Absolutely amazing and disgusting in equal measure, the cash strapped state science bureau NASA is whipping everyone up into a frenzy over something that is new to them.

Lets get this perfectly clear.

All of the life forms that currently exist, wether they be based on Arsenic, Carbon, Silicon, Chlorine or any other element in the periodic table, or no element in the periodic table, have ALL existed…

WETHER OR NOT YOU KNOW ABOUT THEM.

This ‘discovery’ which is actually more accurately termed an ‘uncovery’, is of something that pre-dates the emergence of man (if you accept the theory of evolution) and all the life that is walking, crawling and flying around today.

Everything that is possible that is naturally occurring, already exists; it does not need or seek permission of man to exist, it is there, waiting to be uncovered.

This uncovery does not ‘change everything’ and the utter nonsense about ‘goldilocks zones’ and all the other total garbage that ‘scientists’ rabbit on about is just that: utter nonsense.

What this ‘discovery’ is about, the secrecy and high drama surrounding the release of the information, is the salary addicts at NASA boosting their importance in the minds of the public so that they will not face the austerity chop.

If that were not the case, they would simply just release the information as if it was any other type of information, which it in fact is, and be done.

Lets take to pieces some of the drivel written in The Telegraph about this:

The discovery could prove the theory of “shadow” creatures which exist in tandem with our own and in hostile environments previously thought uninhabitable.

Rubbish. Which creature is the light and which is the shadow? Are the creatures based on the carbon cycle first or second? And thought uninhabitable by whom? Not by anyone with a working brain, that is for sure.

The “life as we don’t know it” could even survive on hostile planets and develop into intelligent creatures such as humans if and when conditions improve.

Intelligent creatures such as humans. Such as. We already know that there is life everywhere, and have known this for a very long time indeed. The only people who refuse to concede this fact are the members of the cult of science.

In a press conference scheduled for tomorrow evening, researchers will unveil the discovery of a microbe that can live in an environment previously thought too poisonous for any life-form to survive.

The bacteria has been found at the bottom of Mono Lake in California’s Yosemite National Park which is rich in arsenic – usually poisonous to life.

Obviously arsenic is not ‘usually poisonous to life’ and never has been. People with a proper understanding of the universe know that life is everywhere and very diverse in what it uses to get its job done. That people can write this at the beginning of the 21st century is really quite astonishing.

Somehow the creature uses the arsenic as a way of surviving and this ability raises the prospect that similar life could exist on other planets, which do not have our benevolent atmosphere.

The prospect of life on other planets, or more accurately, the probability, is 1. This is a fact and that fact has nothing to do with any homocentric scientist from NASA or the earth saying it is so. It simply is.

Dr Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist at the Centre for Planetary Sciences in London, said: “If these organisms use arsenic in their metabolism, it demonstrates that there are other forms of life to those we knew of.

“They’re aliens, but aliens that share the same home as us.”

This is just about the most ignorant thing I have ever read.

These life forms, if they pre-date ‘us’ (whatever that means; are carbon based life forms now to be considered some sort of race?!) then it is ‘US’ that is the interloper surely, and it is ‘US’ that shares this planet with THEM.

These are EARTH LIFE FORMS. The are not ALIEN in any way.

What utter CODSWALLOP!

The space agency will announce the full extent of the findings at a press conference titled “astrobiology finding which will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”.

There is no impact on extraterrestrial life, since this life is TERRESTRIAL.

If you want to infer that life can exist in space simply because you find it at the bottom of a lake, then you must extrapolate about life that is found on the surface in the same way. These people are inconsistent, illogical, terra-centric buffoons of the first order.

They believe the creature proves the existence of a second form of life that exists in tandem and before and after intelligent life blooms on planets across the universe.

Nonsense; there is no ‘second form of life’ or first form; there is only life – it is everywhere, has been before man (evolution accepted) and does not need ‘our’ permission to exist, and its existence here is not proof of anything other than there is life here; otherwise, all life here, no matter what it is based on must be given the same weight as these ‘extremophiles’, and should be used to extrapolate that life is everywhere.

It follows a growing belief that alien life far from being rare is actually abundant in the universe just in a form that is not recognisable as life.

Its only a growing belief by the members of the science cult; they do not accept the facts, for them science is a matter of faith and belief.

All the real scientists already accept that alien life must exist, and also that abundant intelligent life must come along with that fact. This is not news, it is pure hype.

At the heart of his theory is that life on earth may have come and gone many times during the planet’s existence.

These creatures are the remnants of the previous inhabitants.

OR they have always been here, along with the life based on carbon and the other life that is not yet uncovered by man.

Scientists have also estimated that life of some kind exists on hundred billion trillion Earth-like planets in space.

However it is usually just bacteria and intelligent life such as us is fleeting and only exists for a fraction of the time.

This is just fluff and gibberish.

There is no reason to believe that single instances of intelligent life cannot persist for one hundred million years or a billion years. And there is no reason to believe that most of the life in the universe is bacteria. This is all homocentric twaddle, peddled by imagination-less people who desperately need to keep man at the centre of creation.

Sorry boys, if you accept the theory of evolution, then you must accept that man is as close to nothing as you can get in the grand scheme of things. Deal with it.

A study last month said that the universe is teeming with planets capable of supporting alien life.

After studying stars similar to the Sun, astronomers found that almost one in four could have small, rocky planets just like the earth.

And of course, life on a molten planet is impossible right? or a water planet? or a gas giant? Give me a break.

And please spare me the, “but that is all science fiction, not science fact”. Extrapolation is all fiction. You either accept that you can extrapolate, or you reject it. Its like being a little bit pregnant; you cannot extrapolate just so much and no further. If life can exist based on arsenic, and you are extrapolating that it can exist on arsenic on another planet, then you must accept that other planets have everything that we have here, including space faring intelligent life. No exceptions; you cannot use evidence just to suit your religion, or to fit your purpose.

Many of these worlds may occupy the “Goldilocks” zone – the region where conditions are neither too hot, nor too cold, for liquid water and possibly life.

You see? Its just made up nonsense that is terra-centric, imagination-less and wrong.

If you accept that the universe is infinite, then there is enough space and time for life to evolve that uses every sort of condition imaginable and unimaginable. Therefore it is a question of not if this life exists, but where it exists and what use you can make of it. There is no basis whatsoever to limit life to the type that we know, that uses only the chemistry that we understand. This is not a surprise at all to real scientists.

Planets outside our own solar system are too far away and too small to see directly with telescopes.

With the telescope that we currently use you mean. A telescope in space with the correct design would be able to see other planets directly. The real question is who is going to pay for such devices to be constructed.

Instead, astronomers study distant stars for tell-tale ‘wobbles’ – caused when stars are pulled by a planet’s gravity.

In the last decade, nearly 500 planets have been discovered outside the solar system this way.

UNCOVERED, they have been there for ages.

In September astronomers announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planet ever found – a rocky world three times the size of our own world, orbiting a star 20 light years away.

The planet appears to have an atmosphere, a gravity like our own and could have flowing water on its surface.

The discovery came three years after astronomers found a similar, slightly less habitable planet around the same small red star called Gliese 581 in the constellation of Libra.

The planet, named Gliese g, is 118,000,000,000,000 miles away – so far away that light from its start takes 20 years to reach the earth.

This is ‘wow talk’. Not very interesting, and none of it has anything to do with wether or not life and intelligent life is abundant.

The latest news induced feverish debate as to whether scientists were about to announce that they had discovered life on other worlds.

“Did they find ET?”, asked one headline in the U S., while another wrote, “Has Nasa found little green men?”

Heh in Soviet America, ET finds YOU!

Speculation mounted around the world about the mystery information and buoyed people who already believe in aliens.

One said on U.S. news website MSNBC, “It’s still hard for me to understand why people can’t accept that aliens exist … ET is real”.

“Fact is, life is everywhere,” another wrote. ‘I don’t need some BS announcement to know it because I have common sense.’ […]

Exactly. Now use your common sense to understand that this is NASA looking for money. This is not about science or the truth, this is purely about the money.

“It is embarrassing how our country makes it all a secret and hides and controls what we know,” one American ranted, insisting aliens do exist and the U.S. knows it.

“The government lies to us all the time.”

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8174040/Life-as-we-dont-know-it-discovery-could-prove-existence-of-aliens.html

It is embarrassing, and nauseating and rather insulting.

They steal billions in the name of science, and return nonsense for the most part.

NASA should be abolished and science funded only by voluntary means.

What a total disgrace!

There are a few nice people who seem to be confused about rights and in particular, the rights of exchange, association and property.

This confusion manifested itself today over the matter of an American charity that is paying ‘drug addicts’ to be sterilised.

The Libertarian position on this is straightforward.

1. You own your own body.
2. You have the absolute right to voluntarily associate with whomever you like without interference.
3. You have the absolute right to voluntarily exchange with whomever you like without interference.

This means, for example, that prostitution (accepting money for sexual favours) should never be illegal, since it is the consenting act of trade between two people. It means that if you want to sell your hair, a kidney, or both of your kidneys, you have the right to do so since you have a property right in your own body.

It also means in relation to this story, that you have the right to give or accept money in exchange for a medical procedure (in this case vasectomy or some other sterilisation procedure).

And none of this is the business of the state or anyone other than the consenting parties

If you accept that the state has the power to tell you that you may not sell one of your kidneys to someone, then you accept that they own you, like cattle.

If you accept that the state has the power to prevent people offering money to individuals (in this case sterilisation) then you are conceding that the state has the power to interfere in your right of exchange and free association.

You cannot on the one hand, be FOR Home Education, where you freely associate with other people or no people, rejecting the power of the state to tell you how and where you educate your children, and at the same time be FOR the state telling a charity that they cannot offer sterilisation to individuals with their own money. If you concede the latter, you cannot ask for the former and remain logical and coherent.

One patient person claimed that this charity was ‘exploiting’ people, and that using money in this way was ‘exploitation’. The person also claimed that “money and power were connected” Neither of these is the case.

Lets go to the dictionary.

Exploitation

ex·ploi·ta·tion? ?
[ek-sploi-tey-shuhn] Show IPA
–noun
1.use or utilization, esp. for profit: the exploitation of newly discovered oil fields.
2.selfish utilization: He got ahead through the exploitation of his friends.
3.the combined, often varied, use of public-relations and advertising techniques to promote a person, movie, product, etc.

[…]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exploitation

This is a charity, so number one does not fit.
This is an unselfish act on the part of the people who are running this programme, so two does not fit.
Three does not fit.

Lets try another dictionary.

Definition of EXPLOIT

1: to make productive use of : utilize <exploiting your talents> <exploit your opponent's weakness>
2: to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage <exploiting migrant farm workers>

Number one doesn’t fit.
Number two doesn’t fit either; these people are not being mean or ‘unfair’.

By the dictionary definition alone, this charity is exploiting no one.

Now for money and power.

Money is a tool, just like a hammer. You can use it to build a house or murder someone. It is not a living entity. What people do with money is an excrescence of their personality and motives; money is just the means to do it.

Power is force. When the state tells you you must send your children to school, they have the power to do so because they have a monopoly on violence. They send the police to your house, break down the door and take your children to school if you refuse to obey them. This charity has money, but it has no power whatsoever. They cannot force anyone to be sterilised against their will, any more than they can force a person to do anything. They simply make an offer which you can either take up or refuse.

The fact of the matter is, as long as you are not being taxed to pay for something like this (NHS abortion on demand, NHS sterilisation of drug addicts and all other social engineering) what private people plan and get up to voluntarily is none of your business.

Private people getting together to solve the tasks that they perceive as problems is absolutely normal and natural. They have the right to do so, because they are human beings, just like you are. If you do not like the idea of people offering sterilisation to drug addicts, then you are free to organise your own counter charity that gives money to drug addicts to $insert_your_plan_here. You could even organise yourself to pay for radio ads against this charity, and a poster campaign to warn drug addicts that they are being hunted. If you were minded to.

This charity is not stealing from you via the tax man. They are not forcing you to believe what they believe, or to be sterilised yourself. They do not want to control you, or exploit your family like the extremely dangerous fake charities. They do not want anything from anyone, except from the people who think that ‘drug addicts’ should not be left to produce children since they are ‘irresponsible’, from whom they ask for voluntary donations.

This is completely different from the state mandating sterilisation, and some people have a problem separating the evil operations of the state and the non evil work of charities that are funded purely. It is also completely different from the operation of the ‘=fake charities that use ‘your money’ to come after you in your own home. These confused people are the same people who do not understand the difference between choosing to carry a credit card or a supermarket loyalty card and being force to carry a government issued ID Card. We have been over this before; voluntary acceptance of a service through contract is completely different to compulsion by the state.

What is completely unacceptable to all moral people is the idea that because you do not like the behaviour of other people, you should call on the state to stop them from doing whatever it is they are doing voluntarily, that has nothing to do with you.

This is the schizophrenic mindset of some people, who want freedom for themselves and their own peculiar ways of life, but who will instantly call upon the state to smash the lives of other people with whom they disagree; and lets be frank; in the end, this is what it always comes down to; calls for organised surveillance and threats of violence from the state made by those people who cannot stand free association unless its their flavour of free association.

Note that in all of this, I do not take any position on wether or not sterilisation of human beings is a good thing or not, wether prostitution is moral or immoral, or wether it is a good or bad thing to be a ‘drug addict’ bearing children, or anything else to do with an opinion on the details; they are all irrelevant.

This is a question purely of rights; do people have the right to organise, associate, exchange money for goods and services? Libertarians say ‘Yes’ people do have these rights, and they should not be interfered with by anyone.

We may or may not agree with the work of this charity, but if you want to preserve your own way of life, then you have no choice but to support their right to say what they like, give money to whom they like, and associate with whomever they like.

If you do not accept their right, you are irrational, illogical and will not have a leg to stand on when someone who does not share your ideas turns the eye of Mordor upon you and your ilk, claiming that the way they see the world is the only correct way, and you must obey them or face violence, for the sole reason that they hold beliefs that are different to yours, and can muster a violent gang to force you to obey them.

Update! Clarification!

An attentive person has pointed out that that this charity is not paying for sterilisation, but that instead, the sterilisation procedures are taking place at taxpayers expense on the NHS, and that somehow this invalidates the sense of part of this post.

That is of course, not the case.

First of all, these are the precise facts about exactly what happens when a drug addict encounters this charity and takes up their offer. In order to collect his £200 he has to:

“provide a medical certificate of drug dependency and another certifying that they have had tubal ligation, vasectomy or a contraceptive implant.”

[…]

http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2010/04/embrace-the-controversy-lets-offer-project-prevention-on-the-nhs.html

This means that what is happening is that a drug addict, upon presenting documentary evidence that he or she is in fact a drug addict and has been sterilised, receives money from this charity. Where he gets this procedure is not mandated in the terms, though its clear that a drug addict is highly likely to get it done for ‘free’ on the NHS (A vasectomy operation in a private hospital or clinic in the UK will cost in the region of £300 to £900 inclusive of hospital charges and consultant’s fees)

Most importantly,

• No coercion is involved.
• Its a private, voluntary exchange of money for documentary evidence.

The fact that the taxpayer is paying for these procedures is an entirely separate issue, of the legitimacy of socialised medicine; the sterilisation on offer at the NHS is already a fact. If you have a problem with that, its a completely separate discussion to wether or not this charity should ask for money from private people to offer drug addicts in exchange for proof that they are drug addicts and have been sterilised.

This charity is not forcing you to pay for the sterilisation of drug addicts; the state is. If you do not like this, then you have to do something about how the NHS is funded. The charity’s contract with the drug addicts to produce documents is still a completely voluntary and private arrangement between consenting adults, and should be vigorously protected by everyone who wants to continue unmolested with their own peculiar ways.

It is completely wrong to say that these people should not be able to come to their own arrangements, understandings and contractual agreements for money or not.

Once again:

They are not exploiting anyone, since what they are doing is entirely voluntary. This charity is not stealing from you, since by asking people to take advantage of something that is already their (according to those who think that the NHS is entirely legitimate, and who do not understand rights) ‘right’ to sterilisation on the NHS they are getting something that they are already entitled to.

If you disagree with the premiss of the NHS, then the drug addicts and everyone else who uses it for plastic surgery, dentistry or sterilisation is stealing from you wether or not this charity operates in the UK or not.

The logic of this post stands. People have the right to voluntarily contract with each other for anything and on whatever terms they like. You cannot on the one hand, ask for this to be controlled or say that, “it isn’t a transaction which has no effect outside of the charity and the addicts”; this is exactly the same logic that the people who want to ban Home Education use. They say that the children of Home Educators, as members of society, have an impact on that society if they are not educated in the school system and so therefore, Home Education is not a private matter, but is within the remit of the state to control on behalf of society, and parents have no right to Home Educate. If you accept that this charity should not be able to operate, or should be in any way constrained, attacked, scorned, chided or anything else, you are opening yourself up to the same attacks from the people who want to control you and your life, what you and how you solve your problems in ways that are ‘strange’, or ‘out of the norm’.

UPDATE AGAIN

The very wise Ali P, who taught us that Home Educated children are not pupils, pulls our her foil:

The Libertarian position on this is straightforward.

1. You own your own body.
2. You have the absolute right to voluntarily associate with whomever you like without interference.
3. You have the absolute right to voluntarily exchange with whomever you like without interference.

This means, for example, that prostitution (accepting money for sexual favours) should never be illegal, since it is the consenting act of trade between two people. It means that if you want to sell your hair, a kidney, or both of your kidneys, you have the right to do so since you have a property right in your own body.

As it happens, I agree with much of this in principle, but in practice, I believe coercion is frequently used to secure ‘consent’, whether it is statist coercion or other private or ‘charitable’ coercion. The ‘willing’ acceptance of home visits by some home educators, and the ‘advice’ of some charities to agree to these visits, is one example of what I mean by this.

I also agree that there is a parallel with prostitution, which is AFAIK not illegal in this country, although soliciting is. However, for practitioners of the oldest profession, it is not always a straightforward choice to enter voluntarily into a contract for the provision of services, since coercion, threats and even violence are routinely employed in the sector as effective techniques of persuasion.

When a ‘power over’ situation exists, whether it is overt as in forced marriage, human trafficking, domestic servitude (do they all sound familiar?) or more subtle as in cash for organs, sterilisation or whatever, it matters not IMO whether it is the state or A.N. Other who bribes, coerces, forces or otherwise extracts the individual’s apparent consent. And like it or not, some individuals are more vulnerable to such coercion, often through through age, illness or incapacity – drug addicts, for example.

I’d be interested in what others think about this.

Why not?!

We must be clear when we talk about these matters, using words only in their strict meaning, whilst also being careful to separate different classes of entity. The things we need to define in this mater are the two entities (a private group and the state) and exactly what coercion is and how free a free choice is.

By definition, a private charity cannot coerce someone to be sterilised:

co·er·cion? ?
[koh-ur-shuhn] Show IPA
–noun
1. the act of coercing; use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance.
2. force or the power to use force in gaining compliance, as by a government or police force.

[…]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/coercion

As we can see from the dictionary definition of coercion, force or intimidation (threats of force) are necessary to make an action fall into the category of coercion. The second part of the definition explicitly mentions the state.

What this charity is doing is not coercion, but it could be classed as persuasion. This is a very different matter to coercion by the state, with its monopoly on violence.

