There have been some great demos in the post recently. A DVD:

and a cassette:

are two examples.

Both of these were intriguing in content and presentation. Neither had begging letters in them with attached ‘band’ photos, shitty lyrics, sob stories, threats or other nonsense that we throw straight into the bin. The DVD came by itself in the Jiffy® bag you see, in a plain black case. The cassette came in a hand cut cardboard box. The case had a hand folded liner on fine paper and the only writing in the whole package was the stamp that you see on the body of one side of the housing.

This is more like what we want!

Stranger Magazine is out, and it has an article about Numbers Stations in it…

What a beautiful magazine, and what a beautiful way to preview it!

And I have just been informed by Der Kopf that ‘Strich’ is back on the air, after a ten year absence. This makes us ask several questions:

• Who has ordered this station back on to the air?
• Who is this station transmitting to?
• Are the messages going to the same people that used to receive Stritch messages?
• What have these people been doing for ten years?
• Why are they using Strich instead of some new structure?
• Has Stritch been taken over by western agencies?
• What are these Stritch agents up to right now that necessitates the use of Numbers Stations?
• Is this why we cannot get a first hand account? (i.e. all the staffers are still on duty and not retired after the ‘end of the Cold War).

Stranger and stranger Magazine.

Ending on a triplet!!!

Interested in the facts behind the new twenty pound note? You need to listen to these two clips:

[…]

http://mises.org/money/2s5.asp

Some Graffiti

Where I found it

Someone’s lost keys with a strange keyring

You must watch Afro Samurai. The music is by The RZA. It is a stone cold classic.

Jean Baudrillard

There are 2.1 million families in the USA who home school. They sometimes come under attack from simpletons and busy bodies who report them anonymously to the authorities. Clearly, a massive educational campaign on what home schooling is needs to be mounted, so that everyone everywhere understands that not only is it harmless, but that it is superior to sending your child to a school.

Read this account of how a home schooling family was falsely accused, and how they stood up for their rights. Sadly in a country like Germany or the UK where there is no constitution at all, you have no rights.

Social Worker Applauds Family for Standing on Constitutional Rights!

In our 24 years of dealing with social workers and anonymous tips, we’ve found it is extremely rare a social worker ever recognizes or seeks to protect a family’s rights. Well, one HSLDA member family recently investigated for false allegations had a happy ending!

The Hayes family from Lapeer, Michigan, was surprised to find themselves under investigation for child abuse. A social worker came to their door, asked if they were homeschooling and was told there were allegations against them that they were “isolating” and “not taking care of their children.”

Although the family was indeed homeschooling, the allegations of abuse were completely false.

The Hayes called the Home School Legal Defense Association and spoke with Senior Counsel Chris Klicka. Klicka told the family about the importance of standing up for their constitutional rights and recommended they have people in the community send reference letters to the social worker. Klicka then explained to the social worker their Fourth Amendment rights in a follow-up letter.

Based on this information, the Hayes did a wonderful job of showing social worker that they were not hiding anything by refusing entrance to their home, but were merely exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Although the Hayes had been told by relatives who are social workers that they should just do whatever the social worker wanted or they would think they were guilty, the Hayes took the advice of Klicka. They firmly but politely told the social worker that when they talked with her it would be outside of their home.

The social worker was at first leery of this unusual insistence, but soon realized that the family was just exercising their constitutional right to be secure in their home and free from unreasonable searches. By taking Klicka’s advice and politely standing on their rights, the family was able to talk with the social worker and have the investigation completed right then on their doorstep—without the earlier demand to interview their children!

HSLDA Social Services Contact Policy

We desire to assist and advise our members in every contact with a social worker and/or police officer in the investigation resulting from allegations of abuse or neglect. If homeschooling is an issue, we will represent our member families until the issue is resolved. On Fourth Amendment unreasonable search and seizure issues, HSLDA will assist and advise our members whenever the privacy of their home is violated by forced or coerced entry for the purpose of an unsubstantiated investigation. HSLDA membership benefits do not extend to court actions resulting from non-homeschooling matters. However, in circumstances where there is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, HSLDA may, as we have done in the past, choose to take the case in an effort to establish legal precedent.

