Archive for October, 2006

The Kenneth Arnold Sighting – in his own words

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

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

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flap & fly

Monday, October 30th, 2006

They did wrong, but have learned nothing

Monday, October 30th, 2006

Secret Cabinet memo admits Iraq is fuelling UK terror

Tony Blair’s claim that there is no link between Britain’s foreign policy and terrorist attacks in this country is blown apart by a secret cabinet memo revealed today.

Ummm we and every other person on the planet already knew this.

A classified paper written by senior Downing Street officials says that everything Britain does overseas for the next decade must have the ultimate aim of reducing “terror activity, especially that in or directed against the UK”.

The memo, circulated in recent weeks to ministers and security chiefs and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, outlines an extraordinary “wish list” of how the Government would like world troublespots to look in 10 years’ time. It also signals a drive to reduce Britain’s military commitments around the globe.

It admits that, in an ideal world, “the Muslim would not perceive the UK and its foreign policies as hostile” – effectively accepting the argument that Britain’s military action in Iraq and Afghanistan has served as a recruiting sergeant for Islamist terrorist groups. Publicly, Mr Blair has resisted this line fiercely. During his final speech as leader to Labour’s annual conference last month, he described such claims as “enemy propaganda”.

His cabinet allies have supported his position. Earlier this year, John Reid, the Home Secretary, said: “I think it is a dreadful misjudgment if we believe the foreign policy of this country should be shaped in part, or in whole, under the threat of terrorist activity, if we do not have a foreign policy with which the terrorists happen to agree.”

But the memo leaves no doubt that all foreign policy must be driven by the goal of thwarting terrorism in Britain. It demands a “significant reduction in the number and intensity of the regional conflicts that fuel terror activity”.

In other words, KNOCK IT OFF, COME BACK HOME and DONT EVER GO BACK.

After a decade, Iraq must have “stable central and local government, accepted by all sectarian groups”. Afghanistan must be “stable, democratic, with all territory under central government control”.

You guys just don’t get it do you?

WHY should Iraq have a central government? ‘What does this have to do with Richmond?’ is the test that you need to apply to every one of these pronouncements. Why should Britain have a say about anything that happens in Iraq? That is what caused this problem in the first place. You are all living on tenter hooks, paranoid, disrupted, humiliated and scorned…and for what? For precisely nothing, since these people have their own ideas about what is right and what is wrong, and they will live by those ways or die and take you with them. They resist living in ‘democracy’ in the same way that we would all resist living under pure Sharia; to the death. Only the most blinkered and uneducated buffoons can not see this.

Similarly, why on earth should Afghanistan be a centrally controlled democratic government? Who are you to make that judgement? You making these proclamations and then acting on them are the sole cause of everyone hating the UK second only to the USA. For the thousandth time, will you KNOCK IT OFF. What those people do has absolutely NOTHING to do with Richmond. You have no right to demand that they live in a democracy. You have no right to dictate anything to anyone. If you DO believe that you have the right to shape the destiny of hundreds of millions of people in other lands, then take the consequences, and don’t whine like babies when people are lining up to slaughter you.

Israel must have “secure borders” and live in “peaceful co-existence” with its Arab neighbours,

sure, but thats up to THEM isn’t it?

while Iran must have a “representative, tolerant government … no nuclear weapons” and “no sponsorship of terrorism”.

There you go again.

The whole reason why there is an Islamic Republic in Iran is because YOU DISMANTLED THE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT that was running there. What the Iranians have now is the government that they want. What happens in Iran is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

The Iranian government doesn’t ‘sponsor terrorism’. The entire cause of ‘terrorism’ is USUKs interference in other people’s countries. Look at this documentary to find out just how IGNORANT Bliar and Bu$h are; the killer part is where the presenter recounts the event where Bu$h took some Shias and Sunnis to the Super Bowl. They talked. Somehow, the discussion came round to Islam, and someone mentioned that Sunnis and Shias sometimes….’don’t get along’, whereupon The Great Satan said, “You mean that there is more than one kind of muslim?”.

You cant make stuff like this up.

A similar story is recounted about Bliar. These people, these ignorant animals have the gall to tell Iran how to run its affairs? It beggars belief.

The document concludes: “If all or most of the above were in place, threats from other sources of Islamic terrorism (eg Indonesia, Philippines, Nigeria) would be manageable or on the way to resolution. Any remaining deployments of the British armed forces should be seen as contributing to international stability and security.”

Indonesia, The Philippines, Nigeria? listing these countries shows that the person who wrote this memo is as ignorant as Bu$h and Bliar. No muslim in any of these countries gives a damn about the UK, and they would be more than happy to never have any hatred towards anyone. If you however, decide to land troops in their countries, try and stage coups there, stir up trouble and make a nuisance of yourself, you are guaranteed to face fierce resistance. This part of the memo shows that they know nothing and have learned nothing, not even from recent history…and by recent I mean the last five years. There is no problem between Indonesia, Philippines, Nigeria and the UK. My advice to you you JACKASSES is not to start one!

A Downing Street spokesman declined to comment on the memo. However, in an interview, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, played down suggestions that large numbers of British troops may soon be coming home from Iraq. “I think you’re perhaps a little impatient to see a huge change, which I don’t think we are yet in,” she said.

She acknowledged, how-ever, that Britain and America had failed, before going to war, to predict that “there were huge pent-up hatreds and resentments in Iraq which exploded once Saddam Hussein was deposed”.

[…]

Telegraph

You fail again and again. You know nothing about Indonesia, The Philippines, Nigeria and anywhere other than Richmond Upon Thames. Nothing wrong with that; just make sure that you NEVER interfere with any of these countries and how they are run. As soon as you try to interfere, you cause disaster. You always have caused disaster, and always will cause disaster. Solve your own problems, mind your own business and all the ‘terrorism’ will melt away. If you do not, it will be ramped up and your precious ‘democracy’ which you have already partially dismantled, will be utterly destroyed by your own hand.

No one wants your ‘help’ and no one needs your advice. Every educated person can see that you are amongst the biggest hypocrites ever to walk the face of this earth. The British people on an interpersonal basis are the best ambassadors for the UK, because they are decent, peace loving people, and amongst the most tolerant, creative and intelligent in the entire world. The same cannot be said about HMG sadly, and its brief should be confined to garbage collection; that way, no one gets hurt.

