Law lords have ruled against 20 anti-war campaigners who claimed they were right to take action aimed at preventing the Iraq war.

The group had asked if a valid defence was available to peace activists who allegedly broke the law to prevent an even greater “crime of aggression”.

The case centres on action taken near Southampton docks, and at RAF Fairford in the run up to the war in 2003.

The five law lords unanimously dismissed the appeals.

‘Not a crime in domestic law’

Fourteen of the group, known as the Marchwood 14, are Greenpeace volunteers who say they should not have been convicted of aggravated trespass near Southampton docks because they were trying to stop an “illegal war”.

The same argument was also offered by five people who entered RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and allegedly tried to immobilise American B52 bombers which were later involved in “shock and awe” attacks on Baghdad.

A charge of aggression against an individual in a British court “would involve determination of his responsibility as a leader but would presuppose commission of the crime by his own state or a foreign state”, he said.

This would in turn call for a decision on the “culpability in going to war” of the UK government or a foreign government, or both if they had gone to war as allies.

He argued that the courts would be “very slow” to review the exercise of the government’s prerogative powers in relation to the deployment of the armed services.

He said it was “very relevant” that Parliament had not considered whether the international law crime of aggression should be adopted into British law.

‘Dangerous precedent’

Taking that step “would draw the courts into an area which, in the past, they have entered, if at all, with reluctance”.

Lord Hoffmann said that to allow “the use of force in such cases would be to set a most dangerous precedent”. […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4855872.stm

Greenpeace have got it totally wrong. You cannot use force against the army to stop them going to war. Its like a mosquito biting an elephant in the hopes that it will stop it trampling a village.

There is no way that they could have imagined that their actions would have stopped the war. If they belived that, they are completely delusional and need to pack up and go home.

Did they really imagine the courts, which are an aparatus of the state, would side with them, when these very same courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute the mass murderer Bliar and the Cabal? Are these people really that naïve?

I have said this before; what Greenpeace, StopWar^† and all those other 70’s style protest groups need to do is understand the problem, and then deal with it appropriately. Kicking the tyres of a B52 is innapropriate. Gathering togerther 7 million taxpayers and getting them to withdraw their services in a co-ordinated economic attack, now THAT is appropriate.

The astonishing lack of imagination, dearth of oblique thinking, these are the true problems with Greenpeace and all organizations like it. When they have in the palm of their hands, literally millions of people who are willing to work with them to prevent an illegal war, the only thing they can think of is to march away the soles of their shoes on a Saturday, waste paper by sending out pointless status reports instead of doing what they need to do; dismantle the war machine at source; the taxpayer.

†Those idiots at StopWar are at it again:

Protests outside BBC studios nationwide

Tuesday 4th April at lunchtime

The Stop the War Coalition is calling for protests outside BBC studios and offices accross the country, at lunchtime on Tuesday 4th April.

This is to respond to the BBC’s failure to cover the huge troops home demonstration on March 18 on national news and also to protest the general pro-government bias of much of their reporting on the war.

We are asking groups to organise protests at every BBC office. We will be leafletting the offices with a copy of a letter addressed to Mark Thompson. […]

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/new/beebdemo.htm

I have some words for StopWar.

1. BBQ is a wholley owned arm of the state. Get used to it.
2. No matter what BBQ says or transmits, the venal government of mass murderers will not pay it any heed, even if it shows exactly what you desire.
3. It’s the internet STUPID. You can reach all the people of this country by using the internet; forget BBQ as a way to reach into the minds of the people – we have a new, frinctionless tool to use that works brilliantly, if you are creative, honest, and have somehting worthwhile to offer to people in the first place.
4. For the n^th time; DEMONSTRATING IS TEH STUPID
5. GO AWAY AND THINK ABOUT IT YOU MORONS.

“I take the view that it is part of being a good citizen, proving who you are, day in day out,”

The words of Andy Burnham, the treacherous pirate in charge of the NIR/ID card scheme, whose poison is can be read here.

Mr Burnham was asked why Labour had not told voters that the cards would be compulsory. He replied: “Actually, we did. […]

Whilst this is true of the actual legislation and there have been many posts on Blogdial and elsewhere to highlight this, the Neu Labour lie machine have also remorselessly spun the concept of a ‘voluntary phase’ and a secondary vote being required (before punishments can be implemented). It is a tragedy that the mainstream media have largely been unquestioning (I mean *real* questions) in the spun accounts and only now that the House of Lords are providing a wafer thin bulwark against the legislation are the government being asked to account for the true picture.

