Tonight’s vinyl listening was Pauline Oliveros, a piece from 1968, released a few years ago on Table of the Elements; and Head Slash Bausch, by Antje Greie Fuchs. Highly recommended in both cases.
… ’Cause if you don’t, the world will come to an end
And it won’t take long
Privacy International’s recent complaint to the UK Information Commissioner has threatened to bring a halt to an imminent plan to fingerprint all domestic and international passengers departing from Heathrow’s Terminal 1 and Terminal 5, due to begin business on March 27th. The British media is reporting that in response to PI’s complaint, the Information Commissioner has advised that passengers should only accept fingerprinting “under protest” until our complaint is resolved.
The prospect of a complete shutdown of two Heathrow terminals has emerged since Privacy International’s complaint about passenger fingerprinting. The complaint, lodged with the UK Information Commissioner on March 9th 2008, argues that the scheme breaches the fundamental tests of necessity and proportionality under the UK Data Protection Act.
The complaint states: “We believe the BAA solution is disproportionately intrusive. Even if it were to be established that passenger switching (if indeed such a problem exists) was a terrorist threat (rather than merely a breach of airline terms and conditions on transferability) then the photo option would be less invasive and would involve fewer intrusive procedures and less personal data.”
The complaint alleged that the design of Terminal 5 was intentionally created to ensure that passengers, both domestic and international, were exposed to retail outlets to the maximum possible extent. It noted: “We are troubled by BAA’s justification that the new procedure will ensure that “all our passengers will enjoy the same great facilities and wide choice of shops and restaurants”. To diminish privacy rights in order to achieve greater sales revenue is a disquieting development in the evolution of thinking with regard to data protection.
Privacy International alleges that there is no basis in UK law for the establishment of mandatory fingerprinting, and that the claims made by the British Airports Authority (BAA) were based in fantasy or deception. “BAA’s claim that these measures are “required by government” appears to be of dubious substance. There certainly appears to be no legislative requirement for fingerprinting in these circumstances, and so we assume that the scheme is based on an informal arrangement with government. Indeed a spokesman for BAA is quoted in the Evening Standard (March 11th) saying: “the fingerprinting scheme was introduced in cooperation with the Home Office”.
The Information Commissioner’s Office has confirmed to Privacy International (see below) that it has never been approached by the Government, British Airways, BAA or any other party about this scheme.
This PI claim received further weight when the British newspaper, the Mail on Sunday, reported that the Home Office denied that it had set any requirement for passenger fingerprinting.
If the Information Commissioner is not satisfied that the fingerprinting scheme is justified he has the authority to present a cessation order, breach of which would be a criminal offence. If BAA is found in breach of UK law its contractual terms could then be in jeopardy.
See here for the complaint and the response from the Information Commissioner’s Office. Here are some excerpts:
Privacy International believes the Heathrow fingerprinting scheme breaches the fundamental test of Necessity for compliance with Data Protection. We are not aware of any published evidence indicating that passenger switching has become a significant security issue, nor are we aware of any evidence that it could be in the future.
BAA’s claim that these measures are “required by government” appears to be of dubious substance. There certainly appears to be no legislative requirement for fingerprinting in these circumstances, and so we assume that the scheme is based on an informal arrangement with government. Indeed a spokesman for BAA is quoted in the Evening Standard (March 11th) saying: “the fingerprinting scheme was introduced in cooperation with the Home Office”.
[…]
We are troubled by BAA’s justification that the new procedure will ensure that “all our passengers will enjoy the same great facilities and wide choice of shops and restaurants”. To diminish privacy rights in order to achieve greater sales revenue is a disquieting development in the evolution of thinking with regard to data protection. We would have hoped that the planning of Terminal 5 and its associated security procedures would have taken account of compliance with law. We would be interested to learn whether a Privacy Impact Assessment was conducted or whether due diligence was instituted with regard to the DPA.
We do not believe this scheme will be in any way voluntary or opt-in. Most passengers will have little or no choice over which terminal they use, and even where such an alternative exists it may be costly. We do not believe in these circumstances that passengers should be compelled to undergo fingerprinting.
We refer you to the advice provided by your office on the subject of fingerprinting of children in schools (23rd July 2007):
In view of the sensitivity of taking children’s fingerprints, schools should respect the wishes of parents and pupils who object to their (or their children’s) fingerprints being taken in school.
We see no reason why this “sensitivity” should not extend to the adult population, particularly where some people feel vulnerable or anxious about the procedure, or where strong convictions are held about such procedures.
[…]
It is, in our view, not acceptable for BAA to institute an intrusive system merely because of a “state of heightened alert” over airport security, particularly where no evidence is offered to justify fingerprinting. Nor in our view is it acceptable to advance architectural determinism or poor planning as a justification for the necessity for intrusive practices. The decisions that are made with regard to Terminal 5 will resonate across the travel industry, and so it is crucial to ensure that the justification, the legal compliance and the procedures are positioned properly in these early days. Vague claims of government requirements are not appropriate under these circumstances.
Nor, in our view, is it acceptable to define necessity and proportionality in a minimal or casual manner when the environment in question offers so much scope for the development of privacy friendly alternatives to fingerprinting.
This is a properly drafted response, from an organization that is actively working to solve problems.
Well done Privacy International, your cheque is in the post.
This is the sort of organization that is worth donating to and joining. They will not fob you off with cranky emails, admonishing you to not ‘pester them’ with matters like this, whilst on the surface, pretending to be working against these outrageous and Orwellian measures.