Anyone who mentions Iran, who says its ‘intolerant’ who creates and transmits bogus documentaries about, sharia, veiled women blah blah blah; these people are traitors and warmongers and liars and are completely insane.

Enough is enough. Britain has alot of healing to do, and the sooner it starts the sooner Britain will start to look like the place we all loved. The first step is the purging of the war criminals and their bogus anti-democratic legislation.

But thats another blog post!

Vendors in search of a solution

Friday, October 27th, 2006

Just as individual identity is fundamental to our face-to-face interactions, digital identity is fundamental to our interactions in the online world. Unfortunately, many of the challenges associated with the Internet stem from the lack of widely deployed, easily understood, and secure identity solutions. This should come as no surprise. After all, the Internet was designed for sharing information, not for securely identifying users and protecting personal data. However, the rapid proliferation of online theft and deception and the widespread misuse of personal information are threatening to erode public trust in the Internet and thus limit its growth and potential.

Microsoft believes that no single identity management system will emerge and that efforts should instead be directed toward developing an overarching framework that connects different identity systems and sets out standards and protocols for ensuring the privacy and security of online interactions. Microsoft calls this concept the Identity Metasystem. The Identity Metasystem is not a specific product or solution, but rather an interoperable architecture that allows Internet users to use context-specific identities in their various online interactions.

PDF

M$ has released a new paper ‘The Identity Metasystem: Towards a Privacy-Compliant Solution to the Challenges of Digital Identity’. The above is from the summary. This paper is flawed from the outset; the ‘problem’ of identity on the web is a vendor looking for a solution.

individual identity is fundamental to our face-to-face interactions, digital identity is fundamental to our interactions in the online world

This is not true. When I buy a newspaper from a street vendor, he doesn’t need to know anything about me to sell me an Evening Standard. When I buy a bouquet of flowers from a shop in the high street, the shop keeper doesn’t need to know who I am and where I live, or anything else about me. All they have to know is that my money is good. They can then deliver the flowers to wherever I say it should go. The second part of that quoted sentence, “digital identity is fundamental to our interactions in the online world” is simply wrong, for reasons I give below.

many of the challenges associated with the Internet stem from the lack of widely deployed, easily understood, and secure identity solutions.

This is not true; the problem is, as I say below, one of buggy whip manufacturers trying to sell their wares to bicycle makers. Poor analogy!

the rapid proliferation of online theft

Is caused by this misapplication of existing systems and a misunderstanding of what is actually required for an online purchase.

Microsoft believes that no single identity management system will emerge and that efforts should instead be directed toward developing an overarching framework that connects different identity systems and sets out standards and protocols for ensuring the privacy and security of online interactions. Microsoft calls this concept the Identity Metasystem.

Identity management systems are not needed. The onus needs to be swung back onto the user. Identity management systems will eventually be replaced by light systems where the users ‘identity’ is owned by the user. These bad, antiquated systems will eventually collapse like MS Passport collapsed, when the solution that solves the problem correctly is launched.

Identity, like cash, needs to be owned by the user, and it needs to be cash like, and not card like. The problems of CC fraud are caused by old style services trying to shoehorn ’70s style payment systems into a twentieth century shoe. The way forward is to literally let people own their identities, i.e., in systems that do not rely on you revealing who you ‘really are’ to get things done, but which rely on you managing your identity in a cash like manner. I have said this before on BLOGDIAL; your data has an actual monetary value and should be treated as a valuable thing, like precious metals etc.

Skype payments (and all payment systems like it) are a good example of a cash like identity system; they are light, limited in their exposure of user info, and the onus is on the user to protect a single piece of information; her login.

Skype doesn’t care who you ‘really are’ in order for you to spend Skype money (when they roll this out); its up to you to protect your user name and password, just like it is your responsibility to look after your wallet in your pocket when you are in the street. Oyster, for all its flaws (following people around) is the same. When you buy an anonymous Oyster card, no one will care who you are when you go and buy a Mars bar with it in a shop. Who you ‘really are’ is irrelevant to all transactions both online and offline; this is the paradigm (re) shift that identity system vendors resist but which has been in place for generations. It is only now that it is possible to know everything about someone when they grocery shop that companies are clamoring for ways to actually do this and harvest this data. It has never been needed and will be rejected wholesale when people cotton on (again) to how bad these systems really are for people and society.

You can buy with Skype money, have goods delivered to any address that you like, and be completely anonymous while taking full advantage of e-commerce. This is the way that identity should be managed; in light, not heavy systems, that are cash-like, where the onus on security is pushed (or released) back to the consumer. Chaumian e-cash did this beautifully; you should look it up as an example of how identity can and should be managed.

Biometrics, ID cards, iris scans and every other vendor created snake oil product to ‘secure’ identity and e-commerce is just that, Snake Oil. Twenty first century thinking and systems are what is needed and are what will eventually take over. Over zealous, pointless, vendor driven ‘solutions’ are detected as damage by ‘the internets’ and economics, and both of these will be automatically routed around, circumvented, defeated and replaced by systems that are both better and beneficial.

One thing is for sure, Microsoft will not be the vendor to come up with it. It will be someone like Skype, or its decedents that does it; some outfit that is light, decentralized, focussed and unfettered, unlike M$, which is encumbered, lethargic, immobile and who has been playing catch up since Netscape. It will not be Google either, as we have seen from the YouTube buy out. Whoever does it, this solution will change everything overnight. It will destroy the old (and wrong) ideas about identity, and then we will enter ‘The Third Bubble’.

The whole universe

Friday, October 27th, 2006

Last night, I was watching the ‘Prime Sangeet Eid Special’ on PTV Prime, a music special, featuring some classic music clips.

One of the performers shown was a video tape of Ghulam Ali, performing ‘Chupke Chupke Raat Din’ live in the 1970s.

Honestly is was the most magical thing ever. These people are in direct contact with whatever is in charge of the entire universe…such music…

Amazingly, you can hear some of this on YouTube:

Chupke Chupke Raat Din

Another Ghulam Ali piece…

And something very beautiful:

Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam – Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959 )

In a perfect world, in a parallel dimension, some scientists made a giant antenna to transmit a message about the very essence of humanity to the stars. They chose a special recording to send as the message.

When it was decoded at the destination, long after the end of man…

This is what they saw and heard.