“The irony is that if we were to listen to what the Lords are saying, we would actually create two biometric databases: one for the passport system and one for the new National Identity Register. […]

This is another deception, the international requirement for biometric passports can be satisfied by simply having a machine readable version of your passport photo – there is no need for any other extra information to be collected by the passport agency to fulfill this requirement, and certainly not the level of information the government wants for NIR.
Secondly only last week it was announced that the government were looking at distributing the NIR database between various companies in their cackhanded way of addressing a ‘decentralised’ database.

Additionally this morning he came up with the old chestnut of the ‘unelected chamber defeating the will of [20%] of the people’.

Now back to ‘being a good citizen’, his words describe the sort of country where people will have to use ID cards to access public/stakeholder services – imagine that you have to submit your NIR number to;
gain tax credits – and every time you actually want your child to use a nursery or pre-school creche you have to have your ID card scanned (for quality control);
or what if petrol (or travel mileages) were to be rationed, every time you buy a train ticket or go to the petrol station you have to submit ID;
Access public buildings – e.g. borrow a book from a library;
Use an internet cafe (ID already required in Italy);

These and other scenarios may seem bizarre, but I ask, in what other sorts of circumstances will ‘good citizens’need to be “proving who you are, day in day out”.

—–

Admin – how do you get large text to work in wordpress?

What does a ‘stakeholder society’ mean in terms of political powerplay?

By inducing people to use ‘stakeholder services’ provided by the State (or private companies tenbdering for public contracts) instead of private sector provision, there becomes an increased reliance on the State by the individual. If the State provides these services through general taxation and ‘Credits’ then it can increase it’s share of the market by the efffect of people having to pay twice for private provision – once for unused State services and once for the private services.

Stakeholder service provision goes beyond old style public service provision which is largely aimed at helping those with true hardships and begins to universalise State provision in mid/upper socio-economic groups – the bulk of the voters.

Increased reliance on the State will mean that people perceive they have more to lose in making the State unstable (they risk the loss of a stakeholder service or have to pay twice). By inducing the notion that people are reliant on the State when in fact they are simply giving money to government in order to receive it back in the form of ‘credits’ for leading life in the State sanctioned way.

Now an unpopular government could use this ‘dependency’ to leverage unpopular legislation upon stakeholders who are in a tenuous position for example a family requiring tax credits to send their

—-

And ‘their’ I stopped.

But I pick up the theme because reading the post below on ID cards I am minded to believe that tax credits will be authorised/audited against NIR records, this will mean that the government will be gaining leverage over the majority of parents, pensioners, in fact anyone who wishes to be a ‘stakeholder’ and receive tax credits, which if the Chancellor continues his current course will be practically everyone. I belive this is how the government will induce NIR registration (rather than relying on the ‘voluntary’ choice of renewing passports).

Technorati Tags: stakeholder, tax credits, ID cards

Warning on Euro licences
By David Rennie in Brussels
(Filed: 22/03/2006)

A new Europe-wide driving licence could become “an identity card by the back door”, a British Euro-MP warned yesterday.

Transport ministers are expected to approve the single driving licence for 25 nations at talks next week.

The document, the size of a credit card and replacing 110 types of licence in use in the member states, will be phased in over 20 years between 2012 and 2032.

Britain is backing the move as a practical anti-fraud measure which will make it much easier to check valid licences across Europe.

But Ian Hudghton, a Scottish Euro-MP, called for safeguards to prevent the licence becoming, in effect, part of a Europe-wide identity card system.

He welcomed measures to make Europe’s roads safer, including a single driving licence to prevent drivers banned in one country obtaining a licence in another.

But he added: “If we are to have a Europe-wide driving licence scheme there must be safeguards. Otherwise it could herald a European ID card system by the back door.

“Many people would be unhappy about the prospect of a single EU identity card, just as they are unhappy about the prospect of identity cards being introduced by Tony Blair’s Government.

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

So. They are trying to get an ID card throught the front door, AND the back door.

It’s positively pornographic.

Imagine the WASTE this will produce; it is a pure sign of what this is really all about; the contracts to produce and manage identiy systems across the western hemisphere.

There is absolutely no need for an EU driving licence, and of course, the next document they will want to produce is a unified EU Passport.

