The joys of clubbing in England! That was at the M-nus event in London last weekend! Fuck me!!

Rules rules rules………….you will become our subordinates you worthless, druggy, addicted cunts!!

I fucking hope people stop going clubbing in this cuntry. We’re the reason these promoter/club owner bastards are in fucking business! I know its not their fault about the law, but it IS their fault with all these additional rules & charges. £1 for a fucking wristband that allows you to do exactly fuck all as you still have to do a fingerprint like a fucking criminal and a have a time limit imposed on you!

The people need to make a stand by not going anymore to clubs like this one! Only ones that are blatantly taking the piss though which one or two are starting to in my experiences. We should start a list on here of the worst offenders! Manchester’s Warehouse Project the night before wouldn’t let people take their £3.50 beers outside for a fag neither! You had to stand there and drink it first, go for a quick fag and then go in and buy another £3.50 beer! Another nice money making ploy!

By the way I’m not even a massive smoker. I just like the odd one or two through a night. Its the blatant way the clubs are screwing people for more money in these ways thats angered me! They’re starting to use a law as a way to line their pockets even more! And entrance fee’s to some of these nights ain’t exactly cheap to begin with! With all the fucking booking fee’s etc I paid £24 to the Warehouse Project!! Clubs are meant to be an escape from the real world for a few hours yet there are more rules in them these days than at work! Had to be in before 11.30pm even with pre bought tickets. Couldn’t put anything in the cloak room after 1.30am. Event finished at 6am instead of the advertised, “special” 7am license. Whats this shit all about??

Revolution for change!!

1. SE ONE [London]
2. Warehouse Project [Manchester]

[…]

http://www.littledetroit.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25855

One day we will all look back on these insane days and think, “How on earth did we let it go so far?”

The sign reads:

I have a feeling that SeOne are going to be quite famous for the wrong reasons in a short while.

What a bunch of total scum!

Plans to build support for identity cards by introducing them among ‘guinea pig’ groups, such as airport staff and students, are in crisis after 10,000 airline pilots vowed to take legal action to block them and opposition swept through Britain’s universities and councils.

In a move that could wreck the government’s strategy for a phased introduction beginning next year, the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said it would seek a judicial review rather than see its members forced to adopt ID cards at a time when pilots are already exhaustively vetted.

Balpa’s vehement opposition is a hammer blow for the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, who had hoped to win the wider public over to ID cards by demonstrating that they were crucial to anti-terrorism policies. She intends to introduce them among groups ‘who operate in positions of trust in our society’.

In a speech in March, Smith said: ‘The first cards will be issued, from 2009, to groups where there is a compelling need for reassurance that someone is who they say they are.’

But Balpa, which represents more than 10,000 pilots working on 28 airlines, backed by the Trades Union Congress, insists that ID cards will ‘do nothing’ to enhance airport or flight security, and it fears that information about its members stored on a National Identity Register could be abused.

Jim McAuslan, general secretary of Balpa, told The Observer: ‘Our members are incensed by the way they have been targeted as guinea pigs in a project which will not improve security. We will leave no stone unturned in our attempts to prevent this, including legal action to force a judicial review if necessary.’

From late 2010 ministers intend to start issuing ID cards to ‘young people’, particularly students, on a voluntary basis in a further attempt to win the population round. Then around 2012 everyone applying for a passport will have to be on the National Identity Register.

However, the anti-ID card campaign group, NO2ID, is mobilising what it says is ‘a wave of student opposition’ to ID cards on campuses across the country.

More than 40 local authorities, as well as the Scottish parliament and the Welsh and London assemblies, have passed motions opposing ID cards. Without the co-operation of councils, which would use ID cards to verify benefit claimants and those wanting to use public services, the entire project would fail to get off the ground.

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/12/idcards

Finally, the masses are putting their foot down in unison. Students, Trades Unions and everyone else has now woken up to the facts about the NIR and the ID Card.

Only a completely insane person would bet on the successful introduction of ID cards. This insane project is FINISHED, and it is going to crash and burn just like the Poll Tax did.

Good!

I am a loyal citizen of the United States of America, and I believe deeply in the vision of the Founding Fathers, the rule of law as enshrined in the Constitution, and the liberty that our forefathers fought and died for.

I have therefore felt a duty to obey the laws of the U.S. my whole life.

However, it is likely that the U.S. no longer has a constitutional form of government.

As the Washington Post noted in March 2002, Bush hid from Congress the fact that Continuity of Government (COG) plans were implemented on 9/11 and were still in effect many months later, and stated:

It was unclear yesterday whether any federal documents — prepared either by the current White House or by Bush’s predecessors dating to Dwight D. Eisenhower — specify whether congressional leaders should be told if the plan is put into effect. At least one relatively general document, a 1988 executive order entitled “Assignment of Emergency Preparedness Responsibilities,” said the White House’s National Security Council “shall arrange for Executive branch liaison with, and assistance to, the Congress and the federal judiciary on national security-emergency preparedness matters.”

The executive order, signed by President Ronald Reagan, is a precursor to documents outlining the contingency plans in greater detail, which have not been made public. Regardless of whether Bush had an obligation to notify legislative leaders, the congressional leaders’ ignorance of the plan he set in motion could raise the question of how this shadow administration would establish its legitimacy with Congress in the event it needed to step in for a crippled White House.

At least some members of Congress suggested yesterday that the administration should have conferred about its plans, which were first reported in The Washington Post yesterday.

“There are two other branches of government that are central to the functioning of our democracy,” said Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee. “I would hope the speaker and the minority leader would at least pose the question, ‘What about us?’ “

So What?

Remember that, in the summer 2007, Congressman Peter DeFazio, on the Homeland Security Committee (and so with proper security access to be briefed on COG issues), inquired about continuity of government plans, and was refused access. Indeed, DeFazio told Congress that the entire Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress has been denied access to the plans by the White House (video; or here is the transcript). The Homeland Security Committee has full clearance to view all information about COG plans. DeFazio concluded: “Maybe the people who think there’s a conspiracy out there are right”.
And University of California Berkeley Professor Emeritus Peter Dale Scott has warned:

“If members of the Homeland Security Committee cannot enforce their right to read secret plans of the Executive Branch, then the systems of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution would seem to be failing.

To put it another way, if the White House is successful in frustrating DeFazio, then Continuity of Government planning has arguably already superseded the Constitution as a higher authority.”

Indeed, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that “because of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the American public needs no explanation of [Continuity of Government] plans”.

What Does This All Mean?

Continuity of government documents probably require that Congress be notified of the details of implementation of COG plans. But since the executive is hiding such documents from Congress and the people, so we can’t be sure.

Regardless, the executive has failed to “establish its legitimacy with Congress” or the American people, because it is hiding the documents which created the COG emergency government and which give it emergency powers and specify its obligations.

In other words, even if the COG documents were harmless and say “we will coordinate with Congress and the courts and follow the Constitution”, the fact that the White House is hiding the documents, refusing to disclose what acts it has taken pursuant to extraordinary authority granted by the COG plans, and refusing even to say whether a COG government is still in effect renders the current government unconstitutional and illegal.

I consider myself a law-abiding citizen, and I cherish the Constitution, the rule of law, and the American form government established by the Founding Fathers.

But do I have any duty to obey the orders of a government that cannot even establish its basic legitimacy? A government which is itself violating the Constitution and the rule of law? A government that is trying to dismantle the vision that the Founding Fathers and everything that our forefathers fought and died for?

Do I have to obey illegal orders from an unconstitutional government?

This essay doesn’t even discuss spying on Americans, failure to comply with Congressional subpoenas, signing statements, torture, wars based on false intelligence, or the numerous other unconstitutional acts by this administration. It solely focuses on the unconstitutionality of the COG plans.

And it doesn’t even get into guessing what the Founding Fathers might have thought about this bunch of tyrants.

[…]

From George Washington’s Blog

When a very popular man stands up and says what needs to be said…

For 30 years he was one the BBC’s star presenters, stitching up celebrities and subjecting guests on his show to the horrors of the gunge tank. But now Noel Edmonds himself could be in the line of fire, after he announced that he was leading a boycott of the television licence fee.

The former Noel’s House Party presenter, who accused the BBC of “hectoring and threatening” the public into paying the £139.50 annual charge, could be stripped of his ceremonial title of Deputy Lieutenant of Devon, after confessing to his criminality, The Times has learnt.

In an interview at the weekend, Edmonds declared that for four months he had refused to pay the licence fee, a legal requirement for anyone who owns a television, adding that he was prepared to be prosecuted for evading the tax.

Eric Dancer, Lord-Lieutenant of Devon, said yesterday that he would investigate whether Edmonds should lose his position, which carries the blessing of the Queen.

Edmonds assumed the title – which involves assisting the Lord-Lieutenant in arranging the monarch’s visits to Devon, leading the local magistracy and hearing grievances between citizens and tax officials – in 2004.

Mr Dancer told The Times: “If a deputy did do something that was a criminal offence, I’m sure that people who commit serious misdemeanours are not allowed to continue to serve.”

Edmonds made his remarks in an interview with the Breakfast show on BBC One on Saturday, the day before hosting a one-off show on Sky aimed at helping to mend “broken Britain”.

Referring to advertisements by the TV Licensing Authority that threaten prosecution of those who fail to pay the fee, Edmonds said: “I worked for the BBC for 30 years. When I was there it promoted the licence fee by saying how wonderful it was. But now Auntie’s put boxing gloves on.

“I am not going to have the BBC or any other organisation threatening me. I’ve cancelled my TV licence and they haven’t found me. Nobody’s coming knocking on my door. There are too many organisations that seem to think it is OK to badger, hector and threaten people.”