Persuasion is at the centre of a civilised interaction between human beings. It means swaying someone purely by argument alone, the final freely made choice being made by the persuaded person.

To use the UK ID Card example once again, the state claimed that ID Cards were not compulsory, but you would not be able to get a passport without one, and would therefore not be able to travel to other countries. That is clear coercion, this time, with the threat of violently barricading you inside ‘your’ country.

The willing acceptance of home visits by some home educators, falls into this category; if you do not accept a visit from us, we will violently take your children from you. That is coercion pure and simple, and of the same kind, from the same source; the evil state.

As for charities giving ‘advice’ to agree to these visits, this is an example of lying, which is not coercion, but perhaps collusion. If Home Educators had their own legal defence fund and lawyers on tap, this would not be an issue of course.

The parallel with prostitution is very deep in this matter; this charity, according to the byzantine ‘thinking’ of some people and laws of the UK, could be accused of soliciting drug addicts to self mutilate… but I digress; the circumstances by which prostitutes become prostitutes is not relevant to this subject, when we are talking about people who choose that life, as we have seen recently. When people are forced to act as prostitutes through violence, this is unambiguously evil violence, and is not part of this discussion.

Once again, we must cleanly separate coercion, violence and free choice when we have discussions on these matters.

Some confused people say that if someone is poor, they do not have a free choice to refuse money for sterilisation or anything else, by virtue of their desperate need. This is simply not the case. For certain the pressure on them is much greater, but they still have a free choice to not participate in anything that they do not want to. These very weak minded arguments undermine Liberty and act as a foot in the door of everyone’s lives for the nanny state.

With reference to ‘power over’ situations, once again, its important not to conflate a group of different phenomena that are wildly disparate in their cause and natures.

‘Forced marriage’ is an unpleasant idea for the British and people from the culture of the west, where marriage is done out of love and not familial duty.. In other countries however, marriage is quite a different thing, and to them, ‘John meets Jane’ marriages are anathema.

How other people choose to marry in other countries has nothing to do with coercion as defined here. Human trafficking (which is much better termed slavery) is pure unambiguous violence; in the minds of the people whose culture accepts arranged marriages (which is the correct term, not ‘Forced marriage’) slavery is, for the most part, seen strictly as a sin.

Domestic servitude which appears to be yet another unnecessary way of saying slavery, once again is unambiguously evil, and the tests for it are straightforward and beyond this discussion.

Cash for organs and sterilisation for money are nothing to do with any of this; these are entirely legitimate, voluntary exchanges of property, over which a third party should have absolutely no say. To say otherwise, is to engage in slavery; the slavery where your body, and the bodies of your children belong to the collective, to do with what they please, as they please, when they please.

As for individuals being vulnerable, indeed drug addicts with their addled brains and diminished powers of reason are vulnerable to persuasion; this does not mean that all of us who are not drug addicts should not have the freedoms that are our right. Down this line of reasoning, comes the logic that since this class of person cannot reason for themselves or protect themselves, someone has to protect them from the predations of these charities. Of course, the other class of people who cannot reason for themselves or protect themselves are children; hey ho, whaddyaknow, y’ just made Lord Soley’s argument for him; children belong in schools because, “we have to know they are safe”.

This is the big danger of accepting as ‘common sense’ the immoral reasoning of collectivism (and this is explicitly not aimed at A.P.) embrace it at your peril, and do not complain when they come to take your children, using your own parroted arguments about ‘vulnerable people’ as the pretext.

In Libertarianism, you have a complete way of approaching every possible human interaction that has unassailable logic that protects you, your rights and your relationships with other people. It provides a platform for the maximum prosperity without any violence or coercion. Those who are against it are normally either confused or explicitly violent types – you know the sort, the ones that think restaurants should be licensed by the state ‘because someone might get sick’.

Unfortunately for many, Libertarianism means throwing out years of accumulated presumptions and frameworks, most learned by rote and repeated without any thought. Libertarianism gives you the tools to parse the world and penetrate the reams of nonsense that are spewed out on every subject, like this one. If you take the time to get to grips with it, and have the intelligence and the strength to throw away your bad thinking, you will be rewarded with a set of tools and a philosophy that are is formidable as it is unassailable.

John Pilger has an article at Lew Rockwell, saying that Tony Blair “must be prosecuted”. Anyone that has an interest in permanently stopping the war machine and ending the state knows that prosecuting Blair, as satisfying as that event might be, will do nothing to stop the war machine and its murderous intentions towards Iran.

Lets do it.

Tony Blair must be prosecuted, not indulged like his mentor Peter Mandelson.

I for one, am sick and tired of the soap opera of political personalities and the writers who promote it by talking about it. It hasn’t done anything to stop the war machine in the past, and it will not going forward. This sort of thinking distracts from getting to the solution, as people vent all their energy on hating a single individual instead of the war machine itself.

There are an unlimited supply of Blairs waiting to fill his shoes. Anything other than an idea to stop the next Blair from taking the levers of the war machine in his hands is a waste of time.

Both have produced self-serving memoirs for which they have been paid fortunes. Blair’s will appear next month and earn him £4.6 million. Now consider Britain’s Proceeds of Crime Act. Blair conspired in and executed an unprovoked war of aggression against a defenseless country, which the Nuremberg judges in 1946 described as the “paramount war crime.” This has caused, according to scholarly studies, the deaths of more than a million people, a figure that exceeds the Fordham University estimate of deaths in the Rwandan genocide.

I could not care less about how much money Blair makes from his memoirs. If the price of stopping the war machine for all time is that Blair becomes a multi billionaire, so be it.

This is nothing more than jealousy politics wrapped in a cloak of moral outrage over the genocide committed by Blair. Once again, this is a complete distraction from what sensible people should be thinking about; the next ‘Blair’ and Iran.

People like Pilger, by failing to get to the solution and distracting everyone with his brilliantly crafted exposés is actually a part of the problem. Like Tony Benn and StopWar, these people are not spreading the solution; they are diffusing the anger of the vast majority who are sick of war and want a stop put to it.

In addition, four million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes and a majority of children have descended into malnutrition and trauma. Cancer rates near the cities of Fallujah, Najaf and Basra (the latter “liberated” by the British) are now revealed as higher than those at Hiroshima. “UK forces used about 1.9 metric tons of depleted uranium ammunition in the Iraq war in 2003,” the Defense Secretary Liam Fox told parliament on 22 July. A range of toxic “antipersonnel” weapons, such as cluster bombs, was employed by British and American forces.

We know all of this, and all of it is now irrelevant.

The only thing that matters is the next war and how it is to be stopped. Nothing can be done to de-poison Iraq, and an eloquent recital of the crimes committed there will do nothing to stop the attack on Iran. We know this, because similar writing was done before the Iraq colonisation for decades; from Agent Orange on the crimes of the war machine have been carefully documented and exposed. More exposure will not stop the next outrage. John Pilger, who is deeply experienced in all of this, knows this perfectly.

Such carnage was justified with lies that have been repeatedly exposed. On 29 January 2003, Blair told parliament, “We do know of links between al-Qaida and Iraq ….” Last month, the former head of the intelligence service, MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, told the Chilcot inquiry, “There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection … [it was the invasion] that gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad.” Asked to what extent the invasion exacerbated the threat to Britain from terrorism, she replied, “Substantially.”

Once again, BLAH BLAH BLAH.

The bombings in London on 7 July 2005 were a direct consequence of Blair’s actions.

Only in the sense that he personally ordered it to happen. Are you shocked by that accusation? You need to watch this documentary.

Documents released by the High Court show that Blair allowed British citizens to be abducted and tortured. The then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, decided in January 2002 that Guantanamo was the “best way” to ensure UK nationals were “securely held.”

So what? Blair is out of office and Labour are not in government. What do you have to say about what is happening NOW and what is being planned NOW? And is what you say going to make any difference? These are the questions that need to be asked; these are the points that need to be made, not all of this emotion stoking garbage.

Instead of remorse, Blair has demonstrated a voracious and secretive greed.

Once again, who cares if Blair shows remorse? Will that bring back the dead, or clean up the mess he left behind? Will it stop Iran from suffering the same fate? Of course it will not; Pilger (an author himeself) only cares about how much money Blair is making through his lucrative publishing deals, “I do not murder anyone and I cannot sell the number of books Blair does. I am telling the truth, history is on my side, I have the moral high ground, why can I not sell as many books as a mass murderer? ITS NOT FAIR!”.

Since stepping down as prime minister in 2007, he has accumulated an estimated £20 million, much of it as a result of his ties with the Bush administration. The House of Commons Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which vets jobs taken by former ministers, was pressured not to make public Blair’s “consultancy” deals with the Kuwaiti royal family and the South Korean oil giant UI Energy Corporation. He gets £2 million a year “advising” the American investment bank J P Morgan and undisclosed sums from financial services companies. He makes millions from speeches, including reportedly £200,000 for one speech in China.

More jealousy, more nonsense, all of it irrelevant to the next act of mass murder and none of it able to bring back a single life.

In his unpaid but expenses-rich role as the West’s “peace envoy” in the Middle East, Blair is, in effect, a voice of Israel, which awarded him a $1 million “peace prize.” In other words, his wealth has grown rapidly since he launched, with George W. Bush, the bloodbath in Iraq.

No mention of BDS which is the best way of making people change their ways. Why not? This article is a complete waste of time!

His collaborators are numerous. The Cabinet in March 2003 knew a great deal about the conspiracy to attack Iraq. Jack Straw, later appointed “justice secretary,” suppressed the relevant Cabinet minutes in defiance of an order by the Information Commissioner to release them. Most of those now running for the Labour Party leadership supported Blair’s epic crime, rising as one to salute his final appearance in the Commons. As foreign secretary, David Miliband, sought to cover Britain’s complicity in torture, and promoted Iran as the next “threat.”

So, what should be DONE about the personalities who are about to step into the cockpit of the war machine? We know they are all for mass murder, no matter what their names are. Stop wasting everyone’s time with the soap opera!

Journalists who once fawned on Blair as “mystical” and amplified his vainglorious bids now pretend they were his critics all along.

And if they were critics all along, what difference would that have made? None whatsoever.

As for the media’s gulling of the public, only the Observer’s David Rose, to his great credit, has apologized. The WikiLeaks’ exposés, released with a moral objective of truth with justice, have been bracing for a public force-fed on complicit, lobby journalism. Verbose celebrity historians like Niall Ferguson, who rejoiced in Blair’s rejuvenation of “enlightened” imperialism, remain silent on the “moral truancy,” as Pankaj Mishra wrote, “of [those] paid to intelligently interpret the contemporary world.”

All of this, except the Wikileaks exposé is irrelevant.

Apologies are irrelevant.
Journalists are irrelevant.
Historians are irrelevant.

The only thing that matters is what is going to happen next, and how it can be stopped. If it is true that the majority do not want more war, then war can be stopped. The massive march against the Iraq invasion showed that there are literally tens of millions of people in the UK alone who do not want any more war. The question is, what can they do (or more likely refrain from doing) to stop it.

We know that marching again would be totally pointless, and that for every one of the two million people who marched on that day, there were probably five people who would have gone but who did not make it. We wrote about this before.

Something oblique, unexpected, unstoppable, simple and effective needs to be unleashed. That is the only way an attack on Iran will be stopped. What is for sure is that this strategy will never come from a journalist or a historian.

Wikileaks has demonstrated that it is possible to damage the war machine. So effective is its operation, run by a handful of people with almost no money at all, that there have been open calls for its public face to be assassinated.

That is what we need; a harnessing of all the tools we have to hand to make it impossible for the war machine to operate. Wikileaks does what it does without marching, demonstrating, picketing or any of the other now discredited 20th Century methods of changing the world.

Even in the face of this revolution, the Pilgers of this world keep harping on like its 1999.

Is it wishful thinking that Blair will be collared? Just as the Cameron government understands the “threat” of a law that makes Britain a risky stopover for Israeli war criminals, a similar risk awaits Blair in a number of countries and jurisdictions, at least of being apprehended and questioned. He is now Britain’s Kissinger, who has long planned his travel outside the United States with the care of a fugitive.

If Blair is collared, then what? All of the above still applies, and if Kissinger is a war criminal, and you compare Blair to Kissinger, then Blair has a long life of influence and wealth ahead of him, no matter what you say or write.

Two recent events add weight to this. On 15 June, the International Criminal Court made the landmark decision of adding aggression to its list of war crimes to be prosecuted. This is defined as a “crime committed by a political or military leader which by its character, gravity and scale constituted a manifest violation of the [United Nations] Charter.” International lawyers described this as a “giant leap.” Britain is a signatory to the Rome statute that created the court and is bound by its decisions.

But not retroactively, and its over broad, as what is or is not a ‘crime’ is open to debate (dumping the dollar might be construed as an act that in its character, gravity and scale could be construed as a ‘crime’ by some). Statists want more state power knowing (or not) that this leads to more war, more aggression as people are forced to conform to artificial ‘norms of society’.

On 21 July, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, standing at the Commons despatch box, declared the invasion of Iraq illegal. For all the later “clarification” that he was speaking personally, he had made “a statement that the international court would be interested in,” said Philippe Sands, professor of international law at University College London.

I have a new phrase to describe Pilger, StopWar and all the other well meaning statists who incessantly whine about the war machine without offering any solutions ‘The Cathartics‘. I like it!

The Cathartics grasp onto any word or slip of the tongue and then scream and shout about it like it means something when it means precisely nothing. The House of Commons is the one of the centre stages of the soap opera, and Pilger quoting lines from its script is no better than a scarf wearing washer woman recounting what happened on Coronation street last night as if it were real.

Tony Blair came from Britain’s upper middle classes who, having rejoiced in his unctuous ascendancy, might now reflect on the principles of right and wrong they require of their own children. The suffering of the children of Iraq will remain a specter haunting Britain while Blair remains free to profit.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/pilger/pilger86.1.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Blair, reflecting on what he did means nothing. What Pilger actually means is he should feel ashamed of making so much money out of his publishing deal and post PM contracts. Get over it Pilger; Blair lining his pockets is not the problem.

As for the principles of right and wrong he requires of his own children, that is an entirely personal matter that is also, not the problem, and I guarantee you that Blair is not haunted in any way by what he did. He believes that what he did was of benefit in the long run, and nothing you can say will change that. Finally, venting jealousy is a poor substitute for a solution to the end of the war machine.

What a total waste of time; Lew Rockwell, one of the biggest websites in the world, where articles are not only read but copied, re-posted and emailed by the millions; a platform of extraordinary reach, has been used by this man to spew a completely pointless jealous rage piece, repeating what everyone already knows about Iraq, singularly failing to mention even a single possible solution to the next war crime. Even offering a bad solution would be better than nothing. Not a single hyperlink to any resource that could help stop the possible attack on Iran… but there is a link to Amazon so you can buy his book.

If the attack on Iran is to be stopped, do not look to John Pilger for an answer. It will emerge from the internets via social networks, and then, all of a sudden, the war machine will be shut down.

What we are waiting for is a text; a small piece of writing containing the very simple instructions that everyone needs to follow to bring down the machine. The idea is coalescing in the mind of someone somewhere, and soon, it will arrive in your inbox, or in your timeline and it will hit you with its simplicity and its beauty. You will commit to doing it and you will forward it to all your friends and re-tweet it, and the machine will die on that day.

Tony Benn, war enabler and thief has a piece over in the Grauniad that simply cannot be allowed to stand:

The time to organise resistance is now
We reject these cuts as simply malicious ideological vandalism, hitting the most vulnerable the hardest. Join us in the fight

Gravity is not an ideology, it is a fact. In this matter, the fact is that the state is STEALING money from the productive to disburse as it sees fit. This is theft, pure and simple. It is immoral and unacceptable to decent people.

It is time to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government’s budget intentions. They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s, which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services.

What has wrecked the lives of millions is SOCIALISM. The STATE is responsible for all the ills that have been suffered in the twentieth century, and thanks to the internet, everyone can now see that this is the case.

There is no such thing as ‘our jobs’ jobs are created by entrepreneurs, not the state. They are not collective property; they are the property of the people who create them. Pay is what is due to people who do work. The rate of pay is a private matter between employer and the employed. The state should have no say in that private contract whatsoever. Education is not the business of the state; it is not a right, but is in reality, a good like Health Care. Transport is also no business of the state, and niether is the delivery of anything, including the post, and any other service, like the internet, which some deluded people want to claim is a right.

The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers’ profligacy.

This is a straw man argument. It is completely wrong that anyone other than the shareholders and depositors in banks were made to bail out the banks. In a properly functioning country, no one would be forced to pay for a bailout, or other people’s food or anything else, and the fact that this has happened is no excuse for more organized theft by the state.

The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VAT to 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBT people and pensioners.

It is absolutely wrong that the state should levy a ‘value added tax’. This is an unjustifiable interposition in the private transactions of individuals. As for that shopping list of people who are going to suffer because of these cuts, they would not be suffering at all if everyone were free to interact economically with 100% of their money, and those that were left out would be take care of by charity.

One thing is for sure, Labour and socialism has utterly failed to produce the prosperity that they promise again and again, and they will never be able to produce it. All they can do is destroy capital, technology and redistribute wealth by force.

If their ideas were great, people would voluntarily finance them. The fact is that people who are creative and productive see their sham for what it is, and run from it like horses run from fire.

Women are expected to bear 75% of the burden. The poorest will be hit six times harder than the richest. Internal Treasury documents estimate 1.3 million job losses in public and private sectors.

The ‘public sector’ is entirely parasitic. Those jobs are not real jobs; they are invented by government and financed by people who are productive in the real economy.

What happens in the ‘private sector’ or the real economy, is not the affair of the state, and if the state had no power to interfere in the real economy, it would be many times more prosperous, with greater opportunities for both job seekers and entrepreneurs.

We reject this malicious vandalism and resolve to campaign for a radical alternative, with the level of determination shown by trade unionists and social movements in Greece and other European countries.

You cant make stuff like this up.

This man is a representative of the most malicious, vindictive, destructive and anti-human philosophy ever known to man. They are violent thieves who steal money from the productive to give away to their friends and to finance their hair brained schemes.

What do they mean by ‘radical alternative’? What can it possibly mean other than more theft, more wealth redistribution, a return to Orwellian bureaucracy and everything evil that all the British are fed up to the teeth with?

These people understand NOTHING about economics and money. Even a child can be made to understand it if they read the right books.

And as for other European countries, Britain is not a European country. Everyone has had ENOUGH of Europe and its insane policies, and rioting like the Greek parasites will only destroy the infrastructure that you need to steal the billions you are craving for like the vampires you are.

I have a feeling that Tony Benn and his band of modern day Robin Hood criminals are going to find that everyone hates them, will not tolerate being stolen from by them, and will push back against them with such ferocity that they will be knocked over.

This government of millionaires says “we’re all in it together” and “there is no alternative”. But, for the wealthy, corporation tax is being cut, the bank levy is a pittance, and top salaries and bonuses have already been restored to pre-crash levels.

Like it or not, it is the millionares and everyone beneath them that owns and runs a business that creates all the wealth in any country. They should be cherished, free to operate their businesses as they see fit, without any interference from the state of any kind. If you want to start a union, that is entirely your absolute right; but the owners of businesses also have rights, and yours do not trump theirs.

