Boy in court on terror charges

A British teenager who is accused of possessing material for terrorist purposes has appeared in court.

The 17-year-old, who was arrested in the Dewsbury area of West Yorkshire on Monday, was given bail after a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

It is alleged he had a copy of the “Anarchists’ Cookbook”, containing instructions on how to make home-made explosives.

His next court hearing has been set for 25 October.

The teenager faces two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000.

The first charge relates to the possession of material for terrorist purposes in October last year.

The second relates to the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism.

He stood in the dock wearing a baggy, blue hooded top and only spoke to confirm his name and date of birth.

After the 40-minute hearing, the teenager was released on bail under several conditions.

A second 17-year-old who is facing similar charges has already been remanded in custody and will also appear at the Crown Court on 25 October.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7030096.stm

So, there is a young man in court for posessing a book that people have read for over three decades:

This is a book that you can get from many places on the internets, for example:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/89607/Anarchists-Cookbook-IV-4-14

And I guarantee you that once news of this case becomes widespread the number of places where you can get it will triple.

It is absurd on several levels that this book should be illegal. Firstly, you have been able to get it for thirty years. Two, it is your right to read any book that you like. Three, you can get it anywhere via the internets.

Are they now going to say that sites on the internets cannot store and serve this book? Pathetically and predictably, ‘yes’ is the answer.

They will never succeed, firstly because america’s first amendment rights protect books like this, and there is no way that you can block the internets….but you know this.

What is so appalling is that this poor chap is being hauled over the coals over a book, over his right to posses and read a book.

And leave it to BBQ to give the story a misleading title. It should have read, “Boy in court for possessing thirty year old book”.

…The Dark Times!

Drug Cocktail

I haven’t felt myself for about 2 weeks, directly corresponding with my last round of shots. I received my second Guardasil injection the same time as my Depo-Provera, and am also taking Lexapro on a daily basis. I’ve been on Depo for just over 2 years, and it appears that the pain of the shot itself is worsening each time, and it is taking longer for the bruising to fade – 2 full weeks this last time, and I still have a faint mark.

There has been no research done on the effects of Guardasil when injected with other vaccines, and I could find nothing about my trio of drugs in relation to each other. Psychologically I feel as I did when I was 18; troubled, easily agitated, and indecisive. My moods have been all over the board, and several hours of each day every external stimuli irritates me to the point of brief, explosive anger. I’ve lost my work ethic, and find myself expending my energies to shirk work and connive my way out of key responsibilities; this may be burnout, no way to tell. I’ve lost my interest in all activities, and have not ‘felt’ emotion about recent good and bad events, which causes me to wonder if I might be depressed as well. I’ve been having a string of dreams and unprovoked thoughts that seem completely foreign as well, and 100% atypical of my usual personality. These thoughts feel “male” in that they stem solely from visual stimulations and have no emotional bearing. I’ve also noticed mild neuorological oddities, and have odd facial twitches.

I may try to talk to the pharmacist at WalMart today or tomorrow. Currently I should feel apprehensive about the fact that we pissed off a lot of family with our decision to elope, and I should feel ecstatic that I was promoted this week and that $1100 on car maintenance was well worth the expense.

Thank the gods for alcohol.

[…]

http://misopedistbitch.com/musings/drug-cocktail/

!!!!!!

“Take 4 red capsules, in ten minutes take 2 more…help is on the way!

Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented U.S. Effort More Extensive Than Previously Known

By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 22, 2007; Page A01

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.

The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department’s Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country.

But new details about the information being retained suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of travelers more closely than it has previously acknowledged. The details were learned when a group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf.

The Automated Targeting System has been used to screen passengers since the mid-1990s, but the collection of data for it has been greatly expanded and automated since 2002, according to former DHS officials.

Officials yesterday defended the retention of highly personal data on travelers not involved in or linked to any violations of the law. But civil liberties advocates have alleged that the type of information preserved by the department raises alarms about the government’s ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people. The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said.

The activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans’ exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate. They also expressed concern that such personal data could one day be used to impede their right to travel.

“The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society,” said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska. The government, he said, “may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent.”

Gilmore’s file, which he provided to The Washington Post, included a note from a Customs and Border Patrol officer that he carried the marijuana-related book “Drugs and Your Rights.” “My first reaction was I kind of expected it,” Gilmore said. “My second reaction was, that’s illegal.”

DHS officials said this week that the government is not interested in passengers’ reading habits, that the program is transparent, and that it affords redress for travelers who are inappropriately stymied. “I flatly reject the premise that the department is interested in what travelers are reading,” DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said. “We are completely uninterested in the latest Tom Clancy novel that the traveler may be reading.”

[…]

Washington Post

This is of course, a bald faced lie; if they are not interested in what a person is reading, then they would not collect data on the titles of books that you are carrying with you when you travel.

These people are so thick that they cannot even come up with a plausible lie to tell, they just come up with insane non-sequiturs like, “we are not interested in it, thats why we do it”.

As loath as I am to help out the perpetrators of this utter evil and the de destroyers of the american way of life, I have to point out a single reason that a skilled liar might give for the retention of a list of books people are carrying into the USA.

Numbers Stations.

Hell-spawn Chertoff could assert in terror movie plot style that they need to keep a list of books people are carrying because section of the text from these books might be used as One Time Pads to decrypt messages sent by OBL from his secret mountain lair.

It would go like this:

“NSA needs to have a list of all books being carried with travelers so that they can load their 25 million CPU supercomputer under mount Rushmore with the texts of all these books and then run them brute force against all classified ads, Numbers Station transmissions and every other possible source of encrypted messages.”

There you have it. And there are some people in the USA who would willingly drink that Kool-Aid and then preach it like religion, and there are millions more who would subsequently believe it unquestioningly, and then conveniently forget that it ever happened a year or two down the road.

The fact that traitors like Chertoff do not bother to come up with lies like that, which whilst being improbable are at least open to sound bite debate, shows just how sure they are that they are going to take over the usa and grind it into dust.

Back to the gist; RFID tags in books and other property will make this sort of association of objects to people much easer. They will (or do they right now?) then keep a list of ‘bad books’ or ‘suspicious literature’ any of which will cause you to be flagged should you buy them or be detected carrying them.

And if you think that avoiding the land of the great satan will keep you out of their databases:

Ann Harrison, the communications director for a technology firm in Silicon Valley who was among those who obtained their personal files and provided them to The Post, said she was taken aback to see that her dossier contained data on her race and on a European flight that did not begin or end in the United States or connect to a U.S.-bound flight.

“It was surprising that they were gathering so much information without my knowledge on my travel activities, and it was distressing to me that this information was being gathered in violation of the law,” she said.

James P. Harrison, director of the Identity Project and Ann Harrison’s brother, obtained government records that contained another sister’s phone number in Tokyo as an emergency contact. “So my sister’s phone number ends up being in a government database,” he said. “This is a lot more than just saying who you are, your date of birth.”

Edward Hasbrouck, a civil liberties activist who was a travel agent for more than 15 years, said that his file contained coding that reflected his plan to fly with another individual. In fact, Hasbrouck wound up not flying with that person, but the record, which can be linked to the other passenger’s name, remained in the system. “The Automated Targeting System,” Hasbrouck alleged, “is the largest system of government dossiers of individual Americans’ personal activities that the government has ever created.”

Astonishing.

And finally, from the bug-eyed beelzebub pocket devil Chertoff:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in August 2006 said that “if we learned anything from Sept. 11, 2001, it is that we need to be better at connecting the dots of terrorist-related information. After Sept. 11, we used credit-card and telephone records to identify those linked with the hijackers. But wouldn’t it be better to identify such connections before a hijacker boards a plane?”

What ‘we learned’ you little devil, is that america is as vulnerable as any county is to being dismantled from the insiede and all it takes is a few evil and intelligent traitors to pull it off.

Furthermore, and stepping forward into the frame, what you should have learned (by now) is that there is a consequence to killing people in foreign countries (Vietnam). There is a consequence to imposing regimes on people (Iran, Operation AJAX) interfering with other peoples anything.

Now, with everyone running from the dollar like it is the plague, and the chinese threatening to destroy america without firing a shot, the american government is finally and literally going to pay for all the evil it has done, and the american people are very sadly going to pay for the evil that they have allowed to happen and which they have explicitly endorsed with their votes; remember this is all is entirely the fault of the voting public, who returned a war criminal to office, and who seem to be resisting the only man who can save America (with a capital ‘A’).

