Forwarded from Leslie Barson:

I am sending on a copy of an email (with permission) recieved on the Learning Unlimited list in the hope that someone who is closer to Stanstead may be able to help this fmaily for a few days…. If you think you can help please email Aldona directly at ‘aldona99 (at) yahoo.com’. You can also pass this on to any list you think might be appropriate. Thanks Leslie

Hello dear friends,

I’m trying to help a displaced family get out of Europe to N.America who have fled Germany a few months ago, and are hiding out in another country. They have twins, 10 yrs. old that have gone through alot in the past 12 months. They have become very fragile, are clinging to their parents, and literally have anxiety attacks when they encounter people speaking german. One of the twins is very sick, and really needs to take doses of oxygen throughout the day. The boys have not been to a decent doctor in months. Now they have the possibility of getting to their destination, thanks to donations made by caring people, but they need to make the trip as short as possible, and as cheap as possible, since its the 4 of them.

I’ve managed to find a flight directly from London Heathrow to Calgary, but they first need to get to London, so there’s a flight for practically pennies (well, you still have to add the taxes… ) into Stanstead a day or two before they fly for Canada.

The father has good prospects of getting a job with one of the job hunters they have been in contact with for almost 6 months already.

I’m actually hoping to find someone in the London or airport areas who could find the time, space and compassion to help this family get to their destination. This really reminds me of two historical events…. the time when the the slaves were helped and when the jews were being scurried out of the country and out of harm’s reach.

The dates would be around Easter time… between April 8-10, around that time frame. I’ll have more details soon. If someone could find some time at a more opportune time for them we could eventually postpone the trip a few days…

Thank you all for all the moral support you’ve given hundred of homeschoolers throughout the past few years…

Most Sincerely, Aldona Guenter in Germany

This is a sad story, and really, it is less about home schooling and more about the principles of freedom.

This family has been forced to flee Germany. They have been made to pack up and leave their homes so that they can follow their principles, whatever they may be. This is wrong. By being forced to leave their homes in this way, they have been deprived of their right to their property, and the right to be secure in their homes. All decent countries have these rights written down unambiguously.

Western countries need all the decent families that they can get. Their societies are having trouble on many fronts; moral decline and a population decline to name but two.

Home Schoolers are being actively courted in more advanced countries like the USA. They understand that Home Schooled children are a precious resource; Universities and employers both are scrambling for these individuals.

If all the home schoolers in Germany, around 500 families, are forced to flee to free countries, this would constitute a significant ‘brain drain’; and Germany would be the loser. In practicing their insane ideas about creating a homogenous society, they are expelling the very people they need to bring sparkle, decency and variety to their society all of which are essential to any nations health.

The Germans have a history of doing this. They did the same thing with their absurd ideas about ‘Jewish Physics‘ which stopped them from getting the Atomic Bomb. But that was a good thing.

The fact is that a society that is completely homogenous cannot come up with the great ideas; it is doomed to wither and stagnate. It is analogous to the health and life of languages; English is a very strong and healthy language because it willingly includes words from other languages into its base. Other languages that resist new words from other cultures stagnate and are supplanted by English. The French (who have just passed some new and stupid anti-home schooling laws) use a special government department that controls additions to the French language. They are a culture under siege, and persecuting their home schoolers will only make it worse. Luckily there is a place in Canada where they can home school freely AND speak French, Quebec, should they need to escape.

The Societies that have different philosophies (running inside the national culture, i.e. speaking English in England and French in France) flourishing freely inside them are stronger, more innovative, able to ‘come up with the goods’ more often, and are better places to live in. Germany is the opposite of this. It is a bad place to live, a place where your ideas, (and by extension, you) are considered worthless by everyone.

Perhaps a society like Germany cannot be trusted with the precious families that home school. Canada and the United States will reap the benefits of these families and their children, and the ripples of this transferral will propagate down the generations, improving those countries while Germany becomes like an old vine unable to produce grapes.

I hope you will be able to send this family a little something to help them rebuild their lives.

Staff in every nursery in England will monitor children from birth on their progress towards a set of 69 Government “early learning goals”. These goals cover the skill levels expected of five-year-olds in reading, writing and rudimentary maths.