They also get things done, and actively attack problems instead of endlessly appearing on TV and in the newspapers, decrying all that is going wrong.
Send your checque to:
Privacy International
6-8 Amwell Street
London, EC1R 1UQ
GB
Lest we forget, here are our other posts on this subject:
ID Cards, the NIR and Heathrow Terminal 5
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=982
Richard Rogers: Architect of The New Authoritarianism
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=771
Heathrow Terminal 5: Architectural Disaster
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=767
More BBQ Biometric Propaganda: Terminal 5
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=825
Terminal 5 fingerprinting; the howls begin
http://www.irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1015
An Idea Whose Time Has Come – G. Edward Griffin – Freedom Force International
This is a lecture, where G. Edward Griffin says everything we have said on BLOGDIAL for the past seven years is repeated point for point.
You should watch it.
Then check out his website:
Where you can read his ‘Freedom Creed’:
THE CREED OF FREEDOM
Intrinsic Nature of Rights
I believe that only individuals have rights, not the collective group; that these rights are intrinsic to each individual, not granted by the state; for if the state has the power to grant them, it also has the power to deny them, and that is incompatible with personal liberty.
I believe that a just government derives its power solely from the governed. Therefore, the state must never presume to do anything beyond what individual citizens also have the right to do. Otherwise, the state is a power unto itself and becomes the master instead of the servant of society.
Supremacy of the Individual
I believe that one of the greatest threats to freedom is to allow any group, no matter its numeric superiority, to deny the rights of the minority; and that one of the primary functions of just government is to protect each individual from the greed and passion of the majority.
Freedom of Choice
I believe that desirable social and economic objectives are better achieved by voluntary action than by coercion of law. I believe that social tranquility and brotherhood are better achieved by tolerance, persuasion, and the power of good example than by coercion of law. I believe that those in need are better served by charity, which is the giving of one’s own money, than by welfare, which is the giving of other people’s money through coercion of law.
Equality Under Law
I believe that all citizens should be equal under law, regardless of their national origin, race, religion, gender, education, economic status, life style, or political opinion. Likewise, no class should be given preferential treatment, regardless of the merit or popularity of its cause. To favor one class over another is not equality under law.
Proper Role of Government
I believe that the proper role of government is negative, not positive; defensive, not aggressive. It is to protect, not to provide; for if the state is granted the power to provide for some, it must also be able to take from others, and once that power is granted, there are those who will seek it for their advantage. It always leads to legalized plunder and loss of freedom. If government is powerful enough to give us everything we want, it is also powerful enough to take from us everything we have. Therefore, the proper function of government is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens; nothing more. That government is best which governs least.
The ThreeBallot Voting System
Ronald L. Rivest
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge,
MA 02139
October 1, 2006?
Abstract
We present a new paper-based voting method with interesting security properties. The attempt here is to see if one can achieve the same security properties of recently proposed cryptographic voting protocols, but without using any cryptography, using only paper ballots. We partially succeed. (Initially, I thought the proposal accomplished this goal, but several readers discovered a vote-buying attack (see Section 4.4) that appears to be rather di?cult to fix without making the resulting system much less usable in practice. Currently, this paper should thus be viewed more as an academic proposal than a practical proposal. Perhaps some variation on these ideas in this paper might still turn out to be of practical use. The &lquot;OneBallot with Exchanged Receipts&rquot; system sketched at the end of Section 5.3.1, looks particularly promising at the moment. . . ) The principles of ThreeBallot are simple and easy to understand. In this proposal, not only can each voter verify that her vote is recorded as she intended, but she gets a &lquot;receipt&rquot; that she can take home that can be used later to verify that her vote is actually included in the final tally. Her receipt, however, does not allow her to prove to anyone else how she voted. In this &lquot;ThreeBallot&rquot; voting system, each voter casts three paper ballots, with certain restrictions on how they may be filled out, so the tallying works. These paper ballots are of course &lquot;voter-verifiable.&rquot; All ballots cast are scanned and published on a web site, so anyone may correctly compute the election result. A voter receives a copy of one of her ballots as her &lquot;receipt&rquot;, which she may take home. Only the voter knows which ballot she copied for her receipt. The voter is unable to use her receipt to prove how she voted or to sell her vote, as the receipt doesn’t reveal how she voted. A voter can check that the web site contains a ballot matching her receipt. Deletion or modification of ballots is thus detectable; so the integrity of the election is verifiable.
? The latest version of this paper can always be found at http://theory.csail.mit.edu/~rivest/ Rivest-TheThreeBallotVotingSystem.pdf
Introduction
Designing secure voting systems is tough, since the constraints are apparently contradictory. In particular, the requirement for voter privacy (no one should know how Alice voted, even if Alice wants them to know) seems to contradict verifiability (how can Alice verify that her vote was counted as she intended?). The proposal presented here is an attempt to satisfy these constraints without the use of cryptograpy. We get pretty close… Like most cryptographic proposals, ThreeBallot uses a public &lquot;bulletin board&rquot;–a public web site where election officials post copies of all of the cast ballots (there will be 3n of them if there are n voters) and a list of the names of the voters who voted. (Some states might use voter ID’s rather than voter names.) One key principle of ThreeBallot is to &lquot;vote by rows&rquot; and &lquot;cast by columns&rquot;. The ThreeBallot ballot can viewed as an array, where the voter places marks in rows corresponding to candidates, but then separates the columns and casts them separately, keeping a copy of one. ThreeBallot provides a nice level of end-to-end verifiability—the voter gets assurance that her vote was cast as intended and counted as cast, and that election officials haven’t tampered with the collection of ballots counted.