The BBC launched a public consultation last week after receiving complaints that advertisements which warned, “Your town, your street, your home . . . it’s all in our database”, amounted to bullying.

[…]

Noel’s HQ, screened last night on Sky One, was aimed at promoting a “fairer, more caring Britain”. Edmonds told viewers: “You clearly feel frustrated and at times angry at the tidal wave of new rules, regulations and laws that have been introduced in the name of health and safety, security or the environment. Well, the politicians have had their turn, and now it’s ours. It’s down to you, me and them, and to everyone who wants to live in a more caring society.”

[…]

The Times

From the most unexpected quarter…someone who could actually rally millions of people says ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

The Telegraph has a story that is direcly related to the previous post about the TSA and the irrational mania for lists, and the other BLOGDIAL posts about this insanity

Despite ministers admitting of concerns the laws could spark a wave of claims, officers will be able to tell worried parents about the history of someone who has access to their children, if they think they could be dangerous.

They will give out details of convictions, arrests and acquittals for child sex and violence offences as well as unproven suspicions kept on file.

Incredible.

Unproven suspicions kept on file? That means that a single phone call could put you in the police database as a sex criminal, FOREVER, and everyone would be able to access that and brand you as the ultimate kind of monster.

This is beyond imagining.

Critics said the scheme was a “return to witch trials” which would create a climate of unnecessary suspiction.

Police want single mothers to ask for information about their new boyfriends and believe those under suspicion will welcome the opportunity to prove they have nothing to hide.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear? I thought we were past that nonsense!

Grandparents and neighbours can also demand that police look into the records of anyone – even teenagers – who come into contact with their friends’ or family members’ children.

Officers, meanwhile, will pass on the results of their investigation to the child’s parents, carers or guardians.

And how do you think they are going to co-ordinate all of this? Through the NIR and ContactPoint of course.

The pilot schemes, which come into force in four police forces across England, are being set up following a campaign for “Sarah’s Law” – the public disclosure of the names and addresses of paedophiles named in honour of Sarah Payne.

This is completely nauseating, and is probably an accidental misuse of english. How does it honor a victim of a crime to have a law named after them? How many other laws are to be thus named? Will the statue books in the future be full of names of people and not descriptive text?

The campaign was established after the eight year-old was murdered by convicted sex offender, Roy Whiting, in 2000.

Officers, however, said the new scheme does not go that far as measures called on by child protection campaigners.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said: “Giving parents the ability to find out if someone close to their child poses a risk will empower them.”

Jacqui Smith…I am not going to waste any bandwidth in this article on that monster.

Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, admitted there were concerns that “huge numbers of claims” could be made by worried parents but he insisted: “We don’t believe that doing nothing is appropriate and in the best interests of our children.” Critics however, warn the scheme would create a climate of suspicion with thousands of innocent people having their lives scrutinised.

In any country where reason was the rule, this could never happen. In any country where the state was properly accountable to the citizenry the same would be true. Defamation of character is a serious matter, and in a properly run society, if the police ruined your reputation they should be forced to pay out millions in compensation and the officers involved would be sacked. In Britain however, there is no such redress available even for the smallest mistake, and so these officers have carte-blanche to destroy the lives of anyone who they mistakenly identify as an evil doer. And these mistakes WILL HAPPEN.

They also fear it could lead to vigilante attacks on people found to have child sex convictions.

What about the vigilante attacks against those who are wrongly identified by the police? And what about the vigilante attacks on people mistakenly identified by vigilantes? This is a pandora’s box, a nightmare scenario and TOTALLY INSANE.

The announcement comes after The Telegraph revealed that all adults who work with children and are accused of abuse must be investigated by council officers and have details of the claim, even if it was totally malicious, kept on their personnel records until they retire.

In addition, 11.3 million people who work or volunteer with under-16s will from next year have their backgrounds scrutinised by a new vetting body.

Guy Herbert, general secretary of the civil liberties group No2ID, said: “It’s virtually a return to the witch trials, and is the logical conclusion of our zero-trust society. Everybody is being encouraged to be suspicious of everybody else.

Guy Herbert has come up with a beautiful and perfect phrase; ‘Zero-Trust Society’.

This society is the projected reality brought into being by the personalities, character and true nature of the politicians in New Labor. They are superimposing their own flawed view of human nature onto Britain, and through this projection, we get a real picture of the inhuman monsters they really are; fear soaked, suspicious, paedophile sex obsessed, broken spirited, criminal, untrustworthy, lying, thieving, Godless, animals who are hell bent on re-creating Britain in their own image.

“The police won’t be able to isolate the information once they release it, and it will be full of unsubstantiated allegations and suspicions. It is potentially incredibly dangerous.”

Once the data is out there, it is out there forever. But you know this!

What is most galling about this is that the government is putting together the paedophile catalogue ContactPoint on the one hand, an then with the other hand is putting in measures to expose the very people they are facilitating by putting together ContactPoint in the first place. They really are THAT STUPID.

Donald Findlater, of the child protection charity Lucy Faithfull Foundation, added: “The biggest risk to children is not from the registered sex offender who the police know and are managing; it is from the sex offender who is not registered and who no one knows about.”

[…]

Telegraph

And that is the crux of this; you cannot use a list to predict the behavior of a person. Everyone now knows this, so there must be another reason why they are putting these lists together, and quite separately, there must be a reason why they are giving access to real and false criminal evidence to everyone everywhere.

The logical conclusion is that they are deliberately trying to create a Zero-Trust Society, where the last remnants of social cohesion and normal behavior are stripped away, replaced by a government mediated trust that will exert control over everyone in every thing they do. This will be controlled by the ID card, which will be used not only to control and track every movement and financial transaction, but it will also be the talisman and token of trust that will enable your interpersonal relationships to take place. The government and its card will be between you and everything. Literally. And after one generation, no one will remember what it was like to take a person on faith, no one will work on instinct, on gut feelings.

You would be better off living in the Amazonian jungle amongst the most ‘primitive’ people on earth; at least there human beings really will be human beings an not components in a nightmare machine where everything, even human instinct is replaced by a card.

From Bruce Schneier’s Cryptogram, yet another crystal clear explanation of why the TSA’s list of ‘terrorists’ is completely bogus:

The TSA is tightening its photo ID rules at airport security. Previously, people with expired IDs or who claimed to have lost their IDs were subjected to secondary screening. Then the Transportation Security Administration realized that meant someone on the government’s no-fly list — the list that is supposed to keep our planes safe from terrorists — could just fly with no ID.

Now, people without ID must also answer personal questions from their credit history to ascertain their identity. The TSA will keep records of who those ID-less people are, too, in case they’re trying to probe the system.

This may seem like an improvement, except that the photo ID requirement is a joke. Anyone on the no-fly list can easily fly whenever he wants. Even worse, the whole concept of matching passenger names against a list of bad guys has negligible security value.

How to fly, even if you are on the no-fly list: Buy a ticket in some innocent person’s name. At home, before your flight, check in online and print out your boarding pass. Then, save that web page as a PDF and use Adobe Acrobat to change the name on the boarding pass to your own. Print it again. At the airport, use the fake boarding pass and your valid ID to get through security. At the gate, use the real boarding pass in the fake name to board your flight.

The problem is that it is unverified passenger names that get checked against the no-fly list. At security checkpoints, the TSA just matches IDs to whatever is printed on the boarding passes. The airline checks boarding passes against tickets when people board the plane. But because no one checks ticketed names against IDs, the security breaks down.

This vulnerability isn’t new. It isn’t even subtle. I wrote about it in 2003, and again in 2006. I asked Kip Hawley, who runs the TSA, about it in 2007. Today, any terrorist smart enough to Google “print your own boarding pass” can bypass the no-fly list.

This gaping security hole would bother me more if the very idea of a no-fly list weren’t so ineffective. The system is based on the faulty notion that the feds have this master list of terrorists, and all we have to do is keep the people on the list off the planes.

That’s just not true. The no-fly list — a list of people so dangerous they are not allowed to fly yet so innocent we can’t arrest them — and the less dangerous “watch list” contain a combined 1 million names representing the identities and aliases of an estimated 400,000 people. There aren’t that many terrorists out there; if there were, we would be feeling their effects.

Almost all of the people stopped by the no-fly list are false positives. It catches innocents such as Ted Kennedy, whose name is similar to someone’s on the list, and Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), who was on the list but no one knew why.

The no-fly list is a Kafkaesque nightmare for the thousands of innocent Americans who are harassed and detained every time they fly. Put on the list by unidentified government officials, they can’t get off. They can’t challenge the TSA about their status or prove their innocence. (The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided this month that no-fly passengers can sue the FBI, but that strategy hasn’t been tried yet.)

But even if these lists were complete and accurate, they wouldn’t work. Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, the D.C. snipers, the London subway bombers and most of the 9/11 terrorists weren’t on any list before they committed their terrorist acts. And if a terrorist wants to know if he’s on a list, the TSA has approved a convenient, $100 service that allows him to figure it out: the Clear program, which issues IDs to “trusted travelers” to speed them through security lines. Just apply for a Clear card; if you get one, you’re not on the list.

In the end, the photo ID requirement is based on the myth that we can somehow correlate identity with intent. We can’t. And instead of wasting money trying, we would be far safer as a nation if we invested in intelligence, investigation and emergency response — security measures that aren’t based on a guess about a terrorist target or tactic.

That’s the TSA: Not doing the right things. Not even doing right the things it does.

My previous articles on the subject:
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0308.html#6
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/forge_your_own.html
http://www.schneier.com/interview-hawley.html

This article originally appeared in the L.A. Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-schneier28-2008aug28,0,3099808.story or http://tinyurl.com/6dmcl4

All true, all correct.