[…]

http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/mi/200703020.asp

And there you have it. In a country with a properly written constitution you can point to clearly defined rights beyond which the state cannot go. Any agent of the state has to show probable cause to enter your house; they cannot just show up and then demand to enter your house because some anonymous caller said, “bad guys live there”. This is essential to the rights of man, and a properly written constitution protects everyone so that they do not have to fight every day of their lives for their natural rights, like the poor suckers in the UK do.

This is why it is such a terrible tragedy that the constitution is being dismantled in the USA…but I digress. Home schoolers in the UK need to be aware that it is their right to educate their children in whatever way they wish. This is not a matter of the efficiency or inefficiency of the state school system, but rather one of your fundamental rights as a human being. Your children are not the property of the state. They are your responsibility. The state has no right to impart its philosophies onto your children. They have no right to indoctrinate them. They have no right to specify what you should or should be teaching as a home schooler. They have no right to inspect you. They have no right to compel you to register as a home schooler. If they try and do any of the above, they are essentially turning you and your children into property.

Their property.

I doubt very much wether the DfES would order that Islamic schools should teach that all religions are equal (for example). And this is another factor of this intrusion. First they will set the precedent with home schoolers that the state has the right to set the curriculum for all children. Then they will go after the schools that do not follow the national curriculum and compel them to do so. There are several schools in the UK which are philosophy based and which do not follow the national curriculum; if the goal of this totalitarian government is to create a uniform population, then these schools must be made to conform or be closed down.

This sinister, and purely evil policy must be disobeyed by all. That much is clear. What is also clear is that we need to mount an information war against this emerging policy. It would also be a good idea to set up a toothed organization like this one that actually has the power to protect its members from abuse:

Superintendent Demands Homeschoolers Register

The George* family recently started homeschooling. However, right after they began their homeschool program, Mrs. George received a phone call from the district’s regional superintendent. The superintendent informed Mrs. George that he needed to meet with her and Mr. George so that the family could show him their curriculum, assignments from their son, as well as any tests that they gave to him. The superintendent indicated that he must meet with them in order to verify that the Georges were, in fact, giving their son a quality education.

Mr. and Mrs. George’s homeschool program fulfills all requirements of Illinois law, and thus is a legal private school program. As the administrators of their private school, the parents are qualified to verify the student’s educational status. Nowhere in the law does it state that the superintendent has the right to demand to meet the administrators of a private school or to see the curriculum, assignments, and tests of a private school.

When HSLDA was informed of the superintendent’s demands, HSLDA’s Senior Counsel Chris Klicka immediately sent a letter to the superintendent explaining that Illinois law does not give him any legal right to take responsibility for a homeschool family.

The family has not been bothered further by the school district.

* Name changed to protect family’s privacy.

My emphasis.

It seems like the ‘George’ family have had to jump through some hoops to protect their rights, but they are able to do so, and when they came under attack, there was someone there upon who they could call to vigorously defend their rights, and put pay to the interfering tomfoolery of the state.

If the British Home Schoolers do not wake up and start to get angry, they will be steamrollered and their children made into property.

Brother, I’ll drink to that!

Most people reading Cryptogon inside the U.S./Britain are familiar with nonstop feelings of impending doom and frequently asking themselves questions like:

Am I next?
Is this it?
Can I escape?
Is it too late?
Has everyone gone nuts?
Have I gone nuts?
Is this job killing me?
What booze is on sale?
etc. etc.

That was what it was like inside my head for about two years before I bought my one way ticket to New Zealand.

What was the actual escape like for me?

After a couple of hectic days of selecting what to take with me, and what to leave behind, the time arrived for me to get to the airport.

