or, “Why trust one drug and not the other?”, as someone clever once said. Now we both know the answers to /those/ questions.

Mankind is much better off living inside and with his environment. Guardakill is an unnatural medicine; the need for it is artificial, the lust behind its making is the lust for money, and while the medicine itself is not evil, the people who make it most certainly are.

I would agree with this. What I wouldn’t agree with is throwing petrol and matches on non-existant straw men. There should be enough real, substantive data and well-argued opinion (and there is) to let people come to their own conclusion… that only a fool would inject their child with ‘GovDrugX’.

Guardasil has killed people. That is a fact.

No it’s not! You can show people the reality, but you can’t make up ‘the truth’. Those FDA reports should put enough doubt in anyones mind about Gardasil, but there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”. If one starts sounding like the Daily Mail, credibility flies out of the window.

The rules of peer review do not extend into the coroners office, and those recorded deaths and the numbers of people damaged are *not* opinion. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is not going to falsely attribute death to a vaccine (I would imagine) which is where those numbers come from.

Wrong again! I read all the FDA/VAERS reports last night and not a
single one attributes death to Gardasil.

Not.
A.
Single.
One.

They merely report adverse effects in anything from minutes to weeks following Gardasil vaccination. Many of the patients had other injections at the same time. Many had so long between jab and death that mentioning Gardasil seems nothing more than thoroughness.

Now, you KNOW what I think of these ‘medicines’, and you know what I will do for my daughter. If drugs like Gardasil and chickenpox vaccineare to exposed for the fraudulent, greed-soaked tripe that they are then it must be done through strong, coherent argument and not by setting flame to reality.

—————————————–

just because you don’t understand how something works doesn’t mean it must be distrusted.

It shouldn’t be distrusted by itself, but when people are compelling you to take it, common sense says (at least to me) it has to be 100% understood before compulsion. There shouldn’t be any doubt over the mechanism or the elements, otherwise, it should be 100% voluntary.

Gardasil is so new and novel WITHOUT teh accelerant it should absolutely not be mandatory, or anywhere near mandatory. Also no one has pointed out that HPV is not like chickenpox or the flu – it spreads only in a very particular way, by sex. Vaccinations should be used where disease is spread non consensually, i.e. through sneezing – where the public health is at risk, and even that is a near bogus rationale.

But I digress.

One could apply this to all homeopathy, I just picked SJW at random.

Homeopathy is voluntary, as all medicines should be. If it works, then you keep using it. Gardasil doesn’t work to provide life long immunity, and so it is broken out of the vial. By the time a 12 year old reaches drinking age its efficacy will be gone. It is a total sheep dip vaccine.

According to ‘the science’ SJW is no more effective than a placebo.

I don’t believe these studies, in the same way that the anti-homeopathy brigade to not believe the century plus of of trials that homeopathic medicines have been through. These people have an agenda that has nothing to do with health, and everything to do with control of science.
But I digress again.

And that from the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

which is run by the US government, the same organization that mandates vaccines like Guardakil. YEAH, I’m really going to trust *them*.

Aspirin kills 500 people in the US per year, apparently.

and so, should we now ban aspirin or provide defenses against it that are mandated by law? The numbers are almost the same as those who die from Cervical Cancer…

Just a stat, and probably through misuse, but its still a killer. One can twist anything… omigoditsachemical! …. its all about context.

exactly, and Gardasil is the same as anything else; /until it is mandated/ this is the biggest problem with it. Anyone can produce any medicine they like. You are free to take it or not, after you have made a jugement in concert with your doctor. That is your and my right.
Gardasil and the politcs surrounding it break, sour and queer the relationship between patient and doctor. That is probably its most evil effect.

Together we could say “Who do you trust?”. Or, “Why trust one drug and not the other?”, as someone clever once said. Now we both know the answers to /those/ questions.

I trust the one that is old and not mandated. I do not trust the one that is new and mandated. That is my rule, and I apply it to all my medicines. I will not be a party to experimentation or the recouping of someone’s R&D.