Once again. If there is one country on this earth that can turn such a disaster around it is the US of A.

They can be a great people…they wish to be.

The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.

The paper, “Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East” – written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament – was exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo.

“We wrote the report partly as we were surprised that this sort of quite elementary analysis had not been produced by the many well resourced Institutes in the United States,” wrote Plesch in an email to Raw Story on Tuesday.

Plesch and Butcher examine “what the military option might involve if it were picked up off the table and put into action” and conclude that based on open source analysis and their own assessments, the US has prepared its military for a “massive” attack against Iran, requiring little contingency planning and without a ground invasion.

The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

• Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact.
• US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.
• US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.
• Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.
• Nuclear weapons are ready, but most unlikely, to be used by the US, the UK and Israel. The human, political and environmental effects would be devastating, while their military value is limited.
• Israel is determined to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons yet has the conventional military capability only to wound Iran’s WMD programmes.
• The attitude of the UK is uncertain, with the Brown government and public opinion opposed psychologically to more war, yet, were Brown to support an attack he would probably carry a vote in Parliament. The UK is adamant that Iran must not acquire the bomb.
• The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

When asked why the paper seems to indicate a certainty of Iranian WMD, Plesch made clear that “our paper is not, repeat not, about what Iran actually has or not.”

[…]

Most significantly, Plesch and Butcher dispute conventional wisdom that any US attack on Iran would be confined to its nuclear sites. Instead, they foresee a “full-spectrum approach,” designed to either instigate an overthrow of the government or reduce Iran to the status of “a weak or failed state.” Although they acknowledge potential risks and impediments that might deter the Bush administration from carrying out such a massive attack, they also emphasize that the administration’s National Security Strategy includes as a major goal the elimination of Iran as a regional power. They suggest, therefore, that:

This wider form of air attack would be the most likely to delay the Iranian nuclear program for a sufficiently long period of time to meet the administration’s current counterproliferation goals. It would also be consistent with the possible goal of employing military action is to overthrow the current Iranian government, since it would severely degrade the capability of the Iranian military (in particular revolutionary guards units and other ultra-loyalists) to keep armed opposition and separatist movements under control. It would also achieve the US objective of neutralizing Iran as a power in the region for many years to come.

However, it is the option that contains the greatest risk of increased global tension and hatred of the United States. The US would have few, if any allies for such a mission beyond Israel (and possibly the UK). Once undertaken, the imperatives for success would be enormous.

Butcher says he does not believe the US would use nuclear weapons, with some exceptions.

“My opinion is that [nuclear weapons] wouldn’t be used unless there was definite evidence that Iran has them too or is about to acquire them in a matter of days/weeks,” notes Butcher. “However, the Natanz facility has been so hardened that to destroy it MAY require nuclear weapons, and once an attack had started it may simply be a matter of following military logic and doctrine to full extent, which would call for the use of nukes if all other means failed.”

[…]

Political Considerations

Plesch and Butcher write with concern about the political context within the United States:

This debate is bleeding over into the 2008 Presidential election, with evidence mounting that despite the public unpopularity of the war in Iraq, Iran is emerging as an issue over which Presidential candidates in both major American parties can show their strong national security bona fides. …

The debate on how to deal with Iran is thus occurring in a political context in the US that is hard for those in Europe or the Middle East to understand. A context that may seem to some to be divorced from reality, but with the US ability to project military power across the globe, the reality of Washington DC is one that matters perhaps above all else. …

We should not underestimate the Bush administration’s ability to convince itself that an “Iran of the regions” will emerge from a post-rubble Iran. So, do not be in the least surprised if the United States attacks Iran. Timing is an open question, but it is hard to find convincing arguments that war will be avoided, or at least ones that are convincing in Washington.

Plesch and Butcher are also interested in the attitudes of the current UK government, which has carefully avoided revealing what its position might be in the case of an attack. They point out, however, “One key caution is that regardless of the realities of Iran’s programme, the British public and elite may simply refuse to participate – almost out of bloody minded revenge for the Iraq deceit.”

And they conclude that even “if the attack is ‘successful’ and the US reasserts its global military dominance and reduces Iran to the status of an oil-rich failed state, then the risks to humanity in general and to the states of the Middle East are grave indeed.”

Raw Story

My emphasis.

Just read some of the comments on this story:

Well, if it happens, there’ll be violence here, guaranteed.
Igor | Email | Homepage | 08.28.07 – 11:40 am

Which ever dumb bastard gives the order for this, he should be shot dead on the spot.
The Lone Ranger | Email | Homepage | 08.28.07 – 11:47 am

How entertaining. Some of you idiots seem to think we live in a democracy. What you or I think doesn’t mean shit. They will first attack here, probably in September then say the “Database” opps I mean Al-CIAda hit us, then we can have a “justifiable” war with Iran. China and Russia, who have invested billions, will be less than over joyed and we will really be in deep shit. We will have martial law in this country which will lead to very serious infighting which will lead to a civil war. Most likely at least half of us will be dead by next year, with thousands starving as there is not currently enough food in this country to feed us all for any length of time and there will be no incoming shipments. There will be no food, water or electricity in the cities therefore you can elect to die there or in a camp, transportation will be provided. Those currently not in denial will have acquired the necessary supplies, literature, and so forth to begin an existance anew far from current population centers. The military will act much as they presently do but the areas they patrol will contain individuals that are well armed and very much accustomed to the use of such arms and that will eventually eliminate the relatively few and very worn out military we now have. Then my friends the few that are left may, if not poisoned by radiation sickness as our returning troups currently are, be able to pick up the pieces and start again.

Wake up and smell the roses for soon they will all be dead.
John | Email | Homepage | 08.28.07 – 10:02 pm

and so on…

if you had read the last comment twenty years ago, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were the words of a ‘nutcase’, but now, in 2007, with everything we know about the preparations in the USA for ‘something bad’ taking place they don’t seem so odd.

This is a strange situation. Everyone has advance warning of this attack. As we know, the people who could mobilize an army to prevent this, illegal, unprovoked, insane, criminal, attack from taking place are not intending to do anything that will be in any way effective.

One thing is for sure. If they do attack Iran and then try any sort of ground offensive, the Iranians will immediately go to guerilla warfare and the IEDs will start blasting the invaders from day one. They will also probably take this opportunity to eliminate anyone who is not ‘on side’ in their own country…though there will be few of them, because this outrage will most likely erase their differences in the short term. Or maybe not. Either way, an attack on Iran will be a disaster from every possible angle. It will be an act of absolutely pure evil, and no one who participates in it can claim that they ‘didn’t know’ they were being lied to about WMD or fall back on any other excuse, thanks to the debacle that is Iraq.

This time they will be guilty from the instant the order is given, and indeed, anyone who follows those orders should be shot, as the commenter says.

There is no excuse, no justification, no reason, no fact, no extrapolation of fact that a reasonable person could use to order this attack…but of course, we are not, and never have been dealing with reasonable people.

You know that.

In 1997, the time of the first pressing of The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations, we really had no idea about how it would go down or how best to get it into the public view. We took every opportunity to try and get the word out about it, including the following.

Around the corner from THESE Records (who were distributing TCP) in Lambeth Road, is the Imperial War Museum, who were running an exhibition entitled The Secret War which is, “…the UK’s only permanent exhibition devoted to UK espionage”.

Naturally, we thought that the Imperial War Museum might like to stock some ‘SOR’ copies of TCP, as it dovetails nicely with the exhibition. All we would have to do is show it to them, and they should be sold on the idea.

‘SOR’ means ‘Sale Or Return’ – this is how it works. We deliver a box of seven or fourteen copies of TCP, they put them on display in the shop. If they sell, they pay us, if they do not sell, they return them to us. There is no money up front, no security deposit, no account needed; we trust them to pay us, and there is no risk to them whatsoever.

We delivered a sample copy to them with a letter about TCP. You can imagine how we laughed when we received this reply from The Imperial War Museum Shop.

Now, the paranoid would say that someone made a phone call and nixed TCP being stocked. The cynical would say, “they just didn’t get it”, and others will say, “It is just as stated”. Either way, it struck us as rather bizarre that something as germane to a comprehensive espionage exhibition as TCP is, an exhibition featuring amongst other things, ENIGMA machines, short wave radios, spy equipment of all sorts etc would be dismissed in this very odd way. One listen to TCP should have been enough to convince them to stock it. The idea of TCP seems very dry on the surface, but the fact of it is very different. Once you listen to it, it is instantly clear that TCP is the polar opposite of a remote and inaccessible, ‘specialised’ release.