As I was groped and fondled by defenders of the Homeland at airport security, I went into a kind of dreamlike trace. “Will I make it out to the other side of this thing?” I wondered. The cacophony of the checkpoint became a sort of languid hum. The fat TSA employee started to move its lips, but I don’t remember what it said. I complied, on some instinctual level. A few minutes later, I was standing just beyond the security checkpoint, holding my shoes and belt in one hand, and my falling down pants with the other.

I exchanged a couple of brief, humiliated, what-just-happened-to-us? kind of looks with other travelers, many of whom were not Americans, and not used to being treated like that.

I walked to the appropriate Air New Zealand gate and sat down. I took my mobile phone out and called a couple of people to say one last goodbye. Then I called the voice mail system for my phone and changed the greeting to something close to this:

“Hi, you have reached Kevin. I have left the United States and don’t have any plans to return. Goodbye.”

Minutes later, hundreds of people, including me, took our seats in the belly of the large white bird. Minutes after that, it hurdled down the runway and out over the Pacific Ocean, veering South and West. I’ve never been able to sleep on aircraft before. But I did on that flight.

Once I was in Auckland, I had to catch another flight to reach the Far North, my wife (she went over a few weeks before me) and my new family. I walked to the domestic departures area in the Auckland airport and asked an Air New Zealand employee where the security checkpoint was, because I somehow wound up at the gate without passing through one.

“There is no security checkpoint for domestic flights, sir.”

You can imagine my shock at this remarkable statement.

“There’s no security checkpoint?!” I asked.

“Nope. Not for domestic flights,” she smiled.

I felt like dropping to the ground and kissing the polyester airport carpet, but I didn’t.

I took a seat and mumbled to myself, “I’m not even out of the airport and things already seem better here.” That was my first big epiphany in New Zealand, and they just kept happening. (Maybe someday I’ll write more about this. In short, if you’re having doubts about the lies you’ve been taught all your life about the U.S., run with those feelings. Run for your life.)

When I read the story below, I wondered, “How long has it been since I escaped America?” As of today, I have been in New Zealand for exactly one year. On reflection, I think back on my life in America as a vague and distant nightmare. The United States has became a vast nut house inside a debtor prison. I’m still not over the euphoria of being out. […]

http://cryptogon.com/?p=448

The world this week
A look at what could be dominating the headlines around the world this week – and some key background on those events.

Greenland became the first entity to vote to leave what is now the EU 25 years ago. People voted 52%-46% to withdraw from a body they had joined as part of Denmark before winning home rule in 1979.

[…]

BBQ

This was snarfed from a BBQ ‘What we will lie about next week‘ page, in this case, the 23rd of February 2007.

This is odd; Greenland left what was to become the EU in 1985, so why is this going to be a headline in the near future?

Hmmmmmm!

Everyone and their dog knows that Great Britain needs to leave the EU as a first step towards ensuring the longevity of freedom in this country.

If Greenland can do it, then Britain can do it.

Greenland is responsible for all of its standards, its way of life, its laws, its immigration policing … everything.

That is the way it should be.

York Stories

Local interest… but in the writing of this York resident I find a relaxing, interesting, sensitive persona with a true and deep empathy for the city and what it can mean to live somewhere one finds so special. In particular, the reviews of walks in coutryside around the city have been inspiring. Every time I visit the site, I think this person would be nice to bump into and chat with in a pub, after a nice, relaxing wander by the river.

Dotted!

Maine overwhelmingly rejected federal requirements for national identification cards on Thursday, marking the first formal state opposition to controversial legislation scheduled to go in effect for Americans next year.

Both chambers of the Maine legislature approved a resolution saying the state flatly “refuses” to force its citizens to use driver’s licenses that comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real ID Act. It asks the U.S. Congress to repeal the law.

The vote represents a political setback for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Republicans in Washington, D.C., which have argued that nationalized ID cards for all Americans would help in the fight against terrorists.

“I have faith that the Democrats in Congress will hear this from many states and will find a way to repeal or amend this in the coming months,” House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview after the vote. “It’s not only a huge federal mandate, but it’s a huge mandate from the federal government asking us to do something we don’t have any interest in doing.”