Parents’ groups attacked the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum, which will be a legal requirement for all childminders and children’s centres from September 2008.

Margaret Morrissey, from the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said: “I think it’s really sad that we have reached the point now where instead of reducing children’s stress we have increased it.

“Will nurseries be worrying more about children reaching these targets than caring for our children?

“It worries me that we are expecting children to reach these targets when they have not even had their first birthday.”

The Department for Education published practice guidance alongside the curriculum document, detailing how childcare staff should assess the progress children make at different ages.

Babies from the age of birth to 11 months should be assessed for “the different ways babies communicate – such as gurgling when happy”, the guidance said.

At this age, babies “communicate in a variety of ways including crying, gurgling, babbling and squealing”.

Staff were advised to record how babies under 11 months old “begin to explore their own movements”, mimic adults’ facial expressions and “gaze” at things that interest them.

Under the section dealing with learning to write, babies between birth and 11 months should be observed for the “random marks” they make in their food, the guidance said.

To help develop the early numeracy skills of babies under 11 months, nurseries should display toys and objects like fir cones or shells in small groups and as single items.

Staff should then record “the attention that young babies give to changes in the quantity of objects or images they see, hear or experience.” […]

Daily Mail

I am not making this up, obviously.

These are the insane people who want to control every aspect of life from the cradle to the grave, starting with how often you, “goo goo, gaa gaa” as an infant.

And that is completely GA GA.

One comment on this site says it all:

Moral: don’t put your baby in a nursery; look after it yourself. If you can’t do that, it probably means you shouldn’t have had the poor mite in the first place.

– Jane, Preston, England.

Amen.

Adam Curtis, who made the documentaries ‘The Power of Nightmares‘ and ‘Century of the Self‘ has his new work broadcast by BBQ2: ‘The Trap’. This first installment is up to his usual high standards.

Its thesis is fascinating, and is similar to ‘Century of the Self’; a clutch of academics come up with ways of explaining the world that can be applied directly to human affairs, inagination-less politicians read their works, become enamored by them, implement them, and the side effects are entirely negative.

In this installment, the academic is John Nash, (who the insightful Mimi Majick immediately identified as being Autistic), whose work at The Rand Corporation and his “Nash Equilibrium” equations helped form the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Please watch this installment for the background.

Curtis explains clearly how the “Nash Equilibrium” works, and my first thoughts were these:

Equilibrium is a state that can be found at a large number of points in a dynamic system. Some we want, and some we do not want. If M.A.D. were carried out, we would reach equilibrium where no one had nuclear weapons and the threat would be over. There could be described as the equilibrium of unburied death. But that is just one possible outcome, one possible point of equilibrium, out of a near infinite number of possibilities.

We are all familiar with coupled pendulums, and multiple magnet toys. These dynamic systems take a very few elements running on simple rules which when coupled together, create a system that is impossible to predict, yet which operates within a gamut that can be unambiguously written out and expressed as a formula.

Human beings, when they are left to their own devices will interact in the same way and out of this will emerge a dynamic system. We can loosely predict the states generated by the result of huge human populations interacting as individuals, and we can cause changes in the states of these populations by increasing or decreasing inputs like V.A.T., propaganda or legislation.

Think of a stream of water coming out of tap. We have all played around with them. the shape of the falling water is constant when the speed of the water is not varied and the slightest increase or decrease can change it from drips a braided stream a spluttering gush or any one of an infinite number of variations in between. The point is that there is no one way to achieve any particular state of equilibrium, and we have to strive for an equilibrium that is desirable, not undesirable.

Nash did work that expressed in a formula how people could always make an optimum decision when they are interacting in an adversarial game. His theories work from the position that people are selfish, that they are adversarial, suspicious of each other trying to ‘figure out’ what their fellow man is going to do at any time, by nature. This is where Mimi Majick chimed in with, “That guy is AUTISTIC!“.

If Nash is autistic (at the very least, the documentary says that he was suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia when he did his award winning work) then it would make perfect sense that this is how he saw other people; sufferers of Autism cannot put themselves into the minds of other people; they cannot read other people’s faces or emotions; they live in a confusing world where other people’s behavior cannot be predicted. It is a frustrating world for them, and the have to devise their own strategies and rules of thumb to get along in situations that we all take for granted.