Which of the above three reasons do you think stopped them from stocking TCP?

A list of crimes from a different age, applicable to today:

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

True.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

Very familiar.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

The Greater London Council.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

VERY true.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

This is the absolute truth in Britain, and is so totally applicable it beggars belief.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

War without a declaration of war, armed soldiers scattered throughout London.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

The military industrial complex.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

The EU.

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

One for the Iraqis methinks.

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

ROTFL ‘Diplomatic Immunity’!!!!

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

True.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

Bliar’s work. Sad and oh so true.

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

Extraordinary Rendition.

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

Absolutely applicable: Glass–Steagall Act for example.

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

This is coming…from the EU.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

All Britons to be numbered like prisoners; that is, by any measure, an act of war.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

So true, and applicable in so many ways.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.

The ‘War on Terror’, EU enlargement. The legions of foreigners who are invited to Britain who they then deliberately provoke unto madness, causing them to carry out the acts of madmen.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

The traitorous double agents, collaborators and quislings.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

I think you get THAT picture.

Do you know where this list of crimes came from originally?

I will leave it to you to use the Google.

Paul Craig Roberts
Lew Rockwell.com
Thursday Aug 9, 2007

This week the Russian and Chinese militaries are conducting a joint military exercise involving large numbers of troops and combat vehicles. The former Soviet Republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgkyzstan, and Kazakstan are participating. Other countries appear ready to join the military alliance.

This new potent military alliance is a real world response to neoconservative delusions about US hegemony. Neocons believe that the US is supreme in the world and can dictate its course. The neoconservative idiots have actually written papers, read by Russians and Chinese, about why the US must use its military superiority to assert hegemony over Russia and China.

Cynics believe that the neocons are just shills, like Bush and Cheney, for the military-security complex and are paid to restart the cold war for the sake of the profits of the armaments industry. But the fact is that the neocons actually believe their delusions about American hegemony.

Russia and China have now witnessed enough of the Bush administration’s unprovoked aggression in the world to take neocon intentions seriously. As the US has proven that it cannot occupy the Iraqi city of Baghdad despite 5 years of efforts, it most certainly cannot occupy Russia or China. That means the conflict toward which the neocons are driving will be a nuclear conflict.

In an attempt to gain the advantage in a nuclear conflict, the neocons are positioning US anti-ballistic missiles on Soviet borders in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is an idiotic provocation as the Russians can eliminate anti-ballistic missiles with cruise missiles. Neocons are people who desire war, but know nothing about it. Thus, the US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reagan and Gorbachev ended the cold war. However, US administrations after Reagan’s have broken the agreements and understandings. The US gratuitously brought NATO and anti-ballistic missiles to Russia’s borders. The Bush regime has initiated a propaganda war against the Russian government of V. Putin.

These are gratuitous acts of aggression. Both the Russian and Chinese governments are trying to devote resources to their economic development, not to their militaries. Yet, both are being forced by America’s aggressive posture to revamp their militaries.

Americans need to understand what the neocon Bush regime cannot: a nuclear exchange between the US, Russia, and China would establish the hegemony of the cockroach.

In a mere 6.5 years the Bush regime has destroyed the world’s good will toward the US. Today, America’s influence in the world is limited to its payments of tens of millions of dollars to bribed heads of foreign governments, such as Egypt’s and Pakistan’s. The Bush regime even thinks that as it has bought and paid for Musharraf, he will stand aside and permit Bush to make air strikes inside Pakistan. Is Bush blind to the danger that he will cause an Islamic revolution within Pakistan that will depose the US puppet and present the Middle East with an Islamic state armed with nuclear weapons?

Considering the instabilities and dangers that abound, the aggressive posture of the Bush regime goes far beyond recklessness. The Bush regime is the most irresponsibly aggressive regime the world has seen since Hitler’s.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts218.html

Things haven’t been this scary since ‘The Cold War’ an the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.

It really has gone totally bonkers; what is worse of all is that such a small number of insane ‘people’ are the cause of all of it, and in the face of the opposition of literally billions of people, they are managing to do bad things, and get away with it.

Some will call for a world government to reign in rogue nations like america, and to prevent rogue nations from springing up. Personally the hegemony of the cockroach is preferable to the hegemony of one world government under the control of the types that run the EU and the CFR.

The answer has to be Baudrillard Mass Inertia where the billions in opposition to this insanity simply say ‘no’ and absorb and deflect and disobey every bad piece of legislation and every bogus edict until government gets the message and returns, spontaneously, to one of consent and not compulsion.

The poison of american insanity is spreading to the EU where they are now planning to roll out a USVISIT style system (despite the fact that this system is without merit by all metrics) and is going to demand VISAS for ALL non EU countries, including the USA, in a tit for tat face slap to the pig ignorant us government for treating EU citizens like garbage. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

If Ron Paul becomes president, and the bookies are putting the odds of that taking place at an astonishing 15 to 1, then maybe we have a chance to stop all of this. I have said it over and over again; the only country that could reverse a downward spiral like is the usa, and lo and behold, many millions of americans are flocking to Ron Paul because they can feel their country slipping away from them, and sense that this man is someone who can be trusted. Finally.

Unpaid fines may stop people leaving UK

• Home Office plan outlined in ‘e-borders’ scheme
• Huge amounts of data likely to be produced

Alan Travis, home affairs editor

Tens of thousands of people who have failed to pay court fines amounting to more than £487m would be banned from leaving the country under new powers outlined by the Home Office. Ministers are also looking at ways of using the new £1.2bn “e-borders” programme to collect more than £9m owed in health treatment charges by foreign nationals who have left the country without paying.

The programme, to be phased in from October next year, will also allow the creation of a centralised “no-fly” list of air-rage or disruptive passengers which can be circulated to airlines.

The e-borders programme requires airlines and ferry companies to submit up to 50 items of data on each passenger between 24 and 48 hours before departure to and from the UK. With 200 million passenger movements in and out of the UK last year to and from 266 overseas airports on 169 airlines, an enormous amount of data is expected to be generated by the programme.

Passenger numbers are expected to rise to 305 million a year by 2015 and ministers claim the £1.2bn programme is the only way to provide a comprehensive record of all those seeking to enter and leave the UK. The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, claims that the programme will create a kind of border control, with information being passed to police and security services before passengers board a plane, boat or train: “It will create a new, offshore line of defence – helping genuine travellers, but stopping those who pose a risk before they travel.”

However, the long-term nature of the programme means that by 2009 only half the passenger movements in and out of Britain will be logged in the e-borders computers, and even by 2011 coverage will have reached only 95%.

A Home Office assessment of the secondary legislation that is being used to implement the programme gives some early indications of who, other than suspected terrorists and international criminals, will be on the British no-fly list and be banned from travelling to and from the country. It floats the idea that provisions should be introduced to ban travel overseas for the tens of thousands of offenders who have not paid outstanding court fines or failed to discharge confiscation orders made against them. Although no official estimate exists of the number of people who have to pay court fines the amount they owe has now reached a record £487m, with a further £300m in unpaid confiscation orders.

Passengers will be further encouraged in future to book their tickets and check in online. Other suggested benefits of the e-borders programme include easier identification of those who falsely claim non-domicile or non-resident status to avoid UK income tax, thought to be costing as much as £2bn a year, and those who wrongly claim social security benefits despite having left the country.

[…]

Guardian

Like we have said so many times before; none of this is about ‘terrorism’, the original reason they gave for proposing all of this in the first place. It is all being done to totally control everyone in the UK.

The nonsense of unpaid fines is just that, nonsense. If they succeed in putting all of this together, your fines will be withdrawn from your account automatically without your consent.

This piece in the guardian gives you the reader a false impression of what is being created. Once all the tools are in place, they will not only be able to control who can and cannot leave the UK, but they will also control all of your money and movements as you live in the UK. They will be used to control who can and cannot have a bank account, or credit card for example. Who can and cannot travel on the underground or a train. Who can or cannot buy alcohol. They will do all of this with the ID card / NIR / your thumb, which will be the talisman without which you will be able to live.

They will keep registers for everything. By getting yourself on the ‘no underground list’ when you try and tap in to board a train, the gate will not open. When you try and buy a pint of beer your thumb will tell the barmaid not to serve you, because you are on the ‘no alcohol’ register. When you go to withdraw money, you will find your account locked because you are on the ‘no financial transactions’ register. Since you will be compelled to swiped for just about anything you want to do, the government will have total control over the goods and services that you will and will not, by decree, be able to access.