The Real ID Act says that, starting around May 2008, Americans will need a federally approved ID card–a U.S. passport will also qualify–to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take advantage of nearly any government service. States will have to conduct checks of their citizens’ identification papers, and driver’s licenses likely will be reissued to comply with Homeland Security requirements.

In addition, the national ID cards must be “machine-readable,” with details left up to Homeland Security, which hasn’t yet released final regulations. That could end up being a magnetic strip, an enhanced bar code or radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.

The votes in Maine on the resolution were nonpartisan. It was approved by a 34-to-0 vote in the state Senate and by a 137-to-4 vote in the House of Representatives.

Other states are debating similar measures. Bills pending in Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana and Washington state express varying degrees of opposition to the Real ID Act.

Montana’s is one of the strongest. The legislature held a hearing on Wednesday on a bill that says “The state of Montana will not participate in the implementation of the Real ID Act of 2005” and directs the state motor vehicle department “not to implement the provisions.”

Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project, said he thinks Maine’s vote will “break the logjam, and other states are going to follow.” (The American Civil Liberties Union has set up an anti-Real ID Web site called Real Nightmare).

Pingree, Maine’s House majority leader, said the Real ID Act would have cost the state $185 million over five years and required every state resident to visit the motor vehicle agency so that several forms of identification–including an original copy of the birth certificate and a Social Security card–would be uploaded into a federal database.

[…]

News Dot Com

Well well well.

Does this mean that the drivers licenses from that Maine will not be good for travel inside the other areas of Soviet America? If that is the case, the free citizens of Maine will go berserk with rage when they are routinely denied travel ‘rights’ or are perpetually strip searched because they have deviant drivers licenses. This is commonly known as ‘discrimination’.

It is also what we call ‘soft compulsion’; make them need REALID by causing their lives to become impossible without it. Are all the banks in Maine who are going to be forced to require REALID for all transactions going to be under different rules than the rest of Soviet America? Will they then be prevented from making transfers to other banks from customers who have not presented REALID? These are the questions that come to mind. Hell, forget all of that, will they be able to drive cars in other states?

Maine is going to have to become like another country entirely if they are going to separate themselves from the biometric net. Its called secession, and it will be the best thing for them. They will have their international airport, where USVISIT will not exist, and then once again, at least in one place, america will start looking like America. With a capital ‘A’. Most importantly they will have their own foreign relations, ensuring that they have real, long term security at zero cost.

In a properly federated country, stuff like this can happen. After everything, this total nightmare, like I said before, if any country can come back from the brink of total destruction, it is the United States of America. These are the people who went to the moon, who built the internets…there was no place like it on earth.

And I’m not just saying that.

The question is, is this the beginning of the end for the biometric net? Will Maine and the other ‘REAL-AMERICA’ states get away with this?

I sure hope so.

Gun shots ring out in the Bagdad night
Enter GI Joe in the Palace hall.
He sees the Iraqis in a pool of blood,
Cries out, praise god, we killed them all!
Here comes the story of Saddam Hussein,
The man the The Great Satan came to blame
For somethin that he never done.
Hanged in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.

Three bodies lyin there does GI see
And another man named Musta, movin around mysteriously.
Thats the way we do it, he says, and he throws a grenade
We are robbin your country, I hope you understand.
And we aint leavin, he says, and he stops
Its a hard job being here like we’re your cops.
And forever wer’re gonna be your cops
And they arrive on the scene with IEDs flashin
In the hot bagdad night.

Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Achmed and a couple of friends are drivin around.
Owner of ‘best taxi driver of Bagdad’ crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
When GIs pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that.
In Bagdad thats just the way things go.
If youre Iraqi you might as well not show up on the street
less you wanna draw the heat.

Achmed had a partner and he had a rap for the cops.
Him and Jamal were just out drivin around
He said, I saw two men runnin out, they looked like terrorists
They jumped into a white car clenching their fists.
And miss GI just shook her head.
She said, wait a minute, boys, these ones aint dead
So they shot them there for all to see
And though these two could hardly more innocent be
They told all that they may have been guilty men.