Glasgow BBQ: an island unto itself

Friday, October 27th, 2006

One in 10 of Glasgow’s call centres has been infiltrated by criminal gangs, police believe.

The scam works by planting staff inside offices or by forcing current employees to provide sensitive customer details.

The information is then used to steal identities and fraudulently set up accounts or transfer money.

The Customer Contact Association played down the extent of the problem but admitted it was a concern to those in the industry.

Det Ch Insp Derek Robertson of Strathclyde Police told the BBC’s Newsnight Scotland programme that there were a large number of call centres in the Glasgow area.

Recruit volunteers

“We have 300-plus, and we know that number is growing,” he said.

“I would say approximately 10% have been infiltrated in the past and we are working very hard to reduce that number.”

Detectives believe that criminal crews are sent out to recruit volunteers to work in the centres.

Once they agree, they are asked to supply financial information in return for a fee.

Another tactic is to identify pubs where call centre workers visit and intimidate the employees to pass on the details.

Det Ch Insp Robertson said: “There are a number of different ways to do it.

“We know of organised crime groups who are placing people within the call centres so that they can steal customers’ data and carry out fraud and money laundering.

“We also know of employees leaving the call centres and being approached and coerced, whether physically, violently or by being encouraged to make some extra money.

“And of course you have the disgruntled employee who may turn their hand to fraud just to benefit themselves.”

However, Anne Marie Forsyth of the Customer Contact Association played down the extent to which criminal gangs had managed to manipulate the industry.

She told the programme: “I think what Derek is talking about is the financial services sector, but the contact centre sector is far wider with travel, health, insurance and lots of others.

“Nevertheless it is obviously a concern and it’s a concern for all businesses.

“CCA membership has been very active over the last couple of years over sharing and exchanging data in this area. There is lots and lots to learn because business has got to be one step ahead as fraud increases.”

Call centres have become an increasingly important source of jobs.

Scottish Enterprise estimates that the industry employs about 18,000 people in Glasgow alone.

Across the UK the number is closer to 800,000. Median wages for those answering the phones are about £14,000.

The union, Unison, said that most call handlers working for established companies would be well trained and well monitored.

Dave Watson, their senior regional officer for Scotland, said that the biggest concern over security centred on out-sourcing companies which had high staff turnovers.

Mr Watson told Newsnight Scotland: “I think the real issue here is there are opportunities for criminal gangs to infiltrate staff where you’ve got high turnover and employers are desperate to recruit anyone to fulfil a particular contract.

“So what companies need to do is maximise their in-house operations and where they are using out-sourced providers they do that with the same standards that they require with their in-house operations.”

Det Ch Insp Robertson said call centre fraud was now a top priority.

His officers regularly monitor local jobs pages and contact new call centres.

He said: “That’s the only way to get ahead of the criminal – by pro-actively targeting the organisation before they recruit their member of staff. We are actively working on that.” […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6089736.stm

And surprise surprise, no mention of the NIR, the previous scandal of Identities for sale from inside Whitehall, and we have been here before.

The habitual and deliberate failing to connect the dots practiced by BBQ imbeciles, in this case, one ‘Raymond Buchanan’ is simply appalling.

It doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate from this and previous examples to see that if the NIR is rolled out as planned, it will be a piece of cake for anyone to get into the most intimate details of a a British citizen. It will be even easier than is the case in this ‘article’, because NIR access will be widespread, with terminals everywhere, plastered with Post-It® notes sporting privileged user passwords….

You get the picture.

For you people that DONT get it (BBQ dunderheads who lurk on BLOGDIAL) this is just the tip of the iceberg. If the NIR is rolled out, people will be able to investigate you without having to commit any sort of crime or deception. The NIR will provide a ‘service’ where you, the man in the street, can check if someone has a criminal record or not. If you think that it is outrageous that ‘criminals’ are getting into call centres, imagine the scenario (you do have SOME imagination dont you?) where all you have to do is pay to get access to anyone’s details, and its all perfectly legal. The logical conclusion will be that if you are allowed to access this part of a person’s life (criminal record), why not let people access everything else? This WILL happen if the NIR is put in place, and people stupidly enroll in it.

By not connecting the dots, by brainlessly boosting the idea of biometrics, by letting it slip again and again, deliberately, and with malice of forethought, you, you ignorant BASTARD are a part of the PROBLEM.

Or maybe I have it all wrong.

Maybe BBQ Glasgow exists in a parallel universe, where there is no Whitehall, no Bliar, no NIR, nowhere else that HMG IT has been corrupted from the inside, no broken DVLA, where Google is actually ‘Google Glasgow’ where you can only search inside that universe, where the police have never sold surveillance to criminals. You get my point, and there are many more that I could have sourced and quoted. If I felt like it, I could even extrapolate this story to the call centres in other countries, that have the billing records of millions of Britons on tap.

But why go there?

This is irresponsible journalism…or it would be if what BBQ did really was journalism, and not wildly biased propaganda on behalf of every punter with a fist full of fifties.

This story was brought to you by an very vigilant virologist, its veracity verified and its verse vectored to me for vilification.

BBQ Bias and Bastardy

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

The anonymous cowards are at it again at BBQ, this time with a completely biased, PR pumped piece promoting Biometrics.

This ‘guide’ says everything that is not important about Biometrics in the present context and leaves out everything that is important, i.e. the databases that will be used to abuse you should you be fool enough to ‘enroll’.

Lets take it apart piece by piece:

Biometric technology uses computerised methods to identify a person by their unique physical or behavioural characteristics.

Developments and uses have increased with demand to match concerns over international, business and personal security.

Biometrics is more personal than a passport photo or Pin, using traits such as fingerprints, face or eye “maps” as key identifying features.

Uses range from building access and laptop security to identity cards and passports.

However, there are concerns about the storing of biometric data and its possible misuse.

There are concerns are there? Do tell. There are no sidebars for related links on this evil piece of propaganda; that is because it is a piece of propaganda, and not a news item. They don’t want you to think about the implications of being fingerprinted and then stored in a database that every jobsworth in this land will be able to query.

Note how they left out the uses of Police identification, and the history of fingerprinting as being for criminals. which is exactly the sentiment that they are trying to overcome.

