I watched a program about this car

It is pure beauty, sorry if any of you guys have heard about alreay….

Gentle reader, did you know that in April President Bush went to Stanford University to speak to the Hoover Institution fellows at the invitation of former Secretary of State George Shultz but was not allowed on campus? The Stanford students got wind of it and blocked Bush’s access to the campus. The Hoover fellows had to go to Shultz’s home to hear Bush’s pitch for war and more war.

A person might think that it would be national news that Stanford University students would not allow the President of the US on campus. It happened to be a day that hundreds of prospective freshmen were on campus with their parents, many of whom joined the demonstration against Bush. I did not hear or read a word about it.

Did you? I learned of it from faculty friends in June when I attended Stanford’s graduation to witness a relative receive her degree. The June 16 edition of The Stanford Daily reprints its April 24 report of the episode. […]

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07082006.html

This is what I call news…news that is not reported.

Incredible. SHAME on all the us ‘journalists’.

A woman who refused to pay her council tax in protest at the condition of her neighbourhood has been jailed. Josephine Rooney, 69, who lives in Hartington Street, Derby, has the £800 to pay, but said the city council has failed to clean up her area.

The council has denied Miss Rooney’s claims, saying measures were already in place to improve her district.

Rooney, who described herself as a “conscientious objector”, was jailed for three months by Derby magistrates. […]

A 69-year-old Derby woman facing jail after refusing to pay her council tax has won a national award for looking after her community.

Josephine Rooney owes Derby City Council nearly £800 and refuses to pay because, in her view, the council has failed in its duty of care to her.

Miss Rooney has now won a Taking a Stand award from the Government’s Respect campaign. […]

“I planned this nearly two years ago when I read about that pensioner down in the West Country, and I wanted to find a way of committing civil disobedience – in the way conscientious objectors do so in South American dictatorships and other parts of the world.

“So, that’s what I really am, a conscientious objector,” she said.

[…]

What a beautiful person. And now she is suffering at the hands of those employed to SERVE her, because THEY have failed in their duties.

If only everyone else on her street had stood with her…

Know what I mean?

Public libraries are on the verge of extinction warn campaigners. How can they be protected for the future?

Be honest – when did you last use your local library? Do you even know where it is?

[…]

We use our library at least weekly. There is no excuse not to, since:

We can rent CDs and DVDs from the library much cheaper than other places.

They may have a poor stock, but one can order ANY BOOK YOU LIKE and it will be brought to your local library. It takes one minute to fill in a form. Same for CDs and DVDs.
We can check stock and renew items online.

They hold a wealth of local information, both historical and about upcoming events.

They give classes in many things for kids and adults. There are kids story-telling sessions too.

They have computers with free internet access.

What more do you want!?!?!???

Knowledge is sustenance, and here is a font to sup at for free. Fill thy cups, my friends!

June 6^th, 2006: The people in the pictures below have my friend’s T-Mobile Sidekick. Instead of doing the honorable thing when finding someone’s phone in a taxi, they instead kept it.

I have found 8 cell phones in the last couple years in taxis. EVERY single one I have contacted the owner (by leaving a message on their voice mail or by answering their phone and telling their friends that I have the phone) and returned it promptly. When people have found my phone, they have also in turn returned it.

When my friend realized that she had left the Sidekick in the taxi she asked me to immediately send a message to the phone saying that we would give a reward for the phone. There was no response. After a day of waiting, she had to go to the store and spend over $300 on a new Sidekick. When she put her SIM card in, she saw that the person(s) that had taken the phone had not only signed on to AOL leaving their name and password in the phone, but they had taken pictures of themselves.

I immediately contacted the AOL name: Sashacristal8905 and requested that the Sidekick be returned. I was immediately told that my “white ass” didn’t deserve it back. That she was not a “white bitch” (my friend who is a blonde white girl had pics on the phone this person had obviously seen) stupid enough to return a phone she found. After lots of threats, she said she and her boy would wait for me at:

Sashacristal8905: i got ball this is my adress 108 20 37 av corona come n do it iam give u the sidekick so I can hit you wit it

So, anyways..this is my story. If you happen to know these people in the picture please let me know at: stolensidekick@gmail.com I am not going to go to the address posted above, because a.) Not going to waste my time going to a probable fake address b.) If it is real, there will be a physical altercation and I would probably wind up arrested which would do no good to anyone. I’d rather just embarrass the thief as much as possible. Teach them a lesson on the etiquette of returning peoples lost belongings. […]

http://www.evanwashere.com/StolenSidekick/

Take a look at the entire sequence of events. Its funny and frightening at the same time.