What the article does not do however, is to explain the irrational TSA policy and how they can continue to do what they are doing unchallenged. TSA admins must know that what they are doing is incorrect and innefective in every way; they are not that stupid to believe the fairy story that they give as the pretext for their procedures.

There therefore must be another reason why they are persisting with this nonsense, instead of abandoning it completely as a big mistake.

Once explanation is that they want to put everyone in the country, and I mean every single man woman and child, on a new ‘Clean’ list, not for the purposes of anti terrorism, but for control of every aspect of life. I am talking about a national ID card that is needed for every transaction, no matter how small, as we have written about so many times.

We all know that the ‘security’ measures they are trying to roll out world-wide are not about security. It is high time that everyone start trying to figure out (for themselves) what the real agenda of all of this is. They will find that any conclusion they can come to is not pretty.

Trying to second guess the final maneuver and true agenda will also help us force the people who are trying to do this to state explicitly why they are doing it; if they cannot give a satisfactory answer they will be forced to shut it all down permanently.

Either way, we are fast approaching the point where the road forks, and they will either get away with rolling out the global police state or they are utterly destroyed.

Andy Burnham, fascist, liar and traitor said that:

Suggesting the Government will have knowledge of, and control over, your life through the National Identity Register is untrue. It is also nonsense to suggest either that “every outpost of the state” or private enterprises will have access to the register.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=156

and

His (Henry Porter’s) article swallows the contents of a ridiculous, anonymous email and unquestioningly regurgitates it. The scheme will not track your life’s activities. ID cards will be used when it is important to verify identity.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=142

Now it emerges that not only is everything that Andy Burnham said about the NIR and ID cards a total lie, but that the EU knew it, and had been planning to capture everything about everyone. We were right and he has been proven to be a liar:

New Statewatch Report: Embargoed until 00:01, Thursday 11 September 2008

The Shape of Things to Come by Tony Bunyan

The EU is currently developing a new five year strategy for justice and home affairs and security policy for 2009-2014. The proposals set out by the shadowy “Future Group” set up by the Council of the European Union include a range of highly controversial measures including new technologies of surveillance, enhanced cooperation with the United States and harnessing the “digital tsunami”. In the words of the EU Council presidency:

“Every object the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record. This will generate a wealth of information for public security organisations, and create huge opportunities for more effective and productive public security efforts.”

Seven years on from 11 September 2001 and the launch of the “war on terorism” this major new report The Shape of Things to come (60 pages) examines the proposals of the Future Group and their effect on civil liberties. It shows how European governments and EU policy-makers are pursuing unfettered powers to access and gather masses of personal data on the everyday life of everyone – on the grounds that we can all be safe and secure from perceived “threats”.

The Statewatch report calls for a “meaningful and wide-ranging debate” before it is “too late” for privacy and civil liberties.

Press release (pdf)
Eight page Conclusions (pdf)
Copy of full report (pdf)

For further information:
00 44 208 802 1882
e-mail: office@statewatch.org

And there you have it.

“Every object that the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record.”

We have detailed how all of this will be done before on BLOGDIAL, and of course, much of this was accurately predicted in the ‘Frances Stonor Saunders’ email from 2006.

• They will know what objects you have because each store receipt will have your ID attached to it, and the state will have access to the store’s database of all purchases.
• They will know each and every transaction you make, no matter how small, because cash transactions will be outlawed and replaced by Oyster like systems..
• They will know everywhere you go because you will use an Oyster or its decedents to go on public transport or trains, your car will be tracked every mile by GPS and or ANPR and CCTV will watch you while you walk.
• They will know everywhere you fly because the airlines will capture information about you and pass it to them.
• They will know every border you cross because your passport data will be captured.

And of course, they will know everything about your medical history, in intimate detail.

There is no technical reason why they cannot do all of this. The only reason why they will not be able to do it is if there is public opposition. Of course, the elite security services will put together a covert system that will do all of this and more outside the scope of the law, but that is not our worry; these measures have nothing to do with ‘security’, which is now the word they are slowly using in place of ‘terrorism’ since it is becoming widely understood that none of these measures can stop ‘terrorists’. These measures are designed to exert total surveillance and control over the ordinary individual, with a special focus on financial transactions.

I say control because the state will be able to turn ‘your’ identity off with a few clicks of a mouse, making it impossible for you to exist.

Imagine a world where there is no cash. You will not be able to even beg on the streets for money should the state freeze your bank account. You will not be able to travel anywhere, go on the internet (which will require you to ‘swipe in’ to log on). You will become a non person, cut off from society, made desperate…and easy to persuade.

Once this happens to a few people, and news about it spreads, a wave of deeply seated fear will spread over the civilized world like a black fog. No one will dare say or do anything out of line for fear of being handed the death sentence of ‘ID Death’.

As we have seen in Great Britain, there is nothing and no place that they will not consider their domain, from how you plant your garden, to what and how much you eat, to how you dispose of your garbage, they will be there, watching you, controlling you and fining you for the smallest infraction. That is what they will add to the mix. The Germans will bring their obsessive need to control thought to the table. The worst aspects of every nation will be brought to bear on everyone; this will be the greatest nightmare ever faced by any generation of human beings in their short history.

I say their because if no one stands up to this, if everyone accepts this without even a stone being thrown then I cannot consider myself to be one of those ‘human beings’ that would willingly put their heads into a noose without so much as a word.

But I digress.

We have an anti Police State policy whereby we do not cooperate with any police state measure, and do anything we can to stop it. Just recently when someone asked me to produce my passport to complete a transaction, I refused. A few weeks later when another person asked for that same document, I refused again. I will not show my passport at any place other than a border. I will not show my driver’s license anywhere except when I am getting a ticket for speeding or some other car related event. I will refuse every time, without exception. I will not pay any fine that is generated by the Police State system. I will not respond to anything generated by it.

Now.

If four fifths of all adults in the UK did this, the system would utterly collapse. I imagine that something like this will happen eventually, and hopefully sooner rather than later. It is the only way that it can be destroyed utterly; by denying it the food it needs to survive; compliance. BLOGDIAL readers know that demonstrations, petitions and Chakrabarti posturing will not do anything to stop this. Only massive refusal to obey will stop it in its tracks. This refusal must be carried out with business, because it is they who actually operate the majority of the system on a day to day basis. They swipe everyone’s cards, they provide back door access to their databases. The state alone has no apparatus to do the majority of the work. Their single greatest point of direct access and contact is at the borders – other than that, they are nothing but desk bound creatures shuffling between meetings and lunches while they delegate the dirty work to the public.

This can and will be stopped. The Soviet Union no longer exists, and neither does PanAM. Nelson Mandela got out of gaol and became president of South Africa Both of those institutions and that man and his countrymen’s situations seemed unassailable, unchangeable and the pillars of reality. Now all of it is gone, and we lived to see it.

We will live to see the total destruction of the Police State. It will either happen before it starts or after it is entrenched. Either way, it will end and the subhuman monsters that are bringing it about will be consigned to the ranks of the forgotten. No one will remember Andy Burnham in the future. His worthless, meaningless life and the lives of his co conspirators will be washed away as we move to a future where people like that, pure evil, are rendered powerless to hatch their vile schemes on the good people of civilization.

The Express has a front page story detailing government proposals to require that you seek planning permission in order to grow plants in your own garden:

AN army of town hall snoopers could soon be telling people what they can and cannot grow in their gardens.
Fast-growing plants and even lawns could be banned, under Labour’s latest environmental blitz.

People would be forced to get planning permission to make changes in their gardens in order to help the Government hit its targets for reducing waste.

Last night Bob Neill, the Tories’ local government spokesman, blasted the proposal. “This is utter nonsense,” he said. “Are they really expecting hardworking people to go along to the council to get building regulation consent to plant their rhododendrons?

“This is another example of the heavy hand of Labour needlessly meddling in people’s lives.”

The astonishing measures are put forward in a policy document commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Some lawns could be banned because eco-experts claim that “mulched gardens” are better for the environment.

They say that lawns need extensive watering and people toss cut grass in with normal household waste.

Gardeners would also be told to avoid plants that need a lot of water.

Backbench Tory MP Philip Davies said: “I am gobsmacked that this is something the Government thinks is worth wasting their time with.

“They should be concerned with saving gardens by stopping developments being built on them, not intruding further into people’s private lives.

“If this is what Gordon Brown’s latest relaunch amounts to, then God help us all.” Doretta Cocks, of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection, said: “We have already got too many officials allowed to invade people’s homes.

“It is dreadful to think that they are going to start spying on gardens as well.”

Mark Wallace, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group, said: “The Government and town hall officials should realise by now that they are not doing their basic jobs properly, so there is no way they should poke their nose into the design of our flower-beds.

“The last thing people need is more busybodies bossing people about.”

[…]

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/60549

and an opinion piece:

THE idea that town hall snoops should acquire powers to vet what plants people grow in their gardens is the latest suggestion from the eco-fascist movement which is destroying freedom in Britain.
It should surprise nobody that those putting forward this preposterous plan do so on the basis that it could allegedly help to reduce household waste.

The people who do not want to empty your bins have entered the business of telling you what should be in your back yard.

Naturally enough they approve of plants which like dry conditions but disapprove of those which need regular watering.

Only in a nation where officialdom has inverted its proper role of serving the public could such suggestions make it into the policy documents of government departments.

Under Labour, state commissars have come to believe their proper station is to be masters of the people rather than servants.

The British public are known for regarding their homes as their castles but they are equally proprietorial about their gardens.

In our increasingly overcrowded island a patch of private outside space presents many people with a rare opportunity to assert their individuality.

Any politician – local or national – who seeks to exert state control over such terrain will surely be drummed out of office.