This is the principle, that everyone has the same rights, that Tony Benn cannot accept. His position, in his mind, is one of superiority. His rights trump all others. The rights of his friends and followers trump the rights of all others.

He is DEAD WRONG.

An alternative budget would place the banks under democratic control, and raise revenue by increasing tax for the rich, plugging tax loopholes, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, abolishing the nuclear “deterrent” by cancelling the Trident replacement.

Banks are private property. What Benn is advocating is that the banks be nationalised, STOLEN from their owners if you will. Once again, the word ‘democratic’ is being used as a synonym for ‘fair’, ‘just’, ‘honest’, and ‘good’ when it is none of those things. Democratic control means control of the mob, against the wishes of the owners of property. That is THEFT, IMMORAL and EVIL.

Raising revenue by increasing tax for the rich is just theft. There should be no taxation by the state, full stop. The state should not be engaged in wars of aggression, no matter where they are being fought. And without a state, there would be no money for a nuclear deterrent unless everyone voluntarily wanted to pay for one, which I doubt would ever happen.

All of our problems come from the state, and people like Tony Benn, who control it.

An alternative strategy could use these resources to: support welfare; develop homes, schools, and hospitals; and foster a green approach to public spending – investing in renewable energy and public transport, thereby creating a million jobs.

Welfare is a soul destroying disease, and even those who deal with poverty have come to understand this.

We commit ourselves to:

Oppose cuts and privatisation in our workplaces, community and welfare services.

Those workplaces do not belong to you, they belong to the people who created them you THIEF! The welfare services you claim are yours are financed by money you STEAL.

Fight rising unemployment and support organisations of unemployed people.

Fighting rising unemployment can only be done correctly by freeing business to do what it does best, creating jobs, capital and progress. We do not need you, or the state to make this magic happen.

Develop and support an alternative programme for economic and social recovery.

There is no alternative to reality. Money and human nature are fixed. Go and read about it.

Oppose all proposals to “solve” the crisis through racism and other forms of scapegoating.

And no scapegoating of the people who create the jobs you want so badly, the ‘rich’!

Liaise closely with similar opposition movements in other countries.

No matter how many people you gather together in your bogus and immoral cause, you will still be bogus and immoral.

Organise information, meetings, conferences, marches and demonstrations.

YES! please do that, after all its so very effective!

Support the development of a national co-ordinating coalition of resistance.

That sounds to me like a call to arms to all thieves. Absolutely appalling. They want more theft, more immoral redistribution of wealth, more tyranny, more bureaucracy, a bigger hungrier state, more control over business. Just how stupid can people be?

It seems that there is no limit.

We urge those who support this statement to attend the Organising Conference on 27 November 2010 (10am-5pm), at Camden Centre, Town Hall, London, WC1H 9JE.

Signed:

Tony Benn

Caroline Lucas MP

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/04/time-to-organise-resistance-now

And then there is a list of the usual, delusional suspects.

Thieves to a man, all rotten to the core, leeches, unproductive, insane, destructive, anti-human and all bad!

It is as we predicted; the promised Great Reform Bill was just another sideshow. Nick Clegg blows it out of the water today, with this laughable drivel.

Tongs at the ready…

This morning Nick Clegg delivered a speech asking the public how they want the Government to redress the balance between the citizen and the state.

This morning I want to talk about freedom.

All ears.

For too long new laws and regulations have taken away people’s freedoms, interfered in everyday life, and made it difficult for businesses to get by.
The state has crept further and further into people’s homes, the places they work, their private lives.
That intrusion is wrong; it’s illiberal; it’s disempowering and it’s going to change.

All true, except for the last part. But we have already said that.

This government is putting freedom under the spotlight in a way the previous government never did.

Actually, by their inexcusable abuses, they forced everyone to think about the true nature of rights, right and wrong, ethics and the role of the state. New Labour are responsible for a huge uptake in Libertarian ideas, and one LibDem Councillor giving up that unethical party.

We want the British people have their say on where the state should step in, and where it should butt out.

This is entirely illegitimate. This is democracy; two wolves and a sheep deciding on what is for dinner. A ruthless bully boy thick necked Fabian Socialist northerner with ice cold ambition for blood, and two fat monsters deciding on who gets to kidnap your children. What the mob wants should not be law. PERIOD. This goes against every idea of the rights of the individual to his own life and property. Mob rule is UNCIVILISED.

I sense GREAT FAIL in you!

We are asking people for ideas on restoring hard won liberties that have been lost…

Ok, but as we said before, what are the conditions? And at the risk of repeating myself, what the MOB wants does not make RIGHT.

On repealing unnecessary laws that have no place on the statute book…

And on stripping away the excessive regulation that stops businesses from innovating.

Define ‘unnecessary’. Define ‘excessive’.

Your views will shape directly the steps we take.

And here is the first caveat; the views of the mob will SHAPE the steps; this is not, “we are your servants, and therefore we obey.”

It is a radically different approach.

Because this Coalition trusts people to get on with their lives…

This is wrong headed; it is not the place of a servant to trust that the master can ‘get on with his life’. Trust is something that the MASTER gives to the SERVANT conditionally; if the trust is broken, the servant is FIRED. What Mr. Clegg has demonstrated obliquely is that he thinks that he is your MASTER.

It’s probably the thing Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have most in common.
We don’t think every problem can be fixed by passing a new law.

Translation, “we do not have the power (yet) to fix everything, and so therefore, we leave to you what we cannot now control.”

We understand that Whitehall doesn’t have all of the answers, and doesn’t have a monopoly on the best ideas.

Translation, “we do not yet have all the answers, and so in the interim, we defer on matters that we do not yet have answers for.”

So gone are the days of know-it-all, do-it-all government.

They never existed!

Because a liberal society, a prosperous society, is one where citizens and businesses have the space and power to thrive.

True, but what is the nature of that space, and what do you, Nick Clegg, have to do with any of it?

Today I am asking the people of Britain to help us to begin building that society.
Protecting civil liberties, repealing unnecessary laws, and cutting restrictive red tape.

Here it comes…

Civil liberties

First, civil liberties.
One of the Coalition’s immediate acts was to halt ID cards.

But not for foreigners, who are second class sub humans, Apartheid style. This is FAIL for the reasons outlined here.

Plans are underway to restrict the storage of innocent people’s DNA; to properly regulate CCTV; to restore the right to non-violent protest; to protect trial by jury… To end the scandal of children being fingerprinted at school without their parent’s consent.

If the ID Card is anything to go by, all of these will be piecemeal measures at best.

The vetting and barring scheme for people wanting to work or volunteer with children is being scaled back to common sense levels.

You see? TOTAL FAIL.

That scheme should be SCRAPPED in its entirety. Its basic premise is fundamentally flawed. It is inherently immoral, dangerous, corrosive and evil. The only result of keeping will be an indefinite continuation of exactly the sort of ‘society’ that Clegg claims to hate. There are only two conclusions we can come to in this; he is either plain stupid, or he is he lying about hating the nanny / police state. One of those has to be true, because keeping the Barring scheme in any form is completely indefensible.

And we are looking again at counter-terrorism and security legislation to make sure it can provide the necessary powers to the police and the security services…
Without inhibiting the freedoms it’s meant to protect.

There is nothing to look at. At a time when the Irish were regularly detonating bombs in London, there was no need for any of this. The simple answer is to brutally cull all ‘Terror legislation’ that was enacted between the early ’70s and now. That would restore some semblance of sanity without any need for thinking. The only reason why these people want to ‘look again’ is because they have won hard fought totalitarian tools that they are loathe to give up. That is the only possible rationale for stalling or equivocating about this.

As someone who has spent years campaigning for these changes, I am enormously proud to see them in motion.

This is the same mentality of Blair; ‘only a small number will be affected by these laws’ was his rationale for his totalitarian edicts. By not fully removing ID Cards, Clegg is using the same logic; only the brown people will be affected, and so that is good enough for me. Completely shameful!

But I want us to go further.

Why not COMPLETE WHAT YOU HAVE ALREADY PROMISED FIRST!

Our ambition is to create a society where no law-abiding individual ever feels intimidated by the state, just for going about their day-to-day business.

Someone already had that ambition ‘Nick’ and his plan is better than yours because it doesn’t include you.

Where people aren’t cast under suspicion simply because of who they are, or where they’re from.

Astonishing. ID Cards for foreigners are going to be retained by them, and they can say this with a straight face? ID Cards for foreigners means that people are going to be targeted precisely because of who they are or where they are from. Absolutely disgusting!

But that means redoubling our efforts to restore the great British traditions of freedom and fairness.

The culture of snooping and mistrust has become so ingrained that we must tackle it with renewed vigour.
Don’t accept it.

WHOA there Nick, that sounds like a call to civil disobedience!

And what about that ‘preacher‘, who your government just barred from entering the UK; a frail man with pencil thin arms and spectacles, who everyone can watch on YouTube at will to make up their own minds wether or not his ideas have any value – this man; should he and the free people who want to accept a speech from him for their own money now ‘not accept it’ and smuggle him in? (And by the way, that man has MILLIONS of views on the YouTubes. Banning him is utter insanity and FAIL.)

Just what the HECK are you saying?

If you’re sick of the state prying into your private affairs, tell us.
If you feel harassed when you haven’t done anything wrong, tell us.
If there are ways that we can better protect your dignity, tell us.
And tell us what you want us to do about it too.

OK, we tell you that you may no longer restrict what we can or cannot ingest at any time or in any place. We are going to take you at your word and simply, “Not accept it”.

Now what? Are you just simply going to relent and fade away back into the night? I think not.

Unnecessary laws

This isn’t just about the laws that make you feel under threat.
This is also about the laws that serve no real purpose.
Obsolete rules that are out of date or that are duplicated by other laws.

Prohibition is obsolete, unworkable, a drain on everyone’s resources and time, bad for everyone’s health and completely immoral and unjustifiable.

It ends NOW.

Take seditious libel – a 17th Century offence, under which writing something contemptuous about the government could be punished by life imprisonment.
Not only do such laws make a mockery of our justice system…
Just having them on our statute book gives succour to regimes in other parts of the world that use similar offences to restrict freedom of speech.
That’s why I was delighted to see campaigners successfully work to get those particular laws abolished last year.

That was last year; what have you done for me lately?

And there are other laws that are now completely obsolete.
It’s a little know fact, for example, that under old laws that are still in place, failing to report a grey squirrel in your back garden is technically a criminal offence.
That’s one I think we could probably do without.

Who cares what you think or want? It is what the public want and their liberty that counts, not what you ‘think’ anyone can do with or without. And by listing all these arcane and patently absurd laws you skirt around the real issues of liberty, rights and power.

We need to work through legislation to identify laws we don’t need.
Looking, also, at how they work on the ground.
And, my colleague, Eric Pickles, will shortly be asking Councillors and Council staff to identify outmoded, outdated and obsolete secondary legislation which could be cut down to size.

The same councils, that with total unanimity and with a single voice, claimed that they needed to be able to enter people’s homes to interrogate their children without the parents present? Now you are being SILLY.

On laws that have fallen into disuse, some people may ask ‘what’s the point?’
Why bother getting worked up about a law that just sits there and does no any harm?
But I say: that misses the point.
Squirrels aside, whether seemingly harmless or not, laws that serve no purpose obscure what legislation is for in the first place.
Over the last decade thousands of new laws have been added to the statute book.
Thousands of new ways of turning us into criminals.
Laws for the sake of laws – as if every problem can be solved by an Act of Parliament.

But it doesn’t work; it’s a distraction.

FALSE it is not a distraction in any way; it is YOU that is using it as a distraction.

The purpose of the law is to protect and empower citizens.

FALSE.

The purpose of the law is NOT to empower citizens, the law’s sole purpose is to control and restrain the state.

That is the only time the state ever has the right to restrict your behaviour.

The state has no right WHATSOEVER to restrict your behaviour at ANY TIME. If you are doing something, like committing suicide, that has nothing to do with anyone else but you, the state has no ‘right’ to stop you or to interfere with you in any way. This is absolutely pure LibDem FAIL on STEROIDS… which, by the way, you have every right to shoot into yourself until you look like this.

As soon as we forget that we open the door to state intrusion.

State intrusion begins when Nick Clegg asserts that the state has a ‘right’ to restrict behaviour. He clearly doesn’t know that rights are, where they come from and why his beloved state doesn’t have any.

We lose that kneejerk indignation we should all feel when the state sticks its nose in where it doesn’t belong.
And that complacency is dangerous.

And so to end the habit of compulsive law-making, all new criminal offences and civil wrongs will now be specially screened.
They will only come into effect if we can demonstrate that they are needed, that there is no alternative, and that existing penalties are not sufficient.
And, because no one has been keeping track of new offences, we will start to keep count, making that information public.

No one has been paying attention in any case. They simply get on with whatever they are getting on with, and take no heed of you and your fellow totalitarians. Look at the huge ‘drug’ industry and the associated consumption as an example. Literally millions of people regularly do it, without any consequences of any kind. Anyone who thinks that the population cares a whit for what Nick Clegg thinks on these matters is not on the same planet as everyone in the western hemisphere.

Regulation

Third, regulation.
Regulation is enormously important; not least in protecting employees and ensuring standards.

Utter rubbish. The state is absolutely not needed to ensure standards or protect employees. This is simply not a fact.

But we have to get the balance right.

No, you do NOT. What people do in the privacy of their own homes, the private transactions they make on and with their private property, what they sell in their private businesses, IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. There is no ‘balance to get right’, and these are the same words that the last government used to justify entering people’s homes to interview children away from their parents without any cause whatsoever. More fail from the masters of FAIL.

Too many of the business and voluntary groups I meet tell me that they feel overwhelmed with forms to fill out and boxes to tick…

They should follow your advice: “Don’t accept it.” Don’t fill out the forms. Do not comply. Do not engage. Do not respond. Do not obey.

Whether it’s a fledgling business looking to take on more staff…
Or a charity struggling with the complex record checks their volunteers have to undergo.
And too many ordinary people are burdened with costly bureaucracy…
Which is why, within weeks of coming into office, the Coalition scrapped Home Information Packs – pointless red tape that was hampering the housing market.

And what of the useless eco fascist energy rating? Oh, I know! “Don’t accept it!”

We need regulation that makes sense.

No, ‘we’ need to be left alone to regulate ourselves as we see fit.

Regulation that we can afford and that people can have confidence in.

Wrong. The price is irrelevant, and confidence in regulations do not make them effective.

Ensuring businesses and organisations are run fairly, offering high quality services…

And here we go again, with the infuriating misuse of the word ‘fair’ businesses are PRIVATE entities that should be run as their OWNERS see fit. It is not your place to mandate or legislate ‘fairness’.

But also allowing them the space to be creative and to adapt to changing circumstances.

‘ALLOWING’? Who are yo to allow or disallow anything whatsoever? “Don’t accept it!” hmmmm I’m beginning to like that phrase!

According to the British Chamber of Commerce, the cumulative cost to business added since 1998 has now reached £88 billion.
That is an unacceptable drain on the entrepreneurs and innovators we need to get the economy back on track.

Today, our new Reducing Regulation Committee, chaired by Vince Cable, is meeting for the first time.
Their immediate task will be to look at all of the regulations approved by the previous government which are due to be introduced this year, to establish whether or not they are really necessary.

There is nothing to look at; scrap them all wholesale and save yourself the wasted effort.

They will be central in helping to develop a one-in-one-out rule.

All out and none in should be the rule.

Ministers intending to bring in a new regulation will have to get rid of an existing one.

This is totally ridiculous.

If we accept the initial premise that regulation is sometimes necessary, then if there is a numeric cap, it is clear that at some time, either the cap will need to be raised or ‘people are going to get hurt because we were not there to protect them’. By saying that there should be a numeric cap, Clegg is conceding that no matter what the circumstances are, the state should have no power to increase regulation. The libertarians say that the cap should be a ZERO, and by his own logic, he is confirming that we are correct; why should the state have ANY regulatory power at all, if the limit to its remit is an arbitrary number completely divorced from circumstances or an apparent ‘threat to society’?

Can these people think at all?!

They will also need to convince the Reducing Regulation Committee that their proposed regulation is necessary.
That’s a fundamental shift in Whitehall: regulation will be the last, rather than the first, resort.
And I would also like to highlight the very good work that is going on in Defra, where an industry-led Task Force has been set up to reduce the burden on the farming community specifically.

Farmers know what is best for their property, and this is another simple matter of property rights. The state has no right to interfere with farmers and their private property. PERIOD. Defra should be abolished immediately.

More broadly, we are looking closely at the timing and implementation of new EU rules so that British businesses are not at a disadvantage compared to their competitors abroad.

British business will be the most competitive in the world if Clegg and his merry band of capital destroyers went about the proper business of government, instead of insanely interfering with everyone’s affairs. People would flock to the UK to set up factories, capital would flow in by the trillion if only they would RELENT.

But the key to all of this is you.

True and false. It is up to everyone to “Don’t accept it!”, and not to wait for Clegg to come to his absent senses. If everyone simply said we “Don’t accept it!” Clegg would have no choice but to throw up his hands and join in the pool party.

You – the small business owner, the social entrepreneur, the volunteer.
You know better than government departments, better even than Vince, what rules and regulations are holding you back.
The whole point of this exercise is to get Whitehall out of the driving seat.
We want to know where regulation works, where it doesn’t, and what we can do to help.

I have an even better idea; why should anyone wait for you to be told anything at all? Why doesn’t everyone just do what is right for them (without breaking the two principles of Natural Law, “Do not encroach on other persons or their property.” and “Do all you have agreed to do”) and get on with what they need to get on with? Why should anyone have to wait for YOU to make any sort of decision or appraisal?

What does any of this have to do with YOU?!

A new kind of engagement

And it isn’t just the outcome of this process that is important, it is the process itself.

The outcome is the only thing that matters, and that outcome should be the end of the state.

This is the most ambitious online crowd sourcing exercise ever attempted by any British government.
It is an entirely new way for government to engage with people.

The only act that is required here is disengagement.

One we want to make a habit of…
And we will shortly be asking for your input into how we improve our public services and make savings to help get the public finances in order.

Sadly, your insane Keynsian drivel, soaked as it is in the absurd ideas of ‘fariness’ and dusted by the anthrax of statism represents an infinite and impenetrable barrier to common sense, Austrian Economics, (the TRUE economics), Natural Law, Ethics and Rights. Without an understanding, even a cursory one, of all these things, you are FAIL.

Something we started last week when the Prime Minister and I wrote to 6 million public sector workers…
Doctors, teachers, nurses – people on the front line who know best.

Our aim is for the best suggestions on freedoms and regulations to be included in parliamentary bills, this year and in the future.
As for what they’ll look like, I don’t know.
The government may have got the ball rolling, but now the debate is totally out of our control.

If only!

We don’t know what ideas are going to end up on the site; how they will spread across other sites and forums; which of them will capture imaginations and which won’t.
If a specific reform is popular, Ministers won’t be duty bound to act on it, but we won’t be able to hide it either; it will be right there for everyone to see.

And that, my friends, is the ultimate fail.

Nick Clegg is not a public servant.

Public servants are duty bound to obey their masters. If the masters want a repeal of all prohibition laws, then the dutiful servant is duty bound to act on this order. You, Nick Clegg, have no rights when it comes to controlling other people, you only have power. By disobeying the will of the public, and by demonstrating that you do not care what anyone thinks through this insane pandora’s box exercise, you are going down a road that will expose to all and sundry that you are not a public servant at all, but are in fact, no different to a suave and slick, smooth talking slave master.

