The Blogdial stance on the ‘independence’ of the BBC is well documented.

Two things crossed my path in the last few days regarding the BBC. Firstly, I read a ‘story’, actually a magazine piece, about Darwin and his attitude to slavery. The piece appeared to suggest that it was his anti-slavery stance which resulted in the theory of evolution clicking into place in Darwins thought processes.

This was on the front page of the BBC website, and in your face on the Science subsection. And all it is is a glorified puff-piece for a book, full of conjecture and nothing more.

We read that…

[…] new evidence suggests that Darwin’s unique approach to evolution – relating all races and species by “common descent” – could have been fostered by his anti-slavery beliefs.

And this new evidence? Nowhere to be found. Everything said in this piece I already knew from reading the excellent Darwin biography published by these same authors in 1992.

So why is the BBC plugging this cash-cow as part of their Darwin season? It is nothing but another example of licence fee money wasted. The BBC is riddled with these pieces; non-news, non-attributed, non-stories of no discernible benefit to licence fee payers.

There I am, glad once again that I do not pay the licence fee, and wondering why those who do pay allow the BBC to get away with such behaviour when this hits my inbox…

>>> -------- Original Message --------
>>> Subject:     Re: Fwd: Re: BBC Gaza appeal ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
>>> Date:        Tue, 23 Jan 2009 10:25:26 -0000 (GMT)
>>> To:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> To all British TV viewers,
>>>
>>> We have all seen the terrible devastation of lives in Gaza. Without
>>> thinking about the causes for the moment, we can all, as human
>>> beings, feel empathy for the children that are being maimed and
>>> killed there.
>>>
>>> The BBC who are financed by our money, have refused to show, quite
>>> absurdly and cold heartedly, a humanitarian request for aid to help
>>> alleviate the suffering.
>>>
>>> This is the last straw.
>>>
>>> The BBC works for us, on our behalf. It is completely wrong that all
>>> the people of the UK, the license payers, should have their views
>>> ignored and their money spent in ways that they do not consent to.
>>>
>>> In any other circumstance, if you were not given what you wanted when
>>> you handed over money for a service, you would be able to switch and
>>> pay for a different service or stop receiving the service altogether.
>>>
>>>
>>> Can you in good conscience support the BBC with your money, when they
>>> are so clearly under the influence of people to the extent that they
>>> would refuse an appeal for aid to help children in a crisis?
>>>
>>> There have been other crisis appeals and the BBC has transmitted
>>> appeals immediately and in full. It is clear that this is a blatant
>>> case of bias. The question now is, what are the other things that the
>>> BBC has not shown that should have been? It is clear that we can no
>>> longer trust them; if they can sit in their studios and watch
>>> children die and refuse to even read out an address to help dying
>>> children, they do not deserve our respect and certainly they do not
>>> deserve our money.
>>>
>>> I therefore am calling on all license payers to boycott the BBC
>>> license fee on a permanent basis. It is no longer acceptable that
>>> they should be able to use the force of law to take money from us
>>> when they are so fundamentally out of touch with us and the rest of
>>> humanity.
>>>
>>> If the BBC is going to carry on in any form, they must rely on fees
>>> from people who want to watch their entertainment, news and their
>>> opinions. Now that TV is digital, they can encrypt their signals like
>>> SKY does and ask people to pay for their programming. If people want
>>> what they have to offer, they will pay for it.
>>>
>>> The BBC will then have to respond directly to its audience or cease
>>> to exist because no one will pay for their programming. It will no
>>> longer be an option for them to say, essentially, that they do not
>>> care about what the audience wants or thinks, and that they are a law
>>> unto themselves with no accountability to anyone.
>>>
>>> If you are outraged at the BBC's refusal to show the appeal for Gaza,
>>> if you think that it is time for the BBC to grow up and join the real
>>> world, and that they should face the consequences of angering their
>>> audience, if you are tired of being forced to pay for an organization
>>> that doesn't care a whit for your opinion, and acts like you simply
>>> do not matter, please forward this to someone you know.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance.
>>>
>>> An Ex TV License payer.

CLANG!

A penny drops.

And somebody, somewhere, finally realizes that money talks. Somebody, somewhere realizes that non-compliance IS an option. Not only that, but non-compliance is the RIGHT option.

Somebody, somewhere has had enough, and I’m surprised it has taken so long. I’m disappointed that it has taken something like the Gaza Appeal Fracas to get them moving, but so what, they are moving.

Without the accompaniment of the sounds of heart strings being plucked, here is the distilled version:

To all British TV viewers,
The BBC who are financed by our money.
The BBC works for us, on our behalf. It is completely wrong that all
the people of the UK, the license payers, should have their views
ignored and their money spent in ways that they do not consent to.

In any other circumstance, if you were not given what you wanted when
you handed over money for a service, you would be able to switch and
pay for a different service or stop receiving the service altogether.

It is clear that we can no longer trust them; they do not deserve
 our respect and certainly they do not deserve our money.

I therefore am calling on all license payers to boycott the BBC
license fee on a permanent basis. It is no longer acceptable that
they should be able to use the force of law to take money from us.

If the BBC is going to carry on in any form, they must rely on fees
from people who want to watch their entertainment, news and their
opinions. Now that TV is digital, they can encrypt their signals like
SKY does and ask people to pay for their programming. If people want
what they have to offer, they will pay for it.

The BBC will then have to respond directly to its audience or cease
to exist because no one will pay for their programming. It will no
longer be an option for them to say, essentially, that they do not
care about what the audience wants or thinks, and that they are a law
unto themselves with no accountability to anyone.

If you think that it is time for the BBC to grow up and join the real
world, and if you are tired of being forced to pay for an organization
that doesn't care a whit for your opinion, and acts like you simply
do not matter, please forward this to someone you know

Without going on too much longer, lets reinforce the message with a little substitution…

>>> HMG will then have to respond directly to its employers or cease to exist because no one will pay for their idiocy. It will no longer be an option for them to say, essentially, that they do not care about what the public wants or thinks, and that they are a law unto themselves with no accountability to anyone.
>>>
>>> If you are outraged at HMGs behaviour regarding [war x, y or z; ID cards, NIR, corruption, nepotism], if you think that it is time for HMG to grow up and join the real world, and that they should face the consequences of angering their EMPLOYERS, if you are tired of being forced to pay for an organization that doesn’t care a whit for your opinion, and acts like you simply do not matter, please forward this to someone you know.

Get the message. And get the message out.