Why should there be an EU driving licence when passports from different countries are accepted without question? Because cars are a fantastic source of revenue; if they can consolidate the driving licences and all the car registrations in a new EU car registration structure, they will have a huge revenue resource. Any car in your country can be taxed and each member state will be able to fleece the driver as he crosses borders, whereas now, this cannot happen.

And finally, there is no need for any of this. All they need to do is to allow each authority access to the other authorities systems through a single interface. This would cost much less, whilst having the same effect of wiping out everyone’s jurisdictional insulation.

Snarfed from here.

http://30gms.com/index.php?/permalink/beard_moustache_white_trainers/

This is disgusting. I too have a beard, moustache and wear white trainers. My hair was quite a bit longer up until a month or so ago. But I’ve haven’t been stopped recently. Is it because I have white skin and blue eyes?

The irony is that this guy is working on a site for the Home Office that deals directly with this. I wonder how he can go on working on it with a clear conscience after this has happened to him.

The Guardian has a new ‘group blog’ , called “comment is free”. Instant impressions:

• It is very Guardian-like
• It is very newspaper-like; Its editors pick what is to be given front page prominence (like they know better than the readers what is or is not interesting). That is so 2005/Slashdot. The users decide what is cool and what is not cool.
• It is not blog like
• Its stuck to the left
• It is set in three columns
• No user feedback, other than comments, ie no moderation of stories or comments or user tagging

Read the introduction:

Welcome to Comment is free, the first collective comment blog by a British newspaper website. It will incorporate all the regular Guardian and Observer main commentators, many blogging for the first time, who will be joined by a host of outside contributors – politicians, academics, writers, scientists, activists and of course existing bloggers to debate, argue and occasionally agree on the issues of the day.

Why are we launching it now? Because it’s obvious to us that our major competition for opinion and debate is moving online, and unless we move with it, we’re failing our journalists and future generations of readers. […]

Translation; everyone is getting their news from the blogosphere. They are reading our stories and then spinning them. We are losing influence. The Empire must strike back.

We need to expand and deepen the debate which takes place every day in our newspapers and for which we have an unrivalled reputation. We need to ensure that the Guardian and Observer remain at the heart of the liveliest liberal-left discourse (although we’ll continue our long tradition of carrying voices from across the political spectrum). How? Not only by doing so much more than we can in print, and much more immediately, but by putting our own writers where their real rivals are. Readers, too, need to be at the heart of the conversation, and much more engaged than print allows. […]

The debate is already deepened, thanks to the blogosphere. The fact that it has taken The Guardian so long to do this proves that brontosaurus media is on the way out. Now, had they cloned Digg, this would be an entirely different matter, they might have had their Jurrasic Park style second chance at life, but they did not, and they have missed the next phase of news aggregation, without good reason either. “Readers, too, need to be at the heart of the conversation” Un oh, dinosaur speak spilling out.

Comments will only be allowed with a valid e-mail address and registration, to try and keep the standard of the debate as high as possible.

Why? If the readers are to be at the heart of this mythical paleo babble “conversation” why should we obey this absurd command when we can set up our own blog in 5 minutes and then publish and be read? If everyone wants to read rants, let them, and if not, let the readers moderate themselvs. Editors no longer have a job; this is what the tectonic shift is all about, and its frighetening the shit out of these people.

Please tell us what you think. Post your comments below or email us at comment.is.free@guardian.co.uk.

or how about “post on your own blog and link to us” heh, of course not, because they are for centralized control of thought and agenda, the top of the pyramid being the grand poohbah editor. Posting to your own blog means accepting that other blogs are the equal of any Guardian Blog, diminishing their importance, which is happening quite nicely and naturally wether or not they like it.

Some of the comments on this post are interesting, the first saying “just what is your job Ms editor” the others saying that they dont like their location being attached to their names The editor, finally weighed in with an apology for not commenting on the comments with this amazing text:

Hello again – apologies for not coming back earlier to answer some of your points but it’s been a bit busy today.

Say what? You just launch a new blog, you are the ‘editor’ and you leave your keyboard while the comments are flooding in? You have to pay attention to your blog if you are going to rul0rz it, and to not be there in the first few hours, I mean, honestly, do you KNOW anything about what you are doing?

My role as editor. The central role, as with any editor, is to try and make the site the most lively, diverse, engaging, surprising comment site around.