If you do not believe this, then you are a fool.

And as for non-domicile or non-resident claims to avoid income tax, the people who are doing this will simply leave and not come back to the UK, and spend their trillions in less hostile countries.

‘e-borders’ like USVISIT is an affront to decent people, will cost billions of pounds netting only a few petty criminals while making some IT contractors very rich. The population of Britain, and now passengers traveling here, are to be reduced to cattle by this proposal, and it is pure evil, just like USVISIT is.

Use the google to see what we have written on this.

Alan Travis of course, has no idea about what he is writing, failed to connect the dots between the proposed e-borders and USVISIT and how the latter has cost billions and caught only 1500 ‘criminals’.

The Guardian fails again. No surprise there.

Update…

You will remember that in the Soviet era and till today, as is the case today in many undemocratic and unfree countries, you have to get what is called an ‘exit visa’ in your passport before you are allowed to travel. This is completely abhorrent to all decent people. Only in totalitarian states does the government have the power to stop you from traveling outside of your country, and guess what, this is precisely what the proposals above create; an exit visa system for the UK.

By creating a list of people who cannot travel and checking your name against it in realtime, the government is essentially granting you an exit visa at the time you are checked. The permission to leave is the visa. The way things work in a free country, you can come and go as you please; its your private business. Britain is like this now; when you turn up at the airport, you simply show your passport and get on the plane and that is it; this is certainly true for people with nationalities that do not require a visa for entry, and it should NEVER be the case that a BRITISH person should be checked to see if their exit visa is in order.

Read this list of countries and their exit visa requirements:

Afghanistan
“The Constitution provides for these rights; however, certain laws limited citizens’ movement. The passport law requires women to obtain permission from a male family member before having a passport application processed. In some areas of the country, women were forbidden by local custom or tradition to leave the home except in the company of a male relative. The law also prohibits women from traveling alone outside the country without a male relative, and male relatives must accompany women participating in Hajj.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41737.htm

Algeria
“The law provides for freedom of domestic and foreign travel, and freedom to emigrate; however, the Government sometimes restricted these rights in practice. The Government does not permit young men who are eligible for the draft and who have not yet completed their military service to leave the country if they do not have special authorization; however, such authorization may be granted to students and to those persons with special family circumstances.” (…) “The Family Code does not permit married females younger than 18 years of age to travel abroad without their guardian’s permission.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41718.htm

Armenia
“The law requires authorities to issue passports to all citizens, expect for convicted felons; however, an exit stamp may be denied to persons who possess state secrets, are subject to military service, are involved in pending court cases, or whose relatives have lodged financial claims against them. An exit stamp is valid for up to 5 years and may be used without limit. Men of military age must overcome substantial bureaucratic obstacles to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41668.htm

Bahrain
“The 1963 Citizenship Law provides that the Government may reject applications to obtain or renew passports for reasonable cause, but the applicant has the right to appeal such decisions before the High Civil Court.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41719.htm

Belarus
“The Constitution provides for freedom of movement in and out of the country; however, this right was restricted at times. Official entry and exit regulations specify that citizens who wish to travel abroad must first obtain an exit stamp valid for 1 to 5 years. Once the traveler has a valid stamp, travel abroad is not restricted by further government requirements and formalities; however, the Government could intervene to invalidate stamps that had been issued.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41671.htm

Benin
“The Government maintained documentary requirements for minors traveling abroad as part of its continuing campaign against trafficking in persons.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41588.htm

Bhutan
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation “The law does not provide for these rights, and the Government placed some limits on them in practice. Citizens traveling in border regions were required to show their citizenship identity cards at immigration check points, which in some cases were located a considerable distance from what is in effect an open border with India. By treaty, citizens may reside and work in India. In addition, ethnic Nepalese claimed that they were frequently denied security clearances, which is a prerequisite for obtaining a passport form. The ethnic Nepalese said that since the clearances were based on the security clearance of their parents, the clearances frequently excluded children of ethnic Nepalese. All citizens must have a security clearance from the Government.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41739.htm

Brunei
“The Government restricts the movement of former political prisoners during the first year of their release.” (…) “Government employees, both citizens and foreigners working on a contractual basis, must apply for approval to go abroad, which was granted routinely.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41636.htm

Burma
“An ordinary citizen needs three documents to travel outside the country: a passport from the Ministry of Home Affairs; revenue clearance from the Ministry of Finance and Revenue; and a departure form from the Ministry of Immigration and Population. In 2002, in response to the trafficking in persons problem, the Government tightened the documentation process in ways that hinder or restrict international travel for the majority of women.” (…0 “The Government carefully scrutinized prospective travel abroad for all passport holders. Rigorous control of passport and exit visa issuance perpetuated rampant corruption, as applicants were forced to pay bribes of roughly $300 (300,000 kyat), the equivalent of a yearly salary, to around $1,000 (1 million kyat) for a single woman under 25 years of age. The board that reviews passport applications denied passports on political grounds. College graduates who obtained a passport (except for certain official employees) were required to pay a fee to reimburse the Government for the cost of their education.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41637.htm

Congo, Democratic Republic of the “Married women were required by law to have their husband’s permission prior to traveling outside the country.” (…) “Local authorities in the Kivus routinely required Congolese citizens to show official travel orders from an employer or government official authorizing travel.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41597.htm

Cuba
“The Government severely restricted freedom of movement…” (…) “The Government imposed some restrictions on both emigration and temporary foreign travel. By year’s end, the Government had refused exit permits to 836 people, but allowed the majority of persons who qualified for immigrant or refugee status in other countries to depart.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41756.htm

Ecuador
“The Government requires all citizens to obtain permission to travel abroad, which was granted routinely. Military and minor applicants must comply with special requirements.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41759.htm

Egypt
“Males who have not completed compulsory military service may not travel abroad or emigrate, although this restriction may be deferred or bypassed under special circumstances. Unmarried women under the age of 21 must have permission from their fathers to obtain passports and travel.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41720.htm

Equatorial Guinea “All citizens were required to obtain permission to travel abroad from the local Police Commissioner, and some members of opposition parties were denied this permission. Those who did travel abroad sometimes were interrogated upon their return.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41601.htm

Eritrea
“Citizens and foreign nationals were required to obtain an exit visa to depart the country.” (…) “Citizens of national service age (men 18 to 45 years of age, and women 18 to 27 years of age), Jehovah’s Witnesses (see Section 2.c.), and others who were out of favor with or seen as critical of the Government were routinely denied exit visas. Students who wished to study abroad often were unable to obtain exit visas. In addition, the Government frequently refused to issue exit visas to adolescents and children as young as 5 years of age, either on the grounds that they were approaching the age of eligibility for national service or because their diasporal parents had not paid the 2 percent income tax required of all citizens residing abroad. Some citizens were given exit visas only after posting bonds of approximately $7,400 (100,000 nakfa).”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41602.htm

Gabon
“The Government intermittently enforced an internal regulation requiring married women to obtain their husbands’ permission to travel abroad. During the year, there were numerous reports that authorities refused to issue passports for travel abroad with no explanation. There also were reports of unreasonable delays in obtaining passports, despite a government promise in 2003 to process passports within 3 days.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41604.htm

India
“Under the Passports Act of 1967, the Government may deny a passport to any applicant who “may or is likely to engage outside India in activities prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India.” The Government used this provision to prohibit the foreign travel of some government critics, especially those advocating Sikh independence and members of the separatist movement in Jammu and Kashmir.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41740.htm

Indonesia
“The Constitution allows the Government to prevent persons from entering or leaving the country, and sometimes the Government restricted freedom of movement.” (…) “The Government prevented at least 412 persons from leaving the country during the year. The AGO and the High Prosecutor’s Office prevented most of these departures. Some of those barred from leaving were delinquent taxpayers, while others were involved in legal disputes.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41643.htm

Iran
“The Government required exit permits (a validation stamp in the passport) for foreign travel for draft-age men and citizens who were politically suspect. Some citizens, particularly those whose skills were in short supply and who were educated at government expense, must post bonds to obtain exit permits.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41721.htm

Israel
“Citizens generally were free to travel abroad and to emigrate, provided they had no outstanding military obligations and were not restricted by administrative order. Pursuant to the 1945 State of Emergency Regulations, the Government may bar citizens from leaving the country based on security considerations.” (…) “In addition, no citizen or passport holder is permitted to travel to countries officially at war with Israel without special permission from the Government.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41723.htm