Each one of the leafs in this vile document has a pathetic disclaimer attached to the bottom. These are not there to provide the much vaunted BBQ ‘balance’ but exist merely so that when (if) anyone bothers to complain to BBQ about this brazen piece of paid for PR, they can point to these weak, near meaningless lines as proof that they are giving ‘both sides of the story’ . Its pure tosh of course, and these vermin, the unnamed animals that authored this are fully aware of what they are doing – pushing a single point of view on behalf of HMG and the vendors that want to fleece the entire population.

A brief glance at the face is enough for most people to identify one another. Face recognition technology can be just as swift.

2D face recognition involves making a unique template from measurements between key points on the face.

This can be done from a live image or from a clear photograph – a method being used with the issue of new biometric passports in the UK.

Face recognition is being used by some authorities to scan crowds to identify suspects whose faces have been logged on a database.

However, some of the technology may be easy to fool through ageing or face coverings and there are privacy concerns over surveillance uses.

You see? Seven words as a disclaimer. Not on any level is that ‘balance’ not even numerically. But we all know that the BBQ is biased, and actually, I don’t have a problem with it being so; what I detest is that they force you to pay for them to lie to you, and then they claim that they are not biased at all. That is beyond evil.

There are some great Flash explainers in there. Pity no one there had the guts to make one of them describing how once you are in there, you cannot get out, and how every time these systems are put in place, they are always abused by governments, and that these systems are indeed, the hallmark of a totalitarian state.

Iris scanning measures patterns on the coloured part of the eye – the iris.

The tissue has a unique pattern of markings which does not change and is different for each eye.

Iris scanners read from the outer edge towards the pupil, detecting and plotting the markings.

Data is saved and stored within a chip, on a passport or ID card for example, which will be verified when the eye is scanned in future.

While iris scanning is fast and accurate, its accuracy can be affected by objects obscuring the eye and may not be suitable for people with cataracts.

Not even a moral objection, just a technical one. Pathetic.

Using fingerprints is the oldest method of identification.

In the digital world, the fingerprint is electronically read by a sensor plate.

The corrugated ridges of the skin are non-continuous and form a pattern that has distinguishing features, or minutiae.

The minutiae can be plotted and joined up to form a template that can be stored and compared against fingerprints in the future.

Some readings may be affected by fingerprints that have been damaged through injury and some sensors may not be able to read fingers that are too wet or too dry.

Yet again, another technical objection. Nothing about humiliation, degradation, violation, databases, fallibility, an the fact that this whole scheme will not solve a single one of the problems fraudulently touted by that subhuman adulterer Blunkett and his Elephant eared swine of a colleague. That is who you are in service to, BBQ anonymous intellectual cripples; those are your masters, and you will burn in HELL for serving them.

Finally we end with a pitiful glossary:

Identification/One-to-many: Sample is compared to all biometric data saved in a system. It seeks to find an identity, rather than verify a claimed one.

Verification/One-to-one: Comparison of sample with previously enrolled template to determine if from same person.

Slaps: Fingerprints taken by simultaneously pressing four fingers of one hand onto a scanner.

False Acceptance Rate: Probability that a system will incorrectly identify an individual or fail to reject an impostor.

False Rejection Rate: Probability that a system will fail to identify a registered user.

Enrolment: Process of collecting a biometric, converting it into a biometric reference and storing it for later comparison.

Liveness detection: Ensures only characteristics from a living person can be stored, read or used.

Multimodal Biometric System: A system that uses two or more biometric characteristics or sensor types.

[…]

BBQ

Missing from this list are some of the words I used above, but most the important, glaring, obvious omission is a definition for the word…

‘DATABASE’

How could this POSSIBLY have been left out? You know how. This is PROPAGANDA, in full caps.

Shame shame shame on who ever produced this, and I think that they feel this shame, since they are too ashamed to put their names on it as the authors. Vile, nasty, dirty, cowardly, underhanded garbage.

Appeal for Redress: at least it’s something

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

I read this story at the lovely Al Jazeera today, a story that I have not yet seen anywhere else:

US troops call for Iraq pullout

More than 200 men and women from the US armed services have joined a protest calling for American troops in Iraq to be brought home, organisers say.

The soldiers said they did not think it was worth their while to be in Iraq and questioned the use of repeated tours of duty.

The campaign, called the Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq, takes advantage of defence department rules allowing active duty troops to express personal opinions to politicians without fear of retaliation.

The appeal posted on the campaign’s website at www.appealforredress.org said: “As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq.

You can read the rest at Al Jazeera

We could perhaps criticize the soldiers for not going all the way, risking full-on court martial and the whole lot, but I wouldn’t expect anyone with a family to do that, it’s just… far too self-sacrificing to be done by Americans on a wide scale. What they’re doing instead is intelligently speaking through a loophole that has been used before, effectively. If this picks up steam, it could get interesting, that is if anyone knows about it. Like I said above, I haven’t seen this story ANYWHERE but on Al Jazeera, so perhaps it’s being successfully buried by “teh mna.”

Regardless, what I want to get at is… if a few soldiers with brains can do this, where the hell is everyone else? This is an easy thing to do, the soldiers know the system, how it works, and they’re using it to their advantage. While they’re not fully refusing to co-operate – I can sort of understand that due to the reasons I spelled out above – this is at least something that piques my interest. These are average soldiers – nothing could ever be more media-friendly. But watch the media try to pull an Ann Coulter and bend the story into something ridiculous and insulting and full of glitz and mega-sports-channel style election graphics that somehow convinces Average Joe American (though, givent the current hemmorhage of stupidity in the US media the past couple of days, that may not happen). Or worse yet it just… won’t be reported on. At all. That’s what I’m betting on. We’ll see what happens.

Combine it with despair-filled articles like this, and maybe something good will happen for a change?

(sorry to push things down with yet more American news, but this is fun stuff! C’mon! Maybe I’ll post some retarded Canadian news soon. There’s plenty of it going around right now.)

Olbermann / Juba2

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

The latest Olbermann special comment mentions the new Juba Video, which was transmitted on network news in the usa. Have you seen it? It’s brutal.

It has some of the same music that appears in ‘The night of Bush capturing’ 1st person shooter.

I had heard about ‘Juba’ but have not till today, seen him in action.

So lets get this straight; there is a sniper, called ‘Juba’ who has a rifle not only equipped with a powerful scope, but also video camera with a telescopic lens.

Thats just too much.

Those poor boys, being blown away for no good reason. It’s all bad…all bad.