I am very interested in the attitude of these people, and how it is the polar opposite of the man who tracked them down. The girl’s brother is a military policeman, and threatened the owner to leave his sister alone.

Don’t these military policeman recieve any morality / legal training, or is the only training they get centered on how to use force against people? If this is the level of person they have in ANY part of the military….well… it explains alot.

Of course, many will now (if they do not already) conciously or subconciously profile these types of people as beneath contempt on sight. Whether that is right or wrong, it’s too late, since the people who have a grasp of morality in the usa are greatly outnumbered. Or so the National Alliance will say; they have using stories like this and worse for ages in incendiary broadcasts on shortwave to illustrate that people like this ‘Spinn’n Rim Beotch‘ who found this phone and sent the messages pictured above and her authority abusing MP brother are the central cause of the problems besetting america. Have a listen to their archive of broadcasts for a taste.

And that is the problem. No one can challenge the fact that its one thing to keep a mobile phone you have found with the intention of keeping it and then TURN IT ON (incredibly stupid) but it is another thing entirely to say IN WRITING to its owner that only ‘stupid white bitches’ return lost property. To have said, “No I won’t return it, finders keepers losers weepers” would have been bad enough, but to have that extra slant on the reason changes the character of the whole incedent.

These people are already under siege as the underclass of america this only makes it worse. It shows that, as the National Alliance will say, they have not absorbed the values of the usa and are not likely to. They will give the reason as ‘race’. Others will say that it is an absence of education. Either way, people who do not take on the values of the nation in which they live, and by ‘values’ I mean ‘returning lost property wherever possible’, ‘don’t drop litter in the streets’ are a real problem. Not just because you are less likely to have your phone returned to you if you lose it in a place where these people dominate, or be up to your ankles in trash when you walk down their streets, but because you will get dangerous friction of the type caused by telling someone that their sister or girlfriend is a ‘white bitch’ when they meet people who do not think like them.

This is yet another example of why even the most tolerant nations are fed up with people who are not only not on the same page, but are reading from another book entirely. A $350 telephone brought all of this on. Printing of books brings this on. Making movies.

Are you or are you not fatigued with with all of it?

And the above flows neatly int this extraordinary plan:

A new super highway serving all of North America is quietly being worked on by the Bush Administration.

What’s being called the NAFTA Super Highway, four football fields wide and stretching from Mexico to Canada along Interstate 35 is advancing by a number of agencies.

Once complete the new highway will move goods from the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas north to the Canadian border. This move will bypass the Longshoreman’s Union in the process without the need for the Teamsters Union, Mexican drivers will be able to access the most modern highway in North America driving right into the heartland of America.

The plan calls for Mexican trucks to enter a fast lane at the border crossing, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system.

Though reports have been hidden for the most part, construction of the new NAFTA Super Highway is scheduled to start next year with several agencies already in the know, including various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations).

The North America SuperCorridor Coalition , a non-profit organization is dedicated to developing the world’s first international multi-modal transportation system.

The highway would by-pass the Great Lakes area with the exception of Duluth Minnesotta , then proceed northward toward Winnipeg.

The plan will no doubt create problems for the Bush Adminstration from unions. The administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.

[…]

http://www.soonews.ca/viewarticle.php?id=7120

It is such a fantastic, surreal idea that the first impression is that it cannot possibly be true, but it seems like it actually is real:

North American SuperCorridor Coalition

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NASCO Logo

The North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc., is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.

1 Scope 2 Border Crossings 3 Affiliations 4 Funding 5 Critics 6 External Links

[edit]

Scope

NASCO encompasses Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94, and the significant east/west connectors to those highways in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Graphic showing the route of the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor

[edit]

Border Crossings

The project includes the largest border crossing in North America–(The Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Canada), the second largest border crossing of Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and extends to the Ports of Manzanillo, Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico, and Manitoba, Canada.