Nash, being a gifted mathematician will have applied his powerful skills to this ‘problem’, as it would have been very troubling to him that for all his life he could never read the emotional states and more importantly, the intentions, of other people.

The implications of this are frightening. Following Nash’s work was wrong not only because there are an infinite number of points of equilibrium in human interactions that are all possible (and more preferable), but because policy has been built around the affliction of an Autistic man, whose world view is totally abnormal and in fact, inhuman.

I can give two examples of humans reaching mutually beneficial equilibrium through the opposite of Nash’s distorted world view of inherent human distrust and selfishness.

The first is amongst the rough diamond dealers in Antwerp. Orthodox Jews in Antwerp can do diamond deals worth any amount of money and pay with slips of paper in exchange for goods. These ‘IOUs’ are as good as money. They all trust each other totally. This community has less friction than communities where there is distrust; you can do a deal anywhere and with confidence. You don’t have to run security checks or any of the high friction malarky that distrustful communities and relationships are burdened with. Everyone trusts each other, everyone makes a profit. No one is cheated. The community is in equilibrium, and the only way it can work is if everyone trusts each other.

The other example is that of Free Software and Open Source Software. In these software communities, everyone is generous and not selfish. We have all seen (and you are reading this on the results of) this approach. It has literally changed the world, for the better, and we are moving toward an equilibrium state where everyone has free software, all are benefitting, and anyone can make money off of the free software.

Imagine if Eric S Raymond worked for The Rand Corporation, and instead of the literally sick and abnormal world view of Nash, we had a variation of The Cathedral and the Bazar as the starting point for the position that we are in now. I think we would all be better off.

Perhaps in the future we will see a documentary describing how little know men like Richard Stallman implemented radical ideas that spread throughout society, changing it for the better.

I’m looking forward to the other parts of this documentary.

Tony Blair is facing fresh criticism over identity cards after saying police would be able to use the national database to check fingerprints found at crime scenes.

The Prime Minister was accused of “changing his tune” on ID cards after using the argument to reassure opponents of the controversial scheme. The Government insisted there was nothing new in his comments and that the police provision was set out explicitly in legislation passed by Parliament.

But the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said they never realised police would be allowed to go on “fishing expeditions”.

Evening Standard

So they voted on it without understanding what it was they were voting for.

This is why all countries need a constitution. The legislature is so ignorant, so over worked, so stupid that they cannot be trusted to write anything but the most mundane pieces of law.

Everyone has been saying this for ages. ‘Frances Stonor Saunders‘ laid out the true nature of the ID card scheme clearly and succinctly, and her piece was read by millions of people.

How could they possibly not understand exactly what this bad idea really means?

What is encouraging is this; as everyone starts to understand what this system will really do, it will cause an explosion of pure outrage. It might take a demonstration of how evil it is for this outrage to be manifested, but make no mistake, it will happen, and this scheme will be totally dismantled.

After this happens, people will be made aware of how precious their privacy is, and they will protect it with more vigor and attention. Its like having your car broken into; once it happens, you think differently about parking your car and what you leave in it. You are suddenly made aware of the true reality, and this permanently changes your outlook forever. The ID card scheme will do and is doing this to the British population.

The next ‘revelation’ people will make is that the card itself is meaningless. You become the card with this biometric ID scheme. The police or anyone anywhere can id you by your fingerprint. You don’t have your card on you? No problem, put your thumb on the scanner please sir. And that will not be a request.

Police will have hand held scanners as I wrote about in January 2004. You will not have to carry your card to be identified. In fact, if you go to a public place and leave your prints, someone with access (i.e. anyone with some money) will be able to access the NIR and find out you were there.

It is clear that these MPs do not know what they are talking about, because they keep talking about the cards and not the NIR which is the true evil in this idea.

The next round of articles will centre on the NIR and how it is a grave threat, and how they ‘didn’t understand what it really meant’ when they voted for it.

Just you watch.

“What about the socialization?” One occasionally hears this question with regard to homeschooling.