Background
We assume that the reader is somewhat familiar with voting systems. For more background, the following readings are recommended:
Each ballot has two parts: the upper &lquot;voting region,&rquot; and then the &lquot;ballot ID region&rquot; on the lower part. The voting region of a ballot contains the candidate names, each with an op-scan bubble that can be filled in by the voter. Each ballot has a distinct ballot ID, di?erent from the ID’s of other ballots on its multi-ballot and from all other ballot ID’s. The ballot ID’s on the three ballots of a multi-ballot are unrelated in any way to each other, they are merely randomly assigned unique ballot ID’s, with no cryptographic or other significance. The ballot ID might be a long (e.g. 7-digit) number which is essentially random, or some other unique identifier, possibly in barcoded form. For now, we’ll assume that the ballot ID’s are pre-printed on the ballots, but we’ll see that there are security advantages to having them added later instead by the voter or by the &lquot;checker&rquot; (see Section 3.4).
Filling Out The Multi-Ballot
Details
We now describe the ThreeBallot voting system in more detail.
[…]
Christopher Anderson has an exhibition at Magnum called ‘Silicon Forest’. Magnum contacted us with the idea of illustrating his works with sound from The Conet Project, and we agreed.
The photographs are of the town, Akademgorodok (??????????????, part of the Russian city Novosibirsk, Siberia), created in Soviet era Russia as a place where scientists were grouped together to do research.
When the USSR ceased to exist in 1991, the upheaval did not leave the scientists working there unscathed, and they have had to turn their significant prowess around and re-invent themselves as soldiers fighting corporate warfare.
Having looked at the exhibition site today, I have to say that the photographs and the sound are a perfect match, brilliantly edited together.
Many people have used The Conet Project in their works; some succeed in doing something really worthwhile, and this is certainly one example of a very fine piece of work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEcBjpsP1bU
How much further can Olbermann take it before he says, “One night in desperation a young man gets a gun”?
At the end of the day, if he really believes what he is saying, and he (and everyone else) sees that nothing is going to change, and in fact, we are going to continue to be attacked unless ‘something is done’, then where is there left to go Keith?
Too bad your depth perception is gone Keith; that disqualifies you for ‘the juba role’ ay?!
This poster:
is appearing all over London.
I wonder who is behind them?
Google says: Your search – DRD/Noid – did not match any documents when we search for “DRD/Noid”.
When we search for “H.M.P. London” the third result is a flickr page showing the posters plastered on a telephone booth near Holland Park.
Fascinating.
It would have been an even better poster if it had some government / bad contract style super small print that you could only see if you went up close to the poster, explaining why ID Cards are such a bad idea.
Still we have to award them an ‘A’ for effort; good job lads.
The great Neil Young says that music cannot change the world. This is essentially correct.
Gestures like this poster are, like music, moving and beautiful, but they will not solve the problem. They will not even convey enough information so that you can make a coherent argument. If you are going to make the effort to print thousands of posters, and then take the risk of flyposting them illegally, then you should make the best of that effort, and remove all ambiguity from the act. That means each poster should explain in detail what the problem is and what needs to be done.
Look at how the state does it:
look at how it is laid out, and the way it clearly and succinctly conveys important information.
If I were to design a poster, it would be a pastiche of the second one, with an appropriate text, so that everyone reading it would have the living daylights frightened out of them. THAT is the kind of poster that would be an effective information tool, of the kind that we need.
The utterly unique Gæoudjiparl Van Den Dobbelsteen has a lecture on Google Video that you need to take a look at.
I’ll assume you’re well on your public Danish television voyage by now. You’re witnessing a televised lecture presented by Goodiepal, a Danish electronic musician that enjoys some airplay on WFMU and is probably most widely know for blowing minds with his mechanical bird invention, and composing tones and melodies for consumer electronics companies.
You’ll see him keep his studio audience stupefied with a near hour-long discourse on: The Eurobot (as demonstrated by cardboard scenery cutouts and handmade balls of yarn), the assertion that Europeans don’t understand time, the idea of mirror points in music, the future of electronic music, and how to keep music scores hidden from artificial intelligence.
At first blush it all seems very whimsical but discursively sound but at about the twenty minute mark when he’s still playing with his little robot set and whistling the Eurobot score to himself, one can’t help but wonder if he’s putting us on. And yeah, you’ve got the simul-soundtrack cranked, so you’re on media-fuckery watch anyway.
What’s going on here, you ask? Thankfully, a mysterious poster to a web forum has left a few clues.
A user going by the name of “Gæoudjiparl EDUCATION” brought this video to my attention in the V/Vm Test Records web forums. He seems to share our feeling about the video that:
“…something is not quite what it appears to be…
Several indications of a hidden agenda are evident when investigating the program
more closely although the question of who is actually behind remains disguised. The following is an attempt to cast light on some of the dubious occurrences.”Apparently, Goodiepal has been spiked with a hallucinogenic drug, allowed to prattle on far beyond the time normally allotted by this television program (true: you’ll see him gesture to the producers throughout the video), and may be mixed up in a situation akin to a scenario presented by a 1967 science fiction novel by Fredrich Pohl (pictured left).
Alright, alright, cute, cute. We get it. Goodiepal isn’t about to appear on television under the “phony” terms posited by modern television production studios. Rather than use his invitation to speak his mind directly, he serves up a quasi-didactic mixture of truths, lies, and pure babble.
Much of what he says in this video likely represents the very opposite of his belief (such as the suggestion that we allow computers to start performing our vocal compositions for us).