[edit]

Affiliations

NASCO now includes the former North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, a non profit organization in Mexico dedicated to economic development and improving trade relations through the heartland of America to Canada and Mexico. Both organizations intend to operate as one organization under the name NASCO, sharing both missions and objectives. Membership includes public and private sector entities along the corridor in all three participating countries.

[edit]

Funding

NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) for the development of a technology and tracking tools. NASCO hopes the deployment of a modern information system will reduce the cost, improve the efficiency, reduce trade-related congestion, and enhance security of cross-border and corridor information, trade, and traffic.

[edit]

Critics

Critics of supercorridors complain that existing transportation infrastructure is not being invested in and maintained. Other critics are concerned about the environmental damage which will occur by creating a supercorridor.

Further still, concerns regarding American job preservation (from the resulting influx of migrant truckers) threaten trucking, rail, and longshoremen unions. More American males are employed by semi-trucking companies in the United States, a statistic which will likely be changed by open border crossings.

[…]

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

Wow.

We need less movement of goods, more local production and consumption, fewer avenues of ingress. At first glimpse, this looks like total insanity. And it is suspicious but not at all surprising that it is being done without debate or discussion. They are trying to re-engineer three countries at once. No one is going to like the idea.
People have been discussing this for ages:

The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan American Union networked by a NAFTA Super Highway has long been a Globalist brainchild but its very real and prescient implementation on behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations has finally been reported on by mainstream news outlets

After nearly ten years of reporting by Alex Jones and the rest of the Patriot Movement, the establishment press is finally covering serious reports on the plan for a Pan-American Union, based on recent articles by Human Events columnist Jerome Corsi.

World Net Daily reports,

“The White House has established working groups, under the North American Free Trade Agreement office in the Department of Commerce, to implement the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005.”

The article even carries the admission that the Council on Foreign Relations, often the bane of sophomoric stereotypical caricatures of paranoid conspiracy theorists, played a fundamental role in crafting the policy for the homogenization of the US, Canada and Mexico. […]
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/june2006/210606cfrplan.htm

I wonder what the Canadians think about being joined at the hip with the USA and by extension Mexico. No doubt the Mexicans are entirely enthusiastic.

And of course, they will need a unified way of controlling the movement and money of everyone in this super state, and the son of REALID will be the key to it. Both Canada and Mexico will have to agree to be subsumed into this super state, and all of the rights and traditions of both will be wiped out in one fell swoop.

The scale the speed and the scope of what is happening today is almost beyond belief.

http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm

This is what the future of ‘the Surveillance Society’ will look like; broken cameras in the streets, overgrown by weeds because the contracting companies no longer exist to clean them up.

When people have had enough, there will be a ‘day to close the eyes’ where tens of thousands of people destroy surveillance cameras, when the London congestion charging system is physically destroyed by people who have simply ‘had enough’.

I can see this day as clearly as I see the keyboard in front of me.

Modern Love
In the salad days of spying, back when Ivy Leaguers working for the CIA would sneak messages into and out of East Germany in walnuts carried by unsuspecting globetrotting boy’s choirs, intelligence services used coded shortwave radio transmissions to send one way messages to their agents.

The transmissions consisted of repeated strings of numbers and the military alphabet code and were made famous years later when Wilco used a recording of a East German woman repeating Yankee Foxtrot Hotel in its breakout album (and got sued for it).

Now, it seems someone is keeping the mystery alive via the potent 21st Century combination of Craigslist and VoIP, according to Homeland Stupidity blogger Michael Hampton.

On or around May 8, the following personal ad appeared on the Internet classified ad site Craigslist. (It has since been removed.)

For mein fraulein

Mein Fraulein, I haven’t heard from you in a while. Won’t you
call me? 212 //// 796 //// 0735

If you actually called the number, up until a couple of days ago you would have heard this prerecorded message (MP3). It’s a head scratcher to keep you National Security Agency analysts occupied in your spare time. Each block of numbers is repeated twice; but below I have transcribed them only once for clarity.