Here’s a quote from psychology professor Richard G. Medlin’s article, “Home Schooling and the Question of Socialization,” Peabody Journal of Education, Vol. 75 (2000): 107-23.

Shyers (1992a, 1992b), in the most thorough study of home-schooled children’s social behavior to date, tested 70 children who had been entirely home-schooled and 70 children who had always attended traditional schools. The two groups were matched in age (all were 8-10 years old), race, gender, family size, socioeconomic status, and number and frequency of extracurricular activities. Shyers measured self-concept and assertiveness and found no significant differences between the two groups.

The most intriguing part of the study, however, involved observing the children as they played and worked together. Small groups of children who all had the same school background were videotaped while playing in a large room equipped with toys such as puzzles, puppets, and dolls. The children were then videotaped again in a structured activity: working in teams putting puzzles together for prizes.

Each child’s behavior was rated by two observers who did not know whether the children they were rating were home-schooled or traditionally schooled. The observers used the Direct Observation Form of the Child Behavior Checklist . . . , a checklist of 97 problem behaviors such as argues, brags or boasts, doesn’t pay attention long, cries, disturbs other children, isolates self from others, shy or timimd, and shows off. The results were striking — the mean problem behavior score for children attending conventional schools was more than eight times higher than that of the home-schooled group. Shyers (1992a) described the traditionally schooled children as “aggressive, loud, and competitive” (p. 6). In contrast, the home-schooled children acted in friendly, positive ways.

[…]

http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com/

Kim Jong-il’s painful trip to dentist

The Deal Leader was said to have been stoical throughout

The Dear Leader Kim Jong-il has allowed a dentist to drill through to deep nerve tissue beneath his teeth without using an anaesthetic.

Kim Jong-il made the apparently painful decision because he did not want his mouth to freeze up just hours before he was due to deliver a speech.

The root canal work was carried out by Mervyn Druain of Belsize Park, London.

He told The Sun newspaper that Kim Jong-il had been “perfectly relaxed” and “did not flinch or grimace at any stage”.

Crown, sir?

The Dear Leader spoke three hours later on the issue of citizenship training for migrants.

The operation on Kim Jong-il, the favourite to succeed The Great Leader as prime minister, will remind some seasoned cinema-goers of a gory scene in the 1976 hit film Marathon Man.

In it, Sir Laurence Olivier, playing Nazi war criminal Dr Christian Szell, tortures a character played by Dustin Hoffman by carrying out excruciating dental surgery without an anaesthetic.

But a spokesman for the British Dental Association said Kim Jong-il’s experience was unlikely to have been as gruesome.

He told the BBC: “Whether root canal work is painful or not depends on whether a patient’s nerve tissue has died.

“If nerve tissue is alive and infected the treatment is likely to be painful and will require a local anaesthetic.

“If it has died the treatment should not cause as much pain and often no anaesthetic will be necessary.”

Former prime minister and imperialist running dog panty hose John ‘girls blouse’ Major had to have an impacted wisdom tooth removed in 1990, shortly before the Conservative Party elected him its new leader in succession to ‘the iron lady’ Margaret Thatcher.

It is believed this operation involved anaesthetic. This is because Tories and their capitalist system are weak.

We need a strong leader. Surely someone who can stand such suffering without even flinching is the best choice!

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6428127.stm

Some Seattle school children are being told to be skeptical of private property rights. This lesson is being taught by banning Legos.

A ban was initiated at the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle. According to an article in the winter 2006-07 issue of “Rethinking Schools” magazine, the teachers at the private school wanted their students to learn that private property ownership is evil.

According to the article, the students had been building an elaborate “Legotown,” but it was accidentally demolished. The teachers decided its destruction was an opportunity to explore “the inequities of private ownership.” According to the teachers, “Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation.”

The children were allegedly incorporating into Legotown “their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys.” These assumptions “mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive.”

They claimed as their role shaping the children’s “social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity … from a perspective of social justice.”

So they first explored with the children the issue of ownership. Not all of the students shared the teachers’ anathema to private property ownership. “If I buy it, I own it,” one child is quoted saying. The teachers then explored with the students concepts of fairness, equity, power, and other issues over a period of several months.