And take a look at these soldiers, pissing their pants as they face death.

And now imagine being Drafted.

Perfect Encapsulation

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

If Your Fingerprints Aren’t Down You’re Not Coming In

UK Government wants to control where citizens go to get drunk. Will people start caring more about the liberty crushing surveillance society now?

Steve Watson / Infowars.net | October 23 2006

The drinks are on Big Brother.

The British government has announced that it wishes to send nationwide a previously localized program of mandatory fingerprint scanners at the entrance of every pub and club in major UK cities. Under such rules If you want to have a drink in the trendiest places in the UK you will have to be fingerprinted.

As usual this is being sold as a way to reduce alcohol related crime and weed out troublemakers. We’re all suspects now, we’re all possible criminals and we all need to be scanned and catalogued in order to save civilized society. The young hoodlums are taking over and we must all be considered dangerous in order to stop them.

The move to introduce the scanners is being sold to club and bar owners with the promise that they can stay open longer if they implement it. If they refuse that nice little earner they will simply be shut down as new licenses stipulate that a landlord who doesn’t install fingerprint security and fails to show a “considerable” reduction in alcohol-related violence, will be put on report by the police and have their licenses revoked.

What’s more, reports detail the fact that all clubs and bars that have this forced upon them, or choose to willingly use it, will be hooked up to a centralized database in order to easily share the biometric information. Access to this database will also be granted to the police and the government.

We have previously been told that it is just a matter of time before the fingerprint replaces cash and credit cards.

As a citizen of the UK I have not known a time when civil liberties have been under attack from so many angles at the same time. In the name of the war on crime, the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on binge drinking, the war on anything the government can’t be bothered to attempt to get to the real cause of, we have to relinquish our privacy.

Big Brother Is watching… And listening and shouting and scanning and taking your fingerprints and swabbing your DNA. Lets take a snapshot of a typical day in Britain should all these things be fully implemented.

You get up to go to work and walking down your residential street you are picked up by multiple cameras within minutes of leaving your house. Before you board the tube or the train you may have to relent to going through the high-tech body screener for detecting would-be terrorists. Place your hands above your head and wait for the machine to produce a naked picture of you on a screen.

If your ‘re lucky enough not to have to go through one of these you will certainly be picked up by the the face scanning cameras which are programmed to sound an alarm when they spot suspicious behaviour, such as waiting somewhere for a prolonged period of time or just walking in a suspicious way.

Should you drop some litter or act out of turn the cameras may even start shouting at you in order to publicly humiliate you and let everyone else around you know what you’ve done. This way you might be shamed into never stepping out of line in that way again.

You swipe your electronic travel card over the reader and a unit of travel credit is deducted. This sends a signal to the central database reporting your whereabouts. You could still use cash but the fare has been raised so high for cash users that it seems ludicrous to opt for that.

Those who are lucky enough to work out of the big cities or those who drive to work will have their movements and personal behaviour monitored by traffic cameras all over the country. They will also be tracked at all times by the black box locator within their vehicles.

Once you get to work you are continuously monitored from the moment you enter the building until you leave.

After work you may go for a drink. Once you have had your fingerprints scanned to enter you may also have to undergo a DNA swab test for drug use. If you refuse you are recorded as suspicious and may even be arrested at which point your DNA will be forcibly taken anyway.

This will be added to the national DNA database which is also hooked up to the central UK citizens database which eventually will contain the DNA of everyone no matter whether or not they have committed a crime. You will not have access to this information but the government will. They may even sell the information to private companies should they wish to. The Information will be stored on the database forever.

If you do manage to get in the pub for a drink you will be able to pay for it much more quickly and easily if you have an implanted microchip. Just wave your arm over a reader and it will pick up the chip’s signal and deduct a beverage credit accordingly. A chip may also eliminate the need for an ID card, travel card, medical card and the like. No need to carry cumbersome wallets or handbags anymore!

Perhaps you will not have worked hard enough this week to earn enough beverage credits though. Oh well never mind time to go home. When you get back remember to put out the trash. Make sure the bag is not too heavy though or more refuse credits will be deducted from your allowance. And don’t forget to recycle or you could get some jail time.

Just before you turn in check your personalized cctv channel and report any suspicious activity in your neighbourhood. You can then go to sleep safe in the knowledge that you are ‘secure beneath the watchful eyes’ of Big Brother.

In the UK we are the most observed population outside of North Korea. Britain is the surveillance bench mark, the rest of the Western world is a close second. As Henry Porter Commented in last week’s London Observer, It’s time to wake up to what we have become and stop allowing limits to be put on our liberty. It’s now or never.

[…]

http://www.infowars.net/articles/October2006/231006prints.htm

Once again, the nail is hit right on the head.

But…

WHAT ARE YOU PROPOSING TO DO ABOUT IT?

We can sit down and write about this until the end of time (not too far away now ay?) but it will change absolutely nothing. In the past, people made careers out of being in opposition. Lets be absolutely clear; I am NOT one of these people. I do not enjoy or endorse or agree with the idea of an ‘underground’ or ‘resistance’. I do not want to spend time paying the price of eternal vigilance for freedom. There are simply some things that I will not do, by default and so all these measures do not apply to me. But I digress.

As we can see, despite all the blathering and warnings spread all over the country, England is being turned into a police state. Once again, what are you going to do about it? I mean, what personally are you going to do to stop this fingerprinting abomination from spreading to every pub in the land?

Are you going to:

  • Write to every publican?
  • Write to the breweries that own the pubs that are not free houses?
  • Write to CAMRA and every other beer association, asking them to contact all of their members?

Those are for example. If you are not willing to do this, or to even suggest that this should be done whenever you write an article, then you are part of the problem, whoever you are, when you do not act to preserve this great land.

This fingerprinting at pubs is not the final goal. It is a softening up exercise, designed to get every drinking adult used to the idea of being fingerprinted on a regular basis. If they manage to roll out the NIR, enrollment will encounter much less resistance because everyone will think that fingerprinting is a part of ‘normal life’ and will not think twice about handing over their prints for their passport or driving license etc etc.

Business must resist this. They are proxy shearing centres that HMG uses to enforce its nonsense and butter up the public. There is no way that they will revoke the licenses of ALL the pubs in the UK; if all of them refuse to help bastardize this country, the only recourse for the government is to back down. The publicans and license holders will only have the balls to do it if they feel threatened by a massive letter writing campaign (one of the last instances where letter writing actually works; between one human and another).