Group 415
01305 60510 12079 04606 50100
93000 08203 90130 94069 01207
81080 17028 01706 90220 73038
01401 70150 15073 00402 00680
12013 12510 00540 04091 01401
30150 86022 09608 10660 02082
05507 00020 00000 02208 30290
08022 01200 40710 13065 02709
40190 29014 02200 80020 11083
07300 30260 19000 00700 00000
86

Link.

Hampton and the fine pholks over at 2600 Magazine did some digging and found that the number was a pre-paid VoIP account, but not much more than that could be divined.

Hampton suggests that the best way to figure out the answer is to attack the code.

I think he’s probably wrong.

My guess is that some young cryptanalysts are sending love notes and taunting Mossad, the NSA and the phone phreakers at the same time.

And if they are using unbreakable one-time pads, nobody, including the NSA with their fancy computers, can ever be privy to their sweet nothings.

My blessings (29564 20456 18435 05689 77329) to the happily anonymous couple. […]

http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog

!

“cryptanalysts … sending love notes and taunting Mossad, the NSA and the phone phreakers at the same time”

Romantics….

UPDATE:

‘Now there’s two of them!’

415-704-0402

Is the telephone number that has a recording of a musical intro, then some numbers read out by a machine, made up of very different voices.

These two messages have an interesting feature. They both have a ‘group’ count that has nothing to do with the number of groups delivered.

Now why would someone do that?

A: They know the form of Numbers Stations, but not the actual workings.
B: They know the form and the workings, and are misusing the word ‘group’ deliberately.
Someone has pointed out that all the groups in these messages can be found in large primes. Large primes are big enough so that you can find many five figure groups in them. This doesn’t prove, point to or say anything.

Some people are saying that this is for sure, a government operation of some kind. Any telephone call can have its two ends pinpointed. That means that anyone calling this number to recieve a message can be black bagged. Also because the messages are long, the person collecting it will be exposed for a signifigant amount of time while she transcribes it. Its risky. A far safer way to send a message like would be to use the radio.

No criminal would do this, because they understand how telephones work. ‘Terrorists’ don’t use crypto. So, what we have left is the most likely culprit; someone having fun.

But who could it be? It could be anyone, and now that they know that people are actively looking at the source of the ‘call me’ messages we will no doubt have some more of them. Or maybe not.

Who wants to bet?

Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.

Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor’s hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.

Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they’re in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they’re working with that organization.

Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members’ online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are supporting Tor’s development as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Which locations have employees working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting websites? Which research divisions are communicating with the company’s patent lawyers?

A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.

The variety of people who use Tor is actually part of what makes it so secure. Tor hides you among the other users on the network, so the more populous and diverse the user base for Tor is, the more your anonymity will be protected.

Why we need Tor

Using Tor protects you against a common form of Internet surveillance known as “traffic analysis.” Traffic analysis can be used to infer who is talking to whom over a public network. Knowing the source and destination of your Internet traffic allows others to track your behavior and interests. This can impact your checkbook if, for example, an e-commerce site uses price discrimination based on your country or institution of origin. It can even threaten your job and physical safety by revealing who and where you are. For example, if you’re travelling abroad and you connect to your employer’s computers to check or send mail, you can inadvertently reveal your national origin and professional affiliation to anyone observing the network, even if the connection is encrypted.

How does traffic analysis work? Internet data packets have two parts: a data payload and a header used for routing. The data payload is whatever is being sent, whether that’s an email message, a web page, or an audio file. Even if you encrypt the data payload of your communications, traffic analysis still reveals a great deal about what you’re doing and, possibly, what you’re saying. That’s because it focuses on the header, which discloses source, destination, size, timing, and so on.

A basic problem for the privacy minded is that the recipient of your communications can see that you sent it by looking at headers. So can authorized intermediaries like Internet service providers, and sometimes unauthorized intermediaries as well. A very simple form of traffic analysis might involve sitting somewhere between sender and recipient on the network, looking at headers.

But there are also more powerful kinds of traffic analysis. Some attackers spy on multiple parts of the Internet and use sophisticated statistical techniques to track the communications patterns of many different organizations and individuals. Encryption does not help against these attackers, since it only hides the content of Internet traffic, not the headers.