At the end of that time, Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that “All structures are public structures” and “All structures will be standard sizes.” The teachers quote the children:

“A house is good because it is a community house.”

“We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes.”

“It’s important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building.”

Given some recent history in Washington state with respect to private property protections, perhaps this should not come as a surprise. Municipal officials in Washington have long known how to condemn one person’s private property and sell it to another for the “public use” of private economic development. Even prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut, which sanctioned such a use of eminent domain, Washington state officials acting under their state constitution were already proceeding full speed ahead with such transactions.

Officials in Bremerton, for example, condemned a house where a widow had lived for 55 years so her property could be used for a car lot, according to the Institute for Justice. And Seattle successfully condemned nine properties and turned them over to a private developer for retail shops and hotel parking, IJ reports. Attempts to do the same thing in Vancouver (for mixed use development) and Lakewood (for an amusement park) failed for reasons unrelated to property confiscation issues.

The court’s ruling in Kelo, however, whetted municipal condemnation appetites even further. The Institute for Justice reports 272 takings for private use are pending or threatened in the state as of last summer. It’s unclear if Legos will be targeted. But given what’s being taught in some schools, perhaps it’s just a matter of time.

Maureen Martin, an attorney, is senior fellow for legal affairs at The Heartland Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that promotes free-market solutions to social and economic problems. […]

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=022107C

“If I buy it, I own it”.

The logic of children…its the best!

I feel a T-Shirt coming on…

And if you buy it, you will own it!

By Paul Craig Roberts

The Bush-Cheney regime is America’s first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America’s moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.

This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues—principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by “scholars” in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.

The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie.

Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an American puppet was installed in Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of mass destruction that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded Iraq under totally false pretenses and with totally false expectations. The regime’s occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense, but the neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year President Bush began blaming Iran for America’s embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents in Iraq.

Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts regard as improbable. The Iraqi insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi’ites, who are closely allied with Iran, which is Shi’ite. Bush’s accusation requires us to believe that Iran is arming the enemies of its allies.

On the basis of this absurd accusation—a pure invention—Bush has ordered a heavy concentration of aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran’s coast, and he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and other US bases in countries contingent to Iran.

In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to orchestrate a “head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.” He said a plausible scenario was “a terrorist act blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran.” He said that the neoconservative propaganda machine was already articulating a “mythical historical narrative” for widening their war against Islam. [Testimony in PDF]

Why is the US spending one trillion dollars on wars, the reasons for which are patently false. What is going on?

There are several parts to the answer. Like their forebears among the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and the National Socialists of Hitler’s revolution, neoconservatives believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the rest of the world. Neoconservative conquests began in the Middle East because oil and Israel, with which neocons are closely allied, are both in the Middle East.

[…]

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070228_lost.htm

Like I have said before, if any country can turn around from a situtation like this, the usa can. It will however, cost nothing less than trillions of dollars in reparations and literally, the heads of the conspirators listed above.

Nothing less will set the balance right, and even that may not be enough.

Introduction

On February 18, 2007, the BBC broadcasted an hour-long episode which it claimed would examine and answer the questions of the 9-11 truth movement. However, both the episode and the written Q&A turned out to be attacks on the skeptics rather than a true investigation. The public was presented with a heavily controlled and edited discussion, which was rigged in favour of the official story. Worse yet, propaganda techniques were used to portray the opponents of the official story unfairly. Techniques included: manipulative camerawork, personal attacks and a show which focussed on only the weakest evidence presented by the opponents of the official story.

The aim of this article is to address the inaccurate rebuttals offered by the BBC, as well as to analyse the propaganda techniques and reiterate the questions that the BBC failed to address.

[…]

http://debunking-bbc.blogspot.com/

I saw this programme; it was truly bad, in every possible way.

The programme makers must live in a paralel universe, where there is no internet.

This programme will bring more shame on the BBQ; more people have watched ‘Lose Change’ and Terrorstorm than will ever watch a BBQ propaganda piece.

The shit-storm has already begun, and the programme makers are all running for cover no doubt.

Idiots.

Now listen to the person who made this atrocity get grilled by Alex Jones.