And What Have You Done With My Body, God?
4 cd digi box set including 56 tracks, 41 previously unreleased. Full “Into Battle…” EP “Close (To The Edit)” and “Moments In Love” cassette singles on CD for the first time. 36 page booklet containing track-by-track commentary by all five original members.

[…]

Tu-umb!

WTF did you read that?

FORTY ONE PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED TRACKS.

As you can imagine, it was ordered on teh spot. Yes, ‘teh’.

When this man:

took this man’s:

manifesto:

The slim volume of essays, presented here for the first time in English translation, is one of the significant documents of musical aesthetics of this century. If the book itself has remained the province of a mere handful of readers, its ideas, passed on through a variety of later musical and literary movements, became the inspiration for some of the most innovative artistic creations of modern times. Luigi Russolo anticipated-indeed, he may have precipitated-a whole range of musical and aesthetic notions that formed the basis of much of the avant-garde thought of the past several decades. His ideas were absorbed, modified, and eventually transmitted to later generations by a number of movements and individuals-among them the futurists, the Dadaists, and a number of composers and writers of the nineteen-twenties. The noise instruments he invented fascinated and infuriated his contemporaries, and he was among the earliest musicians to put the often-discussed microtone to regular practical use in Western music. Russolo’s views looked forward to the time when composers would exercise an absolute choice and control of the sounds that their music employed. He was the precursor of electronic music before electronics had come of age.

[…]

http://www.pendragonpress.com/books/bookdetail.php?PPNo=345B

used this to make it real:

used her:

to make it ‘musical’ very very beautiful…

and never forgetting J.J. Jeczalik, Gary Langan and the priceless Horn….

you received something that ‘raised the bar’ and which today makes almost everything look and sound like shit.

Once again ladies and gentlemen few, was how it was done.

That is what it looks like… and sounds like… when you put people who can THINK together and let them get on with it.

That, my friends, is why I RAIL constantly about the desert of the real, about the dearth of anything real, anything that contains even the faint echo of a single real person’s thought.

A famous bass player said, after being heckled ‘over and over’ to play a song about entomology, “all we need is one person with an original thought”.

That was in 1979.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fury-mounts-over-childs-death-1021670.html

It is completely unsurprising that some people will overreact when confronted by a story in which harm has been done to “kiddies”.

What is surprising in this case is the means chosen to protest. This angry local chose to suggest that council tax payers of Haringey withold their taxes until their demand (sacking of an ‘incompetent’ official) is met.

Who knows for sure why, but one may imagine it felt right, one may say logical, to this person that this was a way to directly affect the council and make them take notice… Now if one irate ranter can find the right answer, why do so many ‘intellectuals’ still insist on marching and signing pieces of paper?!?

There were two marketing men and a clinical research director sitting in a pub… ‘Why did the chickenpox vaccine cross the road?’ ‘To get to the mass market on the other side!’

‘Thats not funny. There is no market for chickenpox vaccine.’ ‘Oh yes there is, they just don’t know it yet…’

……………….

Now, substitute chickenpox with ‘human papillomavirus’ (HPV) and you have this year’s new mass market. And the size of that market, as we’ve said before, is every child alive now and forever. And if Merck get their way, every older woman too.

Today, girls in Scotland have been brought into the HPV vaccination programme, having been told that they will be at less risk of cervical cancer.

Schools start cancer vaccinations

Every secondary schoolgirl in the UK is to be offered the injections

Scottish schoolgirls are to become the first in the UK to be vaccinated against cervical cancer.

Schools in the Lanarkshire, Tayside, Grampian and Western Isles NHS areas are to begin vaccinating 12 and 13-year-old girls from this week.

Pupils in other areas of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland will follow in the coming weeks.

All girls aged between 12 and 17 should have been offered the vaccine by August next year.

The immunisation programme is to get under way in Scotland before other parts of the UK because its school term has already started.

The Cervarix vaccine works by targeting HPV, the virus which causes cervical cancer. Its manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, said it should prevent 70% of cases – saving about 70 lives a year in Scotland.

HMG chose Cervarix over Gardasil, for as yet unspecified reasons and despite Gardasil being a better choice healthwise – always assuming you want the vaccine in the first place!

The vaccine is given in three separate doses and – at about £240 for a course – is the most expensive vaccine to be routinely offered by the NHS.

£240 for every girl now and forever direct from taxpayers coffers to GSK shareholders.  “Wow! There’s the money river! Pa, bring the buckets!”

Dr McKenzie added: “They must understand that the vaccine is fantastic news for preventing cervical cancer, but it can only be combated by using cervical screening and the vaccine.

“So when they are called for screening aged 20 they really must come along whether they have had the vaccine or not.”

The number of girls aged between 20 and 25 who come forward for cervical smears is already declining.

Some fears have been expressed that the vaccination programme will cause even fewer to attend screening, while questions have also been asked about why so much money is being spent on saving the lives of less that 100 Scottish women a year.

Good fears, good questions, as yet not satisfactorily explained. There is the question about how long protection lasts, meaning boosters are inevitable at current estimates. And questions as to whether a drop in screening rates would completely abolish any success in prevention, given the small numbers of patients involved.

But really, this is all so much fluff covering the truth of modern pharmaceutical marketing techniques: by using available media, you (the gullible sheeple) can be made to fear absolutely anything. You will then buy any snake-oil BigPharma comes up with to protect you against The Fear.

This technique even has a name. ‘Astro-turfing‘.

Not only this, but BigPharma can then wine, dine and otherwise bribe your ‘elected’ officials into committing hundreds of millions of pounds worth of public funds towards the cost of Snake-Oil.

Not convinced? Try this excellent and pretty comprehensive, utterly compelling, ‘how it works’ piece from the New York Times:

One of the vaccines, Gardasil, from Merck, is made available to the poorest girls in the country, up to age 18, at a potential cost to the United States government of more than $1 billion; proposals to mandate the vaccine for girls in middle schools have been offered in 24 states, and one will take effect in Virginia this fall. Even the normally stingy British National Health Service will start giving the other vaccine — Cervarix, from GlaxoSmithKline — to all 12-year-old girls at school this September.

The lightning-fast transition from newly minted vaccine to must-have injection in the United States and Europe represents a triumph of what the manufacturers call education and their critics call marketing. The vaccines, which offer some protection against infection from sexually transmitted viruses, are far more expensive than earlier vaccines against other diseases — Gardasil’s list price is $360 for the three-dose series, and the total cost is typically $400 to nearly $1,000 with markup and office visits (and often only partially covered by health insurance).