The solution: a distributed, anonymous network

Tor helps to reduce the risks of both simple and sophisticated traffic analysis by distributing your transactions over several places on the Internet, so no single point can link you to your destination. The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in order to throw off somebody who is tailing you—and then periodically erasing your footprints. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several servers that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it’s going. […]

Running Tor

• Installing Tor on Win32
• Installing Tor on Mac OS X
• Installing Tor on Linux/BSD/Unix
• Installing SwitchProxy for Tor
• Configuring a Tor server
• Configuring a Tor hidden service

http://tor.eff.org/

When you use Tor, your ISP cannot record where you have been surfing. That means that any legislation any government passes mandating the storage of your internet usage is rendered moot.

You need to download this and run it as a server when you are not using your bandwidth. A MUCH better use of your CPU/Pipe than searching for coals in Newcastle with SETI@home was.

Like I always say; complaining is good, but there comes a point when you have to stop complaining and take action. Someone has taken the time to create Tor, now all you need to do to assert your rights is to download the software and use it.

Your privacy is restored.

You did’nt even have to shoot a gun.

Blair attack ‘morally justified’

George Galloway met Fidel Castro in Cuba this week

MP George Galloway has said it would be “morally justified” to assassinate Tony Blair, but stressed he was not calling for his death. In an interview with GQ magazine he was asked whether a suicide bomb attack on Mr Blair would “be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq”.

He said it would be morally equivalent to Mr Blair “ordering” Iraqi deaths.

But Mr Galloway said he would not support an attack and would tell the authorities if he knew of any plot.

Alert the authorities?

In the interview, former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan asked: “Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber, if there were no other casualties, be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?”

The Respect MP replies: “Yes it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it, but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7.

“It would be entirely logical and explicable, and morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq as Blair did.”

He was also asked whether he would alert the authorities if he knew Mr Blair was to be assassinated by Iraqis.

Mr Galloway replied: “My goodness this is a moral maze.

“Yes I would, because such an operation would be counterproductive because it would just generate a new wave of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment whipped up by the press.

“It would lead to new draconian anti-terror laws, and would probably strengthen the resolve of the British and American services in Iraq rather than weaken it. So yes, I would inform the authorities.”

Respect says Mr Galloway is “sticking by” his comments.

In a statement, the MP said: “Like the prime minister’s wife commenting on suicide bombings in Israel I understand why such desperate acts take place and why those involved might believe such actions are morally justifiable.

“From the point of view of someone who has seen their country invaded and their family blown apart it’s possible, of course, for them to construct a moral justification.

“But I’ve made my position clear. I would not support anyone seeking to assassinate the prime minister.

“That’s why I said in the interview I would report to the authorities any such plot that I knew of.

“What I did make abundantly clear to Piers Morgan in the GQ interview is that I would like to see Tony Blair in front of a war crimes tribunal for sending this country to war illegally and for the appalling human consequences which resulted. That’s what I will continue to press for.”

‘Disgrace’

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell condemned the comments.

“If Mr Galloway is being accurately reported, he could well be regarded as providing encouragement to someone who might be disposed to carry out a crime of that kind,” said Sir Menzies.

“No politician, ever, by act, word, or deed either expressly or by implication, should give any support to the notion that violence might be justified.”

Labour MP Stephen Pound told The Sun newspaper the remarks were “disgraceful”.

He said: “These comments take my breath away. Galloway is disgraceful and truly twisted.

“Every time you think he can’t sink any lower he goes and stuns you again. It’s beyond reprehensible to say it would be justified for a suicide bomber to assassinate anyone.”

Mr Galloway has been in Cuba this week, where he made a surprise appearance on live television alongside Fidel Castro.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5020222.stm

Sir Menzies Campbell, Britians own Ralph Nader, making sure the votes of millions are wasted year after year, a man who cannot understand the english language:

“No politician, ever, by act, word, or deed either expressly or by implication, should give any support to the notion that violence might be justified.”