There is an old nursery rhyme that poses the question: “How does your garden grow?” Municipal snoopers who make such inquiries in the future should not expect to receive a detailed list of items but instead to be given the curt reply: Mind your own business.

[…]

http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/60602/Municipal-snoopers-have-no-place-in-our-gardens

What is missing here, firstly is a proper ending to the opinion piece. It should have ended, “…curt reply: Over my dead body you son of a bitch.”

The other, more important point that the Express completely fails to address is the fact that they approve of the government outlawing the growing of other plants. They already heartily approve of the outlawing of marijuana, and if they accept that precedent, then it is completely logical to allow the government to tell you what other plants you should or should not grow.

The principle is very clear; as soon as you let the state govern you in one aspect of your life, they will seek to govern you in all aspects. There is no reason why you should not be able to grow any plant (that is naturally occurring) on your own land. You have the absolute right to do that, and then to make any preparation from those plants that you like for any application that you like, as long as you are not harming anyone else. That is why Genetically Modified plants cannot be grown on your own land, because bees will pollinate your clean plants with the frankenstein pollen from the GM crops, doing harm to your property.

The Express cannot reasonably complain about this. They are FOR the state controlling your garden for plants that they do not like, but AGAINST the state controlling plants that they do like. This is illogically. Either you accept the state’s authority to tell you what you can and cannot plant in all instances where your garden doesn’t harm anyone else, or you accept that you have no rights at all on your own land, and submit completely.

They are now way down the roller-coaster of their own destruction thanks to their own unthinking stance towards liberty, and sadly, wen confronted by the monsters they have created, all they can do is give a limp wristed, milk blooded response.

The latest large business to leave the USA is Dell

http://gizmodo.com/5045901/dell-to-sell-most-or-all-of-its-factories-in-18-months

Why?

Because america is bad for business.

If america were good for business, companies would be moving TO there, and not FROM there to other countries.

Biden and that wannabe mass murderer Obomba keep talking about helping factories and jobs stay in america, but they know nothing about economics, every businessman knows it, and the people who own Dell are taking pre-emptive measures to escape the Socialist Homeland that is going to emerge when those two take power.

The white heat of public outrage is crisping this sham:

The launch of the Government’s flagship database of every child living in England has been delayed just days after The Daily Telegraph exposed serious concerns about its purpose.

ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in the country, as well as detailed information on their parents, GPs and schools.

It was announced in the wake of the murder of Victoria Climbié as a way to protect children by connecting the different services dealing with them, but this newspaper discovered that it will actually be used by police to hunt for evidence of crime.

The £224million computer system was meant to come into operation in April 2008 but was delayed following the loss of data discs containing 25 million child benefit records by HM Revenue & Customs last year, which triggered fears that ContactPoint records could easily find their way into the hands of paedophiles.

A review of its security – which the Government refused to publish in full – found the risk of a data breach could never be eliminated and the launch of ContactPoint was pushed back to October.

Now, just weeks before its planned launch and days after the Telegraph disclosed concerns that it will be used to increase the criminalisation and surveillance of England’s youth, ministers have announced that ContactPoint will not become operational until the New Year at the earliest.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families claimed that the new delay was not down to security or privacy fears, however, but simply because of “glitches” that had emerged during testing of the system, which is being built by the IT firm CapGemini.

The children’s minister, Kevin Brennan, told fellow MPs: “We have identified some issues as a result of recent system tests which we are working urgently to address.

“I have therefore taken a decision today to postpone deployment until January 2009 to allow sufficient time to continue to test the system.”

However opposition MPs said the Government should now take the opportunity to scrap the whole project.

The Shadow Families Minister, Maria Miller, said: “We repeatedly warned the Government of the problems with ContactPoint but they pressed ahead regardless, ignoring our calls to allow time to sort them out.

“There were clear indications in February of significant security concerns with this database. Only now, with just weeks to go until the project is supposed to go live, have they finally agreed to pull back to try to iron out some of the problems. Ministers now need to come clean and confirm whether this delay is because children’s personal information is at risk.”

The Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary, David Laws, added: “Instead of delaying the launch of the database, this intrusive project must be scrapped altogether.

“A recent independent review has already undermined all of the Government’s assurances that the database will be secure. The discovery of further technical issues does not bode well for the future.

“The Government has proven itself untrustworthy with large databases containing sensitive data. Parents have every right to demand that their children’s personal details are not put at risk.”

Of course, ContactPoint should be scrapped entirely, and readers of BLOGDIAL know the reasons why.

If it is scrapped, (and it should be because ContactPoint can never be made secure) then the same reasons why it is being scrapped will apply to the rationale behind scrapping of the NIR and the ID Card.

No database can ever be secured. Once the data gets out, it is out forever. Internal leaks are a great hazard, and most of the biggest data escapes have been from this source, like the DVDR posted in the post and LOST, containing the personal details of 25 million children and parents.

This submission has a good summary of these risks, and why databases can never be secured.

The fact of the matter is if children need to be protected from paedophiles by not implementing ContactPoint, then the rest of the population should also be protected from identity thieves, stalkers, rapists, and every other sort of criminal that will be willing to pay millions for access to the NIR data. Of course, all of these correct objections are completely separate from the moral objections that are to do with children not being the property of the state, privacy, liberty and all the rest.

ContactPoint is part of the irrational mania for registers that computer illiterate ministers are suffering from which threatens to plunge Britain into an abyss of unprecedented blackness and horror.

I am getting a sense that this is a step too far for the mild mannered, infinitely patient Great British Public™; that the reaction of the public has been violently antagonistic to ContactPoint, and ministers have been feeling the incandescent rage of anyone they encounter who knows about this abominable system. Even a rabid dog knows when to turn tail and flee when it is confronted by its own destruction, and it may be the case that Neu Labor is that rabid dog when it comes to ContactPoint.

It should not be long before the same reasoning is applied to the NIR and ID Cards and then the whole identity sham will come down on them.

“This is your freedom. This is the freedom of the British. And to you, it’s gold. And you don’t get it. Because to give freedom to you is just throwing it away. Freedom is for closers.”

In the Queen’s speech this autumn Gordon Brown’s government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and “made accessible” to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and “other public bodies”.

This fact should be in equal parts incredible and nauseating. It is certainly enraging and despicable. Not even George Orwell in his most febrile moments could have envisaged a world in which every citizen could be so thoroughly monitored every moment of the day, spied upon, eavesdropped, watched, tracked, followed by CCTV cameras, recorded and scrutinised. Our words and web searches, our messages and intimacies, are to be stored and made available to the police, the spooks, the local council – the local council! – and “other public bodies”.

This Orwellian nightmare, additionally, is proposed for a world in which leading soi-disant liberal democracies run, and/or permit rendition flights to, Guantanamo Bay. How many steps separate an innocent British citizen from some misinterpretation or interference or error in the collected and ‘made accessible’ data of text messages and emails, and a forthcoming home-grown version of Guantanamo Bay for people whose pattern of phone calls does not fit the police definition of acceptable?

Two things have made this ghastly development possible: the technology, and politicians. The technology is way ahead of the game: Siemens of Germany are already supplying 60 countries with a device that monitors and integrates data from phone, email and internet activity; its software establishes patterns of uses and alerts monitoring staff to deviations from the patterns. As New Scientist reports, the system is already known to throw up huge numbers of false positives; that could have been predicted by a rudimentary acquaintance with human nature and human life. But it is a fact that has to be added to the brilliance and reliability of government and law enforcement agencies in keeping data secure, unhackable and unlosable.

The second point concerns the quality of our politicians. They say they are putting us all under suspicion for our own good. They wish to protect us against terrorists and criminals, and to make bureaucracy more efficient. The efficiency of bureaucracy has one of its finest moments in the neat and sorted piles of false teeth, hair and spectacles at the gas chamber doors. Oh no: better the milling crowd than the police-disciplined queues of bureaucratic efficiency; better the irritation of dealing with human fallibility than the fear of dealing with jack-booted gendarmes whose grip on one’s arms follows stepping out of the queue.

But as to the first matter: protecting us – by making us all suspects, all potential criminals and terrorists – from terrorism and criminality. Well: the first duty of our politicians should be to protect our liberties, and to encourage us to see that liberty carries risks, which we should be trusted to understand and accept so that we can make our own lives our own way. But no: these politicians – Brown and Labour, once the party of the people – are going to keep us safe by not keeping our liberties safe; they are going to keep us safe by making us unfree. Yet the putative benefit of protecting us from terrorism and crime is unattainable. They themselves say ‘there is no 100% guarantee of safety’: but they are going to spy on us all anyway! In fact they are going to create crime: a huge new criminal industry awaits for stealing, copying, falsely creating and manipulating that newly-created precious commodity, “identity”. A huge new impetus awaits for techno-crime to disrupt the monitoring and data storage systems on which the government intends to spend billions of our tax money, creating its unblinking eye in our bedrooms. As surely as night follows day, the new surveillance society will do more harm than good.

[…]

Grauniad

We have been saying this for almost a decade, and with all the technical facts included.

We are far ahead of AC Grayling and all the others who write in these newspapers, and have been for many years.

What none of these people want to face is the fact that government will NEVER bestow (or in this case, return) freedom on its citizens. If AC Grayling wants his civil liberties back, he is going to have to become uncivil to a very distasteful degree.

The potential for profoundly negative uses of technology has escaped us. It is with despair that I conclude that we have to start all over again with the demos and resistance, the campaigns and arguments, to roll back this huge and ultimately destructive assault on our civil liberties.

That is not going to cut it. The police are armed like Japanese manga characters, and have powers to lock you up indefinitely should you dare to riot. Once again, BLOGDIAL is way ahead of you. Rioting and demonstrating do not work. They did not work to save the Iraquis (who were murdered to the tune of one million people), and they will not work to restore your liberties. Do you really think that people who are capable of mass murder (Gordon Brown) will be in any way moved by a demonstration or a riot?