If someone I trust explains that Alum is safe in a very particular context, then I will trust it, otherwise, I do not trust any medicine without looking into it myself and getting other opinions.

There should be enough real, substantive data and well-argued opinion (and there is) to let people come to their own conclusion… that only a fool would inject their child with ‘GovDrugX’.

This is about trust. We cannot trust the people who make Gardasil and anyone who promotes it because the whole programme is tainted from the off. People cannot come to that conclusion on their own because it is hard to be a dissenting voice in this matter if you do not have the credentials.

there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”.

So you are telling me that the report that attributes the deaths of
those girls to Gardasil is false, yes?

Wrong again! I read all the FDA/VAERS reports last night and not a single one attributes death to Gardasil.

then what you are saying is that Judicial Watch are libeling Merc. Both things cannot be true at the same time.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/6428.shtml says unambiguously that the deaths are related to Gardasil. Are you saying that they are lying?

http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2007/GardasilVAERSUpdatedDeaths0907.pdf

??? so the above is a forgery? Help me out here!

That is a VAERS report listing Gardasil as the cause of death!

they would NEVER list Gardasil as the cause of death if they were
not absolutely sure would they not?

What have I missed here?

I’m not sure what the reality is; VARERS says ‘death by Gardasil’ you
say no such reports even exist.

The ambiguity, the complexity, everything about it screams out to me that it must be totally shunned. An impenetrable reality is as bad as a lie, and in the face of that, taking the risk is just not an option.

Then add into the mix that Justice Watch had to sue for the information, the case is closed; these guys are evil and their medicine is no good!

————————————————————–

So you are telling me that the report that attributes the deaths of those girls to Gardasil is false, yes?

JudicialWatch’s conclusion that G-causes-D is OPINION based on a misinterpretation of official documents. The reports never link G and D. They are simple, clear reports which state known facts about each case.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/6428.shtml says unambiguously that the deaths are related to Gardasil. Are you saying that they are lying?

Not lying per se, but distorting beyond reasonable limits. As I said
previously, this does no good and leaves them looking like rabid haters without the ability to construct a strong enough argument from the available information, without resorting to screeching FEAR! EVIL! DEATH!

That is a VAERS report listing Gardasil as the cause of death!

NO!!! Read that pdf!
Lets see…
1st page: ‘Gardasil did not cause the patients death’

P.2 ‘Cause of death was sudden death’. Other factors involved. Does notblame Gardasil.

P.3 All just hearsay! A nurse who heard from a nurse… and anaphylaxis DOES NOT occur 3 days after exposure. It’s a bit quicker than that. Ask anyone with a peanut/bee sting allergy. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.4 Hearsay! Bloodclot 2 weeks after vacc. Could have been any cause! Does not blame Gardasil.

P.5 Death 2 weeks after vacc. No direct link at all. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.6 Another 2 week gap Does not blame Gardasil.

P.7 States ‘manner of death natural’!!!! Does not blame Gardasil.

P.8 History of heart problems, died of heart problem. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.9 Viral sepsis and secondary infection. Symptoms started BEFORE last vaccine. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.10 Hearsay, no cause of death reported. Does not blame Gardasil.

Are you now seeing the difference between the official VAERS reports and the conlusions/opinions in the JudWac piece?

then they would NEVER list Gardasil as the cause of death if they were not absolutely sure would they not?

See above; Gardasil is NEVER listed as cause of death by VAERS.

Why trust one source and not another?
Just because JudWac appear to agree with our stance on BigPharma does not mean they are virtuous truth-givers. They have their agenda, just as Merck does.
We at Blogdial should know better though, and decide for ourselves.

Now, who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? ((C) Groucho)

What have I missed here?

The blindingly obvious! That Mercks clinical trial, and JudWac’s take on the VAERS reports are all spin to support a position, and somewhere under it all, crushed and splintered, lies the reality.

I’m not sure what the reality is; VARERS says ‘death by Gardasil’ you say no such reports even exist.

VAERS NEVER EVER says death by Gardasil.