Award-winning advertising has promoted the vaccines. Before the film “Sex and the City,” some moviegoers in the United States saw ads for Gardasil. On YouTube and in advertisements on popular shows like “Law and Order,” a multiethnic cast of young professionals urges girls to become “one less statistic” by getting vaccinated.

The vaccine makers have also brought attention to cervical cancer by providing money for activities by patients’ and women’s groups, doctors and medical experts, lobbyists and political organizations interested in the disease, sometimes in ways that skirt disclosure requirements or obscure the companies’ involvement.

…

In the United States, hundreds of doctors have been recruited and trained to give talks about Gardasil — $4,500 for a lecture — and some have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Politicians have been lobbied and invited to receptions urging them to legislate against a global killer. And former state officials have been recruited to lobby their former colleagues.

“There was incredible pressure from industry and politics,” said Dr. Jon Abramson, a professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest University who was chairman of the committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommended the vaccine for all girls once they reached 11 or 12.

“This big push is making people crazy — thinking they’re bad moms if they don’t get their kids vaccinated,” said Dr. Abby Lippman, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and policy director of the Canadian Women’s Health Network. Canada will spend $300 million on a cervical cancer vaccine program.

…And why the sudden alarm in developed countries about cervical cancer, some experts ask. A major killer in the developing world, particularly Africa, where the vaccines are too expensive for use, cervical cancer is classified as very rare in the West because it is almost always preventable through regular Pap smears, which detect precancerous cells early enough for effective treatment. Indeed, because the vaccines prevent only 70 percent of cervical cancers, Pap smear screening must continue anyway.

“Merck lobbied every opinion leader, women’s group, medical society, politicians, and went directly to the people — it created a sense of panic that says you have to have this vaccine now,” said Dr. Diane Harper, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Harper was a principal investigator on the clinical trials of both Gardasil and Cervarix, and she spent 2006-7 on sabbatical at the World Health Organization developing plans for cervical cancer vaccine programs around the world. […]

In television advertisements, a cast of hip people in their 20s — artists, writers and professionals — describe why they got the shots, in the language of liberation, such as, “I chose to get vaccinated because my dreams don’t include cervical cancer.” The advertisements direct viewers to gardasil.com, which includes patients’ stories, buddy icons and downloads for holding an event at sororities.

Girls of any age who have had one dose of the vaccine can ask for text-message “reminders” from Merck to get the next two shots. The offers come with another reminder: “I understand that the information I provide will be used by Merck or those working on behalf of Merck for market research purposes.”

For such efforts, Merck last May swept the 2008 Pharmaceutical Advertising and Marketing Excellence awards, and Gardasil was named Brand of the Year by Pharmaceutical Executive magazine.

The marketing helped make Gardasil one of Merck’s best sellers, with a projected sales of $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion outside Europe this year, and more from sales in Europe, where Merck sells the vaccine through a joint venture with Sanofi Aventis.

…

Gregory A. Poland, a vaccine expert at the Mayo Clinic, was a nonvoting member on the C.D.C. panel that recommended Gardasil in 2006 and has publicly defended the panel’s decision. Records show he received at least $27,420 in expenses and consulting fees from Merck from 1999 to 2007. Both the C.D.C. and Dr. Michael Camilleri, chairman of the Mayo Clinic Conflict of Interest Review Board, speaking on Dr. Poland’s behalf, said the payments complied with institutional requirements.

…

In the United States, 41 states have passed or begun considering legislation on cervical cancer, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and 24 have considered proposals to mandate the vaccine for girls, generally in middle school…

The only state to pass a bill requiring the vaccine for school entry is Virginia; it takes effect in October, after school begins, so will first apply in 2009.

Merck has a growing economic interest in Virginia. In December 2006, Merck announced it would invest $57 million to expand its Elkton, Va., plant to make Gardasil, helped by a $700,000 grant from a state economic development agency that is part of the executive branch. Two months later, Gov. Tim Kaine, who has been mentioned as a possible Democratic vice presidential candidate, signed legislation requiring Gardasil for schoolgirls. Four months after that, Merck pledged to invest $193 million more in the plant to make drugs and vaccines, helped by a state grant of $1.5 million.

…

In Texas, Merck hired Gov. Rick Perry’s former chief of staff as a lobbyist, and contributed $6,000 to the governor and $38,000 to other legislators. Last February, Mr. Perry ordered that all schoolgirls be inoculated with Gardasil, a pronouncement that was overturned by the Texas Legislature, 181 to 3, a few months after the financial conflicts were revealed.

…

One rationale for inoculating boys is that entire populations should be vaccinated to achieve what is called herd immunity. But critics ask whether it is worth conducting a campaign on the scale of the one used against polio to eliminate a generally harmless virus.

Said Dr. Raffle, the British cervical cancer specialist: “Oh, dear. If we give it to boys, then all pretense of scientific worth and cost analysis goes out the window.”

My emphases. What a great article. Balanced, factual, well-written, undramatic. Take note, BBQ.

The anti-HPV push appears to have recruited BBQ, who try to attach a team of wild horses to your heartstrings to make sure you get the message. Embarassing and irrelevant to the real story.

So, like chickenpox vaccine before it, and who-knows-what after it, BigPharma take the population as one big cash cow and milk it, regardless of need or healthcare priorities, regardless of how better public money may be spent, regardless of fully examining any potential health hazards associated with their products.

Do you trust a vaccine created to fulfil a market created out of a need for profit?

The other night, I listened to the great Alex Jones, who complained rightly and bitterly that his websites are ‘on a government blacklist’, making them inaccessible on the free wireless network at St Pancras Station. thinkprogress.org is also blocked as are many others. These websites are not blocked in China, “public enemy number one” when it comes to web censorship so we are told.

I decided to see for myself what the precise details of this blocking are, and made a few google searches and phone calls.

My preliminary research shows us the following:

St Pancras Wi-Fi is run by a company called ‘CitySpace‘.

This is the press release announcing the contract from 2007.

and here are some of the people they work with:

Cityspace is proud to work with many clients and partners to deliver sustainable urban digital networks, including:

BAA
BBC
Bracknell Forest Borough Council
Bristol City Council
City of York Council
Clear Channel
Cornwall County Council
Department for Transport
Department for Work and Pensions
Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council
Ealing Council
Essex County Council
First Group
Gateshead Council
GNER
Hampshire County Council
Islington Council
Kent Fastrack
London Borough of Havering
London Borough of Sutton
London Borough of Tower Hamlets
London Borough of Waltham Forest
London Underground
Met Office
National Rail Enquiries
NEC
Newcastle City Council
Newham Council
Norfolk County Council
North Tyneside Council
Plymouth City Council
Portsmouth City Council
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Royal Borough of Kingston
Serco
South Tyneside Council
South Yorkshire PTE
Southend-on-sea Borough Council
Suffolk County Council
Sunderland City Council
Surrey County Council
Transport for London
Traveline
West Sussex County Council
Yahoo!