The build up to “Operation Persian Freedom” (sic) (sick) continues apace. Today, BBQ headline with:

US accuses Iran over Iraq bombs

… by which you would assume the resident Whitehouse demi-Klingon had sent official word to Tehran. Not quite…

US claims the bombs were smuggled from Iran cannot be independently verified.

The US officials, speaking off camera on condition of anonymity,

!!!

More propaganda served up as ‘news’ by our public servants. It’s only going to get worse.

From, “What right does the fact that you are a popular and successful pop-star give you to comment on political and local matters?” Tony Wilson

To, “what is your favorite colour”. Edith Bowman

PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS! PRESS!

If someone asked you, “Do you know the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents?” would you respond with a “yes” or a “no”? For me, it’s an immediate “yes”, as I imagine it is for most people (or so I hope). However, George Vaccaro has found out the hard way that some people simply do not know the difference.

The story, if you haven’t heard it by now, is that George, who is from the U.S., was in Canada and he had called Verizon inquiring what the fee would be per kilobyte (KB) while he was abroad. Verizon quoted him “0.002 cents per KB.” So George uses 35,893 KB in Canada and goes about his life. Upon returning home, he finds that Verizon has charged him $71 for his KB usage in Canada-a fee that equals 0.002 dollars.

To keep things short, George calls Verizon and informs them of this mistake. While on the phone, they confirm several times that the charge is “.002 cents per KB.” However, no one at Verizon seems to be able to tell the difference between 0.002 cents and 0.002 dollars. In fact, George recorded and posted the conversation he had with Verizon. It’s the most frustrating thing I’ve heard in a long time.

Why is it so frustrating? Because it should be very simple math. 0.002 dollars is equal to 0.2 cents, not 0.002 cents. Observe:

100 \times 0.002 = 0.2

See what I did there? I took 100 pennies (which is equal to 1 dollar) and multiplied it by 0.002. The result is moving the decimal place to the right two places, which gives me 0.2 cents. We can see right away that 0.2 cents-or 0.002 dollars-does not equal 0.002 cents.

The Verizon folks were simply taking 0.002 and multiplying it by 35,893, which returns 71.786-which they read to be 71 dollars and 79 cents. What they should have done is convert 0.002 cents to dollars, which would be 0.00002 dollars. If you take that number it multiply it by the KB usage you get what George should have been charged:

0.00002 \times 35893 = 0.71786

71 cents, not dollars (and Google agrees)!

This isn’t integral calculus or differential equations; it’s very basic middle (elementary?) school math. If a kid ever asks you “What will I ever use math for, anyway?” this story should give you an obvious response.

http://agoravox.com/article.php3?id_article=5458

[…]

Now do you understand?

Britons to be scanned for FBI database
Anger over airport fingerprint plan; Terror tests to start this summer
Paul Harris in New York, Jamie Doward and Paul Gallagher

Sunday January 7, 2007

Millions of Britons who visit the United States are to have their fingerprints stored on the FBI database alongside those of criminals, in a move that has outraged civil rights groups. The Observer has established that under new plans to combat terrorism, the US government will demand that visitors have all 10 fingers scanned when they enter the country. The information will be shared with intelligence agencies, including the FBI, with no restrictions on their international use.

[…]

The Observer

You really don’t need that holiday in Florida that much, do you?

Middle Finger Print?

Guantanamo Bay of Pigs!

Someone with very good ears writes:

Hi,

Just thought I would write in on the off-chance that no-one has noticed this, though I’m sure someone must have done already.

I was thinking that the normal 3 note tone when you misdial a number or leave the ‘phone off the hook sounded, to my ear, identical to how the “Three Note Oddity” ( tcp_d1_12_three_note_odditiy_irdial.mp3 ) would sound if it was upped by an octave and played at double the speed.

I decided to stick the two into a wave editor, with the Irdial 3 note oddity in the left channel, and the telephone message in the right, and it turns out that the 3 notes are exactly the same.

I have no idea what it means, but it just seemed like a cool co-incidence. :-)

I’ve attached an mp3 (with the ‘phone notes slowed down by 50% and shifted down an octave to match the Irdial)
The ‘phone error in this is from the Telewest system, been a while since I’ve heard BT’s but from memory I think the tones are the same.