But dude, “culture jamming” in these modern times strikes a blow against a weakened opponent: mass culture and mass media. Willful obfuscation of earnest dialectics is a very proper move as far as much of our contemporary countercultures are concerned. But it doesn’t do shit to communicate higher ideals to the “uninformed masses.”
I think this is a ripe case of “co-option” anxiety. Co-option theory suggests that mere exposure of a subculture’s defining aesthetic or idealistic touchpoints threatens to weaken the bonds of is participants. This plots the forces of cultural good (say, young skinny white unmarried people living urban areas and reading small circulation magazines) against the sold-out ethos of corporations who want to use their culture to sell things to them (gasp!) and demands that cool kids not blow their cover.
Once I transcoded this whole thing out using my handy Goodipal media ring I actually liked the ideas very much. But I am the choir, aren’t I? Personally, I’m not buying the (meta)story any longer. (Oh, also: Your technique just got co-opted. Pwned!)
!!!
I have to say, we need more people like Van Den Dobbelsteen…and have always need more.
This is the sound of america waking up.
It is a beautiful sound.
These are the Real Americans™ that we all knew and loved.
They live!
Still:
And in motion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Tm_w5aODE
ASK US WHY
After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled making building prisons the fastest growing industry in the United States. More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated and every year we arrest an additional 1.9 million more guaranteeing those prisons will be bursting at their seams.
Every year we choose to continue this war will cost U.S. taxpayers another 69 billion dollars. Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before. We would suggest that this scenario must be the very definition of a failed public policy. This madness must cease!
The stated goals of current U.S.drug policy — reducing crime, drug addiction, and juvenile drug use — have not been achieved, even after nearly four decades of a policy of “war on drugs”. This policy, fueled by over a trillion of our tax dollars has had little or no effect on the levels of drug addiction among our fellow citizens, but has instead resulted in a tremendous increase in crime and in the numbers of Americans in our prisons and jails. With 4.6% of the world’s population, America today has 22.5% of the worlds prisoners. But, after all that time, after all the destroyed lives and after all the wasted resources, prohibited drugs today are cheaper, stronger, and easier to get than they were thirty-five years ago at the beginning of the so-called “war on drugs”.
With this in mind, we current and former members of law enforcement have created a drug-policy reform movement — LEAP. We believe that to save lives and lower the rates of disease, crime and addiction. as well as to conserve tax dollars, we must end drug prohibition. LEAP believes that a system of regulation and control of production and distribution will be far more effective and ethical than one of prohibition. We do this in hopes that we in Law Enforcement can regain the public’s respect and trust, which have been greatly diminished by our involvement in imposing drug prohibition. Please consider joining us.
You don’t have to be a cop to join LEAP! Find out more about us by reading some of the articles in our Publications section or by watching and listening to some of our multimedia clips,. You can also read about the men and women who speak for LEAP, and see what we have on the calendar for the near future.
Look at this video on YouTube.
I have been saying for years that all that is needed to kill the war machine is for people to stay home en masse, to stop feeding the machine, and that marching and demonstrating in the streets is useless. There is a reason why so many horror / disaster films feature empty streets as the ultimate nightmare:
The only way we can permanently stop war is to think obliquely use common sense and do not do anything that will not permanently fix what is wrong.
We had this debate on BLOGDIAL before the historic march organized by StopWar. Demonstrations are pointless because they do not achieve their ends, and the people who go on them are nothing more than stupid monkeys; the people who organize them are actually working for the enemy. Time and time again we have said this, (and other stuff) and had it proved, sadly.
Now the directors of this film, after everything we have said and witnessed are asking everyone to:
[…]
Now, it seems, the message has emerged into the infinitely dense inertia sump of the mass that the only way out is O.U.T.
This video is only the beginning. The next obvious step is for all those people to simply NOT PAY on the 15th.
This is all a consequence of the internets, some ideas whose time has come, and a shift in the mass that is unstoppable. The only choice that the enemy has is to be swept aside as the mass moves, like a glacier, crushing everything underneath it that is not part of it, carrying boulders along with it, carving out the landscape in its slow, majestic and inexorable way.
Global warming will not melt THIS glacier. No lie will penetrate it, or deflect it.
False flag terror has been de-fanged as a way to motivate the mass, thanks again to some great documentary films on the internets.
The ideas of liberty are now spreading geometrically to every corner of the mass on the globe. It is bigger than one man. This next action, and the actions to follow will have a profound, tangible, measurable effect that will be iterated again through the network that connects the mass, further empowering it in a feedback loop that will increase the density of the liberty idea within the mass, making it even more impenetrable, more able to absorb any lie, in the way that black holes absorb everything; but in the case of the mass, there is no event horizon. Ideas falling into the mass are actually absorbed and then destroyed.
This action is quite different to the feel good, useless, safety valve false maneuvers of demonstrations and marches, that feed back only despair, failure, exhaustion and an overwhelming feeling of impotence, smallness and hopelessness – just what the enemy and its witting and unwitting boosters have been using to corral the mass into acquiescence. Now, another type of feedback is building up, and its shrill shriek blots out the bleating of the ‘there is nothing we can do’ brigade of sheeple; it is a force field of feedback that uses the infinite gravity of the mass as its power source. All the old messages are dead. The old lies are crumbling under the tidal forces as the mass moves.
They are FINISHED!