That is what I propose; because the British don’t flee from their own land when its under attack from a hostile enemy, and this is a war, no doubt about it!

Paternalism and privacy

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

I recently had a questionnaire posted to me by the council. It was to guage my physical activity and full of the sort of personal questions the Census misses out (but I jump ahead of myself here). It is for a scheme branded ‘Smarten Up”. I have a chance of winning a mountain bike if I hand over these details to quite whom I don’t know.

When I used to get this sort of marketing profile survey from private companies my second thought would invariably be what database this information would have been put on, and who the information would be shared with. So of course after temporarily rescuing it from the recycling pile I got to thinking how this information could be used for ‘my benefit’.
We’ll skip past the fantasy thought the council might dig up the local drive-through burger shop and replace it with a local swimming pool and such like. The question of whether the government’s relaxation of inter-agency data sharing restrictions is relevant at local government level is an issue but conceivably my GP could be notified of my wonderous athletic talents and send out a request for a check up at some appropriate moment, maybe a social worker could visit if my putative family doesn’t appear to be getting the exercise it so richly deserves.

Now, as I mentioned, these questionnaires for various issues fill in the Census gaps about how people are going about their business, taken individually, anonymously and with limited scope they could possibly help the council direct tax funds to provide ‘better services’, however we are most definitely on the cusp of an age where these non-anonymous (remember the bicycle bribe?) surveys can be aggregated and linked with some identifier like, oh… let us say, your NIR number. Yes that’s a good one because then any state agency can quickly find out about your lifestyle, and it can be transferred to some central data store so it may ‘follow’ you when you move from one authority to another. Hooray!

That’s it. I’m off to France

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

Beer fingerprints to go UK-wide

The Register | October 23 2006

The government is is funding the roll out of fingerprint security at the doors of pubs and clubs in major English cities.

Funding is being offered to councils that want to have their pubs keep a regional black list of known trouble makers. The fingerprint network installed in February by South Somerset District Council in Yeovil drinking holesy is being used as the show case.

“The Home Office have looked at our system and are looking at trials in other towns including Coventry, Hull & Sheffield,” said Julia Bradburn, principal licensing manager at South Somerset District Council.

Gwent and Nottingham police have also shown an interest, while Taunton, a town neighbouring Yeovil, is discussing the installation of fingerprint systems in 10 pubs and clubs with the systems supplier CreativeCode.

Bradburn could not say if fingerprint security in Yeovil had displaced crime to neighbouring towns, but she noted that domestic violence had risen in Yeovil. She could not give more details until the publication of national crime statistics to coincide with the anniversary of lax pub licensing laws on 24 November.

She was, however, able to say that alcohol-related crime had reduced by 48 per cent Yeovil between February and September 2006.

The council had assumed it was its duty under the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) to reduce drunken disorder by fingerprinting drinkers in the town centre.

Some licensees were not happy to have their punters fingerprinted, but are all now apparently behind the idea. Not only does the council let them open later if they join the scheme, but the system costs them only £1.50 a day to run.

Oh, and they are also coerced into taking the fingerprint system. New licences stipulate that a landlord who doesn’t install fingerprint security and fails to show a “considerable” reduction in alcohol-related violence, will be put on report by the police and have their licences revoked.

Offenders can be banned from one pub or all of them for a specified time – usually a period of months – by a committee of landlords and police called Pub Watch. Their offences are recorded against their names in the fingerprint system. Bradburn noted the system had a “psychological effect” on offenders.

She said there had been only been two “major” instances of alcohol-related crime reported in Yeovil pubs and clubs since February. One was a sexual assault in a club toilet.

The other occurred last Friday when an under-18 Disco at Dukes nightclub got out of hand after the youngsters had obtained some alcohol from elsewhere. A fight between two youngsters escalated into a brawl involving 435 12-16 year olds

A major incident is when 15 police attend the scene, said Bradburn. She was unable to say how many minor incidents there had been but acknowledged that fights were still occurring in the streets of Yeovil.

The Home Office paid for Yeovil’s system in full, with £6,000 of Safer, Stronger Communities funding.

Bradburn said the Home Office had paid her scheme a visit and subsequently decided to fund similar systems in Coventry, Hull and Sheffield.

The Home Office distanced itself from the plans. It said it provided funding to Safer, Stronger Communities through the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Local Area Agreements. How they spent the money was a local decision, said a HO spokeswoman.

[…]

Propaganda Matrix Quotes The Register

I swear to you right now, that I will NEVER give my fingerprint in order to have a drink. My local can fuck off to hell if they think that I am going to do it. DEATH to all publicans to go along with it…and if it does get rolled out, then farewell O England…I fought for thee….

REAL music and REAL musicians

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

So, on Friday I saw Parlane/Jeck/Fennesz perform. It was an interesting listen, some stimulating noises.
Then last night, in the same venue, I saw the Payvar Ensemble from Iran.

Their performance left me full of joy, with a broad smile on my face. Absolutely stunning!

More than that, with their music, their togetherness, honesty and humility they gave me a better understanding of Iranian people, Iranian culture, Iranian spirit, free from political predujices and at a completely human level.
Ostad Mohammadali Esmaeili, who enchants the tombak itself with his playing, has a childlike playfulness in his drumming. It was impossible not to love him. He is possibly the best musician I have ever seen. I wanted to hug him.
The space and time they found for the music to flow into was marvellous.

Apparently, they will record for Radio 3 next week. I recommend it highly. But if have the privilige to get an opportunity to see them perform, see their faces and benefit from their wisdom… do not miss it!

payvar

http://www.amc.org.uk/press/

Well, have we a ram among the sheep?

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

The government no longer serves the people

Bev Conover / Online Journal | October 21 2006

Actually, the government hasn’t served the people for a long time. But now, with a stroke of a pen, George W. Bush wiped out the last vestiges of the US Constitution, nullifying our democratic republic, and has all but declared himself dictator. So what are we going to do about it?

Are we going to sit back and hope that the US Supreme Court will declare the Military Commissions Act of 2006 unconstitutional? A hard thing to do in the absence of a constitution, i.e., if someone can even bring the case to the court, given that Bush declared “enemy combatants” have no rights.