Are you really that Naïve?

In any case, how are you going to organize a resistance when they can know your every move in advance? This is assuming that you will not seek permission for your demonstration or gathering of more than 99 people in advance. You will not be able to surprise the police state with a demonstration or a riot, which in any case, even if you managed to organize it flash mob style, would not produce the result you require; the restoration of your liberties.

We need to stop this assault on civil liberties going further, we need to roll back the attritions they have already suffered, and we need a rock solid written constitution to protect us from those who aim to make us all suspects in the gaze of the unblinking universal eye.

Wow, you really ARE that Naïve!

The United States of America has a written constitution, and it has been summarily torn to shreds by the legislature in the last seven years.

A written Constitution is useless against this sort of onslaught. That should be plainly obvious to everyone by now.

If you have even a shred of common sense, you should be coming to the conclusion that all bets are off, that something VERY UNCIVIL has to happen if you are going to ever be free again.

Thankfully freedom returning to this beautiful island is not impossible. It will take some clear thinking, some twenty first century thinking (combined with some eighteenth) to make this happen.

Your freedom is out there, just waiting for you to take it. Are you man enough to take it?

If you are not prepared to face these facts, if you are not prepared to stare this problem in the face as you would a leaking roof, then all is lost, and all you and Henry Porter will have are your columns.

Oh…have I got your attention now?

Sent in by a particularly observant lurker:

Punters at a village pub have developed an ingenious way of beating the credit crunch without compromising on their daily pint.

Thrifty punters have begun bartering home-grown produce in exchange for beer and even pub meals.

Various items of fresh fruit, fish, meat and vegetables have been exchanged, with the amount of pints, meals or vouchers offered linked to the size, quantity and quality of the items presented.

A sign placed inside the pub says: ‘If you grow, breed, shoot or steal anything that may look at home on our menu, then bring it in and let’s do a deal.’

So far pints have been swapped in place of potatoes, mackerel and a kilo of fresh fruit.

Locally shot rabbits, pheasants and pigeons have also been exchanged for beer.

The Pigs pub, in Edgefield, near Holt, Norfolk, even encourages locals to contribute to its traditional food menu in return for free alcohol.

Manager Cloe Wasey, 24, said the offer has taken off as people have started to feel the pinch financially.

‘We’ve been doing it for almost two years now but the success of it has only just recently started to boom with the credit crunch setting in,’ she added.

‘People need to find different ways to go out and this helps.

‘It’s also great for us because we get produce at a good price, although we have high standards so the food we get in has to meet those.

‘We find the home grown stuff is often much better than what we can get from the suppliers.

‘Someone will say “that rabbit tasted great” and we say ‘here, meet the person who shot it”.’

Driver Derek Feast, 64, a regular in the pub, recently swapped some of the free range chicken eggs he breeds for a pint.

‘I have a job where I earn the national minimum wage so this little bit of extra money helps me get out,’ he said. ‘The odd penny here and there really helps.’

Miss Wasey, who runs the pub with her business partner Tim Abbott, 24, who is head chef, said the scheme has helped cement the pub’s place at the heart of the village community.

‘It gives us a more local feel,’ she said.

[…]

Daily Mail

People without any exposure to the ideas of economics in the abstract understand and are attracted to barter on a gut level.

With barter, there is no middle man. There is no VAT, no record of transaction, in short, there is no law involved.

The next clear step is to organize barter with cards and computers, and there have been some attempts at this, the biggest one seems to be Bartercard, which started in Australia:

Bartercard is unlike any other credit or debit card because you fund our card with your own goods and services…NOT CASH. Bartercard currently helps over 55,000 smart businesses in 12 countries around the world (over 4,000 in the UK) to increase sales, customer base, cash-flow and profit. Bartercard enables member businesses to exchange goods and services with other Member businesses, saving valuable cash, without having to engage in a direct swap of goods.

Bartercard runs to facilitate Business to Business barter. Some interesting feedback on it thanks to the Google. It is run as a franchise world-wide

The next step has already been taken; one example can be found in the form of the Totnes Pound, where the idea of barter is pushed into the background and the (more understandable) idea of alternative currency is in the foreground.

After this the next step is to create a barter system that works on mobile phones, specifically the iPhone and iPod touch. A barter system running on a mobile platform, exposed to millions of people, could pick up enough momentum to become a powerful alternative to debt based, inflation cursed, corrupt currencies and the organized crime gangs that operate them.

Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana hit out at the religious values of the Italian government on Monday as the furore over a plan by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni to fingerprint all children in the country’s gypsy camps rumbled on.

“The ‘Catholic’ ministers of Silvio Berlusconi’s government have fallen at the first hurdle, without appeal,” said the weekly, which slammed the newly formed government in April for failing to include staunch Catholics in its line-up.

“The dignity of man is worth nothing to them. No-one has raised his hand to counter Maroni and his indecent racist proposal“.

The weekly went on to attack the granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Alessandra Mussolini, who had previously failed to comment on Maroni’s plan despite her recent appointment as president of the Parliamentary Children’s Committee.

“Mussolini’s silence is not surprising, since ethnic and religious registers are part of her family DNA and finally return as government heritage“, it said.

The Catholic paper went on to suggest that the fingerprints of parliamentarians and their children should be taken first.

“The registering of a Roma child, who has committed no crime, violates human dignity,” it said,

“We would have given more credit to the minister if, together with the register, he had explained how he would get all the Roma children into schools and take them away from the camps they share with rats. What help has he planned? Nothing”.

Mussolini described the editorial as “a mixture of confusion and intolerance”, adding that she “could not fail” to support a plan that would “save and defend” the Roma children.

But the president of the Italian branch of the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) echoed Famiglia Cristiana’s fears.

“Not only do we fail to understand how this register can bring positive results, but there is a risk of criminalising the victims – the children themselves,” said Vincenzo Spadafora, appealing for a meeting with Maroni.

“I think the minister would do well to open dialogue on this issue rather than repeating his position,” he added.

A former Italian president, Francesco Cossiga, added to the chorus of nay-sayers, asking what Maroni had planned next.

“I think the minister’s next step will be to cut the first phalange from the little finger of the right or left hand of gypsy children, or even better a piece of the lobe from the right or left ear so that they can be immediately recognised,” he said.

MARONI DEFENDS PLAN.

But Maroni’s proposal received support from Foreign Affairs Minister Franco Frattini, despite unofficial comments from the EC last week that the plan would be unacceptable.

“I think that Maroni has done well to continue along this path. This measure is above all in the interests of the children who have no identity. We can help them (by removing them) from the ignoble state of abandonment in which they find themselves,” said Frattini, a former European Commissioner for Justice and Security.

“It’s not about registers or anything like that but about identifying those who live in our country. These things are done in many other European countries without any scandal and they will also be done here,” he added. Maroni hit back at critics, describing his plan as a “logical measure” that conformed to European directives.

“All the polemics are unfounded, the fruit of ignorance or ideological prejudice,” he said.

Maroni also pointed to an EU law passed in April that requires member states to take the fingerprints from migrant minors coming from outside the EU from the age of six and up.

Under Maroni’s proposal, fingerprints will be taken during a census of all gypsy camps in a bid to establish who is in the country legally and who is not.

Gypsies found without the correct paperwork will be expelled after three months.

The government eventually plans to dismantle all illegal camps as well as authorised camps that do not have adequate facilities.

The proposal has come under heavy fire from opposition politicians, children’s rights organisations, Catholic immigration foundation Migrantes and international bodies including the European Union and the Council of Europe for discriminating against an ethnic minority.

[…]

http://www.italymag.co.uk/italy/politics/catholic-weekly-slams-fingerprints

My emphasis.

Well well well; it seems like the Catholics are finally smelling the stench of fascism and are beginning to say something about it.

Note how Franco Frattini, Fascist, justifies dehumanizing people because it is a logical measure.

Note also how these vermin lie through their teeth; they say:

It’s not about registers or anything like that but about identifying those who live in our country

how can you identify who should or should not be in the country without keeping a register of who is legal? The whole ‘logic’ of fingerprinting and biometrics is that you keep a permanent register and then constantly check people against it. If this man does not understand this, he is incompetent. If he does understand it and said those words, he is a liar. Either way, he has no place being in charge of any of this.

All the usual excuses are rolled out:

These things are done in many other European countries without any scandal and they will also be done here

Translation: “other states violate peoples rights, and so we will also”.

Italy would be far better off simply rounding up all Roma and expelling them en-masse, as they bulldoze their camps.

That way, the people of Italy will be spared the creation of their own police state biometric apparatus; which is the REAL reason why this is being done. Once the apparatus is in place, ‘logic’ will be used to justify putting all Italians in the database, and using it for any and all purposes.

This is how they build these systems. This is how the Germans built their early computer driven police state apparatus; on the back of the threat of the Baader Meinhof gang.

Wake up Italians; you may not like the Roma, but your problem is not them, it is what is being planned for YOU!