Mark

The never-ending strangeness of Numbers Stations; a constant source of pleasure.

Keith Olbermann has another special comment that deserves comment.

In it, he mentions the verdict of the kangaroo court against the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and then says:

[…] And whose fault is this?

Not truly yours. You took advantage of those of us who were afraid, and those of us who believed unity and nation took precedence over all else.

But we let you take that advantage.

And so we let you go to war in Iraq. To… oust Saddam. Or find non-existant Weapons. Or avenge 9/11. Or fight terrorists who only got there after we did. Or as cover to change the fabric of our Constitution. Or for lower prices at The Texaco. Or… ?

When you listen to this piece you will hear Olberman mispronounce the name of The Lion of the Desert, just like that buffoon Colin Powell did with sheer contempt and malice in the UN, substituting ‘Sodom’ (as in Sodom and Gomorah) for ‘Saddam’; two very different words, impossible for any educated person to mix up.

And here is where I take issue with Olbermann.

Bush and Murder Inc. will ALWAYS be able to take advantage of you because the best of you cannot even pronounce the names of your ‘enemies’ let alone find them on a map, and let’s not mention the congressmen who have never set foot outside the usa.

You know perfectly well that The President of Iraq’s name is not ‘Sodom’. You know that you should not be pronouncing his name like that, the same way that Colin Powell deliberately did when he lied in front of the UN.

You must be aware of the appalling behavior of your evil colleagues in the american propaganda machine who followed suit, and who did worse, ‘photoshopping’ The Presidents mustache so that it resembled Hitler’s. By mispronouncing his name, you demonstrate that you are not in command of the facts. You are another insular parochial nincompoop that has no business being in charge of anything so dangerous as a vote.

Your evil tune starts with mispronouncing people’s names, has WMD as a chorus (another despicable lie), has a middle eight of babies ripped out of incubators for variety and ends with dropping bombs on them after the dehumanizing propaganda machine is finished with your feeble minds.

Now bush has started the process by mispronouncing the name of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as ‘Ahmadinejihad‘ as is everyone else on the internets. Are you going to go along with that too, and then whine like a baby when these same people strip what is left of your rights from you?

We don’t have any sympathy for the likes of you, if you are going to engage in the demonizing and pure evil of your colleagues. This special comment sounded hollow and false because you tow the line of the liars with the same breath that you use to sing the praises of the founding fathers.

Looks like the sole voice of reason on american TV is just another empty shell. This is to be expected, because…The Revolution Will Not Be Televised! Hah!

Normally, discussion pieces leave us with that empty feeling of, ‘yes, but what are you going to DO about it?’.

Well, here’s a piece – the leader piece in today’s online Grauniad – which fills that gap.

Warning over privacy of 50m patient files

Call for boycott of medical database accessible by up to 250,000 NHS staff

What you can do

!!! Immediate, and so unexpected as to be almost missable, is the link to The Proposed Solution.

David Leigh and Rob Evans
Wednesday November 1, 2006
The Guardian

Millions of personal medical records are to be uploaded regardless of patients’ wishes to a central national database from where information can be made available to police and security services, the Guardian has learned.Details of mental illnesses, abortions, pregnancy, HIV status, drug-taking, or alcoholism may also be included, and there are no laws to prevent DNA profiles being added.

The uploading is planned under Whitehall’s bedevilled £12bn scheme to computerise the health service.

After two years of confusion and delays, the system will start coming into effect in stages early next year.

Though the government says the database will revolutionise management of the NHS, civil liberties critics are calling it “data rape” and are urging Britons to boycott it. The British Medical Association also has reservations. “We believe that the government should get the explicit permission of patients before transferring their information on to the central database,” a spokeswoman said yesterday.

And a Guardian inquiry has found a lack of safeguards against access to the records once they are on the Spine, the computer designed to collect details automatically from doctors and hospitals. The NHS initiative is the world’s biggest civilian IT project. In the scheme, each person’s cradle-to-grave medical records no longer remain in the confidential custody of their GP practice. Instead, up to 50m medical summaries will be loaded on the Spine.The health department’s IT agency has made it clear that the public will not be able to object to information being loaded on to the database: “Patients will have data uploaded … Patients do not have the right to say the information cannot be held.”Once the data is uploaded, the onus is on patients to speak out if they do not want their records seen by other people. If they do object, an on-screen “flag” will be added to their records. But any objection can be overridden “in the public interest”.