Jordan
“The law requires that all women obtain written permission from a male guardian to apply for a passport; however, women do not need a male relative’s permission to renew their passports. In the past, there were several cases in which mothers reportedly were prevented from departing with their children because authorities enforced requests from fathers to prevent their children from leaving the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41724.htm

Kenya
“Civil servants and M.P.s must get government permission for international travel, which generally was granted.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41609.htm

Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of “The regime only issues exit visas for foreign travel to officials and trusted businessmen, artists, athletes, academics, and religious figures. Short-term exit papers were also available for residents on the Chinese border to enable visits with relatives in bordering regions of China.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41646.htm

Kuwait
“The Constitution does not provide for the rights of freedom of movement within the country, freedom of foreign travel, or freedom to emigrate. The Government placed some limits on freedom of movement in practice.” (…) “Unmarried women must be 21 years of age or older to obtain a passport and travel abroad without permission of a male relative. Married women must obtain their husbands’ permission to apply for a passport. A married woman with a passport does not need her husband’s permission to travel, but he may prevent her departure from the country by placing a 24-hour travel ban on her through immigration authorities. After this 24-hour period, a court order is required if the husband still wishes to prevent his wife from leaving the country. In practice, however, many travel bans were issued without court order, effectively preventing citizens (and foreigners) from departing. All minor children under 21 years of age require their father’s permission to travel outside the country. There were reports of citizen fathers and husbands confiscating their children’s and wives’ travel documents to prevent them from departing.” (…) “The law permits the Government to place a travel ban on any citizen or foreigner who has a legal case pending before the courts. The law also permits any citizen to petition authorities to place a travel ban against any other person suspected of violating local law. In practice, this has resulted in many citizens and foreigners being prevented from departing the country without investigation or a legal case being brought before a local court.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41725.htm

Laos
“Citizens who sought to travel abroad were required to apply for an exit visa. The Government usually granted such visas; however, officials at the local level have denied permission to apply for passports and exit visas to some persons seeking to emigrate.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41648.htm

Lebanon
“All men between 18 and 21 years of age are subject to compulsory military service and are required to register at a recruitment office and obtain a travel authorization document before leaving the country.” (…) “Spouses may obtain passports for their children who are less than 7 years of age after obtaining the approval of the other spouse. To obtain a passport for a minor child between 7 and 18 years, the father or legal guardian needs to sign the request to obtain a passport.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41726.htm

Libya
“The Government requires citizens to obtain exit permits for travel abroad…” (…) “A female citizen must have her husband’s permission and a male escort to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41727.htm

Morocco
“The Ministry of Interior restricted freedom to travel outside the country in certain circumstances. In addition, all civil servants and military personnel must obtain written permission from their ministries to leave the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41728.htm

Oman
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, Repatriation, and Exile “The law does not provide for these rights; however, the Government generally respected these rights in practice.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41729.htm

Pakistan
“Government employees and students must obtain “no objection” certificates before traveling abroad, although this requirement rarely was enforced against students. Persons on the publicly available Exit Control List (ECL) are prohibited from foreign travel. There were approximately 2,153 names on the ECL. While the ECL was intended to prevent those with pending criminal cases from traveling abroad, no judicial action is required to add a name to the ECL.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41743.htm

Qatar
“In general, women over 30 years old did not require permission from male guardians to travel; however, men may prevent female relatives and children from leaving the country by providing their names to immigration officers at ports of departure. Technically, women employed by the Government must obtain official permission to travel abroad when requesting leave…”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41730.htm

Saudi Arabia “Citizen men have the freedom to travel within the country and abroad; however, the Government restricted these rights for women based on its interpretation of Islamic Law. All women in the country were prohibited from driving and were dependent upon males for transportation. Likewise, they must obtain written permission from a male relative or guardian before the authorities would allow them to travel abroad. The requirement to obtain permission from a male relative or guardian applied also to foreign women married to citizens or to the minor and single adult daughters of Saudi fathers.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41731.htm

Senegal
“Some public employees, including teachers, are required by law to obtain government approval before departing the country; however, human rights groups noted that this law was only enforced against teachers and not other public servants.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41623.htm

Seychelles
“Although it was not used during the year, the law allows the Government to deny passports to any citizen if the Minister of Defense finds that such denial is “in the national interest.””
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41624.htm

Singapore
“The Government may refuse to issue a passport and did so in the case of former ISA detainees. Under the ISA, a person’s movement may be restricted.” (…) “Male citizens with national service reserve obligations are required to advise the Ministry of Defense if they plan to travel abroad. Boys age 11 to 16½ years are issued passports that are valid for 2 years and are no longer required to obtain exit permits. From the age of 16½ until the age of enlistment, male citizens are granted 1-year passports and are required to apply for exit permits for travel that exceeds 3 months.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41659.htm

Sudan
“The Government denied exit visas to some categories of persons, including policemen and physicians, and maintained lists of political figures and other citizens who were not permitted to travel abroad.” (…) “Women cannot travel abroad without the permission of their husbands or male guardians; however, this prohibition was not enforced strictly, especially for NC members.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41628.htm

Swaziland
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation, “The law does not provide for these rights, and the Government placed some limits on them in practice. Citizens may travel and work freely within the country; however, under traditional law, a married woman requires her husband’s permission to apply for a passport, and an unmarried woman requires the permission of a close male relative.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41629.htm

Syria
“Travel to Israel is illegal, and the Government restricted travel near the Golan Heights. The Government also denied human rights activists, leaders of opposition groups, and other individuals permission to travel abroad, although government officials continued to deny that this practice occurred. Government authorities could prosecute any person found attempting to emigrate or to travel abroad illegally, any person who was deported from another country, or anyone who was suspected of having visited Israel. Women over the age of 18 have the legal right to travel without the permission of male relatives; however, a husband or a father could file a request with the Ministry of Interior to prohibit his wife or daughter’s departure from the country”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41732.htm

Tunisia
“The law provides that the courts can cancel passports and contains broad provisions that both permit passport seizure on national security grounds, and deny citizens the right either to present their case against seizure or to appeal the judges’ decision. The Ministry of Interior is required to submit requests to seize or withhold a citizen’s passport through the public prosecutor to the courts; however, the Ministry of Interior routinely bypassed the public prosecutor with impunity. The public prosecutor deferred to the Ministry of Interior on such requests.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41733.htm

Turkmenistan
“The Constitution does not provide for full freedom of movement; although the Government took steps to ease restrictions on freedom of movement, restrictions remained.” (…) “In January, the Government eliminated the exit visa requirement, following international pressure from the diplomatic corps, the OSCE, and the U.N. The elimination of the exit visa regime allowed the majority of citizens to travel abroad; however, the Government maintained a “black list” of those not allowed to travel. Some members of minority religious groups, regime opponents, relatives of those implicated in the November 2002, and those suspected of having “state secrets” were not permitted to leave the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41714.htm

Ukraine
“Exit visas were required for citizens who intended to take up permanent residence in another country…” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41715.htm

United Arab Emirates “Custom dictates that a husband can bar his wife, minor children, and adult unmarried daughters from leaving the country by taking custody of their passports.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41734.htm

Uzbekistan
“The Government required citizens to obtain exit visas for foreign travel or emigration, and while it generally granted these routinely, local officials often demanded a small bribe.” (…) “Authorities did not require an exit visa for travel to most countries of the former Soviet Union; however, the Government severely restricted the ability of its citizens to travel overland to neighboring Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Turkmenistan and restricted and significantly delayed citizens attempting to cross the border to Tajikistan. Authorities closed the border with Afghanistan to ordinary citizens.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41717.htm

Vietnam
“Although the Government no longer required citizens traveling abroad to obtain exit or reentry visas, the Government sometimes refused to issue passports. The Government did not allow some persons who publicly or privately expressed critical opinions on religious or political issues to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41665.htm

UK’s Brown won’t rule out military action in Iran

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday he would not rule out military action against Iran, but believed a policy of sanctions could still persuade Tehran to drop its disputed nuclear program.
ADVERTISEMENT

“I firmly believe that the sanctions policy that we are pursuing will work, but I’m not one who’s going forward to say that we rule out any particular form of action,” Brown told a news conference, when asked if he would rule out a military strike against Iran. […]

Brown said he believed the current sanctions were having an effect, but he thought there would still be a third resolution.