Lots of government contracts.

CITYSPACE Company Info:

Industry Consumer Services
Employees 100 – 250
Revenue $50 – 100M
Owership Privately Held

I telephoned CitySpace, and asked wether or not there is a blacklist on the St Pancras station Wi-Fi.

I spoke to a polite man who told me without any hesitation that the people who run St Pancras requested that the service be flittered, and that the list of sites to be blocked comes from a company that provides the blocking software, “it’s an off the shelf product” is how he described it.

He said that he would find out all the details for me and then let me know the who and what and where.

St Pancras Station is run by London & Continental Stations and Properties.

Here is the Wikipedia entry:

London & Continental Railways (LCR) is a railway company based in the United Kingdom.

History

Created at the time of the Privatisation of British Rail it bid for and won the contract from the UK government in 1996 to build and operate High Speed 1 between London and the Channel Tunnel. As part of this deal the European Passenger Services (EPS) and Union Railways sections of British Rail were handed over to LCR as well as key pieces of railway infrastructure including St Pancras railway station and Manchester International & North Pole depots.

EPS was the British arm of the joint Eurostar operation, along with SNCF and NMBS/SNCB. LCR renamed EPS as Eurostar (U.K.) Ltd. (EUKL). Union Railways had been developing plans for HS1 since before the opening of the Channel Tunnel and continued this role as part of LCR.

The original shareholders of LCR were National Express Group, Virgin Group, SBC Warburg, Bechtel and London Electric. As part of the 1996 contract LCR were to finance and construct the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) themselves, funding it from income received from the Eurostar operation.

In 1998 LCR ran into major financial difficulties and appealed to the UK government for support. It admitted that income from its share of the Eurostar operation was not at the level it expected and would therefore not be able to undertake construction of HS1. At this time the future of the high speed line looked in doubt. See here for more details.

In 2006 LCR put forward a proposal to build a domestic high speed line north of London — see High-speed rail in the United Kingdom.

2006 shareholders & status

The current structure of LCR is complex due to numerous reorganisations, for example SNCF is involved in the Eurostar operation at three different levels. Current shareholders in LCR are:

• Rail Link Engineering (RLE)
• National Express Group
• SNCF
• EDF Energy
• UBS investment bank

The construction of the CTRL is being project managed for LCR by RLE. Current shareholders in RLE are:

• Bechtel
• Arup
• Systra
• Halcrow

Since the 1998 reorganisation the operation of EUKL has run as under a management contract by InterCapital and Regional Rail (ICRR). Current ICRR shareholders are:

• National Express Group (40%)
• SNCF (35%)
• NMBS/SNCB (15%)
• British Airways (10%)

Operation of the line will be undertaken by Network Rail under a contract lasting until 2086, when LCR’s concession ends too, and all rights return to the British Government.

Now what we have to hear is which ‘off the shelf product’ is being used as the filter list.

I will update this post tomorrow.

I the mean time, if you ever find yourself in St Pancras or any other place where the internetz are blocked in some way, like a public library, you can get around the censorship very easily. There is no excuse for passively accepting censorship in the age of the internets, and it is up to you to be active, computer literate, and to know the tools you are using so you can free the information that you require for yourself.

First of all, open Firefox (ummm you ARE running Firefox on Ubuntu arent you?) and then, and then do the following:

Install Stealthy for your browser.

You can use Whatismyip.com to check your ip address. http://www.whatismyip.com/

It should display the IP you are using as your proxy and not the IP your ISP allocated to you.

UPDATE 1: August 7th

I spoke to CitySpace today, to the same person I spoke to originally.

He told me that he conferred with people in CitySpace, and they said that, “it was not for them to confirm this” and that “I would have to speak to St Pancras about it. There are 25 people in blue coats at St Pancras to answer these sorts of questions”.

I said, “so there are 25 COMPUTER LITERATE people in blue coats who are able to tell me what blocking software is being used to filter their Wi-Fi network? I think we both know that is highly unlikely!” He agreed. I thanked him and hung up.

On to St Pancras, phoned them, got the reception, passed to some upper guy, transferred up again, spoke to a woman, who said, “they took advice that certain websites should be blocked.

I said, “well I would like to know who gave you that advice”.

She said, “we chose to block certain websites like pornography, ‘hate sites’ and such…”

I said, “Let me make myself absolutely clear; I accept that this is a private network, and you have the right to block whatever you like on it. What I want to know is why you are blocking certain sites, who sold you the blocking list and why innocuous websites are on that blocking list”

She said, “what website were you trying to get to in particular? Were you a customer of St Pancras or a passenger?”

I said, “I was a passenger and I tried to get to thinkprogress.org”

She said, “and what sort of website is that?”

I said, “its a news website, like bbc.co.uk” ( :o )

She said, “do you have a personal interest in this site, because you seem to be quite agitated about this”

I said, “no, I’m not agitated, I had a double espresso at lunch! I simply want to know why these websites are blocked.”

She then said that she would look into it, and that this is a service that just recently went live and that if there are things that are blocked that should not be they would need to look into that, and that if members of the public call them to comment on the service they would look into how it is working.

She said that if I call her tomorrow morning, she should have some answers for me.

Update to follow!

UPDATE 2: August 8th

I spoke to the woman at St Pancras who told me to call her today. She said that she had spoken to someone about this, and that she had not been given the information, but she was told to give me the mobile number of a person who did have the information.

I spoke to this person for 25 minutes, and during the conversation he divulged the following:

• They are running an off the shelf software product.
• St Pancras, has direct control over the list, and can block and unblock any site.
• They have a review system, whereby people can appeal to have their site unblocked. They then take a decision to keep a site blocked or to unblock it. They will do this on a case by case basis, and in order to make an appeal, a site owner should contact Media at St Pancras.
• They were advised by “independent third parties” as to what shape the provision of the free Wi-Fi should take.
• It is possible that certain political websites may be “caught up in the trawl” of blocked sites.
• He refused to say who provided this list of blocked sites, or who the vendor of the software was.