??? Utter, unrefined bullshit; and Bliar has done none of this how exactly? If the answer is that he has, then Menzies agrees with internationally renowned hero G. Galloway that Bliar should be hauled up to the court at Den Hague on a charge of mass murder, crimes against humanity and illegal warfare all of which he unjustifiably ordered. “I was just following Bush” will not be taken by the court as a viable excuse.
Honestly, if this is the quality of thinking that comes out of the Lib Dems, they should give up right now and stop wasting everyone’s time.

31 December 2005

I wrote the following document in 2004 when it became clear to me that AT&T, at the behest of the National Security Agency, had illegally installed secret computer gear designed to spy on internet traffic. At the time I thought this was an outgrowth of the notorious Total Information Awareness program, which was attacked by defenders of civil liberties. But now it’s been revealed by The New York Times that the spying program is vastly bigger and was directly authorized by President Bush, as he himself has now admitted, in flagrant violation of specific statutes and constitutional protections for civil liberties. I am presenting this information to facilitate the dismantling of this dangerous Orwellian project. […]

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70947-0.html?tw=wn_technology_1

Note how this corageous man understands that these ‘Orwellian projects’ can be dismantled.

This is the most important understanding and fundamental point that anyone today can grasp; none of this nonsense that they are trying to roll out is permanent. Any and all of it can be removed and destroyed.

http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/att_klein_wired.pdf

http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php?user_file_id=164248

http://tinyurl.com/q5dk6

http://www.cafepress.com/dvla

T-SHIRT! T-SHIRT! T-SHIRT!

T-tags: europe blair idcards bush iraq immigration breaking-news Current Affairs

Google is not evil. It knows that the NSA and every other arm of uncle sham is gunning for its user data. Part of Google’s soultion to this problem is to remove its ability to read Gmail that is sitting on its servers. GPGmail will provide this solution.

GPGmail is Public Key Crypto that executes in your browser. Your keypairs are stored on your machine. All Gmail users will have effortless military grade Public Key encryption, the public key exchange being handled seamlessly by Gmail.

This means that anyone using Gmail to send or recieve email from another Gmail user will have their email encryped by default. Google will no longer be able to deliver plaintext email to whoever demands it, warrant or no warrant.

Revenue from contextual ads will continue; the users session still displays plaintext email. the new Gmail uses special anonymous routers to provide the ads while not revealing the identity of the user or his complete plaintext. Your email is broken up into pieces and each of these pieces is sent to a different ad server over SSL to retrieve the contextual ad.

In one stroke, the NSA is denied access to billions of emails and millions of users.

Google does good once again!

Okay as i mentioned earlier it is perfectly feasible to keep personal taxation at the local level, this would allow a more locally accountable spending of tax revenue etc, etc.
Now what if we increased that decentralisation further and said that individuals could offset direct contributions to local services against their tax. To keep things simple we don’t do this for basic rate tax payers. But for other tax bands you could allow a third-to-a-half of the tax burden to directly fund local services. To prevent fraudulent charities springing up this would be from a list audited (but not prescribed) by local government.

Why bother? Because such an approach could engender a philanthropic mindset amongst the majority of the population, people would be able to determine how their taxes are spent i.e. tax spending becomes more democratic. Service providers will become directly accountable to tax payers who will can legitimately demand to see how their tax money is used – if it is spent well the services are likely to get similar contributions the next year if not the money will likely go elsewhere.
Once you get people into a philanthropic mindset when they have small amounts of money to allocate to services and if this is seen as an opportunity not a burden then I believe they will be more likely to pursue such philanthropy (bolstering services that they may have previously allocated money to) if they become more affluent.

And why would common philanthropy be advantageous – because dispersed spending increases the likelihood of money being spent productively on services, rather than on schemes which bolster the State and its networks of favoured contractors and consultancies.

Look at this page showing UK government expenditure and Tax Revenue;
You will see that expenditure that is necessarily financed centrally amounts to only about a fifth of the total. Even if you are an 0ld 5k00l p1nk0-c0mm13 and include all of Health and Education that’s still only about half of expenditure that needs to be centrally funded.

If you scroll down to how where this money comes from you will see that only about half of the revenue comes from direct personal taxation.