The ambiguity, the complexity, everything about it screams out to me that it must be totally shunned. An impenetrable reality is as bad as a lie, and in the face of that, taking the risk is just not an option.

But we can find the reality, when we remember to treat JudWac with the same basic scepticism that we treat Merck. I would like to believe JudWac, but they give me no reason to do so when I look at the reality behind what they are saying.

these guys are evil and their medicine is no good!

And JudWac are misguided, severely biased, narrow-minded, blinkered scaremongers whose stance does not stand up to the most preliminary of scrutinies. But we have found this out, and we can understand the reality. We can take each for what it is and still know that Merck is evil, and that JudWac is at least trying to stand on the right side.

When do you think that this cartoon was drawn?

Click here to find out.

Everyone has been warned again and again about all of this….

gah!

The Morgan Fascist Coup Plot and How FDR Defeated It

by L. Wolfe
Introduction

Some 12 years ago, this news service published a report on the 1930s fascist coup plot against the Franklin D. Roosevelt government, led by a Morgan-centered cabal of powerful financial interests; the coup would have replaced FDR with a puppet government whose policies would be controlled by a cabal of wealthy financial plutocrats. As the report made clear, the intention of the conspirators was to use the anarchy and chaos produced by the coup, to eliminate for all time the threat to their power represented by the U.S. Presidency and U.S. Constitution.

Today, we are faced with the same intention by the heirs of that cabal of fascist bankers, who now control most of the Executive branch of the U.S. government and who have, through their agents such as Felix Rohatyn, attempted to emasculate the Democratic opposition. They now seek to impose a fascist government that Democratic leader Lyndon LaRouche has warned would be “Schacht without Hitler”—a brutal austerity government without the overt “messy” characteristics of the Hitler regime.[1]

In the intervening dozen years, our research has more accurately located the Morgan coup plot as part of the broader push for a fascist world order, as promoted by the Nazi-supporting, Synarchist networks of this cabal. The destruction of the U.S. constitutional system was a critical feature of this push for fascism.

Their efforts came close to succeeding and might have, had it not been for the courage of America’s then-most decorated officer, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, and the extraordinary political leadership of FDR himself. While Butler exposed the plot, FDR and his allies waged war against the power of the private investment banks that sponsored fascism at home and abroad, seeking to curb their power, and placing the sovereign power of the U.S. government and Constitution over them. In asserting that all economic policy must serve the constitutionally mandated principle of the General Welfare, FDR put the nation on a pathway out of the chaos and pessimism that served as the breeding grounds for fascist coup plotters. while laying the economic and moral foundation for the direct military battle with the bankers’ fascist golem in Europe in World War II.

The story of this plot was front-page news in even such establishment papers as the New York Times, as it occurred. However, since the death of Roosevelt in 1945, the Synarchists were successful in all but wiping it from the pages of history and common memory. Following the publication of our report, and especially in the recent three years, as the world plunges towards economic collapse and financial chaos worse than the Great Depression, and with it, a new bankers’ drive for fascist dictatorship, there has been a renewed interest in at least some aspects of the plot. PBS, for example, produced a documentary on it, and there are at least two new books in the offing.[2]

We present here an edited and updated version of our 1994 report as an urgent matter of interest to those who must once again rise to fight the renewed fascist threat, so that they might know their true enemies and what they are capable of […]

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3332morgan_coup_plot.html

BBQ says it’s true, so it may be.

Infowars report it, so for sure its true.

and as for ‘what they are capable of’ we all know that the mythical ‘911’ is what they are capable of and what they actually did.

And finally…

I always knew it! :

What’s that you say, you don’t know who the ‘man’ on the left is?

Shame on you!

Mr. Nimmho as an article about the Climate Change Hoax that has everyone without ‘O’ Level physics whipped into a frenzy.

Emissions need to be cut to zero, if only to save us and every other mammal from having to inhale them, and to stop everyone being enslaved to the gas pumps and their owners. That alone is a reason to do something right now, but what is emerging from this Climate Change environmentalism hysteria is a framework within which everything is rationed and I mean EVERYTHING. People will accept it as necessary because they will have swallowed the lie about Climate Change, and will be hysterical with fear, just as they were made to be afraid of OBL. The OBL hoax is now over, and now they have an even better bogey man; one that cannot be so easily put out of mind.