And, yes, there will be clashes – arguments over which ideas are good and which are bad; over what we can do and what we can’t.

There is nothing that you cannot do when it comes to removing legislation. It is in fact a matter of what you won’t do, not what you can’t.

But it is precisely because this process is so unpredictable that it is worth doing at all.
Real democracy is unspun; it is the raucous, unscripted debates that always throw up the best ideas.

Democracy is evil, and all of this is proof of that. Democracy is violence, the stupid ruling the smart, the small being crushed by the mob. It is the will of idiots made into power. It is the cause of every problem that people face today.

Conclusion

The Your Freedom project is part of our bigger political reform agenda.
It is one of a series of ways of transferring power away from government and the state and into your hands.

FAIL. The power that government has is illegitimate, and should be nullified, not transferred to anyone.

Part of the most radical shake up of our politics for decades.
The other steps we are taking – include, among other things, fixing parliamentary terms, giving people a choice over the system they use to elect their MPs, reforming the House of Lords, introducing the power of recall, getting big money out of politics…

All fluff and all irrelevant.

And I will be making further announcements on some of that next week.

But today, let me end by saying this:
This government is determined to give people back their freedom.

It is not in the gift of government to give something to you that already belongs to you. The only thing they can do is get out of the way and stop the violence. Nick Clegg is not about to do this, not at any time nor for any reason.

But we cannot do it without you.

WE CAN DO EVERYTHING WITHOUT YOU NICK.

So be demanding about your liberty, be insistent about your rights…
This is about your freedom, and this is your chance to have your say.

Thank you.

Nick Clegg’s Website

I think ‘we’ should all take a que from the best line in this statement, “Don’t accept it!”.

No one should accept anything anymore. No matter what it is that is being done to you…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you you not to smoke in your own pub, or to close at any time not of your choosing…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you not to grow Marijuana in your own garden…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you to pay a ‘TV License’…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you that you MUST attend school…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you have to pay a congestion charge or pay for the ‘National Debt’…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you to pay 20% VAT…

“Don’t accept it!”.

Need I go on?

The Pandora’s box is now not only open, the lid has been taken off. If you do not take Clegg at his word and “Don’t accept it!” then you have only yourself to blame for your continued status as cattle.

A quick look at the submissions that are pouring in shows that some people want to use the state to do MORE violence or varying degrees lessening of violence:

Democratically electing a head of state, making us all more free.

This guy is smoking the drugs everyone wants legalised. FAIL

Bring back Call Centres to the UK

Forcing business to do what is not economical? FAIL.

Legalise and Tax Cannabis

Legalize it, but then allow the state to steal money off of its production and sale? FAIL

Make access to the Internet a fundamental human right

Complete and utter FAIL. And you know why.

Outlaw corporal punishment in the household.

Force the state into people’s homes? FAIL.

Castrate Paedophiles

Bring back the death penalty? This is fail!

Change CRB Regulations Slightly

Slightly pregnant? FAIL!

You see what I mean? The mob wants VIOLENCE. They want to tell other people what to do, to have money stolen from them. They are irrational, illogical and their demands are illegitimate.

Who is to say which of these should and should not be followed? This is the classic example of two wolves.

All FAIL.

Today, we read an irrational nauseating and completely wrong headed Defense of what amounts to ID Cards through the back door, delivered uncritically by the incorrectly named ‘Liberty Central’, which is in fact, Fail Central when it comes to your rights and defending them:

ID cards: gone for good
Scrapping the costly ID card scheme will be just the first act of this coalition to stop the state stealing people’s liberty

The title of this piece is false. ID Cards are not ‘gone for good’, since foreigners are still compelled to hand over their fingerprints and be registered in an NIR Lite®.

When the second reading of the Identity Documents bill takes place in the House of Commons later today, the coalition government will meet its commitment to scrap the ID card scheme. This bill is the first step the government will take to reduce control by the state and hand power pack to the people. It is not the job of government to collect and store vast amounts of biographical and biometric data belonging to innocent people.

We agree with this entirely.

It is not the job or proper role of government to do this to innocent people, no matter where they come from or who they are. That is the qualification missing from this correct statement.

People do not want the state keeping information on its citizens for some ill-defined and unproven benefit. Fewer than 15,000 people have bought an ID card since last November – and around 3,000 of those were issued free to workers at Manchester and London City airports.

When has what people want had anything to do with the proper role of government, or what it decides to do or not do? This is window dressing, and as for ‘ill-defined and unproven benefit’, you, Damien Green, fall into this trap yourself in this very article.

Many claims have been made in recent years for supposed benefits of the identity card scheme – from tackling terrorism and fighting organised crime to preventing identity fraud. I don’t believe these have, or ever would have, materialised. This is incredible given that the scheme, while delivering no increase in public protection, would also erode hardwon rights and freedoms and requires huge spending.

We have been talking about this for years. All the claims made for ID Cards were completely disproven by us and many other people. Which makes what Mr. Green says later quite astonishing.

The estimated spend of £835m in costs over ten years on the scheme is a significant amount of money, not “diddly squat” as Alan Johnson, the former home secretary, has publicly stated.

What do you expect from a communist post man? In any case, what the liars in New Labour said is now irrelevant. The bills have been put on the table and they need to be paid and repealed.

This huge sum would have been extracted from all of us one way or the other – either because we would have been forced to buy the wretched cards or through taxation.

And the issue of money is an entirely separate issue from the basic immorality of the project.

With the introduction of the Identity Documents bill, the coalition government has acted swiftly to turn back the increasing tide of government bureaucracy. We want to dismantle the scheme at minimum cost to the public and see early destruction of the personal data held on the national identity register and of the register itself.

You may be turning back the tide, but the country is still flooded up to the neck in laws that violate the rights of everyone who lives in Britain. Until you have drained all the leech filled waters completely, you cannot make any claim that the work is finished.

Now we come to the nasty, ridiculous, irrational, illogical, xenophobic clap trap…

Some campaigners have criticised our decision to continue issuing biometric residence permits while scrapping the ID card for UK citizens. This is misguided because the documents are very different.

No, they are not different at all in nature. Foreigners will be compelled to hand over their fingerprints and be registered on an NIR Lite® which will be subject to all the same vulnerabilities as the full NIR. It is discriminatory and xenophobic since it targets only one group of people – foreigners. It is illogical because anyone who does not look the part will be subject to investigation as we have detailed over and over instantly legitimising the need for a National ID Card of the type you are rejecting. It will create confusion, suspicion, division, disharmony and hatred; the complete opposite of what any mandated interfacing with the state should produce.

These biometric residents permits offer no advantages over the traditional ones, just as biometric ID Cards do not offer any benefits to anyone. If they are going to be brought in, as was the case with ID Cards, Damien Green needs to explain in detail, with evidence to back up his claims, how these residence permits are going to deliver the benefits he lists. I note that he does not do this in this article, because he knows full well that this system is being kept on solely to placate the vendors who are having their NIR related contracts cancelled.

We are required by European Union law to provide biometric residence permits to non-EU foreign nationals.

This is the Nuremberg Defense. “I was only following orders”. All the people who committed serious crimes and who used this defense were hanged.

If something is immoral, you have no option as a moral and ethical person but to reject and refuse to impliment it. You cannot lay the blame elsewhere for your crimes of violation. If you are acting as a public servant, you cannot engage in acts of violence against anyone on behalf of your masters, under the same principle that covers your behaviour in the Nuremberg Defense.

This excuse simply does not hold water, and there are any number of EU laws that could be enacted that are offensive to liberty that I could list, where I might say, “if X law was passed would you be obliged to obey it?”. The UK opted out of the parts of the Shengen Agreement that were not to its liking. There is no reason whatsoever that this too should not be immediately stopped.

They are issued under entirely different legislation.

This is the sort of argument a child makes. Whatever the legislation is, you should not be implementing it, period.

They are not “ID cards for foreign nationals”, as the previous government called them.

That is exactly and precisely what they are. As we describe, anyone who does not look the part will be made to identify themselves against the National Biometric Identity Service (NBIS) system, to which the police will have access so that people can be fingerprinted in the street, like criminals.

This is completely indefensible.

The biometric data is not kept on the national identity register

No, it is kept on the NBIS database, which is for all intents and purposes, identical to the NIR. To use these words as as a balm to reassure the public that the danger is really over is pathetic, childish and shows that Damien Green is falling into the same traps that New Labour fell into when they were trying to sell the snake oil of ID Cards. They start by using childish thinking, illogic, diversions, mischaracterisations and end up lying through their teeth to save face.

, and there is no legal obligation for foreign nationals to carry their permit with them,

This is a New Labour style misrepresentation and fact omission. Everyone and their dog now knows that in a biometric system with a central database, your fingerprints are the card. Once you give over your fingerprints, they can be checked anywhere at any time, instantly. You do not need a physical card; this is the sinister nature of biometric identity systems, and it is why the NIR had to be destroyed. The NBIS is no different, and anyone who says so is either:

1. Computer illiterate
2. A liar

so no one should ever be stopped and asked to produce the card.

Firstly, we all know that the anti terror laws have been abused beyond imagination and all reason. No one SHOULD have been abused under these laws, but they WERE and CONTINUE TO BE abused.

If this requirement for foreigners remains, then reflexive xenophobic forces WILL come into play and people WILL be abused. That is an absolute fact. And whilst no one will be asked for their card, they will be forced to put their finger on a scanner to be identified.

First, this will happen to brown people. Then, there will be yet another toothless outcry of racial profiling from the usual suspects, and then to make up the numbers, ‘white’ indigenous people will be targeted at random for street fingerprinting and fingerprinting down at the police station, so that the police can demonstrate that they are not using racial profiling, and being in the new Orwellian doublethink of the day, ‘fair’.

Think about it carefully. If they need to prove that they are not racially profiling, they will need to fingerprint (at any place and any time) the indigenous British, and then record their details along with the fingerprint that they took for the purpose of gathering statistics. That data is going to have to be stored somewhere.

Are you starting to get the picture yet?

ID Cards for foreigners will by their very existence, bring into being ID Cards and an NIR for the entire population.

We must also bear in mind that it only takes an act of Parliament to make the carrying of foreigner ID Cards compulsory. The word of one decent, if slightly confused man in a single article in a Marxist newspaper is no Defense against the future abuses of a rogue Parliament and the totalitarian beasts who man it.

Unlike the identity card for British citizens, this card serves a purpose by helping foreign nationals easily prove they have a right to live and work freely in the UK.

This is a claim that biometric resident permits have a utility greater than the residence permits that were being issued previously. Damien Green has not said how this is so, but I can tell you that proving you have a right to “live and work freely in the UK” means that you will, at a minimum, be required to produce your foreigner ID Card to a potential employer.

Any employer who does not ask for this card, could open himself up to prosecution. Any person who does not look or sound the part will be asked for this card. If an employer asks a person who does not look the part but who is British, could find himself being prosecuted for discrimination.

Once again, the only way a system like this can work is if everybody has a card showing their status; a National ID Card, which the coalition have conceded is unacceptable to decent people living in a free country.

What they must now admit is that the foreigner ID Card is also unacceptable for the same reasons, and more, since it will create the need for the very thing they have railed against so eloquently.

This government wants to bring to an end the practice of the state gathering data for the sake of it. It is imperative the government is held accountable to the people it represents and does not abuse its position in key areas of personal freedom and liberty.

If that is the case, then they should not be gathering the fingerprints of anyone, since doing so serves no purpose but to line the pockets of IBM.

This government represents not only the indigenous people of Britain, but of all people who enter this island legally for whatever reason. By mandating that foreigners are to be fingerprinted, this coalition government aligns itself with the worst abuses of places like Dubai, where workers are routinely abused.

The coalition is setting up a system of second class persons, just as the Apartheid government did, through its system of pass laws. This is anathema to all moral people.

The Identity Documents bill is a major step on that road. Making the repeal of ID cards bill the first to be brought before parliament by the new government demonstrates how serious we are about creating a free society and reducing expenditure.

This is simply not true.

In a free society, you do not fingerprint and catalogue one section of the public, whilst leaving the remainder at liberty. Liberty is for all, no exceptions, no compromises and no excuses.

Cancelling the ID cards scheme and abolishing the national identity register is a major step in dismantling the surveillance state, but this bill is just the first step. It will be followed by a series of reforms to restore British freedom to our citizens.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/jun/09/id-cards-damian-green

The British are not YOUR citizens. Someone who believes in liberty would never use the possessive pronoun to describe human beings; you, Damien Green are THE SERVANT, not the OWNER or THE MASTER.

You have NO RIGHT to fingerprint ANYBODY, British Citizen or not.

You are NOT making the first step unless the NBIS is abandoned permanently; in fact, yo are TRIPPING YOURSELF UP with this absurd and illogical retention of an immoral and inhuman Apartheid system, that is sure to grow like a cancer that will impede the recovery of the healthy liberties of Britain.

It looks like shouting victory was premature:

[…]

Despite the demise of the national identity card, a separate but technically similar scheme for some foreign nationals will continue. That scheme is run by the UK Border Agency and is still being rolled out.

Some 200,000 cards – known as biometric resident permits – have already been given to migrant workers, foreign students and family members from outside the European Economic Area.

The abolition of ID cards is among measures that the coalition partners have pledged to take as part of a reversal of what they call an erosion of civil liberties.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8707355.stm

As it was in Apartheid South Africa, all ‘foreigners’ are going to be compelled to be fingerprinted and put into an NIR Lite®. This is what it looks like:

If you are caught out in the street while looking like a Pakistani, an Indian or a West Indian, Malaysian, Indonesian, Arab, North African, West African, South African, South American (no, they just SHOOT them on sight), you will be pulled over and asked to show your ID Card. If you do not have it, they will force you to put your finger on their mobile fingerprint scanner then the magic will happen…

But wait a minute, we have been here before!!

——-

Foreigners who repeatedly flout the rules when they are made to apply for ID cards will be thrown out, the Government said yesterday.

Immigrants will have to give two fingerprints, iris scans and a raft of personal details to the Home Office when the scheme is introduced for foreign nationals only later this year.

Ministers said that, if they fail to comply with these “primary requirements”, they could have their permission to stay in the UK revoked.

But papers released yesterday revealed that only serial offenders – who break the rules at least three times in five years – will face removal.

Initially, they will face only fines of £250 per offence. And refugees will face only fines – up to a maximum of £1,000 – as human rights laws bar them from being deported.

A consultation document on penalties under the scheme, which is a fore-runner of the national ID card for all British citizens, also said there was no power to jail anyone who failed to pay the civil fines.

But the offence of contempt, which can carry a jail term, “may be applicable”, it added.

Someone with indefinite leave to remain in Britain would only have their leave cancelled in “compelling circumstances”, the paper went on. Fines would be discounted for people on benefits.

The roll-out will begin later this year, with the children of foreign nationals also expected to carry the cards.

Opposition MPs said it offered a glimpse into how the ID card scheme for British citizens could work, when it is introduced from 2009.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: “This shows the kind of punitive measures that every British citizen can expect when ID cards are eventually rolled out nationally.

“ID cards for foreign nationals are not going to solve the problems of identity fraud and illegal working. All they will do is threaten the immigration status of hard working people who bring benefits to this country.”

But Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said: “Britain’s border security is currently undergoing the biggest shake-up in a generation, ensuring it stays among the toughest in the world.

“ID cards for foreign nationals will cement the triple ring of security protecting our shores, along with fingerprint visas abroad and a single border force here at home.”

Daily Mail

Look at the image they used to illustrate this article.

It’s just the sort of photo they would use to inflame peoples emotions and get them on board with ID cards for foreigners.

But the question is this; how are they going to differentiate between those people?

Lets look at it from the policeman’s point of view shall we?

Obviously, the first person you stop is the Muslim on the far left in purple, ‘Number 1?. This guy is probably here on a passport with a Visa, and should be carrying his card.

‘Number 2? we do not stop. She has her belly button showing, and is ‘light skinned’. The belly button, tight jeans and no bra means that she cannot possibly be a muslim, so we leave her alone.

Anyway she’s hot.

‘Number 3? we pull over straight away. He looks ‘muslimish’, is wearing a cap and looks ’shifty’. Frowning fits the profile. Stop.

‘Number 4? STOP!

‘Number 5? Call a WPC….STOP. Covered from head to toe, carrying heavy thick plastic bag.

‘Number 6? Mouse brown hair, fashionable clothes, conscious of her hair. No stop.

‘Number 7? Same as number 6.

‘Number 8? Hot blond, no stop.

‘Number 9? Nice handbag strap, caucasian, no stop.

Now, there is one problem with all the above:

EVERY ONE OF THE PEOPLE IN THIS PHOTOGRAPH IS A BRITISH CITIZEN!

Not one of them is required to carry or apply for an ID card of any kind, because they are all British and all of them were born right here in the UK.

This is the problem with what they are planning; it is the begnning of ‘racial’ profiling on an unprecedented scale. That is the only way you are going to be able to pick up all the foreigners and get them fingerprinted. Then of course, after it is done (if it ever even happens) You will forever be pestering British Citizens simply because they do not ‘look the part’.

Then will come the calls for everyone to be put in the database, since to have only a section of the population under this system makes no sense at all, as we have said so many times.

Even if everyone were in the system, they would STILL use ‘racial’ profiling every day trying to hunt down the stragglers and the refusniks. This is a disaster in the making of the type that Britain suffered with its ‘sus law‘. Only it will be much much worse.

This is discrimination of the worst kind. It is also a breaking of trust in the same vein as the non-dom debacle; people who have lived here for decades are now to be treated as criminals, and subjected to a system created by habitual liars and incompetents who have so little care for human beings that it strains the imagination as to what it would be like to actually speak to these monsters in person.

The fact of the matter is, this is discrimination, pure and simple. A legal challenge is coming. An infrastructure for mass resistance is already in place.

This measure, this ‘dry run’ will be the death knell of this bad scheme.

——-

Thats how we said it in 2008.

if you think that the borders agency is not going to share their database with the police you are insane.

That means that the police and their mobile fingerprint scanners are going to be used to terrorise anyone who is brown.

As the police use mobile scanners, they will scan you, and if you are not on the database it means one of three things:

does that mean you ARE british? Only the British are NOT on NIR Lite®

does this mean you ARE an illegal immigrant? Only illegal immigrants are NOT on NIR Lite®

you ARE an illegal immigrant: DETAIN IMMEDIATELY AND WAIT FOR BORDER POLICE

Interesting isn’t it? Any imbecile can work this out, but clearly, Nick Clegg has not the capacity to do this.

It probably went down like this: the ID Card vendors had break clauses in their contracts that would have cost the treasury tens of millions. Rather than invoke these clauses and pay out the penalties, the coalition gave the contractors the contract for the Borders Agency NIR Lite® system as compensation, in return for not invoking the break clauses.

Who knows?

What is for sure is that this is nothing more than a delay in the roll out of a compulsory ID card system for every British citizen.

In the end the penny will drop that they have to have everyone in the system to know the status of anyone.

A piecemeal system cannot work; that is why every country that has an ID Card makes them compulsory for everyone.

For the record, there is no reason whatsoever to have an NIR Lite® to control borders. This is vendor snake-oil and the coalition has swallowed it wholesale. All the fingerprinting and iris scanning in the world will not stop illegal immigration.