Now if central government were to rightly devolve to local government the responsibilities for raising and spending tax income for the 50% plus that does not require central funding(with a small amount of redistribution to account for poorer areas) ALL personal taxation could be gathered and spent locally, and if you can bear to devolve education and health then you could include a large dollop of ‘Other’.

Basically I am showing you that there is no absolute reason (or absolutely no reason) for central government to directly tax individuals even if you keep current Government spending levels.

Now isn’t that peachy?

Someone clever once said “That’s the way to do it!”

US counts cost of day without immigrants

· Protests force firms to close and hit industry
· More than 1 million take to streets over new bill

A sea of white-shirted protesters 300,000 strong, chanting “Si, se puede” (“Yes, it can be done”) surged through Los Angeles.
US immigrants stage boycott day 

Mass rallies were staged across the US as immigrants boycotted work or school and avoided spending money as a way of showing their worth to the economy.

Despite Monday being a normal working day in the US, many businesses were forced to close as workers in industries including agriculture, construction and leisure withheld their labour.

Goya Foods halted distribution for the day, while Tyson Foods, the world’s largest meat producer, shut nine of its 15 plants.

[…]

Of course, if they really want to make a difference, they could always try a petition.

Our political system is based on the assumption that there are always checks and balances to prevent unbalanced legislation becoming law. […]

“What you don’t seem to understand is that we are good people!” […]

Guardian

Assumption is the mother of all fuckups.

What is clear is that the British need their own written bill of rights and written constitution, so that there are no assumptions, no unwritten rules and no ambiguities about what your rights are and what your elected servants are able to do. The gentleman’s agreement is broken because there are no gentlemen in parliament.
These much needed documents will provide a clear substrate against which all laws can be tested. Should the Constitutional test fail, a new law cannot come into force. Should a new law violate the Bill of Rights, the law is dead in the water.

The author of that piece fails to come to the conclusion that this is needed, and has failed to take the next step after that; the actual drafting of those documents that are so very badly needed.

It is clear that any such document should be crafted in a way that restricts government to street cleaning and maintenance. It should also make impossible any dilution or transfer of powers of the union. Those are just for starters.
Seeing as we are all focussed on the ID card debacle, lets begin with a first draft of the section asserting our rights with regards to our data:

Wheras in the age before flowing information we could live without explicitly naming certain rights that are inherent to life, the free people of this country are now compelled by the inexorable momentum of the digital age to assert with all moral authority, our rights for this new centrury and beyond.

Mankind is born with rights. These rights exist wether they are written down and understood or not. No person would argue that the rights of man before language were different to the rights of man at the time of Magna Carta, and so too, the rights of man in the information era, being incomprehensible to the men of earlier centuries, are no less existant in absentia of someone with the capability to grasp them.

It is with these thoughts in mind that we write down and categorically assert our rights, which are in addition to those rights already described by the great men of centuries past.

Man has the right to:

anonymity
privacy
travel without surveillance
travel without identification
be unidentified
transact without interference
transact by any currency or means
communicate in secret
associate without interference
study without interference

We assert also that:

The details of the life of a man are his real property.

The body of man is sacrosanct. No one shall be compelled to injest anything against his will, and all men have the right to injest what they will.

No man shall be the servant of a state without his explicit consent.

No man shall suffer any law or regulation that infringes these natural rights. Any law or regulation that infringes these rights is void on its face, and we claim and assert forever our moral justification, absolute right and power to reject and disobey any such law or regulation.

That is how you do it. You actually do it instead of talking about it. You gather millions of people who can be convinced that this is correct, and then you assert your rights.

Note also that each of these rights is asserted cleanly; in other words, we do not, as is seen in the German Constitution, assert a right in one sentence and then apply conditions that make the right null and void in the next sentence. Rights are not conditional. It is possible to construct a Bill of Rights and a Constitution that protects everyone’s rights without qualification, but which also prevents one person from causing harm to another. For instance, you have the right to travel. This is an absolute right. If someone blocks a road in a protest, they are able to be removed forcibly from the road because they are blocking people excersising their right to travel. In this way it is possible to maintain order with a set of laws without constructing this root document in a way that renders it stillborn in an attempt to cater for the requirements of law enforcement.