You arent needed for that. Look at Digg. Be like Digg. Or die. The users make the site lively, they provide the diversity (which is not true diversity if there is a black crow school marm hovering over everyone making sure you dont say ‘Fuck’) they also provide the surprising comment. All of that has nothing to do with editors.

We (the team) will try and ensure that we have a broad range of opinion and that means doing some direct commissioning of particular people on particular subjects, while encouraging a wide range of contributors to blog as and when they want on whatever subject they want. I won’t be doing what I’ve spent my life as an editor on the paper doing – close copy editing and going back and forth to writers working with them to change their pieces, improve their pieces or think about arguments they haven’t thought about. The nature of the blog is that we will have to try and let go a bit and let peple say what they want within the bounds of libel and the constraints of our blogging guidelines.

Pointless. Either let go and destroy the death star, or be a newspaper, not some half assed hybrid snore-fest. We have everywhere else to read; why should we read anything with even the slightest bit of control imposed upon it?

Commenting on pieces taken from the paper: this is something we’ll introduce as soon as possible. It’s purely a technical issue, and we’re keen that everything that appears on the site can be commented on.

Computer illiterates!

Comments: yes, we’ll keep a close eye on these.

WHY? You are not responsible for the comments that users make, if you are legally in the UK, then you need to spin off the blogs to a company in another jurisdiction whose job it is to run the your free speech wing, insulating you from prosecution. You simply cannot do this in the blogosphere, because we will go and read something else, where people are totally free to express themselvs, on the exact same stories, even stories from your own newspaper. This is pretty basic.

We hope registration will help keep up the standard of the debate, but we’ll watch for the ususal libel issues or breaches of our talk policy code.

What a monumental waste of resources; indeed someone has already asked the question:

Does this mean we are finally going to be allowed to comment on the Jowell-Mills saga, or are you going to close down that debate like you did on the Newsblog?

And there you have it. It will be stillborn in terms of doing something really groundbreaking and worth a repeat visit.

Discussions with authors about their articles. I’m encouraging our contributors to re-blog on the reaction to their articles and comment on the comment. Some will, some won’t, and I’m not insisting on it.

‘I’m not insisting on it’. Brava!

‘re-blog’?? ‘conversations’?? ‘upper-positive plates‘??

When Digg launches its ‘other than tech news’ site, it will be very interesting to see how it gets taken up. I have to say that my first impressions of Newsvine were a little dampened. It is completely beautiful design wise, modern, fast etc, but I found that the blogs that people are wrting there interfere with my search for news.

I use blogs to read the facts about news, and for the most part I use news sites to collect the stories initially; bloggers dont have the resources to get many stories together in one place, and so in my mind, I keep these two resources separate; people with the means to gather thousands of stories, and people with a free reign to tell the absolute truth on any subject. Where these two liquids meet in an emulsion is where the interesting things are happening, and what I need is a tool to navigate that emulsion, like Digg.

Newsvine tries to mix oil and water; news sources and blog writers. There is no distinction between the two in that site, and so to me, it is a mess; ‘News Type: Opinion’ is an example of this mess. An opinion is not a news type. Opinions are opinions and news is news; oil is oil and water is water. Digg gets the balance just right, the users set the agenda, control what gets seen, can say whatever they like, and you get to read the news and the first line of cobweb sweeping comments all in one place. It is extremely simple to use, easy to look at and navigate, and fast to get what you need out of it. Newsvine, though beautiful, is a little labrynthine, the headlines are not given equal weght on each page (there is a big headline, and then lots of smaller – read less signifigant – ones, one story has a photo, and thes su stories do not).

It feels like its energy is spread out too much, wheras on Digg, the energy flows neatly down the page from headline to headline into the comments and back again. You can take it all in, and there is lots of it, and it seems like you never miss anything important, since all the tech sites repeat Digg stories after they have been dugg. This is crucial; I feel like I am keeping up to date when I read Digg, whereas with Newsvine, I feel like I am missing something, and the blogs there only reinforce that feeling, because they are taking up space that should be spent on news source fed articles.

MPs back identity card proposals

Government plans to force all passport applicants to get an identity card have been backed by MPs, overturning an earlier defeat in the House of Lords. Peers have twice defeated the plans, which they say break Labour’s election promise that the initial ID scheme would be voluntary.

But Home Secretary Charles Clarke said passports were “voluntary documents” that no-one was forced to renew.

The Identity Cards Bill will return to the House of Lords on Wednesday.