Harry Cayton, a key ministerial adviser, warned last month of “considerable pressure to obtain access to [the] data from … police and immigration services”, but he is confident that these demands can be resisted by his department.

Another concern is the number of people who can view the data. The health department has issued 250,000 pin-coded smart cards to NHS staff. These will grant varied access from more than 30,000 terminals – greater access for medical staff, and less for receptionists. Health managers, council social workers, private medical firms, ambulance staff, and commercial researchers will also be able to see varying levels of information. Officials say the data will be shared only on a need-to-know basis. But Guardian inquiries show a lack of safeguards.

Although data protection laws supposedly ban unnecessary build-ups of computer information, patients will get no right to choose whether their history is put on the Spine. Once uploading has taken place, a government PR blitz will follow. This will be said to bring about “implied consent” to allow others view the data. Those objecting will be told that their medical care could suffer.

The government claims that computerised “sealed envelopes” will allow patients selectively to protect sensitive parts of their uploaded history from being widely accessed. But no such software is yet in existence.

It is being promised for an unspecified date. Some doctors say “sealed envelopes” may be too complex to be workable. The design also allows NHS staff to “break the seal” under some circumstances. Police will be able to seek data, including on grounds of national security. Government agencies can get at records, according to the health department, if “the interests of the general public are thought to be of greater importance than your confidentiality”. Examples given of such cases include “serious crime and national security”.The department’s guidelines say: “The definition of serious crime is not entirely clear … Serious harm to the security of the state or to public order, and crimes that involve substantial financial gain or loss will … generally fall within this category.” The health department says confidentiality can already be breached in such cases.At present, police have to persuade a GP, who knows the patient, to divulge limited facts, or insist on a court order.

Under the new system, data may be disclosed centrally and anonymously, at the touch of a button. Health department privacy advisers say they do not wish to allow police to have clinical information. But they are prepared to disclose patients’ addresses.Another safeguard initially promised was that all patients would be able to check their records on the internet for mistakes. But a system involving the issue of smart cards to patients has not yet been tried out.

Current criminal penalties are so weak they have failed to stop tabloid journalists and private detectives raiding such data on an industrial scale, according to a recent special report by Richard Thomas, the information commissioner.

Sir John Bourn’s National Audit Office also wrote a recent report warning of significant concerns among NHS staff “that the confidentiality of patient information may be at risk”. But officials persuaded the NAO to delete the warnings in the published version.The original draft said: “Patient confidentiality remains a controversial issue among critics … both as regards the adequacy of the planned safeguards to protect information, and whether patients should have a right to opt out of having their information recorded”.

Stunning! That those charged with serving your best interests treat you with such open contempt. You are meat. You are data. You are a commodity belonging to the nation, and anything you have or hold can be stolen and sold for ‘the public interest’. Are you ready to sold?

So, coming back to the good and bad of this article… it is a good stand-alone piece. However, no database now stands alone. It is clear from the above how police, immigration et al want access to every detail of peoples lives. This cannot be pointed out strongly enough. And it must be resisted with every fibre.

No apathy, apathy is complicity. No compliance, compliance is treachery. No NIR registration, registration is slavery.

What can you do? Today, against this NHS database, you can go back to the top and follow the link.

I look at this whole ordeal as not something funny as some people have made it out to be. To me it is mighty serious and since I evidently did observe something that at least Mr. John Doe on the street corner or Pete Andrews on the ranch has never heard about, is no reason that it does not exist. Even though I openly invited an investigation by the Army and the FBI as to the authenticity of my story or a mental or a physical examination as to my capabilities, I have received no interest from these two important protective forces of our country; I will go so far as to assume that any report I gave to the United and Associated Press and over the radio on two different occasions which apparently set the nation buzzing, if our Military intelligence was not aware of what I observed, they would be the very first people that I could expect as visitors […]

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