Look at all the great comments over at this Guardian Blogs post:
Ron Paul places second in Nevada. Now that’s news. Bad news for Rudy Giuliani, whose Florida-or-bust strategy likely didn’t account for America’s mayor losing to the likes of Paul in Iowa and Michigan as well. Good news for Mitt Romney, who’s watching John McCain’s image recede in the rear-view mirror. For a few hours anyway. Interesting news for the rest of us. Does America really want a return to the gold standard? Concealed weapons to become commonplace? We know you Ron Paul supporters are online. Tell us what you think of the man’s coup earlier today
Hmph! Lets take a look:
Dr. Paul is the only uncorrupted and uncorruptible candidate running in the primaries for both parties.He is the only candidate that speaks humbly in terms of spending the people’s money and blood. Every other candidate speaks arrogantly of the “government’s” money, blood and resources.You trivialize the significance of his experience, his sincere empathy for this country’s history and that which is uniquely “American”, as well as the logic and breadth of his proposals by seizing upon a couple aspects of a very broad ideological discussion that has been going on for — well at least a hundred years.
Let me get this right. You would expect American voters to view as freakish a candidate who proposed the cessation of spending a trillion dollars a year of money borrowed from ideological adversaries simply in order to sponsor a military presence in 170 countries via 300 bases? To reject the only candidate that has proposed logical and sanely compassionate solutions for funding transitional economic and political solutions for a country on the verge of bankruptcy? You would expect American voters to reject a candidate that views the sacred function of government is to honor its founding covenants? You would expect American voters to view with contempt the only candidate that treats them as thinking citizens, capable of digesting the good, bad and ugly—and not subscribing to pandering, platitude and pervasive mendacity?And here is the real perversion of modern media. Here is the clarion call to citizens around the world that the almighty intellectually elite members of the vaunted fourth or fifth estate of “democracy” have subscribed to their own form of corruption.
This is a statesman whose campaign exists solely and thoroughly only through the contributions of individual donors. Did you hear that? Individual donors. Not Hillary’s and Obama’s $125 million of corporate donors, not the personal fortunes of one like Romney, not the insider connections of the apologist McCain—but regular folks.And we’re nationwide. And maybe some day in the future, we’ll go worldwide. And then maybe again the good and decent people in Europe, Russia, China, Asia, the Middle East will be able to understand what it means to be free. To be truly free.
Because what we are inheriting now is, in the end, slavery.
…
I wonder how the writers of our constitution would vote nowdays between the guy who:
1. wants money backed by something, or money backed by borrowing from the chinese?
2. Spreading our resourses so thin that we are effectively bankrupt and selling our industries to foreigners, or someone who wants to cut spending down to sustainable operations?
3. The guy that supports eroding personal liberties that they struggled so hard to achieve, or the guy that wants to keep big brother out of your business?It is no contest….
Ron Paul would win if the founding fathers were voting. Our country has drifted so far off course that most have lost sight of what is important. Studying history might give us an insight as to how the great nations of the past slipped into nothingness, but I suspect that it is really to late to stop our slide. We probably have to crash and burn before hopefully something better will crawl out of the ashes. Even then there will probably be some kind of NY Banker to extend him credit.
…
“Does America really want a return to the gold standard? Concealed weapons to become commonplace?” Second question first. The vast majority of US states already have liberal handgun carry permit laws that allow law-abiding citizens to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon. (Actually, in one or two states you don’t even need a permit.) As each of these laws was proposed, anti-gun propagandists predicted that an orgy of “wild-west” shootouts would result. They have been proven wrong. If anything, the implementation of liberal handgun carry legislation has been associated with slightly reduced levels of violent crime. The real question is whether people should be rendered defenseless against violent criminals who (we may be sure) will get guns, legally or not. Apparently that’s what you folks in Britain want. Maybe that’s why your levels of violent crime have gone up so much in recent years. First question. The idea of a gold- or commodity-backed standard is to control government spending. Can’t just print more gold. Also, the value of the money would be relatively stable, which helps people plan for the future. Sounds like a good idea to me.
I think its pretty clear, from these and the rest of the comments that people in the usa with at least one firing brain cell, understand that guns are not the issue, and that they actually supress crime levels.
Of all the issues Ron Paul stands for, this article, naturally, picks the most controversial. He may be right on the Gold standard and weapons, or not, but these are side issues. It would be silly to concentrate on those in a time when democracy is being replaced by a belligerent, mad plutocracy that plunges Western societies and the world into chaos and war.
that last one was a very insightful comment, and I agree with it; typical of the prissy, limp wristed fear-mongering, scared of loud noises, Health & Safety Fascist, nanny-statist, control freak, scumbag, lying mouth, traitor loo paper Guardian to focus on things that are just not central to the Ron Paul platform, but which immediately pander to the worst ‘instincts’ of the modern British; FEAR.
But I digress. I posted this because reading those comments helped to wipe away my despair at meeting two very stupid americans, who can be further explained by this, which comes from another comment on that page:
One of the best quotes I found out there which sums it up a bit is from gambling911.com: “Sadly, it has become clear that without a fair shake in the media, it is really difficult to make a realistic run for the White House. On a very unscientific survey of anecdotal evidence (something that seems to be just a reliable as the polling methods these day that all but inagurated Obama in New Hampshire) I have found that roughly 90% of the population has never heard Ron Paul’s message. However, of those that hear the whole message, and not the twisted distorted filtered garbage the main stream media puts out, 80% become supporters….Over and over I hear that people like Ron Paul, would love to have him as President, they believe in his views, but alas, they don’t think he can win so they are willing to vote for someone they don’t like who will give them things they don’t want and take away their rights and liberties. It boggles the mind.” Check out Ron for yourself. Tell your friends. The best place to point them if they show ANY interest at all is here: http://thecaseforronpaul.com
Boggles indeed.