“There will probably be a third resolution in relation to Iran soon … I appeal to the Iranian authorities to understand the feelings that other countries have about the development of a nuclear weapons program,” he said.

[…]

Yahoo News

That didn’t take long did it?

And now, we have the response from StopWar:

Don’t Attack Iran

We demand that the British government oppose and condemn any form of military confrontation with Iran.

The US sabre-rattling over Iran is not only serious and disturbing, but also has uncanny resonance with the lead-up to the Iraq war. The dossier prepared by the US on Iran’s supposed involvement in destabilising Iraq is based on the same imaginary foundations and presumptions as the WMD dossier. The reality in Iraq is complex and evidence shows that the majority of foreign insurgents captured or found dead are Saudis. What does remain clear is that the Iraqi civilian death toll has reached 600,000, with January recording the highest number of civilian deaths since the invasion in 2003. As highlighted in a major report launched this week, any attack on Iran would export this misery and disaster on the Iranian people and have economic, environmental and security repercussions worldwide.

StopWar

[…]

“Why oh why are you posting this garbage you moron?!” I hear you cry.

Yes, yes…

My emphasis.

You all know what I think about StopWar. Use the google if you cannot remember.

These people cannot connect the dots. Clearly.

They say there is an uncanny resonance with the lead-up to the Iraq war. And so, what is their response?

To do exactly what they did before which did nothing to stop the ‘Iraq war’:

If there is an attack on Iran…
Stop the War Coalition will call for immediate national protest action.
There will be an emergency protest outside Downing Street at 6pm on the day of the attack or 12 noon on the weekend.

This is so …. weird!

What was it a great president of the United States of America said?

“Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again”

Well, these wise words obviously do not apply to the sublime thoughts of Tony Benn, the ‘President’ of StopWar, who it seems is just a gatekeeper put there to ensure that nothing oblique emerges from that very large and potentially dangerous organization.

Financial Appeal by Tony Benn, President of Stop the War Tony Benn
We depend entirely on your donations to fund all our anti-war activities.

demonstrations, vigils, public meetings, people’s assemblies, etc. However large or small a donation you can make
will be much appreciated and is very necessary.

Yours in peace, Tony Benn

What. The. Fuck?

Demonstrations, vigils, public meetings, people’s assemblies, and certainly ‘etc.’ are not ‘anti-war activities’. None of the above stopped the illegal and murderous invasion of Iraq, everyone knows it, and yet, someone as old and experienced as Tony Benn DARES to suggest ‘more of the same’ as a way to stop the destruction of Iran.

Let me tell you something about these people.

Even better, let me remind you of how they mocked ‘comical ali’ and derided the Iraqi military, lied about them, put on kangaroo trials, murdered them and treated them like they were not even human.

NOW you see what the result is; a Vietnam style total defeat for Murder Inc. and stirring calls for Jihad to be spread to all the lands of the muslims. You don’t have to be able to understand a single word of what is being said in that video, to imagine how the passion in its delivery must be stoking up the hundreds of thousands of people who are watching these and the many other martyrdom operation videos. Going into Iran with anything other than a pen is PREMEDITATED SUICIDE.

NOW you see what the result is; Britain on tenter hooks, shooting people in the streets, dismantling liberty, destroying this beautiful country.

What a shame!

The fact of the matter is young Iranians are hungry for rock and roll, tight jeans, and Maybeline. If you go in there and try and FORCE them to wear makeup, tight pants and listen to Buddy Holly, they will resist, and you will end up with another Iraq style debacle.

There is no excuse whatsoever to even be saying the words ‘attack Iran’. Unless you want a new islamic super-state created from the combined ashes of both Iraq and Iran.

Heathrow to check fingerprints

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/07/2007

Terminal 5 passengers will have fingers and faces scanned, says Jeremy Skidmore.

Fingerprinting of passengers, a process that has irritated many visitors to the United States, will soon be happening on some domestic flights within Britain.

Domestic passengers departing from Heathrow’s Terminal 5, which opens in March, will have to give a fingerprint and have their faces scanned as part of a security check before take-off. The checks are being brought in because both domestic and international passengers will share a common departure lounge and there are fears that those arriving on international flights may be able to bypass immigration control by booking an onward domestic flight to a regional airport.

This is total insanity.

Firstly, whenever someone gets off a plane, they go straight from the plane to immigration, where they are checked. They should then go to a waiting room that does not physically connect with domestic flight passengers.

The architects that designed Terminal 5 (Richard Rogers Partnership) should be sued for extreme negligence; can you name me a single airport where domestic and international passengers are allowed to freely mingle in a unified departure lounge?

This is one of the biggest design blunders ever in the history of airport design, and now, passengers flying on domestic flights are going to have to submit to fingerprinting just to travel in their own country.

International passengers departing through Terminal 5 will be subject to the normal checks and controls but will not undergo face scans or have to provide a fingerprint. At Gatwick, which also has a shared departure lounge for all passengers, domestic travellers already have their photographs taken.

Did you know this?

A spokeswoman for Terminal 5 said the new fingerprinting systems were a way of taking security to the next level. “At the moment there are no plans for any other passengers to be fingerprinted, but it is the way of the future. We work closely with the Home Office on security issues,” she said.

This is just total bullshit. USVISIT has been a total failure, costing billions only to catch a few people (1500 out of tens of millions of people violated) who have outstanding parking tickets.

From this autumn, those arriving at 10 US airports, including New York JFK, Chicago, Miami and Boston, will have to give fingerprints of all 10 fingers, raising fears of increased delays.

Note how the delays is the only thing concerning this writer.

Bob Mocny, the acting director of the US-Visit Programme, which runs immigration security, said the new technology would improve safety

That is a lie, and it is demonstrated by the figures.

and, eventually, be a fast system. He said the same system would be introduced across Europe in the future.

And from what crystal ball did he glean this information?

However, the Home Office said this week that it has no plans to insist on fingerprints for incoming passengers.

They will not be able to justify it using the USVISIT numbers – they just don’t add up.

“We take fingerprints across 80 different countries from people when they apply for visas and have stopped 4,000 people from coming in,” said a spokeswoman.

That is a totally different scenario. It has nothing to do with fingerprinting EVERYBODY whenever they want to travel.

Recent improvements in security at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted include the introduction of flat scanners that can read the new biometric indicators in e-passports.

That is not an improvement in security, it is more Security Theatre.

Extra checks on passengers have been introduced following the recent attempted terrorist attacks at airports, leading to fears of increased delays for passengers this summer.

And none of them will be of any use. All of them are Security Theatre.

Telegraph

[…]

I have to say, that this is close to the most absurd and insane thing I have ever read. A firm of architects opts to create a single departure lounge with international and domestic passengers unsegregated, and as a result, to fix the problem, people flying inside their own country have to be fingerprinted like criminals.

This is absolute, complete, cant-make-shit-like-this-up INSANITY.

Architecture should serve the people who have to live work and go through it. By failing to segregate domestic and international passengers, not only has Richard Rogers Partnership failed to consider the dignity of passengers who are going to go through Heathrow Terminal 5, but they have failed to understand the brief.

Security at an airport, at a minimum means ensuring that immigration rules are followed. It means carefully considering the flow of passengers and their status. By failing to implement passenger flow correctly by creating a shared departure lounge, Richard Rogers Partnership has created a building that will not only fail to serve the people who use and pass through it, but which will violate and humiliate millions of people. It will serve as yet another way to soften up the people to the idea of regular fingerprinting for even the most simple of things.

This is one of the greatest architectural disasters ever.

Alcohol laws set to be reviewed
Laws making possession of alcohol a largely non-arrestable offence could be reversed, Gordon Brown has said.

The prime minister told MPs a consultation on reclassifying alcohol will be launched next week as part of a review of the entire UK alcoholism strategy.

Alcohol was downgraded to class C – which includes things such as anabolic steroids – from class B, which includes things like amphetamines, in 2014.

But there are fears more harmful forms of alcohol have become available.

A Home Office spokesman said the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will be asked to review reports that danger from alcohol is increasing due to wider availability of more potent strains such as “Whiskey”.

There is concern stronger varieties of alcohol can cause mental health problems.

Medicinal use

Mr Brown said the Cabinet had discussed the issue and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith would publish a consultation document next week about the UK alcoholism strategy.

Mr Brown told MPs at prime minister’s questions: “She will be asking the public to comment on new ways in which we can improve alcoholism education in the country, give support to people undergoing treatment… and give support for communities who want to chase out brewers from their communities.”