Are we going to cross our fingers and hope that the military will effect a bloodless coup by marching into the Oval Office, the Executive Office Building, the Pentagon, the State Department and the Department of Justice and removing Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Gonzales? Doubtful, since today’s so-called patriots, unlike those who risked all in 1776 to declare our independence from Britain, are not apt to risk their careers, much less their lives.

The Declaration of Independence states that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed [that’s us, folks], —

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

From top to bottom, this government has become destructive not only to us, but the world.

The Declaration goes on, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. –”

Have we not arrived at “absolute Despotism” with the Bush administration? Have we not a worthless Congress that has abdicated its constitutional duty to be a check on the executive and reduced itself to nothing more than two worthless houses, which are nothing more than expensive show, by handing over its power to Despot Bush?

How much more abuse will we take; how many have to disappear into Despot Bush’s gulags, how many more of our soldiers will we allow to be turned into war criminal torturers and murderers before we find our spines and say, “Enough!”

Kid yourselves not that you can rid us and the world of these monsters at the ballot box. First, with the easily rigged voting machines, even if the Democrats take back both houses of Congress, you will never know if it was with your vote or the actions of the people behind the curtain who, for whatever reason, want change. Second, even if the Democrats weren’t Republicans Lite, they would need a veto-proof two-thirds majority in both houses to undue all the hideous legislation the despotic Bush administration demanded and got. Third, as long as Despot Bush has the military in his pocket, how likely are the Democrats to undertake impeachment proceedings against Bush and his whole administration?

And don’t count on the Republicans being defeated on Nov. 7, with your vote or the fixing of the vote. Despot Bush’s Rasputin, Karl Rove, may pull an October Surprise. Another 9-11, anyone?

Finally, if Despot Bush & Co. are allowed to remain in office, what makes you think they will leave on Jan. 20, 2009?

We the people have the power to do what the Declaration tells us we must do, if only we would exercise it. We don’t have to resort to armed rebellion, either. We can bring the country to a halt with national strikes. A few of those and the leaders of Congress, be they Democrats or Republicans, will get the message, march into the White House and tell Bush, Cheney et al that it’s over and hand them over to the US marshals to be, as former Ambassador Joe Wilson put it, “frog-marched” to the nearest jail cell to await trial for their crimes.

[…]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1339.shtml

Radicalize Yourself

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

BOSTON (Reuters) – Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S.
Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff said on Monday.
Click to learn more…

“We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet,” Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.

“They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,” Chertoff said. “Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.”

Chertoff pointed to the July 7, 2005 attacks on London’s transit system, which killed 56 people, as an example a home-grown threat.

To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into “intelligence fusion centers,” where they would work with local police agencies.

By the end of the next fiscal year, he said the department aims to up that to 35 staffers. […]

Yahoo News

My emphasis.

We can substitute ‘radicalize themselves’ for its true meaning, ‘educate themselves’.

Most interesting is the quote, “Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites”.

Indeed. The people who cannot be stopped but who can stop everything are those who do not. Those who do not march in the streets for example. Those who do not do more than those that do, and they cannot be stopped, and what they do not can do more than those that do. You do remember this do you not?

ZDNet Australia says ‘Black is White’

Friday, October 20th, 2006

Maybe its because they are in the southern hemisphere, and the Coriolis Effect has addled their sunburned brains…whatever the reason, ZDNet Australia appears to be smoking crack:

Fingerprinting technology is the most reliable and cost effective biometric authentication technology but it’s not being deployed on a wide scale because people still imagine that criminals are the only ones that have to surrender their fingerprints, according to Sagem.

Users are resisting the switch to fingerprint authentication technologies because they still see the process of giving a fingerprint as somehow related to being caught by the police, according to Gilles Novel, manager for secure terminals and transactions at Sagem Australasia.

“We have to shift mentality away from where people are scared [of giving their fingerprints],” Novel told ZDNet Australia. “The problem we have faced is that people think ‘if I enrol my fingerprint there has to be, one way or the other, a link to the police’. They think criminal activity instead of their own privacy.”

Novel argues that attitudes are slowly changing — especially as people slowly realise that fingerprints are more reliable than passwords and can help increase, not erode, privacy.

“If you are an employer and someone does the wrong thing on your network, that person can say ‘it wasn’t me — someone has used my password’. But in the case of biometrics, how can you say ‘it wasn’t my finger?’.” Novel told ZDNet Australia.

???!!!

This uncritical article can only be the result of paid for PR insertion. Everyone knows that fingerprinting is for criminals, and that it should remain ONLY for criminals; free and innocent people should be at liberty to be anonymous and unaccounted for; the exact opposite of what happens when you give your fingerprints to anyone. ZDNet has just published an article that claims that Black is White.

Unbelievable.

Fingerprinting violates your privacy in many ways, which we have outlined on BLOGDIAL for years, and which the writers of a technology rag like ZDNet should for certain understand, ummm don’t they read The Register for crying out loud?

The piece ends with this:

In Australia, fingerprinting technology was being adopted by Centrelink, the government’s nationwide human services agency. Last year, the organisation decided to ditch passwords in favour of a fingerprint authentication system that would require it to purchase and deploy 31,000 finger scanners. However, the plan was scrapped earlier this year.

ZDNet Australia

[…]

Well I do declare, there ARE some sensible people in Australia!

WHY was it scrapped ZDNet Australia? Could it have something to do with the incredible and totally sucessful resistance to ID cards that smashed the Australian governments plans so many years ago?

Maybe we need some of that Coriolis Effect and hot sun here in the UK!

Henry Rollins: lots of anger and no answers

Friday, October 20th, 2006

Henry Rollins has a typical vein popping performance on YouTube. Sadly it typifies the sort of thinking that has allowed Murder Inc. to go hog wild with their plans to the point of suspending the constitution.

Rollins makes several mistakes in his piece. The first one, is that he is swearing like a sailor. The people in middle america who need to be shown the truth instantly switch off when you use ‘bad language’; indeed on Propaganda Matrix (where I found this clip) there is a warning, “Extreme Profanity” many people will not get past that to press play.

Lets go through this garbage line by line:

Freedom is under attack.

There is no such thing as ‘Freedom’. This is a childish simplification. More accurately, the american constitution has been suspended by a small cabal of murderous animals, who will do literally anything to achieve their goals. It has been done with language that even the most terrible of tyrants have never dared to put on paper.