Think about it. If everyone is convinced that every act of consumption has to be rationed, we will all have to be issued with ration books, or their modern equivalent, ID cards linked to centralized databases, where everything you consume is recorded so that you do not exceed your ‘carbon footprint’, ‘plastic footprint’ etc etc.

They are going to substitute the cause of ‘security’ for the environment as the reason why you should give up all of your rights. Street cameras will be there to monitor criminal flytippers of garbage and not terrorists.

David Milibland has brazenly let the cat out of the bag on this one, laying out the plans well in advance, presumably so that they can claim that they have been ‘open’ about this all along.

This brings me to the reason why I am posting this. If you are old enough, you will remember ‘The Energy Crisis’ of the 1970s when hysteria was whipped up about oil. It seems that we are in the middle of a dusting off and replaying of this ‘Energy Crisis’ scenario, revamped for a new generation; one that is not old enough to remember the first, and one which is significantly intellectually and morally inferior to the one that fought off the first attempt.

Read about it yourself.

A good piece is here. Infowars has an old article about this that perhaps even they have forgotten about.

The fact of the matter is this.

Wether or not Climate Change is happening, the answer is not to control people, but to control the very small number of huge businesses that cause all the pollution. For example, the outlawing of the combustion engine as it is now, will begin the process of getting the fumes out of our air, but of course, that means radically altering one of the worlds biggest and most powerful businesses and lobbying groups, and they won’t stand for it.

You never (until very recently) hear calls for the banning of energy sapping technologies, and it is only now, way late in the game that the incandescent light bulb has been put on the chopping block; that extremely beautiful but wasteful thing that every schoolboy knows is a farcically wasteful technology.

Billions are being spent on war, when that money should be spent on refurbishing and replacing the electricity distribution system so that it is more efficient. I could go on, but really its just too obvious. This is really about a pretext for exerting control on the individual down to the level of garbage. Of course, no one says that the companies that package food like this should be forbidden from doing so, thus in a single motion reducing the amount of garbage out there. And how about the utterly loathsome plastic ‘carrier bags’ that plague Britain? Those symbols of poverty should be outlawed immediately. Americans have used paper shopping bags for generations recyclable, don’t suffocate anyone…I mean, really its so obvious.

Like many people, I am not buying into any of this bullshit. I already hate cars and the oil business and all the people associated with it. I hate the fumes, the noise and the brutish culture that surrounds cars, especially in the UK.

I don’t trust any of the people who are delivering this message. They are far too keen to control the population and not the polluters. Their motives are suspect. These are the same narrow minded, imagination-less dorks who claimed that meteors do not come from space, and that man would never land on the moon. And those are the ‘scientists’. I wont even go there on the thick as shit pop-stars and celebrities that are riding along on this roller-coaster of lies. I wonder how many of these morons would go for forced sterilization to protect the environment from overpopulation?

Mr Nimmo ends his post thusly:

No doubt most of us here in America will “take climate change seriously” after we are crowded into Malthusian “sustainable” ghettoes resembling something out the dystopian science fiction film Soylent Green.

Have you seen ‘Soylent Green’? You really should look at it. If you have ever been to an overpopulated city in a ‘Third World’ country, you will recognize some of the scenes. It’s not pretty.

What was so great about America was that it produced work like Soylent Green, but also inspired everyone with dreams of escaping earth entirely. It was seen as absolutely inevitable that we would colonize space; we all expected it, and were ready to line up for it.

All these dreams, all the imagination is missing from the words of the people screaming about Climate Change. And that, to me is the saddest thing of all.

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.
        — Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1785. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
         — Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1796. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;
        —Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. Memorial Edition 16:45, Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
         —Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.