That last call was the longest of all, taking the total time of all the calls to around 55 minutes.

The fact of the matter is (and this is me talking) that St Pancras free Wi-Fi is a private network, and as such, they can block whatever they like on it. They are under no obligation to provide access to anything whatsoever, and if you want free and unfettered internet access, you have to retain and use the skills and tools that are freely available to you to make the magic happen.

If you rely on the providers of train stations and rail services or anyone other than a pure ISP to connect you with the internet, then you are submitting to the prejudices, ignorance, guidelines and the ‘third party advice’ that govern their networks. It is up to you to find out how things really work and then take the appropriate steps so that your experience is unfiltered.

Think about it this way; if a publisher rejected an advertisement you wanted to publish, you wouldn’t think you have a right to have it displayed in their newspaper or magazine? You absolutely do not have a right to be published in anyone’s magazine, and you also do not have a right to have your content re-transmitted over someone’s private network. You DO have the right to publish what you want, and to distribute it to whoever you like…its up to you to make sure that your content is deliverable. In the past, this meant finding a distributor to get your content to the shops. Now it means making sure that your readers and listeners are well versed in proxy tools so that no matter where they are, they will always be able to connect to you.

You do not even have to write the software to do this yourself. There are toolbars and addons out there that make getting around censorship as simple as a single click of a button.

The distinction between a private and public network, between private and public space, is very important, and many people have a blurry / fuzzy idea in their heads about what these concepts actually encompass.

Censorship in China, which is by the GOVERNMENT and censorship of a PRIVATE WI-FI NETWORK are two different things; it is the difference between self censorship and censorship from above that covers everything everywhere. If what I have been told is true, then this is a case of the former; even if the people who offer the software are a government front, and even if the ‘independent third parties’ are compromised in some way, St Pancras have the final say and fine grained control on what is blocked. This is fundamentally different to China blocking everything at the network level.

Could someone telephone them and tell them to keep certain sites blocked? Of course. But all of this is moot if you are able to use your computer to get around blocking software, which is why it is so important to spread information about how to get around filtering with tools like TOR and setting proxies.

You can expect more and more filtering on private networks that are accessible to the public. The people who run these private networks are not interested in providing access to everything, will actively suppress ‘inaccurate information on blogs’, swallow wholesale the advice of third parties, will deploy banning lists provided to them by third parties unquestioned, see no value in the free flow of information, and in the case of St Pancras specifically, do not think much about it as they are more interested in running trains on time. They feel they are doing you a favor (and really, this is correct) by letting you have access to anything at all for free in the first place; they make no money out of it, it has nothing to do with trains and it means they have to employ people to bluster about their service when something isn’t right.

Finally, do read this page about filtering:

4) INDUCED SELF-CENSORSHIP
Another common and effective strategy to limit exposure to Internet content is by encouraging self-censorship both in browsing habits and in choosing content to post online. This may take place through the threat of legal action, the promotion of social norms, or informal methods of intimidation. Arrest and detention related to Internet offenses, or on unrelated charges, have been used in many instances to induce compliance with Internet content restrictions. In many cases, the content restrictions are neither spoken nor written. The perception that the government is engaged in the surveillance and monitoring of Internet activity, whether accurate or not, provides another strong incentive to avoid posting material or visiting sites that might draw the attention of authorities.

And there you have it!

Another great post from George Washington:

Fearmongering As a Form of Warfare

We often think of psychological warfare as meaning disinformation. See, for example, this.

But psychological operations also include efforts to induce and spread fear, because fear immobilizes people more than any other emotion. Make people afraid, and they won’t take any action to challenge those in power.

We all know that false flag terror is a form of psyops to intimidate people. Likewise, the real reason that our government tortures innocent people is to spread fear. And we already know that the Pentagon employs bloggers to spread its propaganda (indeed, even private companies appear to do it).

I’ve increasingly recently run across a form of fearmongering psyops on the web. Specifically, whenever anyone posts a hopeful idea or a promising strategy for fighting tyranny, someone will post a fear-inducing comment like:

“If you sign the impeachment petition, the government will put you in its terrorist database”

Or

“If you show up to the anti-war rally, you’ll be tasered”

You’ve seen this, right?

These kind of statements can do no possible good. They are not intended to convey any useful information. They are merely meant to discourage people from taking any action.

Given that the Bush administration tortures innocent people, tramples on the Constitution, and spies on everyone, many people are already cowed and intimidated. What we need more of is courage and hope. Those are the qualities which will enable us to save our country.

Anyone sewing unreasonable seeds of fear is either a psyops agent or a coward who is trying to justify their own cowardice by infecting others with the virus of fear. Either way, their fearmongering should be countered with comments about the importance of courage in saving our country and with reasons to have hope that we can change things if we are committed to creating a saner world. Fear may be contagious, but so is courage and hope.

Because those trying to save our country outweigh the psyops agents by millions-to-one, we will win the battle if we take a stand for courage and against fear.

There are several posts on BLOGDIAL about what and what not to do about ‘our problems’.

Before the illegal, immoral, unjustified war crime of the invasion of Iraq, I said categorically that a demonstration against the invasion would have no effect, and that the invasion would happen anyway.

Sadly, I was proved right.

Now we have people calling for more demonstrations, public rallies and such like, and whilst I defend everyone’s right to assemble, I disagree that these actions will be of any lasting value.

I call the sentiment behind these actions ‘Yellow Ribbon Thinking’. It is something that americans are particularly fond of, and which keeps everyone in line, preventing them from making the final leap to real solutions that will actually solve the problems.

This is the only sphere of human activity where the solution is not tailored to the problem. At any other time and in every other instance, a normal, rational human being addresses a problem or crisis in a way that is designed to produce a discrete result; if there is a fire, you bring water or a fire extinguisher. If you want to fly to the moon, you design a space craft. If there is a leak in your roof, you patch it. If it is raining, you get out your umbrella. If you are hungry, you get yourself a sandwich.

In not one of those examples would any rational person put forward as a plan that a demonstration against the rain should be held, or that a candle lit vigil should be organized, should we become hungry, or that we should play music if there is a fire, or that we should dance around with plastic wings to reach the moon.

People should not attend anti-war rallies not because they might be tasered; they should not attend them because they do not work to stop war. If they did, they would not be in Iraq and planning an attack on Iran right now.

People should not sign petitions, not because you might get on the government’s ‘terrorist’ database, but because they do not work to effect permanent change. If petitions worked, we would not have 99% of the bad legislation on the books that we have now.