What we need to do now is to complete these documents using the above guidelines. We then need to take the next step, which is to prune the existing legislation of the UK, removing all offensive and illiberal laws. We do this by writing down a list of laws that are to be removed from the statutes at the next election on an emergency basis.

We will charge the conservatives with this task since that is the easiest route; should they balk or refuse, we will create our own party with this sole agenda. If we win the same number of votes that Bliar did to gain power, we will consider ourselvs the winners, and then assert our rights. Parliament would be nullified and our new government put in place by default; a government created by the electorate and obedient only to the electorate.

This means that there will be a time where there are two sets of laws and populations running concurrently in the UK. The one made up of free men obeying the clean set of laws where all bad legislation has been excised, and asserting their rights under the new Bill of Rights and Constitution, and the ‘losers’ who adhere to the Orwellian Police State – the ‘I have nothing to hide’ brigade who have personally pulled the chain that threatened to flush this great country down the toilet.

There may be some conflict.

After we win, and with the new checks and balances in place, it will be impossible for any subsequent government to create an elected dictatorship, as has been done in the UK. All new law will pass through the cleansing filters of the Constituion and the Bill of Rights, and will come out the other end innofensive and effective.

People are slowly coming to the same conclusion; a Bill of Rights and written Constitution are essential if we are to permanently secure our freedom whilst maintaining the present system of democracy, in a repaired form.

Other groups have banded together to write down a set of principles by which they hope to assert themselvs. These documents fail because they do not address the root causes of the problem, offer no permanent solution to it and are often verbose and off target.

What I have written today is crystal clear. It addresses the root problem, and provides a clear and permanent solution to it. Anything less is a total waste of our time.

And we have little of it.

If we do not address and permanently fix these problems right now, the next generation of Britons will grow up not being able to imagine (for example) a UK without ID cards. They will be like the corn-fed Spanish, who whenever they are confronted about that issue, say to a man, “but I have had one since I was born and I don’t feel that it is a bad thing”. It will then be nigh on impossible to return to a true Britain of free people, because no one will know what the phrase ‘free people’ means. They will all be inured to slavery, to being routinely surveilled and made to present ID for every concievable reason.

It will not be like it was in the days of the Soviet Union, where that long suffering population desired freedom because they saw that there were countries where, for example, there was no internal passport. Where you could write whatever you wanted without fear of arrest. Where you could walk with your own cash money in your own pocket without fear of having it confiscated simply for the ‘crime ‘of posessing it. Everywhere in the world will operate on this Autoritarian / ID / Surveillance basis; there will be no example of a free country where everything works without Orwellian control to point to.

All will have been lost.

And to all those nincompoops who say things like ‘go read Magna Carta’, any document that cannot prevent the emergence of a police state is worthless. It is actually less than worthless and dangerous if by its existance it stops people understanding that they have no protection against madmen in office. Still others say, “look at America – they have a constitution and look what is happening there”. So, just because one country is dismantling their democracy, Britain should not take measures to strengthen its own? These sorts of arguments are not even worthy of debate; trying to counter them is like arguing about what sort of nozzle should be placed on a fire hose as your house burns down. This is a crisis situation, which must be treated with a crisis mentality before there is nothing left but ashes and fond memories.

People are starting to stand up and be heard.

From my (other) favourite blog 2lmc spool.

One of Britain’s leading symphony orchestras has been forced to scrap an American tour, partly because of the “mind-blowing palaver” and cost of securing visas for 100 players and staff.

the cost of arranging the visas, estimated at £45,000, would render the trip uneconomic

For those in the US whose response is “fine, we don’t want any of those pansy orchestras around”, there’s also this:

Other agents said rock musicians, also fed up with the process and expense, were refusing to visit the US to work. Katie Ray, of Traffic Control Group Ltd, which secures visas and work permits mainly for rock bands, said some artists were now choosing not to tour in the US.

Of course, the usual rubbish emerges at the end of the article.

John Caulfield, the US embassy’s consul general in the UK, [said] “We are all paying a cost because of terrorism.”

Indeed, I remember all the terrorist outrages caused by rock bands and orchestras in the US. Oh, no, wait, no I don’t.