The anti-Russian bias of the Western media is really something to behold “Russia Invades Georgia,” “Russia Attacks Georgia,” and variations thereof have been some of the choice headlines reporting events in the Caucasus, but the reality is not only quite different, but the exact opposite. Sometimes this comes out in the third or fourth paragraph of the reportage, in which it is admitted that the Georgians tried to “retake” the “breakaway province” of South Ossetia. The Georgian bombing campaign and the civilian casualties – if they are mentioned at all – are downplayed and presented as subject to dispute. The Georgians have been openly engaging in a military buildup since last year, and President Mikhail Saakashvili and his party have been proclaiming from the rooftops their aim of re-conquering South Ossetia (and rebellious Abkhazia, while they’re at it). Avid readers of Antiwar.com saw this coming. In a column entitled “Wars to Watch Out For,” I wrote:

“As President Mikheil Saakashvili deflowers his own revolution and shuts down the opposition media, he could well try to divert attention away from his political problems by ginning up a fresh conflict with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are protected by Russian troops and regional militias.” That’s what Western reporters aren’t telling their readers: the South Ossetians (and the Abkhazians) have had de facto independence since 1991, when they rose up against their “democratic” central government, which had banned regional parties from participating in elections. They beat back the Georgian army, which, nonetheless, inflicted a lot of casualties and damage. A low-level war has been in progress ever since, with Saakashvili and his ultra-nationalist party using the rebels as a foil to divert attention from their repressive domestic policies and Georgia’s sad status as an economic basket case. As I wrote way back at the beginning of this year:

“Saakashvili, the great ‘democrat,’ is busy charging anyone who opposes him with being a pawn of the Russians (and therefore guilty of treason), but the West is calling on him to restore civil liberties – and, in an apparent effort to propitiate his Western benefactors, he has lifted some restrictions and called new elections. Widespread and growing opposition to his strong-arm tactics, even among many of his former supporters, spells political trouble for Saakashvili and his corrupt cohorts, however – and an appeal to Georgian ultra-nationalism (which was always the real ideological motivation of the Rose Revolutionaries) would bolster him in the polls and provide a much-needed distraction, at least from the ruling party’s point of view.” What’s particularly disgusting is the spectacle of the fraudulent Saakashvili’s smug mug all over Western television – the BBC and Bloomberg, for starters – invoking his great love of “democracy” and “freedom” and calling on the U.S. to intervene in the name of supposedly shared “values.” What drivel! Up until very recently, Saakashvili has been busy rounding up his political opponents and charging them with espionage, as his police beat demonstrators in the streets. When this happened, even our somnolent media sat up and took notice, but they seem to have forgotten.

Saakashvili uses the Western media as a platform to broadcast his great love for “freedom” and make the case against the Russian “aggressors,” comparing the present conflict with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s – and even the bloody 1956 repression of the Hungarians! This is nonsense. Russia is not the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain has long since been melted down for scrap metal, and, if anything, Saakashvili resembles the Hungarian satraps of the Kremlin rather than the heroic freedom-fighters, given his absolute fealty to his foreign masters in Washington, to whom he appeals for help in putting down an internal rebellion. In any case, it wasn’t too hard to have seen this coming a mile away, or to predict the American government’s response. As I wrote in “Wars To Watch Out For”: “In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, expect the U.S. to do what they have done for the duration of Georgia’s political crisis: proffer unconditional support to Saakashvili. With Russia aiding and giving political and diplomatic support to the Abkhazians and the Ossetians, and the Americans letting loose a flood of military aid to Tbilisi, this could be the first theater of actual conflict in the new cold war.”

Which is precisely what has occurred. The United States is denouncing the Russians as aggressors in the UN Security Council and accusing the Kremlin of engaging in a policy of “regime change,” in Ambassador Khalilzad’s phrase. The Russian response: “regime change” is “an American invention,” but, hey, in Saakashvili’s case, it might not be such a bad idea. They have a point. The Georgian strongman is a thug and an opportunist who does an excellent imitation of George W. Bush-times-10: whereas GWB merely implies his political opponents are traitors to the nation, Saakashvili comes right out and says it – then drags them into court on trumped up charges of high treason. GWB has presided over a regime that has legalized torture, but only for foreign “terrorists” (José Padilla excepted). Saakashvili, on the other hand, throws his domestic political opponents – whom he labels “terrorists” – in jail and tortures his own countrymen. Georgia’s notorious prisons are chock full of political dissidents. GWB justifies his aggression by invoking “democracy” and the doctrine of “preemption,” while Saakashvili doesn’t bother with such theoretical niceties, denying his aggression against South Ossetia in defiance of the plain facts.

In short: if you love GWB, you’ll love President Saakashvili. Therefore it’s no surprise John McCain is portraying the Georgians as the good guys and demanding that Russian troops leave “sovereign Georgian territory” without preconditions or delay. After all, when your chief foreign policy adviser has up until very recently been a paid shill for the Georgian government, what else could we expect? As I’ve pointed out on a few occasions in this space, Mad John has been spoiling for a fight with the Russians – in the Caucasus and elsewhere – for years, going so far as to travel to Georgia to proclaim his sympathy for Saakashvili’s cause. What’s really interesting, however, is how Barack Obama has taken up this same cause, albeit with less vehemence than the GOP nominee. As Politico.com reported:

“When violence broke out in the Caucasus on Friday morning, John McCain quickly issued a statement that was far more strident toward the Russians than that of President Bush, Barack Obama, and much of the West. But, as Russian warplanes pounded Georgian targets far beyond South Ossetia this weekend, Bush, Obama, and others have moved closer to McCain’s initial position.” While calling for mediation and international peacekeepers, Obama went with the War Party’s line that Russia, not Georgia, is the aggressor, as the Times of London reports: “Obama accused Russia of escalating the crisis ‘through it’s clear and continued violation of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.'” While his first statement on the outbreak of hostilities was more along the lines of “Can’t we all get along?”, the New York Times notes: “Mr. Obama did harden his rhetoric later on Friday, shortly before getting on a plane for a vacation in Hawaii. His initial statement, an adviser said, was released before there were confirmed reports of the Russian invasion. In his later statement, Mr. Obama said, ‘What is clear is that Russia has invaded Georgia’s sovereign – has encroached on Georgia’s sovereignty, and it is very important for us to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.'”

This nonsense about Georgia’s alleged “sovereignty” rides roughshod over the reality of the Ossetians’ apparent determination to free themselves from Saakashvili’s grip, and it’s the buzzword that identifies a shill for the Georgians. “I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions,” said Obama, “and reiterate my call for an immediate cease-fire.” This cease-fire business is meant to feed directly into the Georgians’ contention that they have offered to stop the conflict, even as they continue military operations in South Ossetia, which have already cost the lives of over a thousand of that country’s inhabitants. That didn’t stop the McCainiacs from attacking Obama as a tool of the Kremlin. Sunday the news talk shows were abuzz with rumors of Democratic discontent over Obama’s seeming inability to hit back at McCain’s viciously negative campaign, yet it’s much worse than that – it’s not an unwillingness, but an inherent inability to do so. I hate to cite Andrew Sullivan favorably, but he was one of the first to note the convergence of the Obama camp and the McCain campaign on such central issues as Iran, and the process continues with this confluence of opinion on the Russian question. While the Obama people have dutifully pointed out that Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy guru, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his public relations firm as a paid lobbyist for the Georgians, their own candidate’s position on the matter differs little from McCain’s, except, as the New York Times notes, in terms of “style.”

GWB recently assured Saakashvili that he would do his best to get the Georgians into NATO, but the Europeans – particularly the Germans – are balking, and this foray by the Georgian Napoleon into a direct conflict with the Russians seems to confirm their initial reluctance. The Euros are no dummies: they know Saakashvili’s recklessness could plunge the entire region into an armed conflict that would resemble World War I in its utter stupidity. I’ve written at length about the economic and political interests that stand to profit from a war in the Caucasus, and I won’t repeat myself here except to note that the timing of this – with attacking Iran on the War Party’s agenda – should alert us to the importance of what is happening. Russia has not only been opposed to Iran’s victimization at the hands of the West, but Putin and his successor have taken up Tehran’s cause, selling arms and technology to the Iranians and running diplomatic interference on their behalf. This is Washington’s counterattack by proxy.

Please don’t tell me Saakashvili just woke up one day and decided to attack Ossetia, and that the Americans weren’t notified well in advance. Georgia depends on U.S. military and economic aid, and Saakashvili is a savvy operator: he is pulling a Lebanon, having learned from the Israeli example, and the Bush administration is more than glad to oblige him. Georgian tanks would never have rolled into South Ossetia without being given a green light by Washington. Georgia has embarked on a very dangerous course, and it’s important to realize it hasn’t done so alone. Saakashvili has the implicit backing of Washington in his quest to re-conquer the “lost” provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia (and don’t forget Adjaria!) – or else what are 1,000 U.S. troops doing engaged in “joint military exercises” with the Georgian military, just as the crisis reaches a crescendo of violence? (The Brits, to their credit, have thought better of getting dragged into this one…) It’s too bad Obama is going along with the game plan, but then again, he was never good on the Russian question to begin with, so I can’t say I’m disappointed. South Ossetia is not now a part of “sovereign Georgian territory,” and it hasn’t been for nearly two decades, no matter what McCain and Obama would have us believe. If they, along with GWB, are going to stand by Saakashvili’s side as he mows down civilians and imposes martial law on a war-torn, dirt-poor, and much-abused people, then may they all be damned to hell – that is, if we can find a rung low enough for them.

It’s funny – if you like your humor black – but when Slobodan Milosevic was supposedly doing to Kosovo what Saakashvili is now doing to South Ossetia, the U.S. launched bombing raids and “liberated” the Kosovars from what we were told was to be a gruesome fate. There are many reasons to doubt that this attempted “genocide” ever took place, but given that something very bad was going on in the former Yugoslavia, one has to ask: why don’t the same standards apply to South Ossetia? I’ll tell you why: because the victims, this time, are Russians, Slavs who haven’t achieved official victim status in the lexicon of Western “humanitarians.” Imagine if, say, Colombia invaded Panama, and rained bombs down on the many U.S. citizens currently living there. Would the U.S. act to ensure their safety? You betcha! So somebody please tell me why Russia hasn’t the right to defend its own citizens, and even to deter and punish Georgian aggression. The War Party has been running on some pretty low energy lately, and this revival of the Cold War will no doubt recharge its batteries. The warmongers need a new enemy, a fresh face in their rogues’ gallery, to get the masses excited again, and Putin’s Russia fits the bill. I’ve been warning of this possibility for what seems like years, and now the moment is upon us. What’s interesting is how many left-liberal “peaceniks” are falling for the War Party’s guff and lining up behind McCain, their hero Obama, and the neocons in the march to confrontation with the Kremlin.