Sadly, I will not be able to report to you wether or not those nincompoops did what they said they would do, and wether or not they changed their minds. That they are able to and do is all that counts in the end.
by Lew Rockwell
It was always Murray Rothbard’s argument that while we might from time to time be short-term pessimists, we should always be long term optimists, for many reasons from economics and history.And look at what Ron Paul has done. Building on an unmatched record in public life, and decades of serious study of Austrian economics, foreign policy, American history, and constitutional law and philosophy, he has led a movement that is rightly called a revolution.
That revolution has touched the hearts of young people–and not only young people–across the country and the world. The ideals of peace, free trade, non-intervention, the gold standard, free markets, private property, and civil liberties have never been spread so well and so widely.
The fact that up to 10% of the Republican Party base, people who have historically supported war, empire, managed trade, central banking, business regulation, and the police state–“red-state fascists,” as I have called them–is really something quite extraordinary. Among independents and some Democrats, we will do much better.
Libertarians have long exulted in Ed Clark’s almost-one percent. Ron has improved on Ed by 900%. The political fight is far from done, of course. Ron will campaign hard in Michigan, Nevada, South Carolinia, and all the Super Tuesday states. He will not give up. He will never give up.
From the standpoint of the right and good, Ron Paul and our ideas should have an easy victory. But when has that ever been true, in all of human history?
Ron and his revolutionaries face not only bad ideas from neoconservatism to socialism, but a vast apparatus of entrenched rip-off artists from the Fed and its big banks and investment houses, to the military-industrial complex. There is, we could say, much work to do, and Ron Paul will do it.
Through the primaries, the convention, and beyond, Ron and his movement will stand for liberty against its enemies. He will get more and more votes, and more and more supporters, to add to the hundreds of thousands already onboard. His presence on the national scene will only grow, and so will libertarian ideals. Murray loved Ron Paul, thought the world of him as a candidate in 1988 and as an intellectual, and so do all real libertarians and pro-liberty conservatives.
And now, by the way, on to Michigan, where people are really feeling the pain of the Fed’s deepening recession, and will be especially ready to hear Ron’s message of sound noney and no business cycles under freedom.
“Wilkes and Liberty” was the cry of English and American classical liberals in the 18th century, naming a parliamentary champion of free speech, free press, and civil liberties against government tyranny. From now on, the cry of every libertarian will be, “Ron Paul and Liberty”! We have much work to do.Roll up your sleeves and join our champion!
[…]
There are the problems of the vast apparatus of entrenched rip-off artists from the Fed and its big banks and investment houses, to the military-industrial complex, but there is also the problem of the army of sheeple, of Eloi, of nincompoops, of people who are physically incapable of thinking (low IQ), the hard headed, the habituated, the delusional. These people, all of them, HAVE THE VOTE.
People in the 18th century had common sense. Men who did not own property could not vote. What we have today is a population that is too stupid to vote. That anyone, anywhere in the world, other than his relatives, could vote for John McCain is (yet another) testament to the utter stupidity of the american public.
Am I advocating the disenfranchisement of vast swathes of the american public? Hmmm! What is the inevitable outcome of the current crop of imbeciles having the vote and unthinkingly electing anyone other than Ron Paul? It means the disenfranchisement of ALL americans forever, as america is dismantled and its broken carcass subsumed into a North American Union and then a world government like human flesh absorbed into The Blob. Wouldn’t it be better if we took away the vote from these cretins BEFORE america is lost forever? In the final analysis the phrase, ‘live free or die’ if taken literally means that a free man could not and can not tolerate what the mass of dunderheads are unleashing upon him and his family.
And there you have the thinking behind the people who are determined to absolutely control everyone everywhere. They came to this conclusion decades ago, and are making sure that no one can ever cast a vote that will take away their liberty, which in this case, is predicated upon their absolute control over the population. Either that, or its all happening at random and I’m not sure if that is a worse proposition to contemplate.
Back to John McCain…
This is a man who says that it “would be fine with me” if the americans stay in Iraq for 100 years. Out loud. In public. Quite apart from all of his other insane policies, this one phrase alone should scare the flesh off of any american. What he is advocating is literally, the complete extinction of America. This is the same public that now knows that the pretext for invading Iraq was a lie. This is the same public that now believes that ‘911 was an inside job‘. Wether or not you believe that 911 was an inside job or not, if the majority of people believe that it is true, how is it possible that anyone other than Ron Paul is getting the majority of votes in these primaries? How can he possibly be equal in numbers to Judy Ruliani, arch warmonger / fearmonger whose whole campaign centers around the very 911 that they all believe is at the very least, fishy?
It boggles the imagination.
A very clever man said just before he died:
[…]
We have had the two worst Prime Ministers in our history – Edward Heath (who dragooned us into the Common Market) and Tony Blair. The harm these two have done to Britain is incalculable and almost certainly irreparable.
Whether the public can be blamed for letting them pursue their ruinous policies is debatable.
Short of assassination there is little people can do when their political masters have forgotten the true meaning of the democracy of which they are forever prating, are determined to have their own way at all costs and hold public opinion in contempt.
[…]
When The Daily Mail prints an article saying that the only solution left is assassination, you know that there has been a sea change.