But you know this!

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1353
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=262
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=157#comment-102
http://www.irdial.com/blogger/archive/
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=222

Take a look at this; Labour’s Pat McFaddon talks about the coming public sector cuts, as if they can be avoided by raping the private taxpayer for more money to prop up the public sector, or international investors to pump money into the UK bottomless pit.

Recorded from Sky News, 25 May 2010:

The bit we are interested in is the point at 2:30 where he says:

I haven’t met many constituents complaining about CCTV, but I’ve met plenty who want more cameras in their streets, to stop the kind of thugs who destroy the quality of life in local areas. So I’m not sure if cutting back on CCTV and cutting back on law and order in hard pressed communities is going to go down well with people.

Now look at Labour’s Caroline Flint and Conservative Malcolm Rifkind talk about the coming Queen’s Speech.

Recorded from BBC Breakfast, 25 May 2010.

At 2:00 Lucas repeats the exact same line on CCTV as McFaddon:

Well, um, I have to say I think the ‘Freedoms Bill’ as it’s been called I think raises alot of worrying issues; thinks like the DNA database, which we know is responsible for catching something like 800 rapists and murderers each year, the fact that CCTV cameras… I have to say that as a constituency MP I don’t have anybody coming to me saying we don’t want cameras they are usually saying we want more cameras in order to tackle anti social behaviour and crime in our communities. And thats something that I will be watching out for very very closely because actually I think thats almost taking away freedoms from people to live a safe life.

Oh dear. Its not surprising that they are speaking from the same talking points. What is surprising is that it seems like Labour, having just lost an election, and who are claiming that they failed because they did not listen to people, are STILL taking the Police State Kool-Aid and regurgitating it from a central command centre whose job it is to spread disinformation through the mainstream news.

These horrible, delusional, irrational, monstrous people, even after a defeat cannot come to terms with reality, are still up to the same lying fudging, spinning garbage with the taste of defeat fresh in their mouths.

They really are the most terrible people you could conjure up in your imagination… only WORSE.

Take a look at this:

After massive public rejection of the surveillance state, and country wide vandalism of the millions of CCTV cameras in the UK, it was decided to remove all traces of the monitoring apparatus that cast a debilitating fog over life in the UK. Like the fall of East Germany and the STASI, the changes came overnight as the revulsion over the mutated form of British life became universal and ‘went nuclear’.

“We are not going to live like this anymore. Britain has been turned into a prison, and we have had enough”

Parliament has drawn up a list of all ‘database state’ laws going back to the early days of the now discredited Blair government, all of which are to be struck off the books in one fell swoop.

“This has been a long time in coming, but the writing has been on the wall for years; the silent grumbling of the British public has turned into an earthquake of non-violent dissent. Just like the Berlin Wall, the database state has been dismantled one camera at a time in a single day, without any opposition from the police.”

That was an imaginary scenario concocted to paint a picture of how the fall of the Police State would look.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? It’s from an old BLOGDIAL post.

BLOGDIAL is great because the people who write on it are:

• way ahead of the pack
• know their subjects backward
• do not mince their words
• can synthesise the facts of the present to produce accurate predictions of how the future will look
• all have impeccable taste

The BLOGDIAL archives are chock full of gems like the one above, and we keep getting better and better as we hone our understanding and expand our learning.

Unlike others, who believe that writing about Liberty is likely to ‘bore readers’ we understand clearly that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Now is absolutely NOT the time to pack up and go home; in fact, it is time to redouble all efforts to push back our mutual enemies and mush them underfoot for all time.

With all of that trumpet blowing out of the way, the Queens speech has just been read, so lets rip through it.

Many of the items in it are predicated on the idea that the state is legitimate in the first place, which it is not. We can however look at each item from a point of view of wether or not it makes any sense or is good in the short term:

Office for budget responsibility bill. Sets up the OBR to take responsibility for producing budget forecasts, meaning the chancellor – who under the current arrangements is in charge of producing his own forecasts – won’t be able to twist the figures.

This makes sense, because the people in charge of the money of the state should not audit themselves or do anything like that.

National insurance contributions bill. Raises income tax allowances, so that “most people would be better off relative to the previous government’s plan”, funded by a rise in national insurance. Reallocates tax worth around £9bn.

This does not make sense. It is more borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, exactly like the completely immoral Child Credit scheme, which took money from taxpayers to give to children.

You could not refuse this ‘free’ investment money, and your child was given a unique number as an identifier. If you did not respond to the agency running this fiasco, they invested the money for ‘your’ child on its behalf and sent you as the parent or guardian, regular updates by post about how ‘your child’s investment’ was doing. A scandalous, immoral, deeply offensive and irrational misuse of other people’s money, which does not seem to appear in this speech, even though its abolition is promised.

Welfare reform bill. Simplifies the welfare and benefits system, improving work incentives and “removing the confusing complexity of the benefits system”.

We all know about the Welfare Warfare state do we not?

Pensions and savings bill. Implements the findings of the review of the state pension age being conducted by the government. Currently the state pension age will increase to 66 after 2024. The review will propose bringing that forward. The bill will also restore the earnings link from 2012.

This is another Ponzi scheme. The people who pay in today are being remunerated in the future with devalued money, thanks to the fiat pound.

Financial reform bill. Gives the Bank of England control over macro-prudential regulation in the City. Not clear yet what will happen to the fate of the Financial Services Authority.

The only thing that needs to be reformed is the nature of the Pound.

Equitable Life bill. Pays compensation to savers who lost money when Equitable Life came close to collapse.

Where will the money come from for this? It’s another bailout, as immoral as any other.

Airport economic regulation bill. Promotes competition in the airport market, possibly breaking up the BAA monopoly.

Makes sense; airports should be entirely privately owned and run for profit.

Postal services bill. Allows the sale of part of the Royal Mail, in line with the plans originally drawn up by Lord Mandelson. The exact proportion being sold has not been specified.

The post office should be entirely private and for profit, just like Federal Express.

Energy bill. Promotes energy-efficiency measures in home by introducing a “green deal” charging system, with incentives to suppliers and households to save energy. The bill may also regulate emissions from coal-fired power stations and create a Green Investment Bank.

This is utter Glegish nonsense of the first order. Readers of BLOGDIAL already know why.

If the idea of a ‘Green Investment Bank’ was commercially viable, it would already exist and entrepreneurs would have created one. Nick Clegg is a complete idiot when it comes to this subject; he is more like a religious fanatic, ranting and frothing at the mouth than a rational human being. That bank WILL FAIL without government concessions to the industries that the bank lends money to, so they can generate profits which are not really profits at all but cost savings since the state will not have its protrusible proboscis on those industries, as it does on all others. This bank will therefore destroy businesses and jobs, just like the Green Jobs of Spain, that destroy 2.2 jobs for every real job. It will also divert capital from the real economy into a false ‘Green Economy’.

These are FACTS.

Academies bill. Allows more schools to become academies, giving them more freedom from Whitehall.

But this is to be paid for by the state, so it is still completely immoral at its base. Still, its better that central control is abolished, so it is a move in the right direction.

Health bill. Replaces the “top-down approach” with “the devolution of power and responsibility to doctors and patients”. Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, will set out more details of his vision in the next few weeks.

Is the NHS Spine going to be dismantled or not? That is what everyone wants to know!

Police reform and social responsibility bill. Makes the police more accountable through “directly elected individuals”. The bill will also create a dedicated border police force, ensure health and safety laws do not stand in the way of “common sense policing” and overhaul the Licensing Act.

‘Overhaul the licensing act’ which means ending the freedom to drink when you please, where you please, while the patrons of the House of Commons bar can drink and smoke all day every day year round.

Public bodies (reform) bill. Cuts the number of quangos, with a view to saving £1bn a year.

Makes sense.

Decentralisation and localism bill. Gives more power to councils and neighbourhoods. Also gives residents the power to instigate referendums and veto excessive council tax increases.

What? Give more power to the same councils who use RIPA to investigate dog fouling? These people need LESS power, and to be FORCED to behave like Public Servants. Do you know what a Public Servant is? Read that last link if you have even a sliver of doubt that you do.

Local government bill. Stops the creation of unitary councils in Exeter and Norwich.

Ok….

Parliamentary reform bill. Introduces fixed-term parliaments, gives voters the right to recall MPs found guilty of serious wrongdoing and sets up a referendum on the alternative vote system.

We all know about why voting is illegitimate, and so there is no need to go into that. Recall of MPs would make them more like Public Servants, so that is good. If it ever works.

Freedom (great repeal) bill. Restores freedoms and civil liberties and repeals “unnecessary” laws.

THERE’S THE RUB! What is “unnecessary”? In whose opinion? The predicted backdown starts here!

Identity documents bill. Abolishes the identity card system and destroys the national identity register.

At long last. VICTORY!

After many years of a hard fought information war, we have WON this important battle. Without an NIR and ID Card, it will be very difficult if not impossible to run a totalitarian police state. This is the most important part of the Queen’s Speech!

Scotland bill. Implements the final report of the Calman commission, giving more devolution to Scotland.

Freedom is not free, and if the Scots want freedom they have to have their own money and complete financial separation from England. Without it, all of this is just TALK.

European Union bill. Ensures that there is a referendum on any future plan to transfer power to the European Union.

What about the Lisbon treaty you TRAITORS. There should be a referendum on that and the very idea that Britain is in the EU in the first place.

Armed forces bill. Continues in force the legislation giving the armed forces a legal basis, as well as improving provisions for service personnel.

I’m not even going to go there.

Terrorist asset-freezing bill. Gives the government firm powers to seize assets from terrorists, following a supreme court decision that quashed the previous legislation in this area.

So the court says the law is wrong, so they are changing it so that it is right. So much for all their promises of doing things differently. And of course, this law will be used on ANYONE who they want to destroy. Oh well, what do you expect? Miracles?

And there you have it.

The two most important parts of this speech, the death of the NIR/ID Card and the Great Reform act mean that at least to some extent, things are going to be much better than they would have been under the totalitarian Labour government. Sadly we have already seen the backing down on this Reform Act, which should include ALL legislation that infringes the liberties of people in Britain.

That is why now is NOT the time to stop writing; any newspaper writer with one brain cell will now be getting ready to submit a comprehensive list of ALL legislation that is immoral and an affront to liberty, so that at the very least, it can be rejected and Mr. Clegg can be made to explain why he must retain control over everyone’s personal victimless pleasures; so he can explain why he is the master and not the servant in matters where there is no harm whatsoever.

Rand Paul has won the Republican nomination in the race for the Senate seat in Kentucky, and since this has happened, all the mainstream media are being prompted to pour over what ‘Libertarian’ actually means (even though Rand Paul says he is not a Libertarian) in practice, and they are finding that it is to say the least not to their taste.

In particular, they have discovered the part of Libertarianism that, quite logically, extends the idea of property rights to the subject of restaurant owners excluding people from their establishments for what many feel are not good reasons.

The fact of this matter is simple; either people have property rights or they do not. If the government can mandate that a restaurant must accept me as a client, then the owner of that restaurant does not have property rights in his establishment; the state is the owner of that place because ultimately, they are able to force the owner to serve people he would rather not serve. They are also making the owner into their servant, by forcing him to work for someone he would rather not work for (the act of cooking).

If the state can do this to restaurant owners, then they can do the same thing to any person, for any reason, including you. This is the reason why we must accept the risk that there are people in the world who discriminate, and accept that we have to share the world with them. We cannot gang up against them and force them to believe what we believe; doing that is immoral, and there are no two ways about that.

The possibility of discrimination is one of the risks of living in a space where people are at liberty to live as they see fit and exercise control over their property. You are going to get some people who discriminate, who hold and publish opinions that we find objectionable and who we would not care to associate with. We cannot eliminate risk from the world, and we cannot eliminate behaviours that we do not like. We are obliged to live with these people just as they are obliged to live with us. As long as they do not use violence against us, or gang together to coerce us, there is no problem whatsoever with restauranteurs, who are to our minds, savage, behaving like savages.

Sadly, people in the mainstream believe many contradictory ideas simultaneously. They believe that censorship is wrong, but that there should be such a thing as ‘hate speech’. They believe that they should have the right to Home Educate without being licensed because bad home Educators are practically non existent, but restauranteurs should be licensed, because “someone might be poisoned”. Similarly, these people believe that the property rights of others should be nullified, whilst their property rights are enshrined and protected. This is illogical and irrational thinking.

People in the mainstream of thought are outraged that artists are forbidden from drawing depictions of religious figures, but at the same time, will not support other people who espouse ideas or draw pictures that they find distasteful.

Libertarians do not suffer from this contradictory thinking. Libertarians understand rights correctly; you cannot use the government to enforce your beliefs or ideas; it is immoral and coercive. Banning Facebook because it hosts ideas you do not like is exactly the same as putting someone in gaol because you do not like his view of history. Supporting restauranteurs’ right to ban people from bringing handguns into their premises (or even more likely banning smokers) means you must support the right of restauranteurs to ban anything or any person for any reason. You cannot pick and choose what rights restauranteurs should have based on your own personal prejudices and personal circumstances.

There is a distinction between the state and the private sphere that is not properly understood by ‘normal’ thinkers. If we are to take the premise of democracy and representative government at face value, then anyone who votes or pays taxes or who is a member of ‘society’ has, by default, the same rights to services and to serve as any other member of society. That means that as equal stakeholders in society, the state cannot discriminate against a person for any reason whatsoever, as each person is an equal participant in the collective. The state, with its monopoly on coercion and violence has an obligation to treat all people equally that private people and the businesses they own and control do not. This is the key difference between the realm of the state and the world of private property. Private people do not have the right to use violence to extract monies from individuals, and neither does the public have a quotal share in the property of private people. Private people are also under no obligation to be in service to anyone; any other position than this is to condone slavery. The state, on the other hand, has the power (but not the right) to use violence, has an explicit obligation to serve the electorate, and the public has a quotal share in it and by its own rules, has ‘rights’ granted by it. The two could not be more different, and it is crucial, if you are to understand why restauranteurs have the right to exclude types of potential patron, that you have a clear delineation in your mind separating the state and private spheres.

As this argument rages on, you will see bad thinking swirling around this subject, grouped by the type of speaker. You will hear the same arguments, smears and nonsense again and again from the violent, statist, anti-Libertarians, and they will look like this:

They will:

• Conflate the disturbing imagery and injustices of the past with the core idea that man has rights, including unpleasant people who own restaurants.
• Insist that the state is needed to remove the rights of some people for the good of the whole.
• Mischaracterise Libertarians as people who are against the rights of ‘minorities’, when the exact opposite is the case.
• Use an endless stream of straw men to try and stamp a mark of disapproval on Libertarians.

Libertarians are the most pure anti racists out there. The whole of Libertarianism rejects the idea that people have different or separate rights depending on what they look like, what they believe, or who they prefer to have sex with. They are also the most rights conscious and clear thinking. They are the sworn enemies of almost all conventional wisdom and every foul thing that comes from it.

The logic of Libertarianism is unassailable, civilised, and completely embracing of all people; this may be the reason why it is greeted by such hostility by self selecting groups who make a living out of defining themselves by artificial and false distinctions. These groups are on to a good thing, and widespread adoption of Libertarianism would shut them down permanently. They would no longer be in line for special treatment at the expense of others, neither would they be able to exert control over other groups in any way.

As Libertarianism continues to grow, we can expect more of these desperate and flailing attacks. When the mainstream gatekeepers of public opinion start to delve into the writings of Murray Rothbard, they will find much that is offensive to them, and they will try to use what they find there to demonise and discredit Libertarianism.

Unfortunately for them, the very act of exposing these ideas will cause hundreds of millions to embrace them, because Libertarianism makes perfect sense and is in perfect tune with the true nature of man.

When men are living in a state of liberty, people’s feelings are going to be hurt. There are going to be bad people. There are going to be people who discriminate. There are going to be people who offend others with their ideas. All of these things are a price worth paying for liberty, such is the sweetness of that condition.

Nick Clegg makes another fatal error by offering unconditionally, to scrap the laws that the public want scrapped. Once the lists of legislation to be repealed start to be compiled, he will panic and have to backtrack, whereupon he will be correctly accused of welshing on the offer.

Nick Clegg: tell us the laws that you want scrapped

Sure thing, add these for starters.

The most radical redistribution of power from the state to the people for 200 years is to be made by the new coalition Government, Nick Clegg is to claim.

The public will be asked what laws they want ripped up, in far-reaching reforms designed to put back “faith in politics”, the Deputy Prime Minister will say.

This is nothing to do with having ‘faith’ in politics. Faith is the exclusive purview of religion… of course to some the state is a religion… but we will leave that for another time. This is about getting government out of our lives and off of our backs. Permanently.

The reordering of power will sweep away Labour legislation and new criminal offences deemed to have eroded personal freedom.

This is not ‘reordering power’ it’s an offer of relinquishing power.

It will involve the end of the controversial ID cards scheme, the scrapping of universal DNA databases – in which the records of thousands of innocent people have been stored – and restrictions placed on internet records. The use of CCTV cameras will also be reviewed.

All good.

Dubbed the “Great Reform Act”, the measures will close down the ContactPoint children’s database. Set up by Labour last year, it includes detailed information on all 11 million youngsters under 18.

Paedophiles, marxists, fake charities and statists are all weeping into their cereal right now.

In addition, schools will not be able to take a child’s fingerprint without parental permission.

They should not have this ability in the first place. It’s like saying, “schools will not be able to tattoo serial numbers on the arms of children without parent’s permission”. A school is not a tattoo parlour or a police station, where fingerprints are normally taken.

In an attempt to protect freedom of speech, ministers will review libel laws, while limits on peaceful protest will be removed.

Mr Clegg said the Government wanted to establish “a fundamental resettlement of the relationship between state and citizen that puts you in charge”.

I hear weasel words….

In a speech in London he will say: “This Government is going to transform our politics so the state has far less control over you, and you have far more control over the state. This Government is going to break up concentrations of power and hand power back to people, because that is how we build a society that is fair.”

The word ‘fair’ is beginning to irk me in a very volcanic way. Libertarians do not accept that majority rule is ‘fair’ and that handing the illegitimate power to steal and use violence on others is ‘fair’. You read BLOGDIAL. You know this!

He will describe the plans as “the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832, when the Great Reform Act redrew the boundaries of British democracy, for the first time extending the franchise beyond the landed classes”.

Redistribution of power is not a shake up, at least, it is not one that really matters. Only the diminution of power matters. Only the removal of laws matters. We have been saying this for ages.

Mr Clegg has been the most vocal of the three main party leaders arguing for political reform since The Daily Telegraph exposed the expenses scandal a year ago.

Today, he can put in train the measures which, he claims, will deliver “a power revolution”.

As long as there is a gatekeeper like him, it will never happen in the way it should. We all know that when they get this list of laws, they will… weed out the ones that they simply cannot stomach. This will make the whole process illegitimate, as you would expect it to be.

What is different this time, hopefully, is that after having been handed this laundry list of laws that should be repealed, and then Clegg and his statists refusing to obey, the reaction of the public just might be, “well, sod off then, I’m not obeying any more“. This is the only proper response; imagine if Clegg and co refused to remove miscegenation laws, or alcohol prohibition or anything that is so obviously contrary to your rights as a free human being. Would you throw up your hands and say, “oof marron, it’s the way of the world!”. Perhaps before, but now? after everything Britain has just suffered?