Four in the mornin and they haul Rashid in,
Take him to Abu Ghraib and they bring him downstairs.
Lyndie looks out through one open eye
Points, glad you brought him in boys! he ready to die?
Yes, heres the story of Saddam Hussein,
The man the The Great Satan came to blame
For somethin that he never done.
Hanged in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.

Four months later, Bhagdad is in flame,
Chavez in south america, fightin for his name
While Haliburton still in the robbery game
Jihadi are puttin the screws to GI, lookin for somebody to blame.
Remember that murder called ‘911’?
Remember the man who they said got it done?
You think he’d like to play ball with the law?
Think it might-a been that phantom that you saw in Pakistan?
Just you forget the name of that man.

Dumb Joe Sixpack said, Im really not sure.
Uncle Sam said, a poor boy like you could use a break
You just dont get it, you dont know what’s at stake
Now you dont wanta have to pay five bucks a gallon.
Youll be doin society a favor.
That sonofabitch is brave and gettin braver.
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this nukular gig on him
He aint no gentleman jim.

Saddam could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much.
Its my work, hed say, and I do it for play
And when its over Id just as soon go on my way
Up to some paradise
Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice
And ride a virgin along a trail.
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man into a mouse.

All of Saddam’s cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance.
The judge made Saddam’s witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the Arab folks he was just a crazy nigger.
Not one doubted that he coulda pulled the trigger.
And though they could not produce the gun,
The judge said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white military jury agreed.

Saddam Hussein was falsely tried.
The crime was mass murder, guess who testified?
Only his enemies and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride.
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of Uncle Sam’s hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to be from a land
Where justice is a game.

Now USUK criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Saddam got hung in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell.
Thats the story of Saddam Hussein,
But it wont be over till they clear his name
And leave the land he was from.
Hanged in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.

Thanks Bob… And thanks to the dude who mailed it to me.

Spire on Saturday was extremely good. First some great beer in KoKo bar (Goodramgate), which used to be a fabulous shop selling a myriad of bottled beers and now a lovely, cosy bar run by the same man. From the window we watched images of the East Window of the Minster projected onto the scaffolding that will continue to cover it for years to come.

The concert itself was a mix of classical, religious organ pieces, some accompanied by piano and tape, some vocal pieces, some individual chants, and solo offerings from Fennesz, Jeck and BJ Nilsen. Fennesz played in the Chapterhouse, with transmission into the Nave. It was interesting to wander from one place to the other, feeling the changing acoustics and feel of the rather subdued (for Fennesz) sounds.

For me, Jeck was the surprising highlight. From listening close to his set-up at the front of the Nave,  I wandered to the far end. Here, instead of the intense, personal feel of close quarters, his samples and loops of various organ and church sounds filled the huge space wondrously. It felt like the memories of centuries of ceremonies breathed themselves from the stones to fill the void. Something vaguely familiar, borderline comforting, yet still ethereal and untouchable swirled around, the huge and reverberating space preventing the sounds from coming into anything but the softest of focus.

Nilsen tried his best to send everyone into a coma, and it failed to move me at all. However, a final set of organ and vocal pieces including some Pärt sent me home with a warm glow inside.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/proginfo.shtml

The Sky at Night.

For whenever you have a spare 20 minutes, discover a beautiful little part of the universe.

Telegraph Online

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 2:33am GMT 04/12/2006

The first signs of a significant popular revolt against the Government’s identity card scheme have been uncovered by a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph.

It suggests that hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions, would refuse to register on the proposed database that will underpin the scheme, even if this meant a fine or going to jail.

Despite ministerial claims during the passage of the ID Cards Act through parliament that there was widespread public support for the multi-billion pound plan, the opinion survey shows a country split in two on the issue. It also indicates growing public concern at the encroachment of the so-called “surveillance society”, with large proportions suspicious of the Government’s intentions…

Telegraph

The sleeper is awakening!