~ Justin Raimondo

In a single, concise, citation laden article, Justin Raimondo proves that he is a Blogger Without Peer™.

This is the sort of writing that I like to read, and is the sort of writing that everyone needs to read.

Absolutely brilliant.

And while you are at it, take a look at this tirbal map of Georgia and the surrounding region.

When you look at a map of the disputed area and then see a map like this, you start to get a real picture of what is actually going on there.

The front page of The Times has as its story, with a HUGE headline:

The Times
August 6, 2008

Fakeproof e-passport is cloned in minutes
Steve Boggan

New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports.

Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime. The flaws also undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week were worthless because they could not be forged

[…]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4467106.ece

And Martyn Thomas chimes in, echoing some strange Tory logic:

Martyn Thomas CBE FREng
http://www.thomas-associates.co.uk

The tests also raise serious questions about the Government’s £4 billion identity card scheme, which relies on the same biometric technology. ID cards are expected to contain similar microchips that will store up to 50 pieces of personal and biometric information about their holders. Last night Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, called on ministers to take urgent action to remedy the security flaws discovered by The Times. “It is of deep concern that the technology underpinning a key part of the UK’s security can be compromised so easily,” he said.

The ability to clone chips leaves travellers vulnerable to identity theft when they surrender their passports at hotels or car rental companies. Criminals in the back office could read the chips and clone them. The original passport holder’s name and date of birth could be left on the fake chip, with the picture, fingerprints and other biometric data of a criminal client added. The criminal could then travel the world using the stolen identity and the original passport holder would be none the wiser.

Furthermore, the thief could selectively replace the fingerprints and photo to make the most convincing fake ever. This is something that no one seems to understand; you can replace entries either in the database or the ‘cloned’ documents so that someone can most convincingly ‘become you’.

We have been saying all of this for years, and we have gone further, with more accuracy and prescience.

The fact of the matter is, no matter what anyone says, a database can never be ‘secured’ and no ‘urgent action to remedy the security flaws’ can ever protect these systems.

The only way to fix this problem is to actually make the passports secure. That means:

• Remove the RFID chips from all passports
• Dismantle the NIR
• Take the central passport administration computer offline, so that it is only accessible from inside a single site.
• Issue passports in line with our system, ISLAND.

Securing the passport by removing bad technology does not mean that you cannot use cryptography and modern technology to verify the authenticity of passports; on the contrary, you can have the best of both worlds (the privacy of a paper document and digital authentication) in a single system. We wrote about how to do this previously:

If any document is issued correctly, and is not tampered with, it must be assumed that the holder is the person named on the document, whether it has biometric information in it or not.

If the document has been tampered with, then the holder might not be the person named in the passport. This is the only type of check that needs to be made in passports.

Biometrics are not needed to ensure that the holder of a passport is the named person in the passport. Certainly, there is no need for a central database of all biometrics (photograph, fingerprint, iris scan) to check the identity of each person every time a passport is used. A simple test to see if the passport has been tampered with is all that is required.

This is how you do it.

1. Each passport or ID document contains a cryptographically signed digital portrait of the holder, signed by the passport issuing authority.
2. When your passport is swiped, your picture comes up on the screen, loaded from the passport, and NOT a central database
3. The digital signature of the passport photo is also downloaded.
4. A PGP-like signature check is done against the public key of the national passport issuing authority, which is stored on the keyring of the swiping device.

If the signature is good, the document is genuine. If the signature is bad, the document is a forgery.

This system does several things.

• It decentralizes the management of photo authentication.
• It stops the inevitable abuses of centralized databases.
• Each passport photo is digitally unique. This means that every time that you get your photo taken for your passport, it is a different cryptographically signed number that ends up in your passport. You will never have a unique identifier tied to your identity, even though its your face in every photograph.
• Big brother gets a kick in the balls.
• Passport/ID fraud is basically eliminated, except for the fake ones made to order at the request of MI6 and the like.

There is no need for the centralized passport biometrics database that they are planning; the means exist right now, with military grade crypto and digitally signed photographs that will create a rock solid, absolutely authenticatable, user friendly, non big brother solution to passport fraud, that protects documents and does not further erase our rights as free people.

The crypto to do this is in the public domain, and so zero-cost license wise. My solution is cheaper than the centrally held database solution.

Now of course, there is nothing to stop people from collecting these signature numbers, but if that is the only part of the passport that is readable, and this readable part does not contain your name or any other personally identifiable information, it will be harder for people to create a database connected to your biometric ID. If you are the nervous type you could change your id every month; in any case, I devised this ID scheme to demonstrate that there is no reason to create a centralized database from the outset. There are other, better ways to manage document authenticity. All someone has to do is simply THINK about the problem. Unfortunately, the people who are behind the deployment of this disaster are the companies that sell the systems that will be used to fleece the population for decades to come. Money is the true root cause for centralization, that and the lust for absolute control that slobbering pigs like David Blindkid and John Asscroft dreamed about.

It is only a matter of time now, before both RFID passports and ID Cards are scrapped.

They are not only perfect examples of the misapplication of technology, but they are immoral, illiberal, ineffective, not cost effective and socially corrosive.

Another great post from George Washington:

Fearmongering As a Form of Warfare

We often think of psychological warfare as meaning disinformation. See, for example, this.

But psychological operations also include efforts to induce and spread fear, because fear immobilizes people more than any other emotion. Make people afraid, and they won’t take any action to challenge those in power.

We all know that false flag terror is a form of psyops to intimidate people. Likewise, the real reason that our government tortures innocent people is to spread fear. And we already know that the Pentagon employs bloggers to spread its propaganda (indeed, even private companies appear to do it).

I’ve increasingly recently run across a form of fearmongering psyops on the web. Specifically, whenever anyone posts a hopeful idea or a promising strategy for fighting tyranny, someone will post a fear-inducing comment like:

“If you sign the impeachment petition, the government will put you in its terrorist database”

Or

“If you show up to the anti-war rally, you’ll be tasered”

You’ve seen this, right?

These kind of statements can do no possible good. They are not intended to convey any useful information. They are merely meant to discourage people from taking any action.

Given that the Bush administration tortures innocent people, tramples on the Constitution, and spies on everyone, many people are already cowed and intimidated. What we need more of is courage and hope. Those are the qualities which will enable us to save our country.

Anyone sewing unreasonable seeds of fear is either a psyops agent or a coward who is trying to justify their own cowardice by infecting others with the virus of fear. Either way, their fearmongering should be countered with comments about the importance of courage in saving our country and with reasons to have hope that we can change things if we are committed to creating a saner world. Fear may be contagious, but so is courage and hope.

Because those trying to save our country outweigh the psyops agents by millions-to-one, we will win the battle if we take a stand for courage and against fear.

There are several posts on BLOGDIAL about what and what not to do about ‘our problems’.

Before the illegal, immoral, unjustified war crime of the invasion of Iraq, I said categorically that a demonstration against the invasion would have no effect, and that the invasion would happen anyway.

Sadly, I was proved right.

Now we have people calling for more demonstrations, public rallies and such like, and whilst I defend everyone’s right to assemble, I disagree that these actions will be of any lasting value.

I call the sentiment behind these actions ‘Yellow Ribbon Thinking’. It is something that americans are particularly fond of, and which keeps everyone in line, preventing them from making the final leap to real solutions that will actually solve the problems.

This is the only sphere of human activity where the solution is not tailored to the problem. At any other time and in every other instance, a normal, rational human being addresses a problem or crisis in a way that is designed to produce a discrete result; if there is a fire, you bring water or a fire extinguisher. If you want to fly to the moon, you design a space craft. If there is a leak in your roof, you patch it. If it is raining, you get out your umbrella. If you are hungry, you get yourself a sandwich.

In not one of those examples would any rational person put forward as a plan that a demonstration against the rain should be held, or that a candle lit vigil should be organized, should we become hungry, or that we should play music if there is a fire, or that we should dance around with plastic wings to reach the moon.

People should not attend anti-war rallies not because they might be tasered; they should not attend them because they do not work to stop war. If they did, they would not be in Iraq and planning an attack on Iran right now.

People should not sign petitions, not because you might get on the government’s ‘terrorist’ database, but because they do not work to effect permanent change. If petitions worked, we would not have 99% of the bad legislation on the books that we have now.

I have said it before, and I will say it again. Only a fool keeps doing something that doesn’t work. All of these tactics that are very old, tried and tested, have been shown to be ineffective against the sort of tyranny we are facing today. If you keep doing them, you are a fool. If you are calling for them, you are either a fool, or are working for the enemy.