He will say that reform will not simply mean “a few new rules for MPs [or] the odd gesture or gimmick to make you feel a bit more involved”.

That means we expect REAL action to repeal EVERYTHING that people will no longer obey, even if you refuse to repeal it. I keep coming back to the issue of drugs, not because I want it to take advantage of this particular repeal personally (I despise habitual marijuana smokers), but because it is a perfect example of millions of people doing exactly what they want no matter what the law says. If Clegg really wants to return to some form of sanity, he is going to have to repeal all laws that restrict the imbibing of anything whatsoever. This means throwing out all drug classifications, and the entire prohibition infrastructure, without exception.

I have a prediction to make.

He hasn’t got the BALLS to do it.

And of course, they will all give the excuse that the majority do not want this, but once again, if the majority wanted miscegenation laws, would that make them moral and legitimate? of course it would not.

Mr Clegg will announce that he wants to hear about which laws should be scrapped to roll back the state encroachment into people’s lives.

How does he want to hear this? Through what mechanism? Thankfully, in the age of the internetz, anyone can start a wiki where you can list the laws you want to see repealed. There are a few of these running right now, and for sure, there will be more to come.

I think the deluge of requests will be very large… comprehensive in fact.

“As we tear through the statute book, we’ll do something no government ever has: We will ask you which laws you think should go.

And we will tell you which ones should go. Will you repeal them, or make glib, weasel word excuses for keeping them on the books? That is the question!

“Because thousands of criminal offences were created under the previous government. Taking people’s freedom away didn’t make our streets safe.

“Obsessive law-making simply makes criminals out of ordinary people. So, we’ll get rid of the unnecessary laws – and once they’re gone, they won’t come back.

What he is saying makes sense of course, but what on earth is an ‘ordinary person’? Is an ordinary person someone who grows marijuana in their greenhouse? Or is that someone Mr. Clegg would call a ‘criminal’? Is someone who does $your_recreation_or_right_that_is_banned an ordinary person, or a ‘criminal’?

That is the question: who decides what ‘ordinary’ is, and should there even be someone who defines what ‘ordinary’ is?

“We will introduce a mechanism to block pointless new criminal offences.”

OK fine.

The measures to repeal so-called surveillance state laws will be included in next week’s Queen’s Speech.

Under the coalition agreement, Mr Clegg and David Cameron said they would end “the storage of internet and email regulations and email records without good reason”.

What is ‘good reason’?! In this case, ‘good reason’ is a gaping crater ten miles wide on an asteroid that is eleven miles in diameter.

This is likely to mean the end of plans for the Government and the security services to intercept and keep emails and text messages.

Good. The only purpose for that is to harass, humiliate and threaten ordinary people. There we go with the ordinary people bit again… I meant INNOCENT PEOPLE.

The £224 million ContactPoint database can be accessed by 300,000 people working in health, education, social care and youth justice – leading to fears it could be exploited or fall into the wrong hands.

The readers of BLOGDIAL know all about ContactPoint.

Mr Clegg will add: “It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are regularly treated as if they have something to hide. It has to stop.

True.

“This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state. That values debate, that is unafraid of dissent.”

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/nick-clegg/7738343/Nick-Clegg-tell-us-the-laws-that-you-want-scrapped.html

You forgot the rest of the list of what ‘your’ government will be Mr. Clegg.

All in all, the most important thing is the scrapping of ContactPoint, the NIR and the ID Card. Without them, a totalitarian police state is much harder, if not impossible to construct. Even if they do not repeal the prohibition laws, no one is obeying them anyway and so the decline an fall of democracy will continue unabated.

Whatever happens, repeal act or no, it’s the end of things as they were, and the end of the power of the democratic state. If things go well, it will be replaced with the best possible alternative…

NOTHING.

UPDATE

It’s started. Melissa Kite in The Telegraph reels off some of her hated statutes to be excised:

Be careful what you wish for. Nick Clegg says he wants people to send him ideas of bad laws that ought to be repealed.

I hope the Deputy Prime Minister has an efficient customer services department in the Cabinet Office, because he is about to be inundated. He may need to set up a Ministry of Silly Laws to sift through all the suggestions that are going to pour in. Here are my submissions:

Pet Passports: A law requiring you to take a photo of your cat’s face and stick it on a piece of paper claiming to be an official document is not the sort of thing that made this country great. If Mrs Pomfrey wants to stuff Tricky-Woo in a basket and take him to Cannes on the Eurostar, let her do it without paperwork, I say.

The same goes for Horse Passports: We were told these were necessary to stop anti-inflammatory drugs getting into the food chain. Well, yes, or we could just white knuckle it and take a chance that the overwhelming majority of British horse owners won’t suddenly wake up one day and decide to turn their mounts into salami.

Speed cameras: It would be more honest if the police set up road blocks, randomly flagged down drivers and charged them a £60 protection fee to continue their journey unmolested.

The Licensing Act: Restrictions on small venues that rein in the more dangerous excesses of little old ladies holding tea dances in village halls. What say we just gamble on the Women’s Institute not playing heavy metal and trashing the joint?

The hunting ban: Country folk still cannot quite understand why they are prohibited from killing vermin in the quickest way possible, while Halal butchers are allowed to hang animals upside down and slit their throats. Puzzling, to say the least.

All health and safety regulations: Please, just let us injure ourselves. I personally would deem it a signal honour to take a conker blow to the head if it meant an end to being wrapped in state-sponsored cotton wool.

Data protection: “Your call is being recorded for your own safety”. No it isn’t. It is being recorded because we are living under the lash of an overweening state stuffed with busybodies who need taking down a peg or two.

‘Verbal abuse’: A concept invented as a way of prosecuting middle-class people for losing their rag as they deal with all of the above provocations. It should not be an offence to shout or swear, or tell bureaucrats to file their forms where the sun doesn’t shine: it should be a basic human right.

[…]

Telegraph

If the Telegraph had the same internet expertise as the Grauniad, they would already have a wiki up so that everyone could add their submission. It would automagically find the law that covers your pet peeve from a search term, populate the relevant fields and in two clicks you are done!

The World Should Now Be Considered in Revolution

It is noteworthy that so many disparate groups currently hate government activities that the Mayor of New York City was far off on who drove an SUV into Times Square in an attempt to bomb the famed landmark He initially said :

If I had to guess, twenty five cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.

There is so much anger in the world, a government can really be confused as to who is after it.

Consider the range of anger right now. Completely different philosophies, completely different views of the world, but the Times Square bomber, the Tea Party movement, the Ron Paul movement and the protesters in Greece have one thing in common, a rejection of control by the global plotters.

Ron Paul is in most ways as far as you can get from the Times Square bomber. Paul is non-violent and wants to work through the system. The Times Square bomber planned to express his objections to the global plotters by bizarrely attempting to blow up an SUV in Times Square, but triggering all these actions is a rejection of multi-national government attempts to force their will on the people.

Governments have been slowly moving towards global this and global that, well the one thing they have succeeded at is global anger. People are pissed off in Toledo, Islamabad, Athens and Des Moines. The degree of anger is different, the justification for the anger is varied, but around the globe the anger is there, all in one way or another traced back to multinational-government actions.

In Greece, it’s multinational-government actions via the EU and the IMF attempting to push “austerity programs” against the people. In Pakistan, it’s anger against the multinational-government military actions in the area.

In the United States, its anger against the global banksters that brought panic to the financial system and then raped the taxpayers and paid themselves huge bonuses. The U.S. global banksters are, of course,the puppeteers that are behind all these multinational-government actions.

The banksters have created a world that is in revolution. How all this plays out I have no idea. The genie will not be able to be put back in the bottle. The anger appears to be deep enough that the banksters may have to decide how evil they really are. Will they give the order to crush the revolution, and I mean crush, resulting in millions dead, or will they pull a Gorbachev and choose the noble and wise way and let the flawed bankster built system collapse?

I don’t think the people of the world have figured out yet that they are all protesting, in one way or another, the same one world government/banksters, but if they do, I would hate to be a bankster or a tool of the banksters.

[…]

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/05/world-should-now-be-considered-in.html

This is all true.

The solution in the long term is for everyone to switch to gold coins for their money, on an individual basis. The abandonment of paper money and the mass disobedience of legal tender laws is the only way that everyone is going to get rid of these criminal counterfeiters.

Britain has a huge problem facing it, and the only solution that will pull it free of its crisis is the implementation of Natural Law and this island turning into a Hong Kong style free trade zone. In one year, the entire ‘crisis’ would be over; there would be widespread prosperity, a massive influx in investment from abroad, and a huge reduction in the jobless numbers.

Snipping around the edges with a pair of nail-clippers is not going to do anything to solve the problem, and if they think they can tax their way out of this problem, like the insane Greeks who are going to raise VAT to 23%, and bring in all sorts of draconian regulations like outlawing cash transfers of more than €1500, they have another thing coming. Anyone in Greece with money or brains and talent or any combination of all three is already planning to escape from that sinking ship. The only way that the criminal Greek government is going to be able to stop it is by barring the doors.

Either way, its clear that business as usual is off the table. We have said it on BLOGDIAL before in the context of Home Education; there is no money for the massive and completely illegitimate nanny state. Like all socialist states, this one has run out of other people’s money to spend; they can now either voluntarily shrink and stay in power, or collapse and let chaos bring order. The choice is a simple one, and the British already know how to run an extremely successful country as a free trade zone.

I do not believe that anyone is going to tolerate garbage from the Tories, and of course, they would be insane to do so even for one second.

While we are at it last night, I got the explanation of why Labour are polling so incredibly, inexplicably high.

I went out to a fine Tandoori restaurant, where a young waiter foolishly mentioned the election.

I said to him, “heh, anyone as long as it is not Labour.”

He said, “Why is that? What do you mean?”

I said, “They are the only one that is for the ID card; every other party is going to scrap it”.

He said, “What’s the problem with that?!”

I said, turning to the large mirror behind us, “You see that person in the mirror (pointing to him); that person is BROWN. That BROWN person is going to be stopped and searched by the police to show his ID Card just because he is BROWN. Just like the South African ‘Pass Laws’ the ID Card will be used to discriminate against you and all your family, who will have to prove, every day, that you are legally in this country. If you do not bring your card out with you, dont worry; your fingerprint in the National Identity Database will be checked with a hand held scanner that the police are going to be issued with….IF LABOUR GET IN”.

His face DROPPED, as he realised the racist nature of the ID Card.

He said, in an agitated voice, “WHY DIDNT ANYONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS?! I JUST VOTED LABOUR BY POST!”

I said, “You what?!”

He said, “I have always voted Labour, because my Father always did, so thats why I vote for them, you know what I mean? I just told my brother to vote for them also…. why don’t they tell us these things?!”… Fingerprinting… thats like if I was a murderer or something!….

And there you have it.

I was so angry I felt sick to my stomach. I could barely eat my food.

Once again, the question came to me that I have asked myself for decades; why is it that anyone should be subject to the will of people like this?

Of course, free people are not subject to any of it whatsoever, but you, who believe in democracy and who willingly submit to it, well, you are simply and demonstrably INSANE.

People are voting who have not the slightest idea of what they are doing, its implications, the policies on offer or anything at all to do with voting or politics… they are simply doing what their Fathers did. That is why Labour are polling so highly, where they should be running at ZERO.. and of course, the totally insane LibDems want to lower the voting age to 16 to exacerbate this problem of the influence of the ignorant on the levers of control.

Yes indeed; it really is GAME OVER for this madness. Its just a question of time and the shape of the system that will emerge from the ashes. And I do hope that its not literally ashes.

I just watched the first installation of ‘Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking’, and it contained a schoolboy howler that made me laugh out loud.

At the end of the programme, Mr Hawking suggests that travelling at near the speed of light is ‘Time Travel’, which of course it is not, it is time dilation, not quite the same thing as exiting the present and arriving instantly in the future at a point in time of your own choosing. The phrase ‘time dilation’ is not mentioned in the segment. Discovery dumbing down much?

In any case, here is a transcript of this lol inducing howler:

If we want to travel into the future, we simply need to go fast. REALLY fast.

And I think the only way we are ever likely to do that is by going into space.

The fastest manned vehicle in history was Apollo 10. It reached twenty five thousand miles per hour.

But to travel in time, well have to go more than two thousand times faster. And to do that, we’d need a much bigger ship. a truly enormous machine.

The ship would have to be big to carry a huge amount of fuel, enough to accelerate to nearly the speed of light.

Getting to just beneath the cosmic speed limit would require just six years at full power.

The initial acceleration would be gentle because the ship would be so big and heavy, but gradually it would pick up speed and soon would be covering massive distances.

In just one week, it would have reached the outer planets, gas giants like Neptune.

After two years, it would reach half light speed and would be far outside our solar system.

Two years later, it would be travelling at 90% of the speed of light speed, and passing our closest neighbour Alpha Centauri.

Around thirty trillion miles away from earth, and four years since launch the ship begins to travel in time.

[…]

Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking: Time Travel

My emphasis.

Now compare this with the words of a Scientist who has some understanding about this subject:

There have been a number of studies published showing that staged fission and fusion deep space propulsion systems are capable of round trips to near-by stars in a shorter time then an average life span. Chemical rockets would be used to launch starships into orbit or to the moon for re-launching from there because of the greatly reduced energy requirements on the moon. Clever design would be employed such as was used by the Lunar landing program. Full advantage would be taken of very “free loading” possibility just as the Apollo vehicle takes advantage of the earth’s rotation to the east near the equator and of the gravitational field of the moon and of staged rockets which fire in programmed succession on the way and on counting on earth’s atmosphere to slow it down rather then carrying and firing retro-rockets to slow it down on the way back.

The final weight and cost depend almost entirely on the design assumptions rather than (as academic calculations so often assume) being independent of those design features. An early study of the required launch weight of a chemical rocket capable of sending a man to the moon and back concluded that the launch weight would have to be a million, million tons. The launching was accomplished less then thirty years later with a chemical rocket weighing three hundred million times less.

Stanton Friedman

Oh dear me. Even with this example on the record and many others to hand, Mr Hawking makes this ridiculous howler of a statement that we would need a ‘really big ship to carry all that fuel’.

Here is Stanton Friedman again, making it even more clear how absurd Hawking’s idea is:

We can go to the scientific record (where) there have been loads of papers published… what a track record it is for the astronomy community!

Back in 1903 a great american astronomer Simon Newcombe (October 1903) published a paper in which he showed that the only way man would ever fly would be with the help of a lighter and air vehicle (a balloon); that was two months before the Wright Brothers first flight.

When he heard about the flight his comment was, “well, maybe a pilot but never carrying passengers”. We know how right he was.

Another great astronomer in the twenties said that (proved mathematically) that it would be impossible ever to give anything sufficient energy to get it into orbit around the earth. You do not have to look far to know how wrong that was.

My favourite though is a Canadian astronomer, Dr. Cambell, 1941; he was sick and tired of all this science fiction stuff about going to the Moon, so he did a scientific paper in which he tried to calculate the required initial launch weight of a rocket, just a chemical rocket, able to get a man to the Moon and back. Thats a legitimate question; how big would it have to be?

Pages of equations, bottom line; the required initial launch weight of a chemical rocket able to get a man to the Moon and back would be a million million tonnes. Now even for me, thats too big. But isn’t it interesting that less than thirty years later we got three guys to the moon and back, still with a chemical rocket, whose initial weight (one of the members of the Saturn family) initial launch weight wasn’t a million million tonnes, it was three thousand tonnes; he was off by a factor of three hundred million!

How could he be so far off? He made all the wrong assumptions.

How could such a respected academic professor be so far off in his calculations?

He wasn’t the first and he certainly won’t be the last.

His problem was that he made all the wrong assumptions, because he didn’t know anything about space travel. Thats what aeronautical engineers are for. For example, he assumed a single stage rocket; none of our manned launches have been done with single stage rockets. Two three stages, more like, saves alot on weight. He assumed a limit of one g acceleration for the rocket. How certainly we can all withstand one g but the astronauts who get on these babies are sometimes subjected to 5,6,7 Gs the escape tower on the old apollo spacecraft and the mercury and so forth, if the astronauts have to come off the rocket real quick because there was a problem down below, they would have to take 13 Gs. Without damage either, it was expected. That makes an enormous difference. He assumed we launch straight up; well anybody knows that you bend over pretty quick to launch to the east, you do alot of ‘cosmic freeloading’.

Another example of freeloading, something we do on all our deep space shots incidentally, is he assumed quirt correctly that when you came back to earth from the moon you would of corse have to slow down; you are going 25,000 miles per hour that not a good landing speed. But he assumed the only way you could do that would be to turn the rocket around and fire the retro rocket to slow you down, but of course every pound of propellant we use at the end has to be launched form the earth at the beginning, slowed down when we get to the moon launched from the moon, most of it slowed down back here. It takes at least ten pounds of propellant per pound of payload to move it from each of these steps.

What do we do?

We get smart instead of powerful.

We say the atmosphere is already here; lets use it. We convert the problem from brute force into hitting the atmosphere at just the proper angle; it doesn’t take any propellant at the end of the trip. So, he was far off, no question about that, but can you get here from there or not?

From Stanton Friedman’s ‘Flying Saucers are Real‘

And so there you have it. Stephen Hawking could not be more wrong about this, just as Simon Newcombe and Dr Cambpell were so very wrong. Travelling to other star systems in a timely manner does not mean pushing a space craft like an oarsman rows a boat on the Cam. How do we know this? Because we pay attention.

Another howler was the idea that worm holes are impossible because of ‘feedback’. The first feedback example he gave involved an amplifier. Then this was transposed onto a wormhole in a scientist’s lab. What he failed to explain was where the amplifier was (is) that prevents worm holes from being possible. In fact, we know that entropy causes everything to lose energy; that should prevent worm holes from getting into a screeching feedback loop. Also, if the worm hole was far away from the point of origin, there would be no feed back at all if we use his speaker, amplifier, microphone analogy; it is only when the speaker and the microphone are in close proximity, with an amplifier, that you get feedback. Move either the speaker or the microphone away a sufficient distance and the feedback stops immediately. Presumably you could move the exit away in either space or time to stop this problem.

What these conventional thinkers hate when they address this particular subject are predestination paradoxes and other ‘problems’ that are not really problems at all, but states arising from bad assumptions.

It is the same with the UFO problem; they just cannot bear the idea of extraterrestrials coming here and usurping their positions in this backward society. To stop this from happening, they create all manner of false barriers to aliens getting here to make themselves feel good. It was the same motivation that caused the deniers of the heliocentric system to reject the truth that the Earth orbited the Sun.

That is not scientific thinking!

A lurking parent sent this in:

Europe presses UK to introduce total ban on smacking children
The Council of Europe says London needs to comply with 1998 ruling that said smacking violates children’s rights

The UK will come under increasing pressure to ban all smacking and corporal punishment of children as the European human rights body steps up pressure for a change in the law.

The Council of Europe – which monitors compliance with the European convention on human rights – will criticise the UK because it has not banned smacking more than 10 years after a ruling in 1998 that the practice could violate children’s rights against inhuman and degrading treatment.

Could violate ‘children’s rights’?

As you know, there is no such thing as ‘children’s rights’; this idea is nothing more than a pretext for the state to become the ultimate parent of all children.

