LONDON — London’s East End is notorious for its criminals, from serial murderer Jack the Ripper to mobsters the Kray twins.

The latest candidate for this rogue’s gallery is Janet Devers, a 63-year-old woman who runs a vegetable stall at Ridley Road market. Her alleged crime: selling goods only by the pound and the ounce.

Ms. Devers, whose stall has been in the family for 60 years, faces 13 criminal charges stemming from not selling her produce by the kilogram and the gram. She stands accused of breaking a European Union-instigated rule that countries must use metric measures to standardize trade. The rest of Europe is metric.

But Brits drink their milk and beer by the pint. On the road they rack up miles. Imperial measurement “is what we know, how we are. Who’s to tell us to change?” said Scott Lomax, a fellow vegetable-stall owner.

Ms. Devers, who pleaded not guilty in a court appearance on Friday, is being lionized for her stand in Britain’s feisty tabloids. If convicted, she could be fined as much as $130,000.

“It’s disgusting,” said Ms. Devers of the charges. “We have knifings. We have killings,” she said. “And they’re taking me to court because I’m selling in pounds and ounces.”

And, equally illegally, in bowls. Ten of the counts against her relate to purveying produce, such as hot Scotch-bonnet peppers, by the bowl.

The United Kingdom wrote an exemption into its measurements law to meet the EU metric requirement in 2000, as Brussels allowed. It stated that traders must use metric weights, but they could use imperial measures as well. The problem is that Ms. Devers allegedly didn’t have metric prices on all of her produce when she was charged late last year, and two of her scales only measured in pounds and ounces.

The British imperial system dates back at least to medieval times. Notable holdouts still using it are Britain and the U.S. It doesn’t help that the metric system was created over 200 years ago across the Channel in France, England’s ancient archrival.

[…]

Ms. Devers faces fines of up to $10,000 per charge, or a total of about $130,000. “It would ruin me,” said Ms. Devers, who declined to detail her earnings. She says she canceled a planned trip to New York with her twin sister, because having a criminal record could make entering the U.S. difficult.

[…]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120097109796805629.html

Anyone who reads BLOGDIAL knows what I think about this.

It is beyond insane.

Hackney is riddled with crime, and they send TWO police to arrest someone who is MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS.

This woman is not guilty of anything, save living in the insane asylum called Modern Britain®™.

ASK US WHY
After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled making building prisons the fastest growing industry in the United States. More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated and every year we arrest an additional 1.9 million more guaranteeing those prisons will be bursting at their seams.

Every year we choose to continue this war will cost U.S. taxpayers another 69 billion dollars. Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before. We would suggest that this scenario must be the very definition of a failed public policy. This madness must cease!

The stated goals of current U.S.drug policy — reducing crime, drug addiction, and juvenile drug use — have not been achieved, even after nearly four decades of a policy of “war on drugs”. This policy, fueled by over a trillion of our tax dollars has had little or no effect on the levels of drug addiction among our fellow citizens, but has instead resulted in a tremendous increase in crime and in the numbers of Americans in our prisons and jails. With 4.6% of the world’s population, America today has 22.5% of the worlds prisoners. But, after all that time, after all the destroyed lives and after all the wasted resources, prohibited drugs today are cheaper, stronger, and easier to get than they were thirty-five years ago at the beginning of the so-called “war on drugs”.

With this in mind, we current and former members of law enforcement have created a drug-policy reform movement — LEAP. We believe that to save lives and lower the rates of disease, crime and addiction. as well as to conserve tax dollars, we must end drug prohibition. LEAP believes that a system of regulation and control of production and distribution will be far more effective and ethical than one of prohibition. We do this in hopes that we in Law Enforcement can regain the public’s respect and trust, which have been greatly diminished by our involvement in imposing drug prohibition. Please consider joining us.

You don’t have to be a cop to join LEAP! Find out more about us by reading some of the articles in our Publications section or by watching and listening to some of our multimedia clips,. You can also read about the men and women who speak for LEAP, and see what we have on the calendar for the near future.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e80_1186720972

Look at this video on YouTube.

I have been saying for years that all that is needed to kill the war machine is for people to stay home en masse, to stop feeding the machine, and that marching and demonstrating in the streets is useless. There is a reason why so many horror / disaster films feature empty streets as the ultimate nightmare:

The only way we can permanently stop war is to think obliquely use common sense and do not do anything that will not permanently fix what is wrong.