He was responding to a question from Labour MP Martin Salter who, referring to the medicinal use of alcohol, urged an alcoholism policy that did not “criminalise the sick but tackles the alcohols that do the most harm”.

Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, commenting later for the Conservatives, said: “We would welcome the reclassification of alcohol. Alcoholism is a scourge on society and a major cause of illness and accidents which Labour has failed to tackle.

“We have long called for the reclassification of alcohol based on the science and evidence available which shows all too clearly the real damage alcohol abuse can do to people – especially young people.

“But it is not enough to simply consult on this – the government must also secure our porous borders to stop hard alcohol (like pochine from Ireland) flowing into the country and seriously strengthen alcohol rehab treatment for those already on the bottle.”

The issue of downgrading – or even decriminalising – alcohol has proved controversial and has already been reviewed once by the Home Office.

Urgent research

The original move from Class B to Class C was made when David Blunkett was home secretary.

His successor Charles Clarke asked for a review in 2005.

At that time the ACMD said that while alcohol was undoubtedly harmful it was still less harmful than other recreational drugs like amphetamines which are in Class B. It recommended no change.

But it also called for urgent further research on the potency and pattern of alcohol use.

If the ACMD were to back a change in classification and the Home Office accepted its recommendation, it would require agreement of both houses of Parliament to become law.

Potent varieties

A Home Office spokesman said: “We will be asking the ACMD to review the classification of alcohol, given the increase in strength of some alcohol strains and their potential harms.

“It would be wrong to prejudge that review which shows how seriously we take our priority of reducing drug-related harm.”

The Home Office’s alcoholism information website, Frank, includes details of new more potent varieties of alcohol.

It says: “Recently, there have been various forms of herbal or grass-type drinks that are generally found to be stronger than ordinary ‘hooch’, containing on average two to three times the amount of the active compound, alcohol.

“These include ‘Jack Daniels’ (a golden liquid distilled in copper pots), homegrown ‘Vodka’ (which has a particular strong smell) and ‘Bitter’.”

[…]

BBQ

The US VISIT programme, which is intended to record the entry and exit of every visitor, is still not working nor is there any prospect of it doing so. While most of the the 300 air, sea and land “points of entry” are operating “biometrically enabled” entry records “comparable exit capabilities are not” said a report on the evidence presented to the US House of Representatives by officials from the Government Accountability Office (GAO): Homeland Security: Prospects For Biometric US-VISIT Exit Capability Remain Unclear Over the past 4 years $1.3 billion has been spent on the system.

The report says that:

“The prospects for successfully delivering an operational exit solution are as uncertain today as they were 4 years ago.”

The Department of Homeland Security is committed to providing exit records at air and seaports it has produced no plans or analyses to achieving this and:

“acknowledged that a near-term biometric solution for land POEs is not possible”

Even where biometrically enabled system were available at 11 air and sea pilot schemes:

“on average only about 24 percent of those travellers subject to US-VISIT actually complied with the exit processing steps.”

This was because compliance was “voluntary”.

The biggest long-term problem is the land exit schemes.

“According to program officials, no technology or device currently exists to biometrically verify persons exiting the country that would not have a major impact on land POE facilities. They added that technological advances over the next 5 to 10 years will make it possible to biometrically verify persons exiting the country without major changes to facility infrastructure and without requiring those exiting to stop and/or exit their vehicles.”

Indeed land exit capabilities are “being deferred to an unspecified future time”

The report’s overall conclusion is that:

“there is no reason to expect that DHS’s newly launched efforts to deliver an air and sea exit solution will produce results different from its past efforts—namely, no operational exit solution despite many years and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. More importantly, the continued absence of an exit capability will hinder DHS’s ability to effectively and efficiently perform its border security and immigration enforcement mission.”

And what of the overall effectiveness of the US VISIT scheme? Last autumn the Acting Director of Homeland Security said that out of 63 million recorded visitors “1,200 criminals and immigration violators” had been denied entry – this report says the figure has risen to 1,500.

[…]

http://www.statewatch.org/news/2007/jul/o2usa-goa-exit-report.htm

You
Can’t
Make
Shit
Like
This
Up!

So they are counting people in, but not out? The exit system is VOLUNTARY?!

Look at the HUGE expense just to catch 1,500 people, all of them minor ‘criminals’. Use the Google to find out what we said about this before. This article demonstrates that the VAST MAJORITY of people coming to the usa are not in any way criminal. This means that they should never be treated as criminals. Period.

This is a monumental waste of money, a mass violation of people’s rights, and yet another example of ‘Vendor Hypnosis’. You can work out what that phrase means can’t you?

SHAME SHAME SHAME on the USA!

From the Telegraph:

All schoolchildren should have “happiness” lessons up to the age of 18 to combat growing levels of depression, according to a senior Government adviser.

Pupils should study subjects such as how to manage feelings, attitudes to work and money, channelling negative emotions and even how to take a critical view of the media, said Lord Richard Layard, a Labour peer and professor of economics at the London School of Economics.

In a speech last night, he said that Tony Blair’s Respect programme – the crackdown on young offenders and problem families – was “far more repressive than preventative” and may be fuelling levels of depression.

[How very true – mm]

He said all state school pupils should receive tuition in “how to be happy” up to the age of 18 and their progress in the subject should feature in university applications.

[…]

The proposal comes only days after the Government said that lessons in manners – including respect for the elderly and how to say “please” and “thank you” – should be taught in secondary schools to combat bad behaviour.

[In SECONDARY schools!!! This is so basic a four year old should already know thsi to be right – mm]

Lord Layard, the director of the wellbeing programme at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance, said: “Learning hard things takes an enormous amount of practise. To play the violin well takes 10,000 hours of practise. How can we expect people to learn to be happy without massive amounts of practise and repetition?

[Lest we forget happiness is quite unrelated to spontaneity and wonder – mm]

“I believe it can only be done by the schools. Parents of course are crucial. But if we want to change the culture, the main organised institutions we have under social control are the schools.”

[my emphasis and you know the implications – mm]

[…]

Classes should cover managing your feelings; loving and serving others; appreciating beauty; sex, love and parenting; work and money; a critical approach to media; political participation; and philosophy, he said.

[Classes should cover not complaining, obeying orders, surface pleasures, base pleasures, generating tax revenues, distrusting criticism, co-option into the Statist framework and speculation – mm]

[…]

However, happiness lessons have been criticised by academics. Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at Kent University and author of Therapy Culture, said: “In pushing emotional literacy, what some teachers are really doing is abandoning teaching. They are giving up and talking about emotions instead, so that children value all this non-discipline-led activity more than maths, English or science. What is amazing about this is that time and time again, research says that it does not work.”

[i.e. the politician has no idea what he is talking about and should keep his ‘happiness classes’ to his own family – mm]

And while we’re on happiness:

“Are you a happy man?
Certainly! Do I look happy, huh?
Why?
Because I live the type of life I do.
What type of life is that?
The type that you don’t.”

Öyvind Fahlström: Mao-Hope March

And some Fahlström mp3s at ubu

8 results for: sedition

se·di·tion      /s??d???n/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[si-dish–uhn] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation –noun < ="luna-Ent"> =”dn” 1. incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government.

2. any action, esp. in speech or writing, promoting such discontent or rebellion.

3. Archaic. rebellious disorder.

[Origin: 1325–75; < L séditi?n– (s. of séditi?), equiv. to séd- se- + -iti?n- a going (it(us), ptp. of ?re to go + -i?n- -ion); r. ME sedicioun < AF < L, as above] —Synonyms 1. insurrection, mutiny. See treason.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Dictionary.com

UPDATED FOR THE 2010 ATTACK!
Crytome, a very old and very useful service run by John Young, has been told by its ISP that its contract is being terminated. This is a shenanigan, since his ISP was very supportive of the site up till now:

[By certified mail, received 28 April 2007.]
VERIO
An NTT Communications Company

Writer’s Direct Numbers
o) 303-645-1912
fax) 303-708-2445
e-mail: dthompson[at]verio.net

April 20, 2007

Via Certified Mail

John Young
Cryptome Org
251 West 89th Street
New Yor, NY 10024

RE: www.cryptome.org

Dear Mr. Young,

This letter is to notify you that we are terminating your service for violation of our Acceptable Use Policy, effective Friday May 4, 2007. We are providing you with two week notice to locate another service provider.