Live free or die. That phrase doesn’t mean ‘live free or commit suicide’. It means that you are willing to do anything unto death in order to be free. Disenfranchising the population, assassination, secession, suddenly people are actually talking about these options; not through desire for carnage and chaos and upheaval, but because every decent person has been backed into a corner and there is no way out.
A decent man with sons would not let the bovine majority cast a vote condemning his boys to be drafted into an insane man’s insane war. He has a few choices, and we all know that these choices have all been exercised in the recent past:
Have I left anything out?
Oh yes:
Think about it; you keep everything you own, you get to own whatever else you like, you become one of the bosses, and there are no repercussions because the long pigs are too stupid to understand what is going on right in front of their faces.
Now, less of the horrorshow.
There have been great movements on this planet that have achieved monumental change without catastrophic bloodletting. I have said it before over and over, the only thing that you need to do to defeat the warmongers is NOTHING. No marching, no confrontation, simply remove yourself, (O.U.T.), no more participation, no more contribution, no more cooperation, no more passive obedience, no more of anything or action that helps the system work, unless the country is completely restored, all unconstitutional laws struck down and America returns. This ‘Do Not’ idea, when propagated widely is so profoundly disruptive, so powerful and unstoppable, it can topple any infrastructure. Since it is an idea, you cannot kill it. No on is marching in the streets to be arrested. No one is pitting themselves against armored personnel of the war machine. There is nothing to attack, no one to peruse, no head to cut off and nothing to capture..except the minds of your neighbors.
I do not believe that violence is right or necessary. You can get everything you want without so much as a fist fight. Assassination, disenfranchisement and other forms of violence are what our enemies use; they are the solutions of the imagiiantionless, the weak minded, mean spirited…the bad guys.
Thanks to the way democracy works, there is going to be a permanent unrepresented majority who are fed up to the teeth. It is this huge population of people, numbering in the high tens of millions, who are the constituency of the free, the people who can tip the balance and force change. They are the artists, the writers, business men, scientists, the better educated, the smart; they are the ones who make everything run, and they are the ones who can bring it all to a halt should they choose to do so.
All without firing a shot, clenching a fist or appearing in public.
The dream scenario is that the system works and America changes course and the world is put off of high alert. But I have always said that, “dreams are for those who sleep” either way the power to end this is in our hands, at the ends of our fingertips.
So let’s end it.
Every person living in a sovereign state on the continent of Africa wants Ron Paul to be the next president of the USA.
Why?
Because he is going to dismantle the evil american empire. That means that plans for the Imperial outpost and control nexus AFRICOM will be scrapped, and they will be spared what many countries have suffered for decades; an invading army of bored soldiers pestering the local women, the CIA operating freely to topple governments and directly manipulate elections and business, etc etc. Had AFRICOM gone ahead as planned, it would have been….’a bad thing’.
The Way Ahead
AFRICOM is still in its early planning stages. The command began initial operations in October 2007 and is still formulating mission, staffing and location options.[…]
No, ‘jar heads’, that is not ‘the way ahead’, it is another step down the road to DISASTER and the end of America.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
All people all over the world want the old America back; the America everyone looked up to and cherished. This is probably our last chance to bring it back in our lifetime, and the enemy is trying its best to stop it from happening. They are getting desperate and brazen, like the people who control FOX News and their excluding of Dr. Paul.
Which brings us to…
The american mainstream media is digging deep to try and derail and smear Ron Paul; this time around the hideous grimacing jelly joweled troll they have put in the center of the tracks in front of the oncoming train with a ‘STOP’ sign is named ‘Jamie Kirchick’.
He has instantly been discredited thanks to the internets.
Ron Paul is not a racist. And just for the record, I would rather have an honest, strict constitutionalist racist in the white house than any of the people who are currently running for president.
Thankfully, that hypothetical scenario does not apply in any way to Dr.Paul:
January 8, 2008 5:28 am EST
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – In response to an article published by The New Republic, Ron Paul issued the following statement:
“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.
“In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person’s character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: ‘I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’
“This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It’s once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.
“When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”
[…]
It is interesting however, that the only things they can dig up about him are the things that he says, or is alleged to have said, and they can never attack his policies.
What this tells us is that his policies are 110% sound and unassailable.
Many years ago, May 1995 to be accurate, we dedicated a large section of issue 4 of our superb magazine Rivendell (named after a BBS, not LOTR btw!) to ‘Constitutions of the World’ – here are the parts:
Part2 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’
Part3 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’
Part4 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’
Part5 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’
Part6 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’
You can see from the content of that issue why people like us want Ron Paul to become president; he stands for everything that we believe in and that we have believed in for a very long time.
By STAN GOFF
For starters, I have become a single-issue voter. The two-front war in Iraq-Afghanistan continues to drag on; and I am thoroughly convinced that no viable Democratic nominee will stop these occupations.
The recent analysis by Allan Nairn shows that even the putative anti-war Edwards (who the press is smothering because of his anti-corporate declarations) has a backroom full of defense contractors. Clinton is a ruthless war-monger, period. Obama is employing on the sorriest, pro-Zioinist, neoliberal trash on the market, i.e., Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Clarke, and Dennis Ross, on his core advisory staff.
No one listens to me much, but in some fantasy world where they might, I would suggest that others follow suit with me here. In open primary states, cross over to vote in the Republican primaries for Ron Paul. In closed primary states, switch fast to Republican (like in the next few days).
Vote in the Republican primary; and vote for Ron Paul. Turnout will be dismally low for Republicans this year, because they have been demoralized by the Bush loons’ performances. Independents will vote Paul. The other Republicans are engaged in a fratricidal melee.