We had this debate on BLOGDIAL before the historic march organized by StopWar. Demonstrations are pointless because they do not achieve their ends, and the people who go on them are nothing more than stupid monkeys; the people who organize them are actually working for the enemy. Time and time again we have said this, (and other stuff) and had it proved, sadly.

Now the directors of this film, after everything we have said and witnessed are asking everyone to:

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=739

Now, it seems, the message has emerged into the infinitely dense inertia sump of the mass that the only way out is O.U.T.

This video is only the beginning. The next obvious step is for all those people to simply NOT PAY on the 15th.

This is all a consequence of the internets, some ideas whose time has come, and a shift in the mass that is unstoppable. The only choice that the enemy has is to be swept aside as the mass moves, like a glacier, crushing everything underneath it that is not part of it, carrying boulders along with it, carving out the landscape in its slow, majestic and inexorable way.

Global warming will not melt THIS glacier. No lie will penetrate it, or deflect it.

False flag terror has been de-fanged as a way to motivate the mass, thanks again to some great documentary films on the internets.

The ideas of liberty are now spreading geometrically to every corner of the mass on the globe. It is bigger than one man. This next action, and the actions to follow will have a profound, tangible, measurable effect that will be iterated again through the network that connects the mass, further empowering it in a feedback loop that will increase the density of the liberty idea within the mass, making it even more impenetrable, more able to absorb any lie, in the way that black holes absorb everything; but in the case of the mass, there is no event horizon. Ideas falling into the mass are actually absorbed and then destroyed.

This action is quite different to the feel good, useless, safety valve false maneuvers of demonstrations and marches, that feed back only despair, failure, exhaustion and an overwhelming feeling of impotence, smallness and hopelessness – just what the enemy and its witting and unwitting boosters have been using to corral the mass into acquiescence. Now, another type of feedback is building up, and its shrill shriek blots out the bleating of the ‘there is nothing we can do’ brigade of sheeple; it is a force field of feedback that uses the infinite gravity of the mass as its power source. All the old messages are dead. The old lies are crumbling under the tidal forces as the mass moves.

They are FINISHED!

The UK Says It Shut Down 44,000 Pornographic Web Sites Last Year

The Associated Press

LONDON

The UK shut down 44,000 Web sites and arrested 868 people for Internet pornography last year, state media said Wednesday.

The UK’s Public Security Ministry launched a crackdown on Internet pornography last year, saying it had “perverted the UK’s young minds.”

Nearly 2,000 people involved in Internet pornography activities also were penalized, the official BBC News Agency said.

Separately, the BBC said 33 people were arrested in connection with a Web site that allowed customers, mainly in Scotland, to view live sex shows filmed at 12 separate locations in the northern British city of Grimsby.

The BBC said 23 of those arrested were performers who were ordered detained for 15 days, while the 10 others, including two Scots, were managers. It did not say when the arrests took place, but said the heavily trafficked site had been among those targeted in the crackdown last year.

Cash, computers and film equipment were also seized, the BBC said.

The UK forbids pornography and paid sex in virtually all forms, although prostitution is common and the government’s Internet police struggle to block pornographic Web sites based abroad.

The UK’s online population has soared to 21 million people and could surpass Greece this year to become one of the world’s biggest, the official UK Internet Network Information Center said earlier this month.

The government will increasingly concentrate on Web sites that have audio or video, blogging or send information to cell phones, the BBC said.

The UK recently said it wanted to exert more control over Internet videos and video-sharing Web sites.

The government regularly censors and restricts access to content it considers subversive or politically sensitive, and British Web sites often hire their own censors to eliminate certain content.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

[…]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4175590

Associated Press has another story. And there are many others.

Of course, these sorts of measure can never work. What will happen is this; someone will produce a list of al the sites that are being filtered, and then someone else will create a proxy gateway so that anyone that wants those sites can get to them without having to change any settings on their browser.

Jacqui Smith is yet another in the long line of imbeciles who have taken the job of Home Secretary. This list reads like a who’s who of evil monsters. Jultra had the best lines on Charles Clarke; sadly, he is not posting regularly anymore.