I have said it before, and I will say it again. Only a fool keeps doing something that doesn’t work. All of these tactics that are very old, tried and tested, have been shown to be ineffective against the sort of tyranny we are facing today. If you keep doing them, you are a fool. If you are calling for them, you are either a fool, or are working for the enemy.

The contention that psy-ops are working to stop people from protesting and signing petitions is probably 100% true; but those psy-operatives are also inside the delusion that protesting and petition writing have power. The fact that they are out there trying to stop it adds to the ‘meta psy-op’ that is being promoted; the one geared to making you think that demonstrations, petitions and all other ‘Yellow Ribbon Thinking’ is useful and effective, when in fact they are not. That is the Matroska trick that is being played on the public; it keeps them two levels down inside the doll from discovering the real truth, which is that even if everyone in the entire USA were to sign a petition it wouldn’t be worth the ink used to scratch out the signatures; the bad stuff would still happen. By keeping people from signing and demonstrating, they are keeping everyone from waking up and realizing that these tactics are worthless; going through a failure on the path to achieve your goal is an essential step before creating the next generation of tools that are actually effective in getting to your goal, which in our case is (partial list):

• A permanent end to the war machine
• Sound money
• An obedient congress
• Obedient law enforcement staff
• A properly restrained executive
• Full, unassailable and enforced individual rights
• Full, unassailable and enforced property rights

It seems that today, in response to tyranny, fascism and the police state, the only ‘solutions’ that anyone can come up with are ones that simply will not work. Only a small minority is actually fully awake and doing something concrete and focussed, like the war tax resistors, the people who have turned their backs on ‘the system’ and the many others who have found their own way to escape.

we will win the battle if we take a stand for courage and against fear.

I agree that fear is being exploited to an unprecedented level today. The first step on the road to defeating this is for everyone to understand the true nature of life, risk and the probability of anything bad happening to you.

The fascist ‘Health and Safety’ culture that has engulfed the UK (for example) needs to be explained, confronted and disobeyed at every point that it is touched. ‘Health and Safety’ culture is one example of fear running wild, and how it is used to engineer control. The same goes for Anthropgenic Global Warming.

The fear of ‘terrorism’ is the other bogeyman being trotted out on a minute by minute basis to scare everyone into line. All Security Theatre and its related nonsense must be countered, defied and disobeyed at every point that it is encountered. That means refusing to comply with anything that has been introduced ‘because of terrorism’.

Finally, people have to stop acting like simpletons, and stop using the language of simple minded people. There is alot of this language about; it is unfocussed, nebulous and actually, very dangerous; when your house is on fire, you do not talk about ‘taking a stand’ or ‘standing up for what is right’ against fire. You get a fire extinguisher and PUT OUT THE FLAMES. That is why, whenever I talk and have talked about this I try and make sure that I do not use this in nubibus thinking and offer another way of thinking and acting as a solution. Even if what you offer is wrong, by iterating out the failures we come closer to the solution. The most important part is that you are iterating, and not doing the same thing over and over again.

False Flag terror is the number one tool of the fear-mongers. They have been using it for decades. That means we must put false flag terror in its proper context and ignore it whenever it happens. No matter how big the outrage, we must all refuse to change our opinions, change our behavior, accept new regulations of any kind, get all ‘patriotic’, ‘get behind the president’ or do anything that is expected of us. Once we accept that and behave correctly, false flag terror and the fear they try to create with it loses all power, and it loses the power to change the way we live.

There are probably an infinite number of solutions to our problems. All we need to do is find one and then ruthlessly execute it.

Whatever one we choose to use, it must be done with a clear goal and deliverables and it must be unstoppable. We certainly have many models of how it can be done; as I said above, in every other sphere of life, complex problems are addressed successfully. If this were not the case, we would not have put man on the moon or done anything that requires engineering.

In fact, this is an engineering problem, and it must be attacked in precisely that way.

Spreading information and educating people about what is really going on is essential. You can do this without wasting your time marching in the streets. Context is everything; that is why I support and personally distribute DVDs of the crucial documentaries. Once the critical mass of informed people is reached, it will be much easier to deploy the final maneuver, which should not be something that has been seen before, like a demonstration or a rock concert. For the record, I do not believe that asking foxes to investigate a raid on a chicken coop is sensible, logical, rational or smart. Impeaching Bush will achieve nothing, except the justice that he is gaoled for his war crimes…what about the next war criminal?

That is the question that needs to be asked and addressed.

We need a solution that takes care of the next war criminal, and all other possible followers, on a permanent basis.

Thankfully, it is not an intractable problem.

From today’s Daily Mail:

Sharia law SHOULD be used in Britain, says UK’s top judge

The most senior judge in England yesterday gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.

He declared: ‘Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.’

In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments – and divorce rulings – complied with the law of the land.

But his remarks, which back the informal sharia courts operated by numerous mosques, provoked a barrage of criticism.

Lawyers warned that family and marital disputes settled by sharia could disadvantage women or the vulnerable.

[…]

Daily Mail

Of course, the hoards of ignorant pigs like the first commenter on this story:

UK, I am so sorry for you. That is incredible.

– Susan, Colorado, USA, 03/7/2008 20:14

are coming out howling about how this is such a terrible thing. What is the most terrible thing of all is that these people cannot think.

What this judge has said is that for private contracts people should be free to choose a Sharia court for resolutions of disputes.

Do you understand what that means?

It means that if you choose to be governed by Sharia Law in your financial or marital dealings, you should be free to do so.

There is absolutely no problem with this whatsoever. HSBC already offer Sharia Compliant bank accounts, and Mick Jagger excused himself from paying extortion money for his divorce since his marriage was governed by a different law to UK law. The article itself says that, “Orthodox Jews operate Beth Din courts which operate according to ancient Jewish Law”. And allow me to digress, but why do they not call Sharia Law, “ancient Sharia Law”?!?! Sharia Law is many things, but modern is not one of them!

What this judge is suggesting is a great thing.

It means that you are FREE to obey your conscience in whatever way you like, as long as you do not break the law of the UK. This judge is actually expanding the freedoms of the British, against the current trend of Parliament legislating away everything, every liberty that has been built over the last 1000 years, and the judiciary backing them up to the hilt.

What he is NOT saying is that Sharia Law should be incorporated into British law, and that everyone, muslim or not, should be made to obey it. That would be and should be completely unacceptable. Sadly, many people out there, like this ignoramus from Colorado, do not understand anything about their rights, the rights of others, and the many options you have as a free human being.