All of you people who subscribe to the concept of ‘non violent parenting‘ might cheer the EU on this matter, but beware; first they tell you that you cannot discipline your child through a slap, then they will tell you that your child has the ‘right’ to go to school against your wishes, and you will have no where to turn to to stop it.

In fact, anything that your child wants that you do not want to give it will be a cause for the state to intervene; after all, they have a right to the internet, to TV, to school, to live without discipline, to sex, to eat whatever they like, and rights to things you cannot imagine that they have a right to.

You let them in on this issue and you can forget bringing up your children in your own way. Period.

“The campaign to abolish corporal punishment across the Council of Europe is gathering momentum; 20 countries have formally abolished laws allowing it in the past three years,” said Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, deputy secretary general of the Council of Europe.

Obviously it doesn’t matter how many countries introduce something, that does not confer legitimacy to their actions.

“The UK is one of the countries that has not yet implemented a full ban. In part, this is because the traditional parent-child relationship in the UK is one of authority [and] state intervention into family affairs is still not welcome,” she added.

and quite right too. There is no reason why that should change. The French, Germans, Dutch, Belgians and all the rest of them can do whatever they like in their own countries. There is no reason whatsoever that Britain should adopt this insanity.

We are talking about fundamental human rights,”

No, you are not. You are talking about a fallacious, fictional and dangerous fantasy ‘Children’s Rights’, which are a statists dream.

The state, through its role as the protector of these imaginary rights becomes the parent and owner of all children. The state controls all children, parents are sidelined and the fabric of human culture is re woven to include the toxic thread of the state as the strength of the cloth. It is pure, unadulterated evil.

she said. “Not only do children have the same human rights as adults, but they are more vulnerable than adults. They need more protection and not less.”

This is a very clever lie.

Children do have the same rights as adults, but they are a special form of property partly because they are vulnerable. The proper people to have the property rights in a child are the people who created it. It is not moral, natural or correct that the state should seize children and own them or exercise powers and property rights in children.

Children need protecting FROM the state not BY the state.

Current law prohibits the use of force against children,

Unless that force is being used by the state, which has a monopoly on the use of force and violence.

but gives adults in the home and in some part-time schools and religious institutions a defence to the charge of assault in cases of mild force where they can show the punishment was reasonable.

Corporal punishment is a very useful tool to maintain discipline in a school or the home. You can choose to use it or not as a parent. You can choose to send your child to a school where it is used to maintain order. That is your business; it is not the affair of the state.

The first ban on smacking was not introduced in the UK until 1987, then extended to independent schools in 1999. Further laws passed in the past decade have prohibited the use of corporal punishment in children’s homes and state care.

And now, children are running, literally wild in the streets, raping teachers, knifing them and everything imaginable and unimaginable beneath those crimes. Children who are properly disciplined from the off do not do any of this, and that is why schoolchildren in the 1950’s were so well behaved; they knew that if they got out of line there would be hell to pay.

Since 2004, the law has changed further to make it harder for parents, or adults “in loco parentis”, to use the defence of reasonable punishment when they could otherwise be charged with assault.

And Britain is suffering the consequences of this insanity.

Concerns remain about smacking at home and in part-time educational institutions such as weekend faith schools, where adults using “reasonable force” can avoid prosecutions. Last month, Sir Roger Singleton, the government’s independent adviser on child safety, published a report that recommended smacking should be banned in all places outside the home, citing particular concern about part-time schools and places of worship.

I wonder what Roger Singleton recommends to return discipline to schools? Why are these people so very keen to interfere with the private business of individuals? The sooner they are all consigned to the dustbin of history the better.

“Protection against physical punishment should be extended to all forms of care, education and instruction outside the family,” Singleton said.

‘Bollocks’ as a wise Home Educator once said to me.

However, the report stopped short of recommending a change in the law that allows parents to use corporal punishment within the home.

“I have concluded that any attempt to define those family categories or circumstances to which the availability of the defence ought or ought not to apply would be cumbersome, bureaucratic, largely impractical and very difficult to communicate,” Singleton said.

Interesting… WHY? They have no problem trying to pass legislation allowing them to enter the homes of people who Home Educate, why not do the same for this? Because there are too many properly operating families left in the country, and such a move would cause widespread anger that they just do not want to deal with. The incandescent rage of the Home Educators shone like a dawn before a hot summer day. Millions of parents in revolt to the same level would be like midday on Mercury in comparison.

None of the three main parties have any specific policy on corporal punishment in their election manifestos.

The BNP are for corporal punishment. You should read their manifesto (PDF), I guarantee you someone else is reading it, and agreeing with it.

Earlier this year, two Liberal Democrat MPs attempted to introduce a clause in the children, schools and families bill which would have limited the lawful use of corporal punishment to parents and those with parental responsibility.

You see? TOTAL LIB DEM FAIL once again! These people are your mortal enemies.

Spare the rod, spoil the child!

Ed Balls, the children’s secretary, has indicated that the government would support a ban on smacking outside the family, but not a full ban.

Why not?

This is the same bastard that wants your children to go to school because he believes that you are a child abuser if you do not send your children to be in his fat necked care.

“Sir Roger’s report makes it absolutely clear that a child should not be smacked by anyone outside their family.

Why not? If that task is delegated to another person, it is none of the business of the state. Children know that they are immune from discipline whey they are out of the home, that is why they are running wild!

I believe this is a sensible and proportionate approach,” Balls said. But the Council of Europe is increasingly critical of the UK’s approach, likening the campaign to the move towards the abolition of the death penalty.”Specific places cannot be exempt from rights,” said De Boer-Buquicchio. “Rights pertain to human beings wherever they are and in whatever circumstances and whatever the setting.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/25/law-reform-smacking-europe-uk

This is nothing like the death penalty. This is about controlling families in a completely unacceptable way, not banning a form of punishment that only the state can mete out.

Don’t be fooled by total scumbag Mr. Balls and his suddenly pro family stance; this is merely for the election. If he were to return to his office, he would go hog wild for implementing this evil ban and reintroducing his noxious bill to eradicate Home Education.

To my utter dismay, there are ACTUALLY PEOPLE WHO ARE INTENDING TO VOTE LABOUR!

It beggars belief!

UPDATE!

One of the great revelations of Libertarianism is the correction it makes to crucial words that are used in the English language. ‘Taxation’ is in actuality ‘theft’. ‘War’ is more properly called ‘mass murder’. ‘Conscription’ is, named correctly, ‘slavery’. All of these things and more, when they are called what they really are, can be put into the proper perspective so that you can think about them correctly. Without knowing what words really mean, you cannot start to come to a proper conclusion of any kind about the issues surrounding them. The same is true about the word ‘violence’.

To get to the bottom of this, we need to separate the world of adults from the world of children, and we need to define the terms.

Adults using force against each other is violence. Two men in a boxing ring thrashing it out is NOT violence, and neither is fencing, rugby or any other contact sport. Violence is a physical act of aggression committed by an adult against another, unwilling, non consenting adult.

A parent whipping a child is chastisement, not violence. Chastisement is completely different to violence between adults, where one adult profits in some way from the injury or coercion or damage done to another adult. In chastisement, the child benefits from the lesson imparted by the pain involved in the punishment.

For example, when a young child is walking with its mother down the street and she sees a ball in the middle of the road, she may (if she has not yet learned this lesson) run into the street to retrieve it, putting herself in mortal danger. When a child does this, the first response is for the mother to intone ‘NO!’ in a stern voice. Then, if the child bolts for the ball again, the mother intones ‘NO!’ accompanied by a sound slap. After a lesson like that, any normal child would forever more refrain from running into the road. That is the purpose of chastisement; to reinforce the gravity of a wrong act, its danger etc etc. Understanding by words is sometimes not enough to overcome the will to have fun, and this is where chastisement can communicate gravity where words are insufficient.

Chastisement and punishment are not violence in the context of the parent and its child.

We have all heard the phrase, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you”. That neatly sums up what the true nature of chastisement is; violence, apart from being adults against adults (equal classes of human being), hurts the victim more than the aggressor, and this is by design. Of course, in the case of chastisement there is no victim, since chastisement is beneficial and is done out of love, and not out of the desire for gain.

Thinkers on this subject must be very careful about conflating the adult world, its relationships and interactions which are peer to peer, with the world of parents and their children which is one of owner of property to property.

This property based relationship makes obvious the fact that if an adult who is not the parent of a child, spanks a child without the permission of the parent, that is an act of violence. Only the parent has the right to use or authorise the use of chastisement upon its children. All other adults have no right to punish or chastise or command a child, unless of course, that child is is infringing the property rights of that adult.

It is incoherent and incomplete thinking, a fundamental lack of understanding of English and a mixing up of the adult world and the world of children and parents that started the entirely evil ‘children’s rights’ movement. The relationship between parents and children cannot and should not be conflated with adult relationships. As soon as you do that, you immediately end up with ‘children’s rights’, ‘hearing the voice of the child’, children ‘choosing their own religion’ and all other nonsense like that, all enforced by the state.

Children are not free in the way that adults are free. Children and adults are not equatable in this respect, since one is a special case of the property of the other.

Man’s domestic relationships and rules are of course, his own affair. Many parents today accept behaviour from their children which is appalling, shocking and incomprehensible to some. So be it. When those children misbehave in the streets, everyone knows who to blame. When they cannot sit still in a restaurant, everyone knows who to blame. When they climb upon statues and run hog wild in museums while on group outings we know who to blame. When they scream at the top of their lungs in a supermarket or other public place, we know who to blame. When they constantly interrupt, force the parent to take them out of a public space because they are completely hysterical and out of control… we know who to blame.

Often the parents of such feral children are apologetic and embarrassed when their children go wild; it causes the observer of such bad behaviour to silently ask the question, “Why are you embarrassed? This is the type of child you are rearing with your style of parenting, you have nothing to explain to anyone, so why are you blushing with shame and embarrassment when your child ‘flips out’ in public?”.

The fact of the matter is those parents who have children that do not know how to behave and who have no boundaries know perfectly well that their children are in fact poorly reared, and they are embarrassed because they know that their children’s disorderly behaviour reflects poorly on them. This is especially true when there are children who are properly parented side by side with wild children. You can see it everywhere; when well behaved children are called, “time to go home!” in a park they obey without question and get ready to go. The bad children whine, the really bad children start to cry, le méchant throw a tantrum and les Enfant terrible fling themselves on the floor in complete hysterics. Allowing your child to expose this sort of revolting behaviour to other people is simply disgusting. To some. Parents get to know what parks to go to and which to avoid, and which families to avoid also.

But I digress.

If we really want to change the world for the better, we all need to know our boundaries and stay within them. We might also consider the sort of children we are going to unleash on the world, and make sure the parenting that is provided to them imparts discipline as well as an understanding of what the world really is and what free people are. I have deliberately not touched on the subject of obedience; it is clearly tightly linked to chastisement and its application. This whole area contains many elements that make it difficult to strike a balance for some, especially since it involves your offspring and an uncertain future that is almost certainly going to be filled with bad people. There is no greater teacher than experience, and for those that have more than one child, it gets easier as time goes on, and those in extended families have it even better.

One thing we can say for sure is this; all aspects of parenting are a strictly private affair and its completely up to you to parent in whatever way you feel is appropriate. It is also up to you to pick and choose who you associate with; those parents with children who are intolerable to one group are either included or excluded from your social circle and that is the end of it. This is perfectly natural; “birds of a feather, flock together”. As long as no one tries to force you to live like them, or accept behaviour that is repulsive to you, everyone can live in peace, share information, share public spaces, opinions and enjoy their lives. It is only when someone thinks they are right and then tries to make you obey them that trouble starts.

Another paid / placed-through-bribery article by the ubiquitous anonymous writer at the BBC is selling a TV programme for The Discovery Channel. The same article appears in the Telegraph.

The programme is about aliens, and as usual, if this regurgitated PR is anything to go by, it is going to be full of the same unscientific nonsense as all mainstream media ‘documentaries’ about this very interesting subject. In fact, a more interesting documentary would be about the reactions of people who believe they are scientists to the subject of UFOs.

Here we go!

Aliens almost certainly exist but humans should avoid making contact, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned.

TOO LATE!

1. Aliens already know we are here
2. They have made extensive contact on many levels
3. There is nothing that any human can do about it

In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was “perfectly rational” to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere.

And so, by proclamation, it is all of a sudden ‘rational’ to assume that intelligent life exists elsewhere. ALL HAIL THE HIGH PRIEST, WHO RELEASES US FROM OUR DARKNESS!

The next barrier for the ‘rational’ to break through is to accept that alien life has been here, is here, and that there is nothing the Gods of Science® can do about it. Most of them cannot even find the balls to discuss it, such is their total fear of this subject and its implications for their status.

But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.

There is absolutely no basis for this statement whatsoever.

They just as likely might treat the Earth like an amusement park or a zoo. They could use it as a laboratory. They could quarantine it. They could use it for any conceivable or inconceivable purpose. The point is that when non scientists (Sagan, Schostack, Blackmore, etc etc) talk about aliens, we must remember that they have refused on principle to look at any of the good UFO evidence. They take the posture of ostriches, don the robes of high priests, and make proclamations. These people are not in any way read in this subject, they know, literally, nothing about it, are not scientific in their thinking and should be scrutinised when they talk about it.

One thing is for sure; if aliens can get here, they can reach practically any star they like, either in person or with robotic craft. There is no need for them to come and ‘raid’ the Earth. For WHAT exactly? All the minerals you could possibly want can be found on other planets or synthesized…. the idea that they would come here only to steal is COMPLETELY ABSURD, leaving out completely the fallacious idea that human beings are the first owners of this planet and its resources. For all we know, some alien race might have a prior claim, having terraformed this place for their own use. Who knows? One thing is for sure, to superimpose human frailty, culture, nonsense, ignorance, technology, economics and rationale onto alien races is fraught with dangers. Attributing your petty primitive motives to other people (and they are people) is the precursor to misunderstanding and calamity.

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.

I actually agree with this, but not for the reasons that Mr. Hawking is suggesting. Columbus landing in America was one group from the same species encountering another less advanced group. The more advanced group was a criminal gang of primitive murderers and looters, not scientists. Primitive murderer looters kill and steal. That is completely different to scientists from another species and planet coming to collect plants and animals for study.

The danger from alien contact will be (and I have written about this before) the complete abandonment of human culture in favour of alien culture.

You think we have it bad now with a multiplicity of religions and nut-cases, imagine what would happen if and advanced race of beings landed here and gave us their book of philosophy. Billions of people would switch to it… after all, “it is SUPERIOR is it not” will be the rationale.

In the space of a few years, the world of humans would be changed forever, the culture of man discarded for the culture of other beings, and if not discarded, distorted beyond all recognition.

May God forbid it.

Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.

What professor Hawking thinks does not amount to a hill of beans. He doesn’t know the facts of this matter, has not done his homework, is literally ignorant about this subject and is years behind the curve.

He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

Actually this is not the case at all. We only have to look at good science fiction to see how intelligent life might develop into something that we would want to meet that is very different to us; so different that it would be difficult to communicate with them on the most basic of levels, even though we might share technologies with them. Try reading Joe Haldeman’s ‘The Forever War‘ to find out about that. I’m sure you can think of your own examples, science fiction fans.

In the past probes have been sent into space with engravings of human on board and diagrams showing the location of our planet.

Radio beams have been fired into space in the hope of reaching alien civilisations.

Prof Hawking said: “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.

When you do the math with your mathematical brain, you have to do all of the math to the end and not stop at the equals sign, or two levels up from the final balanced equation. You do not get the full marks for saying x² = y²; you only get 100% for the final answer of x = y. Hawking and his science cult devotees and junior priests all do the math that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that intelligent aliens must exist, but then they refuse to finish the calculations that would prove that they are, without a doubt, here, right now, which would then make obvious the conclusion that what we should be doing is looking for them here.

Finishing the equation means coming to a set of conclusions that will give us a set of predicted phenomena to look for. If we start to detect these phenomena, and then rule out all other explanations, then we may have found them. One thing is for sure, if it is taboo even to look, they will never be discovered, even though they might be right over your heads every day.

“The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

No, it is not. The real challenge is to break through the despicable, unscientific and shameful wall of ridicule and irrationality that prevents the scientific method from being applied to this subject.

The programme envisages numerous alien species including two-legged herbivores and yellow, lizard-like predators.

Back to the PR for the programme. CGI Porn!

Another picture from that set is on the Telegraph article. Taryn Fritz PR (or whoever it is) is doing a sterling job.

I am now going to make a scientific hypothesis combining my observations of fractal geometric forms and the results of the small amount of space exploration that man has managed to do between his murderous rampages.

In three dimensional space living and non living forms are to a large extent self similar, with a large amount of variety. Meteor craters always take on the same shape, as do crystals, fish and anything else you can mention. There is variety in these objects, but they are all self similar.

We have seen that on other planets, craters look like craters on earth. The same goes for all geologic artefacts like weathering and any geologic form you can mention.

Now. There is no reason to suppose that a creature that lives under water on Europa is not going to look like a crab or a fish or a giant deep-water volcanic vent tube worm. The chemistry of life doesn’t matter as much as the fact that the life has formed in three dimensions under gravity; all life that we are going to find will conform to shapes that we would recognise as life on Earth. If we find any life that does not fit any model that we are familiar with, then it is a pattern of a common form that we do not recognise, but which nonetheless is probably not unique. There have been forms of life on earth that no longer exist on Earth that bear littler or no relation to anything living, like the Hallucigenia.

The form of life will always alter to fit the gravity of its environment; this is the most important variable, over chemistry and pressure. Pressure doesn’t matter as much as gravity; crustaceans, worms, jellyfish, cephalopods and fish exist in variations under two tons per square inch. Chemistry doesn’t matter as much as gravity; we have found the badly named ‘extremophiles‘ that live under conditions that seemed ‘harsh’ to biologists trained to believe the false idea that life only exists in a very small gamut of ideal conditions.

You are not going to get bipeds in a zero gravity soup of life supporting chemistry. You will however, get snake forms and flagellating creatures on different scales.

On Europa, you are going to find crustaceans, worms, jellyfish, cephalopods and fish and all other sea forms that we are familiar with. That is a wager I will make with anyone.

The idea that extra terrestrial life is going to be drastically different to life on Earth is irrational; it is a part of the xenophobia that scientists have about alien life, where in every thought and utterance they seek to ‘push away’ alien life. They do this by saying that intelligent aliens cannot possibly get here in space craft. They do it by saying that alien life will not be anything like us, but instead will be totally unfamiliar to us. Both of these views are simply not true. Aliens that come here are humanoid shaped because that is one of the ideal shapes that intelligent forms end up in under gravity. As I explain above, all the other non intelligent shapes we are going to find will exhibit self similarity to the forms that we are familiar with.

Scientists still want to believe that humans are unique in the universe. This is a leftover from thousands of years of non understanding and religion. If they truly believed what they say about their quasi religious ‘Theory of Evolution’, they would not be dealing with this subject in this way.

But Prof Hawking conceded most life elsewhere in the universe is likely to consist of simple microbes.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8642558.stm

This is not scientific thinking.