The contention that psy-ops are working to stop people from protesting and signing petitions is probably 100% true; but those psy-operatives are also inside the delusion that protesting and petition writing have power. The fact that they are out there trying to stop it adds to the ‘meta psy-op’ that is being promoted; the one geared to making you think that demonstrations, petitions and all other ‘Yellow Ribbon Thinking’ is useful and effective, when in fact they are not. That is the Matroska trick that is being played on the public; it keeps them two levels down inside the doll from discovering the real truth, which is that even if everyone in the entire USA were to sign a petition it wouldn’t be worth the ink used to scratch out the signatures; the bad stuff would still happen. By keeping people from signing and demonstrating, they are keeping everyone from waking up and realizing that these tactics are worthless; going through a failure on the path to achieve your goal is an essential step before creating the next generation of tools that are actually effective in getting to your goal, which in our case is (partial list):

• A permanent end to the war machine
• Sound money
• An obedient congress
• Obedient law enforcement staff
• A properly restrained executive
• Full, unassailable and enforced individual rights
• Full, unassailable and enforced property rights

It seems that today, in response to tyranny, fascism and the police state, the only ‘solutions’ that anyone can come up with are ones that simply will not work. Only a small minority is actually fully awake and doing something concrete and focussed, like the war tax resistors, the people who have turned their backs on ‘the system’ and the many others who have found their own way to escape.

we will win the battle if we take a stand for courage and against fear.

I agree that fear is being exploited to an unprecedented level today. The first step on the road to defeating this is for everyone to understand the true nature of life, risk and the probability of anything bad happening to you.

The fascist ‘Health and Safety’ culture that has engulfed the UK (for example) needs to be explained, confronted and disobeyed at every point that it is touched. ‘Health and Safety’ culture is one example of fear running wild, and how it is used to engineer control. The same goes for Anthropgenic Global Warming.

The fear of ‘terrorism’ is the other bogeyman being trotted out on a minute by minute basis to scare everyone into line. All Security Theatre and its related nonsense must be countered, defied and disobeyed at every point that it is encountered. That means refusing to comply with anything that has been introduced ‘because of terrorism’.

Finally, people have to stop acting like simpletons, and stop using the language of simple minded people. There is alot of this language about; it is unfocussed, nebulous and actually, very dangerous; when your house is on fire, you do not talk about ‘taking a stand’ or ‘standing up for what is right’ against fire. You get a fire extinguisher and PUT OUT THE FLAMES. That is why, whenever I talk and have talked about this I try and make sure that I do not use this in nubibus thinking and offer another way of thinking and acting as a solution. Even if what you offer is wrong, by iterating out the failures we come closer to the solution. The most important part is that you are iterating, and not doing the same thing over and over again.

False Flag terror is the number one tool of the fear-mongers. They have been using it for decades. That means we must put false flag terror in its proper context and ignore it whenever it happens. No matter how big the outrage, we must all refuse to change our opinions, change our behavior, accept new regulations of any kind, get all ‘patriotic’, ‘get behind the president’ or do anything that is expected of us. Once we accept that and behave correctly, false flag terror and the fear they try to create with it loses all power, and it loses the power to change the way we live.

There are probably an infinite number of solutions to our problems. All we need to do is find one and then ruthlessly execute it.

Whatever one we choose to use, it must be done with a clear goal and deliverables and it must be unstoppable. We certainly have many models of how it can be done; as I said above, in every other sphere of life, complex problems are addressed successfully. If this were not the case, we would not have put man on the moon or done anything that requires engineering.

In fact, this is an engineering problem, and it must be attacked in precisely that way.

Spreading information and educating people about what is really going on is essential. You can do this without wasting your time marching in the streets. Context is everything; that is why I support and personally distribute DVDs of the crucial documentaries. Once the critical mass of informed people is reached, it will be much easier to deploy the final maneuver, which should not be something that has been seen before, like a demonstration or a rock concert. For the record, I do not believe that asking foxes to investigate a raid on a chicken coop is sensible, logical, rational or smart. Impeaching Bush will achieve nothing, except the justice that he is gaoled for his war crimes…what about the next war criminal?

That is the question that needs to be asked and addressed.

We need a solution that takes care of the next war criminal, and all other possible followers, on a permanent basis.

Thankfully, it is not an intractable problem.

The face of a traitor:

Selling land by the acre to be banned under new EU ruling

People in Britain will lose the right to sell land in acres under a new Brussels ruling nodded through by the Government.

In a low-key meeting, a junior minister agreed last week to abolish the ancient imperial measurement and replace it with the metric equivalent ‘hectare’ from 2010.

The UK previously had an opt-out, technically known as a ‘derogation’, from the EU’s use of some metric measurements, which allowed the continued use of acres for the pruposes of land registration.

But from January 1, 2010, the unit, which dates back to the 13th century, will be banned.

The decision was buried deep within the small print of EU directive 80/181/EEC on agriculture and fisheries and revealed by the Tories.

‘This is this kind of pointless interference into the nooks and crannies of our national life that frustrates people about the EU,’ said shadow Europe minister Mark Francois.

‘Whether we use hectares or acres should be a matter for Britain to decide, not the EU.

‘Once again this weak Labour Government has meekly given up yet another of Britain’s rights to Brussels.

‘They need to think again and insist that we must keep our right to use our ancient traditional measure of land if we wish.’

Successive British governments have been under pressure from Brussels to announce a date for phasing out imperial measures altogether, with the latest deadline set for 2009.

Last year, however, the European Commission and Parliament announced that it would no longer be seeking their extinction.

It followed campaigns by Britons dubbed ‘Metric Martyrs’ who have fought for years to stop the march of new measurements from Europe.

In 2001, Sunderland market trader Steve Thoburn was convicted of selling bananas by the pound.

He died in March 2004, aged 39, just days after learning his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights had been rejected.

But the move consigning the acre to history – rubber stamped by Jonathan Shaw, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Marine, Landscape and Rural Affairs – will alarm those who believe many eurocrats are still intent on forcing Britain to swap the pint for the litre, ounce for the gram and mile for kilometre.

Neil Herron, campaign director of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund, told the Mail: ‘This is what happens when you allow yourself to be ruled from Brussels. We are being governed by people we cannot remove from power and have a weakened Parliament in Westminster.

‘The acre is an instantly recognisable unit to Britons. How is the farming industry going to cope? They will all still talk in acres so this is just meaningless.’

An acre is equal to 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet. A hectare is more than twice the size at about 107,639 square feet.

The first law setting out an exact statutory size for the acre was passed under Edward I’s reign between 1272 and 1307. The word is derived from the Latin ‘ager’, from which we also have words like agriculture.

Public consultations launched by the commission, which confirmed that allowing imperial measures to be used alongside metric measures would not disrupt trade and commerce – and would help to counter anti-EU sentiments.

But loose goods still have to be sold in metric quantities, with imperial measures only allowed to be displayed alongside, rather than instead of, them.

No one from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was available for comment.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1036895/Selling-land-acre-banned-new-EU-ruling.html

Remember the woman who was in trouble for selling by the pound?

We can take comfort in one thing; all of this is going to come to an end, and sooner than you think, because we are winning:

History shows that people usually don’t know when we are about to win. We are lousy at knowing whether we have a chance at victory.

When people struggling for liberty and justice face seemingly overwhelming power and impossible odds, they can suddenly breakthrough and win when things seem most hopeless and they least expect victory.

Why We Underestimate Our Chances

Why?

Well, for one thing, it is impossible to know what’s going on in the other camp. The oppressors might seem invincible, but there are often schisms and rifts which are tearing the enemy apart from within. The bad guys might be extremely vulnerable because they are busy fighting with each other. They might be merely putting a false public image of unity . . . one which is dropped the minute the cameras stop rolling.

In addition – as I learned as a kid in karate class – even the toughest opponent has vulnerabilities. No matter how big the lug you’re fighting is, hit him in one of his vulnerable spots, and he’s going down. In struggles for freedom and justice as well, if you identify and focus on the bad guy’s vulnerabilities, you can win no matter how poorly the fight seems to have been going.

Moreover, the opponent might be affected by what we do a lot more than we realize. You’ve seen it in horror and martial arts movies. The good guy has given his best shot at the monster. But the monster doesn’t seem to be fazed in the least . . . he glowers and starts walking threateningly towards the good guy, who is flat on his back. It seems like the good guy is finished.

But at the last minute, the monster falls over and dies, and we see for the first time that the good guy had earlier mortally wounded the monster in some way.

There is often a lag time between what we do and our ability to see the effect on our opponents. It may be that our activism is having a tremendous effect and is pummeling the forces of tyranny, but that the weakened and wounded tyrants are simply bluffing and putting on a strong front to keep us intimidated. Don’t stop fighting just because the effects of our actions haven’t yet become visible.

In addition, it is often difficult at any given time to see which historical trend will end up being the most important one. In other words, there are always competing trends and forces, and something which doesn’t seem very important at the time can end up winning the battle in the long-run.

As just one example, the Soviet Union collapsed partly because Russians watched images of prosperity on American tv, and decided they weren’t going to put up with what they had. The communist leaders didn’t think that letting in American tv programs would have such a huge influence on their population’s willingness to put up with communist repression. But it did.

There are historical trends which we are not even currently aware of which might end up ensuring our victory.

(Finally, while the enemy might appear to have overwhelming force, they may be “paper tigers”, with much weaker resources than it seems. More on this in a later essay.)

Don’t Quit Now

Bottom line . . . don’t quit now.

It is possible that we are mere days away from starting to hold the tyrants responsible for their war crimes, false flag terror, illegal spying, and other unlawful acts. The Red Cross finding Bush guilty of war crimes is significant (while it is not a U.S. institution, it is an important one).

[…]

George Washington

The people who have systematically sold Britain to the EU are traitors, and the banning of selling by the pound and now the acre are the latest outward symptom of this deeply offensive trend that is wrecking this country.

It WILL come to an end, and ALL the bad legislation and the insane treaties that have been introduced to destroy Britain will be repealed and nullified respectively, leaving us once again in a place worth living in.

For now, it is your duty to sell by the pound and by the acre and by the foot or by the pea weight if that is your desire. Private transactions are exactly that, PRIVATE and the state, any state, has no business interjecting itself into your exchanges of goods and services.