People who want to follow Sharia have the right to do so. That is none of my, or your business. They can get married in whatever way they like, divorce in whatever way they like, lend and borrow money in whatever way they like and pray in whatever way they like. That is what it means to be free, and anyone who is against that is not for Liberty. In fact, true libertarians hold that the state has no business sanctioning and regulating marriage in the first place.

Lawyers are against this because by settling disputes without them, they are cut out of the loop. The same goes for all the other professions that leech off of the law; anything that undercuts them and causes them to lose status and money is a threat. People solving their own problems privately and at liberty are a threat to the system. This judge, by going against that grain is actually demonstrating a great deal of wisdom and even handedness. He will be boiled in oil for it of course.

Now, the ignorant amongst you will say, “but what about women’s rights!??!” We are not talking about women being forced by religious dictate to do anything that is illegal in the UK. We are not talking about illegal and repulsive Sharia punishments being legalized either. What we are talking about, and what this judge is talking about, are consensual contracts only; everything else to do with the ‘clash of cultures’ is completely covered by the law in the UK, the UK law takes precedence at all times, and the objectionable elements of Sharia law have absolutely nothing to do with the subject we are discussing right now.

There seems to be no end to the hoards of people eager to cut their own heads off in this insane hatred for all things Islam. Even when something comes along that increases freedom, real options (in this case, opt outs) people rail against it reflexively without THINKING and applying these scenarios to themselves.

This is our greatest problem today; the absence of THINKING.

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

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

How can we do this?

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

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

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

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

Think of it as ‘Peace 2.0’.

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

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

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

. . . . . . .

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

Someone has their thinking hat on:

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

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

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

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

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

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

How it works:

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

Needed: volunteers in the US and Iran

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

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

Photo by James Felder/SnapshotArtifact.org

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

[…]

http://enoughfear.org/en/call

“Are you man enough to take it?”

Gæoudjiparl Van Den Dobbelsteen goes to war:

01. On Monday the 5th of May 2008 Gæoudjiparl van den Dobbelsteen opened up this temporary Myspace profile in order to declare war on the Scandinavian education system and to bring a new radical education program for modern computer music into being.

02. Later on Monday the 5th of May 2008 a manual for Goodiepal’s autonomous radical computer music education program, now called Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra, was set into production.

The new school book can be ordered online from Smallfish in London..

www.smallfish.co.uk

and a full manual for the magnum work plus a strategy guide will soon be available for FREE download via.

www.brainwashed.com/vvm/micro/parl

03. On Wednesday the 7th of May 2008, 44 pictures of visual Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra scores, unscannnable by computers and done by young students at Krabbesholm, were uploaded to the Krabbesholm website

www.krabbesholm.dk/courses/art/08goodiepal.html

04. On the 10th and 11th of May 2008 Gaeoudjiparl van den Dobbelsteen completed a two day course of radical computer music at Engelsholm Castle in Jutland, Denmark. Another 40 students agreed to complete grafic scores.

05. On Tuesday the 13th of May all Goodiepal’s bachelor students scored excellent points at their composition examines with examiners Jens Hørsving and Ejnar Kanding.

www.hoersving.dk

www.kanding.com

06. On Wednesday the 14th of May a huge sign was placed in the window of Route 66, the record shop closest to the Royal Academy of Music. The sign reads, “The music school book, which was too much for the Royal Academy of Music, can now be ordered here” – so all students, who cannot receive education in the fields of radical computer music, have a place to go.

07. When Saturday the 17th of May dawned the first part of the audio walk through, or manual, was uploaded to this Myspace profile as promised. The next parts will be uploaded when finished.

www.myspace.com/gaeoudjiparlvandendobbelsteen

08 On Sunday the 18th of May photo documentation for the Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra was uploaded to this temporary Myspace profile as Snappidagg’s. Just look under pictures.

09. When Wednesday the 21th of May dawned the second part of the audio walk through, or manual, was uploaded to this Myspace profile.

www.myspace.com/gaeoudjiparlvandendobbelsteen

10. On Thursday the 22nd and Friday the 23th of May Uglemads, Goodiepal and Tordis did put the final touch to all the Under Byen In The Flip Flop Mix 12-inches and send 140 copies off to the band. The rest is to be shipped next week, if you fancy any of the vinyls contact the band at:

www.underbyen.dk

11. On Sunday the 25th of May new snappidagg’s were uploaded, sorry for the delay.

12. Later on Sunday the 25th of May Sara Black tried to sell some Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra education books on Ebay but flopped completely.

13. At the end of Sunday the 25th a one-off auction of the complete Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra box limited to 45 copies was made for sale at Ebay, this was done to raise some money for the war on the Royal Academy of Music.

www.ebay.com

14. On the 27th of May new snappidagg’s were uploaded to the picture section of this temporary Myspace profile. And the second part of the Under Byen IN THE FLIP FLOP MIX was put into production in the Blue House by Tordis, Uglemads and Goodiepal.

[…]

http://www.myspace.com/gaeoudjiparlvandendobbelsteen

At last, someone who actually HAS a pair.

STATE OF OKLAHOMA

2nd Session of the 51st Legislature (2008)

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 1089 By: Key

AS INTRODUCED

A Joint Resolution claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers; serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates; and directing distribution.

WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”; and

WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and

WHEREAS, the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and

WHEREAS, today, in 2008, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government; and

WHEREAS, many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and

WHEREAS, a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE SENATE OF THE 2ND SESSION OF THE 51ST OKLAHOMA LEGISLATURE:

THAT the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.

THAT this serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

THAT a copy of this resolution be distributed to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate of each state’s legislature of the United States of America, and each member of the Oklahoma Congressional Delegation.

[…]

http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=149495;article=119309;

Just like Arizona, Oklahomans have had ENOUGH of the Federal Government of the USA, and is asserting its rights, indeed, its OBLIGATIONS under the Constitution.

And all of this is coming just in time; when Obomba comes to office it could cause a massive reaction in the states legislatures finally putting the Federal Government in its place.

It may be the case that the Constitution will be put back in place in several states thanks to the critical mass of animus caused by the election of a warmongering, bilderburgering, CFRing, trilateralling, PATRIOT approving collectivist puppet monster. Think about it; the USA would be split into something looking like a sandwich cookie, with the east and west coasts accepting ‘the better decider’ Obomba and his Federal Government, with the states in the middle all asserting their Constitutional rights and obligations, kicking out the Feds and restoring something like Real America™.

I wonder what sort of biscuit that would resemble?!

Think about it.