I already know what I am going to hear from all over the program-intoxicated, “I won’t endorse this-n-that position” liberal-left. Ron Paul is backward on abortion, passively racist, anti-immigrant, and on and on. Sorry, but I said I’d vote a dead cat that was anti-war before I’d vote a resurrected Eugene Debs if he showed up and supported the war. I meant that from my heart.
Cynthia McKinney is running Green, though she hasn’t got the nomination yet. Remember Cynthia McKinney? When she broke with the DLC diktat, her own party fronted another Black woman (Denise Majette) to run against her in an open primary, and Republicans crossed over massively to vote in the Democratic primary to unseat her in a foregone Democratic Congressional district.
Two can play that game. If Cynthia McKinney runs in 2008 for President, I’ll write her in if I have to just to burn a vote for Clinton or Obama. But meanwhile, Ron Paul is on our primary ballot (North Carolina), because he is running as a Republican (we have draconian ballot access conditions here for thrid-parties, thanks to — of course — Democrats).
Ron Paul is running for President. Just what are the capabilities of a President, and what are his likely courses of action… in the unlikely event he wins?
Well, he is the Commander-in-Chief, so he can bring the troops home immediately, as well as order the military-industrial complex to radically scale back. In case anyone on the left has missed the implications of this, this would be a profoundly anti-imperial development that would take the US boot off the necks of hundreds of millions of people around the world.
He is a libertarian who dislikes corporate subsidies, so he would veto the mega-billion dollar subisidies for Big Agra, Big Pharma, nuclear power company insurance policies, Weapons-R-Us, the ADM/Cargill Great Ethanol Scam,et al. He could veto the federal highway spending that is promoting sprawl. He has also stated that he opposed so-called free trade agreements.
Hello?
Don’t argue with libertarians when they are right. Many of them say that the leviathan-capitalists that dominate the world’s economy could not get as big as they are in an unfettered and unsubsidized market. Newsflash: that is actually true.
Ron Paul is a Gold Bug. For the uninitiated, that means he believes dollar-value should be pegged to a gold-standard. The implications of a return to the gold standard by the Fed are grim… for Wall Street and the military, both of which depend on massive foreign loans convered by runaway printing presses. Putting a stop to this is a Good Thing. What is the net effect?
Ron Paul may have the most outrageous personal account of race you might imagine; but what is the most horrific social catastrophe in the United States for Black and Brown folk? You guessed it: the criminal (in)justice system. The malignant growth of the American Gulag has been fueled — more than by any other cause — by the ever-more-punative criminalization of drug use and drug addiction, and the ability fo the criminal justice system to apply this criminalization with special force against African America and Hispano-Latinas. Here’s the thing. Paul opposes the criminalization of drugs. What is the net effect?
When we are at the point in history where we cannot change the electoral system, then we need to think tactically about what we can do right now. What will a Paul victory in the primaries do? Not whether a vote for Paul in the Republican primaries endorses his decentralizing philosophy on reproductive choice. President Paul will not be writing legislation. The Executive Branch decides how strongly to enforce legislation… like domestic spying fer-instance.
President Paul would close Guantanamo, halt CIA kidnappings, and gut the enforcement capacity for the PATRIOT Act.
Nominee Paul would give 2008 voters a choice between a real anti-war candidate and a phony Democratic equivocator. The intensity of anti-war sentiment in the country already forced ex-war-hawk Edwards to adopt an out-in-nine-months position to left flank his Democratic opponents.
Don’t ask yourself “what are the ideas?” If your toilet backs up, you can come up with a thousand ideas while shit-water cascades onto the floor. The question is not about ideas; it is, “What will be the net effect?”
Wanna throw a monkey wrench into a fixed electoral system? Here’s a chance.
Stan Goff is the author of “Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti” (Soft Skull Press, 2000), “Full Spectrum Disorder” (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and “Sex & War” which will be released approximately December, 2005. He is retired from the United States Army. His blog is at www.stangoff.com.
Goff can be reached at: stan@stangoff.com
[…]
And there you have it. Snarfed from Lew Rockwell who describes the above as:
Another Left-Liberal Supports Ron Paul
And smacks down some of the left’s dumb arguments against him.
Points of order; Ron Paul’s ideas on ‘race’ are not outrageous in any way – and the fact that Stan Goff calls people ‘black’ demonstrates that he knows less about people than Ron Paul does. But I digress. The rest of this is almost BLOGDIAL in its absolutely pure common sense.
I especially like the bit about your loo overflowing with shit; of course, on BLOGDIAL we say, “if your loo is overflowing and the poop, pee water and used partially disintegrated loo roll is about to spill over the edge, you do not sit there and call for a white paper, go on a demonstration or write to your MP…you get the plunger and start MAKING IT GO DOWN!” … and you do this BEFORE the ‘shit-water’ even gets to the edge; as soon as you see it rising, you ACT QUICKLY.
Sadly, for america and the rest of the world, the loo has already overflowed and we are all walking in an inch of filthy water. Its not too late to call in the plumber though, and his name is RON PAUL.
Beech wood fires are bright and clear,
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut only good they say,
If for long ’tis laid away
Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last.
It is, by the Irish said,
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E’en the very flames are cold.
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.
Apple wood will scent your room
With an incense like perfume,
Oak and maple, if dry and old,
Keep away the winter’s cold.
But ash wood wet or ash wood dry,
A king shall warm his simpers by.
A rainy New Year’s day spent cosy and warm in the glow from our Morsø stove. Not even dressed and sodden with botrytis.
A most relaxing 2008 to you all.