The vote, which Labour won by 310 votes to 277, sets the stage for a constitutional clash between the Commons and the Lords. […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4803930.stm

Charles Clarke is a beast of a man. He knows you cannot travel on an expired passport. He knows that if you loose your passport, that you must replace it if you want to travel.

This is a perfect example of how ID cards will be used to control you. You are not obliged to have one, but if you refuse, you cannot open a bank account, post a package, travel on the underground with a pass, etc etc.

This is pure evil, and this statement about passports being voluntary documents just shows how evil the whole proposal is. It is based on lies at its very foundation, and lies are being used to force through its introduction.

This is why people say that democracy is broken; with monsters, murderers, liars and enslavers at the helm every single time, no one in their right mind thinks that democracy in its current form is a good thing.

A BBQ misleader says:

Media are becoming democratised, and a global conversation is emerging.

Note how the word ‘democracy’ is used in this context; as a force for good, shifting power from the center to the masses.

This is of course, totally wrong.

Media are becoming Anarchized. Democracy is second tier to very epitome of centralized power, the dictatorship; what is happening on the web is that anyone can do whatever they like, without any group consensus or control. That is Anarchy, not Democracy, and it’s a good thing.

There is no ‘global conversation’ this is just new labour doubletalk.

The democratisation of media is also, fundamentally, about the people we once called mere consumers. Their role is evolving from a passive one to something much more interactive, but they are blessed (or cursed, depending on one’s viewpoint) with an unprecedented variety of voices and services.

How can a thing that brings you every possible point of view be a bad thing? If you are a paternalist with access to BBQ as a platform it is a VERY bad thing, because your voice is diminished, and your words ridiculed as everyone can see that the emperor has no clothes, just as I am doing right now. Note how he says that consumers ‘role’ is evolving from passive to interactive, and not active. Interactive means consuming BBQI. It means consuming full stop. Blogging, using Google News..its all about being active. Interactive means passive. And of course, that is what these patricians want; passive consumption in another arena.

The democratisation of media creation, distribution and access does not necessarily foretell that traditional media are dinosaurs of a new variety. If we are fortunate, we’ll end up with a more diverse media ecosystem in which many forms – including the traditional organisations – can thrive.

Why would be fortunate for us? It would be fortunate for YOU because you will keep your artificially created position. It would be bad for everyone else, because we would be compelled to continue consumption of the lies spread by BBQ, as this country is turned into a mini Soviet Union, and embarks on another insane war.

For my part, the most exciting aspect of this change is in the emerging conversation.

‘For your part’ means, “please adopt my catchphrase”. No Sale.

Ill leave it to you to read the rest of it; it is contradictory to say the least. Each example he gives in a list of the “…most important tools in today’s evolving media sphere.” – blogs, wikis, podcasts, web mashups – are all things in which people are being active and not passive. People are being active by creating these resources and they are being active by turning away from BBQ as their sole source of information. Note also how he calls this the ‘evolving media sphere’ making a connection with what he is involved with ‘the media’ and what he is being superceeded by, the blogosphere, the web and software developers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4789852.stm 

Shoppers can pay by fingerprint

Not only is the whole idea of this horrific, but the fact that the article mentions nothing of the multitude of possible downsides to this just baffles me. This isn’t journalism, this is just reprinting press releases.

There was a report on the radio this morning about a European (read EU blighted) search engine ‘Quaero’ to be set up as an alternative to Google. After googling around I found, typically for BBQ, that this was old news dressed up in mouton clothing.

Anyway, the idea of an EU-centric search engine to rival google almost made me choke on my breakfast – until recently the EU website had the single worst search tool I’ve ever seen online (It is now marginally better, and almost useful).

The reason why there is not a ‘Google equivalent’ is that whereas US taxes, financial regulations and competitive research programmes have not discriminated against startup companies almost every equivalent piece of work/employment legislation coming from the EU runs counter to small and new companies. All the blustering of Chirac (whose announcement it was that BBQ relayed) will not change this if he adheres to the typical EU top down imposing of ‘solutions’.

Marks and Spencer seems to be exploiting the goldfish attention span of the media today, last week it was reported;

Marks & Spencer suppliers have reacted angrily to the retailing giant turning the screw on them, just one year after demanding better terms from all its food, textile and accessory manufacturers.