The most abundant life on earth is microscopic and in the oceans. Does that mean that there are not billions of intelligent space faring creatures on the ‘dry’ parts of Earth? If the same proportion of ‘microbes’ to bipedal space faring creatures was replicated across only the Earth type planets, then there would be BILLIONS (Sagan voice) of bipedal, space faring intelligent beings in this galaxy, coming from worlds that are BILLIONS of years older than the Earth.

Once again, if you are a believer in the religion known as Evolution, it is irrational to believe that microbes can exist on a stable planet for billions of years without evolving into more complex intelligent life forms, and there are many planets in the galaxy that are much older than the Earth. On these planets, the Darwinists must concede that intelligent life would have an opportunity to develop there if it developed here, or, they must explain why the Earth is unique, which, by their own math, it cannot be.

These people have painted themselves into a corner. They have to admit that alien life exists or they cannot explain why life is here on Earth. They have to admit that complex alien life must exist, otherwise they cannot explain why it arose here on Earth. Finally, they have to concede that intelligent alien life must exist, otherwise, they have no explanation for intelligent life on Earth.

In the corner they have painted themselves into, stands a clutch of bipedal alien beings and their very odd transluminal space craft, waiting to confront them with their own ignorance.

All scientists who mocked the idea of bipedal aliens visiting the Earth will be utterly discredited forever and consigned to the ranks of the people who burned Giordano Bruno, or who those foolish cultists who laughed at the people in the list at the bottom of this post.

The programme makes a concession to the reality of ‘Spacefaring Aliens’ where “…a fleet of “nomadic” aliens enters a wormhole opened with technologies that are beyond human comprehension.” but once again it fails to do the final part of the math; given the huge numbers of alien races that MUST exist, and the fact that they WILL be space exploring, and that they are BILLIONS of years ahead of man in age, with technology that we can not comprehend, the inescapable conclusion is that they ARE capable of getting here, they DO get here REGULARLY and the ETH explanation of the UFO phenomenon is CORRECT.

Google ‘not interested’ in privacy, say information tsars

Google has repeatedly shown a “disappointing disregard” for safeguarding private information about its users, the privacy officials from 10 major countries have said.

Britain’s Information Commissioner Chris Graham and equivalent officials from Canada, France, Germany and Italy were among the signatories to a letter to the search giant’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, which condemned the way the company has delivered both its Streetview mapping service and its Buzz product, which was conceived as a rival to social network Facebook.

The letter, organised by Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, calls on Google to lay out how it will meet concerns about its use of public data in the future, and says that it has “violated the fundamental principle that individuals should be able to control the use of their personal information”. The search giant has already acted to address a number of the points now raised in the letter, but said that it had no further statements to make on its privacy policies.

The launch of the Buzz network in February sparked an international wave of protests because it took information about email users’ most common correspondents and automatically built each individual a network of followers. This meant that links which people wished to keep private could immediately become public.

Google Streetview, which provides an eye-level picture of almost every street in dozens of cities around the world, continues to cause “concern about the adequacy of the information [Google] provides before the images are captured”, the commissioners said. The product has also been launched some countries “without due consideration of privacy and data protection laws and cultural norms”, they added.

In a statement Google said that it had quickly rectified the problems that caused Buzz users concern. “We have discussed all these issues publicly many times before and have nothing to add to today’s letter,” the search company said. “Of course we do not get everything 100% right. We try very hard to be upfront about the data we collect, and how we use it, as well as to build meaningful controls into our products.“

The commissioners, however, said that they “remain extremely concerned about how a product with such significant privacy issues [as Buzz] was launched in the first place”.

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7612988/Google-not-interested-in-privacy.html

The hypocrisy of the state is a bottomless well full of the excrement of a thousand years of violence, theft, lies and bastardy. They “remain extremely concerned about how a product with such significant privacy issues [as Buzz] was launched in the first place”. What an extraordinary statement, especially coming from the people who issue mandatory Passports, ID Cards, forced enrolment in ContactPoint and all the other harmful things that these states have deployed, knowing full well in advance that they were harmful to the privacy of the people who would be forced into being violated by them.

Lets think about what Google DOES NOT DO, compared to what these states DO DO.

Google does not:

• FORCE people into a National Identity Register, where your fingerprints are taken BY FORCE.
• Operate a system of MANDATORY passports where if you want to exercise your right to travel, you need their permission in advance.
• FORCE people to apply for and carry a driver’s license to drive their own cars
• FORCE people to carry an ID Card when they leave their own houses
• FORCE people to ‘register’ their children at birth
• FORCE people’s children onto databases like ContactPoint
• FORCE people to reveal their private banking transactions to facilitate theft
• FORCE private companies to violate the privacy of their users
• SPY on people’s telephone conversations
• SPY on people’s emails
• READ people’s snail mail to spy on them
• FORCE people to be locked into their violations and predations with no opt out
• FORCE people to _________ their own ________ so that they can __________

Google is a provider of VOLUNTARY SERVICES that exist on a PRIVATE NETWORK OF COMPUTERS that is the internets. In this respect, they are absolutely moral, clean and without blemish of any kind. You do not like their services? Go to Yahoo, Hotmail or the devil for all they care. Google will not hunt you down with guns and murder you for refusing their voluntary services, unlike the state.

All of these purely evil people, namely Jennifer Stoddart Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Alex Türk? Chairman, Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (France), Peter Schaar? Commissioner, Bundesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit (Germany), Billy Hawkes ?Data Protection Commissioner of Ireland, Yoram Hacohen ?Head of the Israeli Law, Information and Technology Authority, Francesco Pizzetti? Garante per la protezione dei dati personali (Italy), Jacob Kohnstamm? Chairman, College Bescherming Persoonsgegevens (Netherlands)?Chairman Article 29 Working Party, Marie Shroff ?Privacy Commissioner, New Zealand, Artemi Rallo Lombarte? Director, Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (Spain), Christopher Graham? Information Commissioner and Chief Executive (United Kingdom)

Are ALL guilty of working for criminal and immoral organisations that routinely steal, murder and violate the property and privacy of hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. There is no escaping this, and they have a huge amount of PURE GALL attacking Google in this way.

When these idiotic, violent, violating, computer illiterate agents of the state offer:

giving people simple procedures for deleting their accounts and honouring their requests in a timely way.

so that the state has none of the information they hold on citizens, THEN and ONLY THEN will they be in a position to say ANYTHING to Google. The state should not have a monopoly on privacy violation; this is what it has now, and that is unacceptable to any decent person with a properly formulated code of ethics.

While we are at it, we must make special mention of Germany and Canada, who outlaw speech that they find objectionable. Obviously (you read BLOGDIAL after all) you know that what anyone feels about a particular speaker is irrelevant. Freedom of speech is a non negotiable absolute. It is entirely illegitimate for the state to proscribe strings of words.

But I digress.

These people, these unproductive, unethical parasites, have a hell of a nerve writing a letter to a company that provides a useful and completely voluntary service to anyone who wants it.

People do not like being on streetview. This is understandable. If all the roads were private, then streetview would be impossible. The people who own the streets would have the right to exclude the streetview cars from travelling down their roads. Libertarians WIN again!

Of course, this would not stop people making drawings of what is on a street and publishing them; those would be just as useful as photographs and would not violate anyone’s privacy.

Thankfully, Google has some balls:

As we have written before, there are definitely questions to be asked over the privacy implications of StreetView and the so-called ‘joined-up’ online world Google is creating with phone, email. social networking, GPS mapping and, potentially, medical records all being held on the database of one large multinational company.

Well, it seems that Google took the accusations to heart and – in a wonderfully catty reaction – has today published a a tool that shows how often governments around the world have either asked it for data on users or asked that data be removed from Google search results.

This ‘Government requests tool’ (click here to view the fascinating table) reveals some very interesting results. As explained by tech site V3.co.uk:

Top of the list of user information requests is Brazil with 3,663 inquiries, reflecting the strength of Google’s Orkut social networking system in that country. The US comes second with 3,580 requests and the UK third with 1,166, the highest in Europe by a considerable margin.

Brazil also tops the lists of information removal, with 291 requests. Germany comes second with 188 and India third with 142, edging out the US, which made 123 requests.

Congratulations should go out to Google for publishing this table and revealing the extent to which Governments around the world are prepared to lean on internet-based companies – and potentially control what we see on the web. Congratulations are also due to our Information Commissioner for recognising the privacy issues with StreetView etc.

It further proves that it is not just state databases we should be concerned about.

[…]

http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2010/04/google-reacts-to-government-privacy-complaints.html

Actually, Big Brother Watch is wrong about the non state databases being something of concern; it is only the state’s mandatory access to private data that causes the problem, not the fact that company owned databases are used as a tool. If there were no state, there would be no threat from databases because it is the violence of the state that makes a database dangerous.

Google and more recently Talk Talk are demonstrating that they have some guts and are not willing to passively be the apparatus of the state.

At last, a ram amongst the sheep!

Tom Chivers the Telegraph.co.uk’s “Strategic Events Editor”, ‘science nerd and pedant’ startles us by the stupidity of his unintelligent and pedestrian twaddle on UFOs:

Marvellous. An “American professor” has called for UFOs and other “unexplained phenomena” to be a university subject.

Science IS marvellous… what is your problem?

It’s in the US, not in Britain, mercifully,

Properly executed Scientific method not being practiced in the UK is a good thing?

although with our excellent range of pseudoscientific BSc options you feel it’ll only be a matter of time (the University of Westminster’s course in “Vibrational Medicine” is a case in point).

I smell a Saganite, Shostlackite skeptic. And it smells BAD.

I’ve put the words “American professor” in inverted commas, not because he isn’t really American or really a professor, but because it’s a direct quote from the news story. It’s a funny thing that being a professor – of any subject, at any university – seems to make you an authority on anything at all.

In the same way that a “Strategic Events Editor” makes you an expert on Science. I guess.

So Prof Philip Haseley, a professor of anthropology at the Niagara County Community College in New York State, is now held up as an expert on alien life.

He at least, appears to be a real scientist, which is quite different to a skeptic; skeptics are not scientific, they are religious fanatics in the cult of Science. This cult of science has its own dogma, its high priests and rabid followers, just like Tom Chivers, who is, apparently, a fully paid up member.

Let’s be clear: I’m not saying a belief in alien life per se is ridiculous. The debate over whether or not we are alone in the universe is huge and ongoing.

That debate is over; haven’t you heard?

The most famous tool we have is the Drake Equation,

Here comes the dogma!

which – using estimated figures like how many stars there are in the universe, how quickly they’re formed, how many planets they have on average, how many of those planets could support life (and how many of those then do), and so on – attempts to work out how many extraterrestrial civilisations we might, in principle, be able to communicate with.

One set of current figures puts that number at two, but that is highly controversial; a few minor tweaks to the estimated inputs can easily raise it as high as 20,000 or as low as 0.000065, which would imply that we are almost certainly alone in our stellar neighbourhood. This continuing argument is the basis of SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, which for 50 years has scanned the skies for signals which could only come from intelligent life (and there is, of course, a further argument over what that means).

Now lets hear from an actual, real scientist:

“Drake’s Brave Guess”. He waxed poetic about the Drake Equation, originated 45 years ago by radio astronomer Frank Drake (now co-director of the SETI Institute) which supposedly is a scientific approach to determining the number of civilizations in the galaxy capable of sending radio signals. The idea is that, if we just keep listening, we will make the great discovery that man is not alone in the galaxy. The reasoning is a great example of pseudo-science. The primary reason for the article was the fact that the new Allen Telescope Array with 42 dishes, each 20 feet in diameter, is just going on line at Hat Creek in Northern California.

Eventually there will be many more dishes. He really seems to believe the quaint notion that our best systems are on a par with alien civilizations’ best capabilities apparently assuming they would not have improved in what could easily be the billion years during which such systems have been around. I was using a slide rule 50 years ago. I don’t anymore. A laser printer is not just a better IBM Selectric Typewriter. Atomic bombs are not just bigger 10 ton block busters that were used earlier in WW 2.

Of course Shostak doesn’t mention that Hat Creek can’t tune into Southern sky alien radio transmitters,even assuming they are still transmitting using very old, for them, technology. In the “Zeta Reticuli Incident” by Terence Dickinson, which discusses Marjorie Fish’s very exciting research on the Betty Hill star map, it is noted that many sun like stars in the neighborhood can only be seen from below the equator.

Shostak presents the Sacred Drake equation and then plays dartboard physics to try to come up with values for such things as on what fraction of planets life develops; on what fraction of those intelligence develops; and on what fraction of those the ability to send radio signals develops and perhaps most important, the lifetime of a civilization.. Considering that we have data for some of these factors from one planet around one star in a galaxy of a few hundred Billion stars, one can see that this is just a mite of a stretch, a rather huge extrapolation. The galaxy may be 13 Billion years old and the sun is only about 4.5 billion years old. But Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, just 39 light years away, are a billion years older than the sun and just down the street.

[…]

http://www.theufochronicles.com/2006/06/drake-equation-by-stanton-t-friedman.html

My emphasis. Quoting Stanton Friedman is not an appeal to authority by the way, it is simply quoting facts. Here are some more facts about the Drake Equation:

Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x fL = ?

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet’s life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI a serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses — just so we’re clear — are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be “informed guesses.” If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It’s simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing…

In the case of the Drake equation, we wind up with a formula that would be science if the values were known, but they aren’t so it doesn’t tell us anything. They may claim to use conservative estimates in their calculations, but if the value has no known basis then there’s no good reason to suggest the “guesstimate” is conservative or wildly optimistic. Of course, looking for ET to call home, or Earth, is not that serious a question so we cut the SETI folks some slack even though they are spending taxpayer money.

[…]

http://www.terrycolon.com/4features/quasi.html

And by the way SETI SHOULD be closed down, not only because it is junk science, but because it is being funded with stolen money. They should be cut no slack whatsoever, they should just be CUT.

But I digress.

But even if we assume the 20,000 figure, the nearest alien civilisation would probably be about 1,500 light years from Earth. So what Professor Haseley is proposing we take seriously is the following:

All true scientists take everything seriously. It is precisely the same sort of mocking and illogical posture that ‘scientists’ in the 1800’s took when they shouted down the real scientists who proposed that meteorites came from space.

1) That one or more alien civilisations have either developed vastly faster-than-light propulsion systems or flown for a minimum of 1,500 years across space to find us

This argument is faulty. First of all, it is like arguing that the only way to cross the atlantic in three hours is by building a boat that travels at twice the speed of sound. You do it in a plane, not a boat. There are probably many ways of travelling long distances that have nothing to do with the holy laws of physics (thou canst not travel faster than the speed of light. To say so is HERESY!). victims of such experimentation. It would look inexplicable, unfathomable, terrifying. It would leave marks, and of course, your fellow polar bears would say you were insane when you recounted the story. If polar bears could talk.

They’re big claims. And, as Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

ALL HAIL SAINT SAGAN, SAGE OF SCIENCE, SOOTHSAYER, SKEPTIC, SAVIOUR – PARAGON OF REASON AND OUR GUIDING LIGHT!

And there is no such evidence.

That is a lie. One out of three.

The trouble with the whole field of “UFOlogy” is that it relies on a logical fallacy. “You can’t explain this photograph/video/experience”, say the UFOlogists, “therefore aliens did it.”

That is another lie. Two out of three.

It’s reminiscent of creationist logic – “you can’t explain this chemical pathway/complex organ/unfound fossil, therefore God did it”, and like creationist logic it cheapens what it wants to promote.

And yet another lie. Three for three.

It is a weak and attenuated religion that hides God in a dwindling supply of feeble, unexplained details, instead of seeing God in the whole glory of the universe; and it is a sad misrepresentation of the serious and important search for alien life to reduce it to conspiracy theory and nonsense.

I don’t know Prof Haseley, or the Niagara County Community College. Maybe the course will be sceptical and scientific. But I think the really interesting university course – and one more appropriate for a professor of anthropology – would be one examining why humanity has such a powerful urge to believe that they have seen ET. What is it in our psyche that needs to know we are not alone?

[…]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tomchivers/100007612/a-degree-course-in-ufology-cheapens-the-real-search-for-alien-life/

Here is an interesting question; how would a “Strategic Events Editor” recommend the release of information relating to the reality of UFOS as alien spacecraft, so that the minimum number of people goes insane when the trigger is pulled?

We may never get the answer to that one, but one thing is for sure, this particular “Strategic Events Editor” does not have the intellectual capacity to design that programme.

Another classic example of weak mindedness, poor logic, religious dogma masquerading as science and ostrich posturing.

Finally, science is not something that can be ‘cheapened’, at least, not in the minds of people who actually have an understanding of how science works.

The scientific method can be applied to anything. Your personal prejudices, deeply held superstitions, religious beliefs and childish thinking have no effect on what is and is not true. If someone is applying the scientific method to a subject that offends you, science is not in any way cheapened. This is the language of the religious fanatic; what this man is really saying is that studying UFOs is blasphemy and that the people who are doing it are fit only for ridicule and then excommunication.

The history of science is littered with this sort of bad behaviour:

• Arrhenius (ion chemistry)
• Alfven, Hans (galaxy-scale plasma dynamics)
• Baird, John L. (television camera)
• Bakker, Robert (fast, warm-blooded dinosaurs)
• Bardeen & Brattain (transistor)
• Bretz J Harlen (ice age geology)
• Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (black holes in 1930)
• Chladni, Ernst (meteorites in 1800)
• Crick & Watson (DNA)
• Doppler (optical Doppler effect)
• Folk, Robert L. (existence and importance of nanobacteria)
• Galvani (bioelectricity)
• Harvey, William (circulation of blood, 1628)
• Krebs (ATP energy, Krebs cycle)
• Galileo (supported the Copernican viewpoint)
• Gauss, Karl F. (nonEuclidean geometery)
• Binning/Roher/Gimzewski (scanning-tunneling microscope)
• Goddard, Robert (rocket-powered space ships)
• Goethe (Land color theory)
• Gold, Thomas (deep non-biological petroleum deposits)
• Gold, Thomas (deep mine bacteria)
• Lister, J (sterilizing)
• T Maiman (Laser)
• Margulis, Lynn (endosymbiotic organelles)
• Mayer, Julius R. (The Law of Conservation of Energy)
• Marshall, B (ulcers caused by bacteria, helicobacter pylori)
• McClintlock, Barbara (mobile genetic elements, “jumping genes”, transposons)
• Newlands, J. (pre-Mendeleev periodic table)
• Nottebohm, F. (neurogenesis: brains can grow neurons)
• Ohm, George S. (Ohm’s Law)
• Ovshinsky, Stanford R. (amorphous semiconductor devices)
• Pasteur, Louis (germ theory of disease)
• Prusiner, Stanley (existence of prions, 1982)
• Rous, Peyton (viruses cause cancer)
• Semmelweis, I. (surgeons wash hands, puerperal fever )
• Steen-McIntyre, Virginia (southwest US indians villiage , 300,000BC)
• Tesla, Nikola (Earth electrical resonance, “Schumann” resonance)
• Tesla, Nikola (brushless AC motor)
• J H van’t Hoff (molecules are 3D)
• Warren, Warren S (flaw in MRI theory)
• Wegener, Alfred (continental drift)
• Wright, Wilbur & Orville (flying machines)
• Zwicky, Fritz (existence of dark matter, 1933)
• Zweig, George (quark theory)

and the very least we can expect from people with even one brain cell is caution when ridiculing a scientist. Not only does it serve no purpose, but you might just find yourself having to eat your hat.