The thoughtful reader may wonder, why wasn’t Jefferson’s proposal of “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms” adopted by the Virginia legislature? Click here to learn why.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

         —Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.
         —Alexander Hamilton

Quotes from the Founders During the Ratification Period of the Constitution

[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

         —James Madison,The Federalist Papers, No. 46.

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.
         —John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)

John Adams recognizes the fundamental right of citizens, as individuals, to defend themselves with arms, however he states militias must be controlled by government and the rule of law. To have otherwise is to invite anarchy.

The material and commentary that follows is excerpted from Halbrook, Stephen P. “The Right of the People or the Power of the State Bearing Arms, Arming Militias, and the Second Amendment”. Originally published as 26 Val. U. L.Rev. 131-207, 1991.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.

         —Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).

Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.
         —Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

During the Massachusetts ratifying convention William Symmes warned that the new government at some point “shall be too firmly fixed in the saddle to be overthrown by anything but a general insurrection.” Yet fears of standing armies were groundless, affirmed Theodore Sedwick, who queried, “if raised, whether they could subdue a nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?”

[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it.

         —Richard Henry Lee, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

The Virginia ratifying convention met from June 2 through June 26, 1788. Edmund Pendleton, opponent of a bill of rights, weakly argued that abuse of power could be remedied by recalling the delegated powers in a convention. Patrick Henry shot back that the power to resist oppression rests upon the right to possess arms:

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.

Henry sneered,

O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone…Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation…inflicted by those who had no power at all?

More quotes from the Virginia convention:

[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually…I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor…

         —George Mason

Zacharia Johnson argued that the new Constitution could never result in religious persecution or other oppression because:

[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.

The Virginia delegation’s recommended bill of rights included the following:

That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

The following quote is from Halbrook, Stephen P., That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals…[I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

         —Albert Gallatin to Alexander Addison, Oct 7, 1789, MS. in N.Y. Hist. Soc.-A.G. Papers, 2.

Gallatin’s use of the words “some rights,” doesn’t mean some of the rights in the Bill of Rights, rather there are many rights not enumerated by the Bill of Rights, those rights that are listed are being established as unalienable.

Roger Sherman, during House consideration of a militia bill (1790):

[C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.
         14 Debates in the House of Representatives, ed. Linda Grand De Pauw. (Balt., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972), 92-3.

For post-ratification quotes, see GunCite’s: Quotes from constitutional commentators.

Irdial’s foolproof secure passport system has been mentioned on numerous occasions, although only in relation to border control. Last night an application came to mind which would be an easy way of demonstrating the principles of the system in a real world, small-scale situation.

The application involves the issuing of a secure card that authorises the user to access a service. The card can then be checked by a different individual to access the service. This is analogous to IPS issuing a secure passport and passing through border control.

The application is a secure and anonymous mailbox/deposit box company.

Issuing

The client registers in one office and has a digital photgraph taken, they also have the option to include a passphrase and PIN. Becaus ethis is a commercial application the company assigns client ID and box number and key. All this information is encrypted and put on the card.
No information needs to be printed onto the plastic card so its function remains unknown to a third party (although for a passport various bits of information could be displayed), the information on the chip cann only be decrypted by the issuer who only needs to database the client ID and box number (for billing purposes).

The client is unknown to the company except for the client ID, a third party can use the card to pay bills (a remote card reader and secure website could be used to send bill payment and the the encrypted ID to the mailbox company) but not access the mailbox (as the photograph they cannot access would not fit), furthermore the client can pay in cash and thus remain anonymous whilst continuing to access the service.

Validation

The mailbox room has a security guard to control access, the client presents their card to the guard who can then use a terminal to display the photograph and any additional measures the client wanted to be included. The client ID can be read and sent to the accounts database so access can be denied if they have not payed their bills.

If the validation is successful the client can use the encrypted key on their card to access the mailbox and retreive their mail.

Er.. that’s it.

This would be a good demonstration because:
It is directly analogous to how passports should be issued and validated.
It allows cash payment and so can provide a client base whose identity could not be otherwise compromised.
It is scalable.
It is open to competition without compromising security (analogous to different countries being able to use the system).
It provides a useful service in itself.