“People are being squeezed to the bone. There will come a point where we will either go bankrupt or throw in the towel and walk away,” said one small textile supplier.
[…]

whereas today M&S proudly announce;

Marks & Spencer is to stock only Fairtrade coffee and tea from next month as it extends it commitment to ethical sourcing.

…

Stuart Rose, chief executive of Marks & Spencer, said: “Our customers have told us they care about how our products are made and we want to help them make Fairtrade part of their retail habit.” M&S, as an own-brand-only retailer, was in a “unique position” to make the change.
[…]

Call me a stickler for consistency but it seems somewhat two-faced to force UK suppliers to be barely profitable and at the same time call yourself ethical for stocking Fairtrade products from countries where the cost of being ‘ethical’ is markedly less. (Anyhow the UK suppliers are free to take their trade elsewhere – given that all the other supermarkets operate on similar lines maybe they should try local independent retailers).

An analogous doublethink situation to the government calling for ‘freedom and democracy’ abroad whilst imposing repressive legisaltiuon at home?

Sharks with implants are planned to be released off Florida

Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into “stealth spies” capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has reported.They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting electrodes in their brains, The New Scientist says.

[…]

Like Dr Moreau’s island for the 21st century neocon.

You know what the next logical step is.

And you know that as soon as they can, they will.

Dear Irdial,

President George Bush has come to Congress – to the American people, really – to ask for another $65 billion for war in the Middle East. It’s the fourth time in three years the Administration has asked for extra, unplanned billions to be taken from other needs. What will he do with the money? We’re told this $65 billion (in addition to the $241 billion spent so far¹) will be used to “stay the course.”

Problem is, no one – not Mr. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney nor Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – seems to know what “the course” is. All citizens are offered is more of the same policies – the same policies which have led Iraq to the brink of civil war and bogged our troops in a hopeless quagmire.

Enough is enough!

Let’s tell Congress that it’s time to use their Constitutional auth […]

Blah blah blah, whine whine whine…

If you don’t want this, DONT PAY FOR IT YOU IDIOTS.

Would you losers keep going to Wendy’s if they consistently forgot to put the burger in your bun every time you made an order?

Of course you wouldn’t, and this is no different. Stop shopping at McWarMachine!

File sharing is not theft. It has never been theft.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4758636.stm

Compulsory ID cards are nothing new in the UK. They were issued to all British civilians during World War II. That is until one ordinary man said no.

Clarence Willcock, a 54-year-old dry cleaner from suburban north London, must rank as one of the unlikeliest Davids ever to take on a Goliath.

Mr Willcock was stopped on December 7 1950 while driving his car along Ballard’s Lane by uniformed police constable Harold Muckle, who demanded to see the motorist’s identity card.

Mr Willcock refused. Pc Muckle told him to produce the compulsory card at the local station with 48 hours. “I will not produce it at any police station,” Mr Willcock replied.

With this act of defiance, Mr Willcock brought crashing down a giant bureaucracy which had, since the outbreak of World War II in 1939, forced an identity card on every civilian in the UK – man, woman and child.

When Willcock v Muckle eventually reached the High Court in 1951, Lord Chief Justice Goddard said the continuation of the wartime ID card scheme was an “annoyance” to much of the public and “tended to turn law-abiding subjects into law breakers”. […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3129302.stm

[…]

A BLOGDIAL post from April 24th 2004
And I add today, from the same article:

“Let us have the credit for ‘setting the people free’,” wrote one Treasury minister in 1952, though he was really gleefully looking forward to “the consequential staff economies”.

The demise of the system was forecast while the fight against Hitler was still fierce. In October 1944, Registrar General Sir Earnest Holderness said that he did “not believe that public opinion will stand for the retention of [national registration] in its present form”.

Sir Ernest reasoned that once law-abiding citizens no longer needed to provide details of their address to ensure their ration allowances, they would not bother to keep their ID cards up to date merely because the government asked them to.

And what, my dear friends, is the difference between the British of 1952 and the British of 2006? Just what is it that they have been putting in the water that has turned a population of real people into sheeple?

How did they do it?

How much lower can they all sink before they are literally turned into cattle?

Everything says “this should not be happening” but it is, and…I can’t wake up!

Darren McGavin, who died Saturday, shown in a 1992 photo.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/26/obit.mcgavin.ap/index.html

A great actor who I remember vividly as Kolchak ‘The Night Stalker’ from way way back when.

Did you know that Chris Carter wanted Darren McGavin to play William Mulder? How great would that have been?!