Sincerely,

VERIO INC.
an NTT Communications Company

[Signed]

Danna Thompson
Legal Department

Verio Inc.
8005 S. Chester Street
Suite 200
Englewood, CO 80112
www.verio.com

————————————————————
Cryptome note:

This notice of termination is surprising for Verio has been consistently supportive of freedom of information against those who wish to suppress it. Since 1999 Cryptome has received a number of e-mailed notices from Verio’s legal department in response to complaints from a variety of parties, ranging from British intelligence to alleged copyright holders to persons angry that their vices have been exposed (see below). In every case Verio has heretofore accepted Cryptome’s explanation for publishing material, and in some cases removal of the material, and service has continued.

In this latest instance there was no notice received from Verio describing the violation of acceptable use to justify termination of service prior to receipt of the certified letter, thus no opportunity to understand or respond to the basis for termination.

It may be wondered if Verio was threatened by an undisclosable means, say by an National Security Letter or by a confidential legal document or by a novel attack not yet aired.

Every few months our Verio service rep, Warren Gleicher, Senior Account Manager, (wgleicher[at]verio.net) writes to see if service is satifactory.

Danna and Warren: Cryptome would appreciate your telling what has led to the termination for publication. Send the information anonymously if necessary to keep your jobs.
————————————————————

Sample legal notice[s] from Verio:

Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2000 13:06:12 -0400
To: cchunt[at]hway.net
From: John Young 
Subject: British Request to Remove Document

Mr. Charles Hunt
Acceptable Use Department
Verio
Tel: 561-912-2536

Dear Mr. Hunt

It was a pleasure to speak with you today about the
document on my site Cryptome:

 http://cryptome.org/mi5-lis-uk.htm.

Your courtesy and supportive remarks are very much
appreciated.

This will confirm that I decline to remove the document
in response to your forwarded request from a "British
Intelligence Agency" made to Verio's legal department.

I do not believe that posting the document is illegal
under US law and does not violate Verio's terms of
acceptable use. And that an informal request, not a
court order, is insufficient reason to remove the
document which provides significant public information.

I told you that I knew of three other instances of
British intelligence documents being posted on the
Internet, and that they had been removed by the ISPs
(Yahoo and Geocities) without public explanation of
why or what justification was given for their removal.
Thus, I would like to obtain information on the British
request to Verio in or to publish the information on Cryptome.

In response to your invitation to send a letter for
forwarding to Verio's legal department I would very
much appreciate learning, in writing if possible:

1. Who made the request: person, title and agency.
2. When it was made.
3. To whom it was made.
4. Its format, whether verbal or written or both.
5. A description of the request or a copy if it was written.
6. Other means discussed between British Intelligence and
Verio to remove the document.
7. How the request relates to Verio's acceptable use policy.

Verio's response and this message will be published on
Cryptome to provide information on how British Intelligence
conducts its affairs in the US.

Regards,

John Young
Cryptome
251 West 89th Street
New York, NY 10024
212-873-8700

That is how REAL PEOPLE respond to threats, in case you didn’t know.

I am sure that Mr. Young is being flooded with offers of free space. All he has to do is take all the offers, upload Cryptome to each of them, and then keep them all identical with rsync.

Then, like TPB he will be impossible to shut down.

Shutting down Cryptome is like burning books. The BASTARDS who have ordered this are the lowest ‘humans’ on the scale.

FAST FORWARD

its 2010 and the completely evil Micro$oft has managed to get Network Solutions to deregister cryptome.org, effectively making it invisible.

Here it the document that Micro$oft does not want you to read. I suggest you download, it, read it and then seed it.

Not only is Micro$oft unable to innovate, its worthless products destroy your work, track you, allow the totalitarian governments of the world back door access to your private documents… the list goes on and on. If you do not already shun them, you should shun them completely. If you have money, buy Apple, who are less evil. If you want to keep your equipment, switch to Ubuntu; it is a superior and moral operating system. You have no excuse, other than your own lazyness, to keep putting up with and financially supporting the evil of this bad company.

Now M$ seems to think that they can remove other people’s websites and stop information on their nefarious acts from spreading. They did not understand the internet when it first started to become important, and now they demonstrate that they are without any clue when it comes to the modern internet, the intentions of the people who run it (you and me) and most importantly, the Striesand effect. Now that they have tried to remove this document, the number of people reading it and storing it will increase by orders of magnitude.

No one is safe whilst evil companies like M$ are able to use the violent state as their enforcing arm. There must be a consequence to this company being evil. That means you must boycott them and their products completely.

Micro$oft is evil, stupid, destructive and in this instance, on the wrong side of history. In the future, Micro$oft will replace Watt in a book about how copyright and patents were eventually destroyed.

At the time of this update Thu Feb 25 10:34:26 GMT 2010, whois says the following of Cryptome.org:

Domain ID:D7496146-LROR
Domain Name:CRYPTOME.ORG
Created On:25-Jun-1999 14:58:29 UTC
Last Updated On:24-Feb-2010 18:47:18 UTC
Expiration Date:25-Jun-2011 14:58:29 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Network Solutions LLC (R63-LROR)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT HOLD
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:24163306-NSI
Registrant Name:Cryptome
Registrant Organization:Cryptome
Registrant Street1:251 West 89th Street
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:New York
Registrant State/Province:NY
Registrant Postal Code:10024
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.9999999999
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+1.9999999999
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:jya@PIPELINE.COM
Admin ID:24163306-NSI
Admin Name:Cryptome
Admin Organization:Cryptome
Admin Street1:251 West 89th Street
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:New York
Admin State/Province:NY
Admin Postal Code:10024
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.9999999999
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:+1.9999999999
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:jya@PIPELINE.COM
Tech ID:24163306-NSI
Tech Name:Cryptome
Tech Organization:Cryptome
Tech Street1:251 West 89th Street
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:New York
Tech State/Province:NY
Tech Postal Code:10024
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.9999999999
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:+1.9999999999
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:jya@PIPELINE.COM
Name Server:NS47.WORLDNIC.COM
Name Server:NS48.WORLDNIC.COM
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
DNSSEC:Unsigned

Why does the Bush administration have a list of everyone who has ever used anti-depressants?

America Blog
Wednesday April 18, 2007

Guess what? They do. From ABC News, regarding the VA Tech shooter:

Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government’s files. This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet sources, or a gap in the federal database, but the sources say theirs is a reasonably complete search.

We don’t even have a list of gun owners, and we have a list of everyone who has been prescribed anti-depressants? And in fact, the article suggests that this isn’t just a database of patients who use anti-depressants, it’s a federal database of every prescription drug you’ve ever bought.

What exactly do the Bushies do with that list? And what other lists do they have of which medications you’ve ever taken?

Americablog

[…]

But all this is ‘perfectly ok’ because (in whining sing song voice) its ‘good for society‘.

Right?

Thats what the people who advocate ID cards, gun control, banning Samurai swords, ‘the war on drugs’, banning breeds of dogs, interfering with home schooling, banning vitamins, in fact, all nanny state, knee jerk, bottle-fed brain-dead population ideas… this is what they are about: VIOLATION in the name of false safety, turning people into defenseless cattle.

The influx of strange demos continues. This one consists of a wedge of cheese:

The Package

Closeup of the label

It came with a cardboard stiffener and a pink post it note, with some lines about beer.

OMW. WTF.

Which brings us to:

Russian agents are as active in Britain now as at the height of the Cold War, senior Whitehall officials have said.

The sources told the BBC’s Frank Gardner there were more than 30 identified intelligence officers trying to get secrets by covert means.

Targets include military hardware, scientific know-how and technology, and inside tips on Westminster politics.

Businessmen who may have access to sensitive information are also of interest, as are Russian dissidents.

Such dissidents include Boris Berezovsky, friend of the murdered former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.

‘Very extensive’

Sir Paul Lever, a former member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said: “Russian espionage activity in Britain is very extensive.

“In scale it’s probably pretty much as it was at the height of the Cold War.”

BBQ

[…]

“Russians fighting Russians is bad for Russia”.

I wish I could attribute that quote to Roman Abramovich, but it’s mine.

More on the demos; we received this VERY interesting one in the last seven days, from Ljubljana in Slovenia, which arrived with some patent application diagrams for a novel guitar pitch-bending arrangement (foot controlled) a CDR of movies featuring it and its inventor in action, a contract proposal and a nice letter. Yes, ‘nice’.

Excerpt from the patent application

“But what did it sound like?”, I hear you cry.

Like Brij Bhushan Kabra on Crystal Meth.