Under attack by hysterical and well funded Christian psychotics,

Wrong. These people are NOT Christians by any measure. They are in fact worshipers of Satan.

intellectually undernourished leaders

Actually, these people are amongst the smartest people on the planet. They are evil for sure, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that they are not smart. Lord Bush might not be smart, but he doesn’t matter.

who lie and manipulate information,

true.

overfed Baby Huey coward bitch motherfuckers like Karl Rove and their suck up weakling apologists like Sean Hannity. To question authority is to be somehow unpatriotic, unAmerican and in league with terrorists worldwide?
Fuck you.

Indeed. Darth Cheney is a fat pig. As for Fox News, they are able to reach into the minds of middle america for a reason, and you would do well to find out what that reason is and then use it to put your own message there, instead of alienating them with your foul mouth. Of course, there will be people who say, “but hey, BLOGDIAL is CHOCK FULL of swearing!!”, yes, indeed it is, but the audience of BLOGDIAL is very particular, and not intended to be a mass one. We tailor the language we use to the particular audience we are addressing, and we have been VERY VERY successful at doing it.

Henry Rollins needs to put on some neat clothes and get on his knees to reach middle america. He needs to be temperate, rational and humble. Alex Jones has the balance between anger, respect and the pure facts perfect, which is why he has had a real impact on the entire world. You cannot pour gasoline on a fire and expect it to go out. This is what Rollins is doing in this piece. He is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to face the problem head on, and is providing no solution of any kind, and is alienating the very people he needs to protect his ‘freedom’.

With even election results becoming more and more questionable, The Constitution a thing to be manipulated, ignored and frivolously amended, even Democracy itself seems to be on the run.

Election results are being fixed with deliberately insecure Diebold voting machines. If this is the problem, then you need to calmly point out that only a paper count with an audit trail is the solution. Saying that, “election results becoming more and more questionable” is meaningless. How it is being done is a matter of public record. Face the problem head on and provide a solution, or shut up.

The constitution is not being manipulated, it is being nullified by pieces of legislation, (PATRIOT, Military Commissions Act etc etc) you need to name these pieces of legislation and then call for them to be repealed. If they are not repealed, then your state should secede from the union. After that, the right of every person to form a militia to overthrow the government comes into force. This is called getting your facts straight, attacking the problem head on and providing a solution. Anything less is just pointless.

Where’s one place you can go and tell your version of the truth, rail against liars, fakes and propagandists with your own unique propaganda, sign your name to it and let the world know how you feel? That’s right, the internet. Perhaps responsible for the most substantial shifts in culture in the last several decades. There is so much freedom and potential on the World Wide Web that one is barely able to get one’s head around it.

Telling the truth is not enough. This was done before the illegal Iraq invasion, and the mass murder happened anyway. Railing against liars is also pointless. Signing your name to anything is just suicidal. The potential of “the internets” as lord Bush calls it, is in its use as a tool to organize real world mass-less and un-manifested civil disobedience. By mass-less and un-manifested I mean the organizing of people in a flash mob sense, where there is no gathering; in fact, where there is an absence of gathering. Demonstrating in the streets (as we have said so many times before on BLOGDIAL) is totally pointless and counter productive. We need to destroy the monster by not engaging with it on any level. That means getting O.U.T., it means 20AC, it means a complete shutdown of obedience. If all the people in the USA who were against Murder Inc did this, the whole criminal organization would collapse. Olberman is a blood brother to Rollins in this error; you must provide a solution and not just a presentation of the facts. The ineloquent and the greatly learned are both slaves to this monster, and neither of them can do a single thing about it because they are not thinking of this as a fire that needs to be put out. They are both like deers in the headlights, stunned spectators at the pyre when all it takes to put it out is to reach for the extinguisher.

The question we have to ask is…why won’t they do it?

Who in their right mind would to dare to regulate or charge websites to be on the internet? Who would dare to rain on a parade so fantastic that many of us wouldn’t know what to do without our high-speed connection and our lives on the internet?

Actually some very powerful forces. Telco companies want to make you pay for your site to be carried on the internet. If you can’t afford to pay, guess what? That’s right–you’re cyber history pal.

Before the internet there were other, smaller nets of computers. This isn’t a problem; your problem is the fire that is raging at your ankles and your inability to even pee on it to quench it. The internet can fix itself. The people in control of it will make sure that happens. If not, it will fissure into a free internet and the commercial internet. You will still be able to run your blog (probably text only) and do your email and it will probably be more secure than the commercial internet. As I said, this is not the issue; it is in fact, a distraction. While the internet is here and unbroken, you would be well advised to use it to its full potential to organize the second american revolution.

The Bush Administration wants major internet and phone companies to keep track of where their customers surf, all in the name of the War On Terror don’t ya know. How much do you want to bet they want the internet regulated, contained and thrown into a cell in Guantanamo Bay?

Indeed Mr Rollins. Do you encrypt your email? Do you use Windows? Do you do ANYTHING to protect yourself and your digital communications? You would do better to calm down, and spread information about GPG and all the other myriad free tools that are out there to use, and of course, use them yourself, contribute to their development and integration into everyone’s life.

For a country that talks so much about freedom being on the march, seems to me that some people want anything but. If they come for your freedom you must not only resist, you must strike back with a vengeance that will stun them. On this front, if your anger and outrage are not at the forefront then you’re already dead. Dead to me, anyway. Fuck these cowards, these traitors, these enemies of Democracy.

These people take what they want. Just like the founding fathers did; they wanted ‘freedom’ and they engineered a revolution to get it. These people want Nazi style total control, and they are doing what they need to do to get it. They have perfectly gauged the public mood (total apathy) and are forging ahead with their plans. You have to admire their balls.

You say, “if they come for your freedom”. They have already come for and stolen your ‘freedom’ you imbecile, and your suggestion that people ‘resist’ is absolutely meaningless. Striking back with a vengeance that will stun them is is also nothing but a hollow phrase.

Without specific instructions or plans and a concrete goal, you will be wiped off the face of the earth, and no Mr. Rollins, and Olbermann, you will not be taken off to ‘Gitmo’ (Guantanamo Bay you habitually abbreviating simpletons), you will in fact be bussed off to one of the six hundred american concentration camps that are currently staffed and waiting for you and your ranting swearing gunless tattooed bespectacled cohorts.

Never relent.

And do WHAT?