The tipping point is coming, and the election of Obomba might just push it over.

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.

To the People of the United States of America,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regards,

Publius

[…]

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

This is beautiful, but there is something crucial missing.

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

And what if these ‘demands’ are not met?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What ‘Publius’ needed to say is:

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

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

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

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

A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

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

(TEXT OF BILL BEGINS ON NEXT PAGE)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therefore

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

By Bruce Schneier
The Guardian
May 15 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

http://schneier.com/blog/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…

Workers accused of theft or damage could soon find themselves blacklisted on a register to be shared among employers. It will be good for profits but campaigners say innocent people could find it impossible to get another job.

It suffers from the same problems that all these databases suffer from.

To critics it sounds like a scenario from some Orwellian nightmare.

That is EXACTLY what it is.

An online database of workers accused of theft and dishonesty “regardless of whether they have been convicted of any crime” which bosses can access when vetting potential employees.

Guilty before proven innocent. There is no law…every man for himself!

But this is no dystopian fantasy. Later this month, the National Staff Dismissal Register (NSDR) is expected to go live.

It is dystopian fact.

Organisers say that major companies including Harrods, Selfridges, Reed Managed Services and Mothercare have already signed up to the scheme. By the end of May they will be able to check whether candidates for jobs have faced allegations of stealing, forgery, fraud, damaging company property or causing a loss to their employers and suppliers.

They are just the beginning.

And you can be sure that this database will be sold to everyone that wants it, no matter where they are in the world. I wonder; will it include your fingerprints, your photo? For sure, it will have your address and telephone number.

Workers sacked for these offences will be included on the register, regardless of whether police had enough evidence to convict them. Also on the list will be employees who resigned before they could face disciplinary proceedings at work.

What this will do is bolster the ‘black economy’ as the ‘straight world’ or ‘the system’ fences itself off with more and more measures. As ordinary people find themselvs shut out of ‘the system’ just for being themselves, or alive, they will come to the ‘black economy’. The black economy will grow so big that it becomes the real economy, or at the very least, an equilibrium is reached, where the two systems co-exist side by side.

The project has attracted little publicity. But the BBC News website can reveal that trade unions and civil liberties campaigners are warning that it leaves workers vulnerable to the threat of false accusations.

You can warn all you like. The sheeple do not care, and the ones that do are not in the system, so they do not care.

TUC policy officer Hannah Reed says that while criminal activity in the workplace can never be condoned, she fears such a system is open to abuse.

“The TUC is seriously concerned that this register can only lead to people being shut out from the job market by an employer who falsely accuses them of misconduct or sacks them because they bear them a grudge. Individuals would be treated as criminals, even though the police have never been contacted.

“The Criminal Records Bureau was set up to assist employers to make safe appointments when recruiting staff to work with vulnerable groups. The CRB already provides appropriate and properly regulated protection for employers. Under the new register, an employee may not be aware they have been blacklisted or have any right to appeal.”

You stupid fool.

The CRB is s STATE operation. The NSDR is s PRIVATE operation. Private people can do what they like, you socialist simpleton. Why don’t you set up your OWN database, instead of bellyaching like a stuck pig. You could then call a national strike if one of your workers is abused…but then, that would mean actually being effective.

James Welch, the legal director of human rights group Liberty, also says that he is concerned that the register does not offer sufficient redress to the falsely accused.

“This scheme appears to bypass existing laws which protect employees by limiting the circumstances when information about possible criminal activity can be shared with potential employers.”

It is a brilliant commercial opportunity; the only problem is, that it has been done in reverse. See below.

Set up by Surrey-based firm Hicom Business Solutions, the database will allow employers to search for potential workers by name, address, date of birth, national insurance number and previous employer.

Records on individuals “accessible online via an encrypted password system – will be kept for a five-year period and can include photos.

Here we go with the ‘encrypted password system’ snake oil again. We know all about that don’t we?!

Mike Schuck, chief executive of AABC, says that theft by members of staff costs the British economy billions of pounds each year and rejects the notion that the register is a blacklist.

It IS a blacklist you scum:

A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize them from a certain social circle. Conversely, a whitelist is a list or compilation or list identifying entities that are accepted, recognised, or privileged.

[…]

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

And the dictionary says so!

He says that all participating companies will be obliged to abide by the Data Protection Act and that workers named on the database “maintained by AABC “will have the right to change their entries if they are inaccurate.

And if they are accurate? And what if they want to be deleted? This is a blacklist you tosser, be honest and you won’t look so stupid.

Should a dispute take place between an employee and an employer about whether an incident occurred, Mr Schuck adds, the worker will be able to appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Yeah, and we all know how well those procedures work, and how much they cost in time and money.

“We are limiting access to the database to employers who can comply with the Information Commissioner’s employment practices code,”he says. “We’re not going to allow Mr Smith’s hardware store. We’re quite open about this. People will be told when they apply for jobs that they may be checked as part of the application process.

How can people be put on this register without their consent?

“Theft in the workplace hurts staff as much as employers because it puts everyone under suspicion.”

ROTFL

This database puts everyone in the country under suspicion!

You are a suspect and untrusted until we can check you on the database, only after that do you become trusted. That is the operating principle of this database and of every other identity system like it, including the NIR and its ID Cards.

Freedom is slavery!

Nonetheless, many workers may get a nasty surprise when old allegations return to haunt them when they next apply for a job.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7389547.stm

Nasty surprises happen to the bosses too, and when they happen to the bosses, its MUCH WORSE.

I have a better idea you villians. Yes, ‘villians’.

Do you remember that song by Sun Ra, ‘Make another mistake’?

Why not set up a database of GOOD WORKERS who are 100% reliable?

Everyone would compete to be on it, it would be another thing to put on your CV…why do these people think that the only thing a database can be used for is keeping a list of BAD people?

Probably because this venal mass murdering government has a mania for ‘registers’ of every sort of ‘criminal’.

Think about it, people try to keep their credit histories clean because they want to be on the list of people who have good credit. This is exactly the same; a voluntary database where an employee’s references are turned into a score. You do not have to be on it, but if you choose to be on it, people will trust you more.

The company makes money from registrations of workers.
The company makes money from database access by employers.

Its a better business model, and is less immoral.

Its just my idea off the top of my head, but what I have demonstrated is that the thinking of these vendors is evil, not creative, not positive and corrosive to community. It doesn’t take the desire to be and do good and use it; it instead, feeds off of evil and suspicion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

IHT

My emphasis.

At last, some bankers with bottle!

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