From Edri-gram:
====================================
8. ELOI – a French database to manage the expulsion of illegal migrants
====================================

On 26 December 2007, the French government published a decree creating the ELOI file, a database aimed at facilitating the expulsion of illegal migrants. In March 2007, the French highest administrative court cancelled a first attempt by the government to create this file, after 4 French NGOs, among which EDRI member IRIS, filed a case against the Interior ministry.

While the March text was cancelled by the Conseil d’Etat for procedural reasons only, the new version shows some important progress related to concerns raised by the NGOS. The main changes are that no data will be kept on visitors of illegal migrants in retention centres, and that personal data of citizens with which illegal immigrants are staying, when not in retention centres are kept for 3 months rather than 3 years.

While this step backwards from the government side is a direct result of the French NGOs action, the ELOI database remains unacceptable, according to the authors of the former complaint, with regards to the migrants themselves and their families. The duration of the retention of their data remains 3 years for most of the data, and data on their children are still kept in the ELOI file. Last but not least, the database still contains data on “the need for specific surveillance (of the migrant) with regards to the public order’. According to the NGOs, this demonstrates that the government makes a direct association between immigration and criminality.

Moreover, the decree contains new provisions, adding to the ELOI database an impressive amount of administrative and judicial data dealing with all aspects of the expulsion process, most of them to be retained for 3 years. In addition, a new purpose has been set to this file, which is to produce statistics on expulsion decisions and their actual executions.

These problems, as well as the Sarkozy administration setting up quantitative objectives – a minimum of 25000 expulsions targeted in 2008 – have made the French NGOs declare that the actual meaning of this file is the government willingness to manage the expulsion of migrants at an unprecedented level. They consider that with the ELOI database, this expulsion policy has reached an industrial level.

Decree n. 2007-1890 creating the ELOI database (only in French, 26.12.2007)

CNIL’s (French DPA) opinion on the draft decree (only in French, 24.05.2007)

French NGOs (CIMADE, GISTI, IRIS, LDH) joint press release (only in French, 03.01.2008)

IRIS dossier on foreigners and databases in France (only in French)

EDRI-gram: French high court cancels the creation of illegal migrants database (14.03.2007)

(Contribution by Meryem Marzouki, EDRI member IRIS – France)

So how long will it be before the French public are treated as Eloi too?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/story/0,,2240907,00.html

ID cards for foreigners within three years

… which is the modern-day, socially acceptable (to HMG) equivalent of the compulsory wearing of a Star of David. And the first step on the path to Idi Aminism, as you mentioned yesterday.

On BBQ they run HMG-approved, “ID-lite: it’s alrite” stories.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7186643.stm

But still quote BlindKid, telling it like it is:

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett, who introduced the initial identity card bill, said the scheme would not work unless everyone had to have a card. “In my opinion, without it being mandatory, there is little point in doing it,” he added.

And…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrights/story/0,,2241005,00.html

FBI wants instant access to British identity data

… which is just incredible. For those worried by such schemes there are simple steps to avoid it, as Blogdial has repeatedly pointed out:
1. Don’t give anyone your personal data
2. Vote Tory/LibDem and let them know why you are prepared to support them.
3. DON’T GIVE ANYONE YOUR PERSONAL DATA.

Then, of course, there is the Prum Treaty, which gives anyone in the EU with access to the right computer, indirectly or directly, access to all your personal government-collected information. Do you know anyone who has heard of it, mentioned it to you, expressed their concern? I don’t.
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.12/prum-treaty-eu

It’s the secret tunnel through which personal liberty escapes, dug in the depths of night with a stolen spoon, and hidden from sight behind a poster of a busty wench… it goes unnoticed until one day…

‘That’s not Personal Freedom! That’s a papier-mache model of Personal Freedom!?!?!?! Hang on… OMIGOD Personal Freedom has has been whisked away down the secret tunnel behind the busty wench! How did we not notice!?’

‘I dunno… I’ve been sleeping in the same room as Personal Freedom for years and didn’t have an inkling anything like this could happen… ‘

How many times will people ignore the scraping sounds in the night before they wake up?

On a similar vein, after a year or two of ‘Facebook is fab, you simply must join and be my “friend”‘ articles, there is now a plethora of bleating, indignant tripe being written about how bad Facebook is, and how shocked these commentators are that Facebook has a very convoluted privacy policy, exploits your personal data to the absolute limits, and exists purely to make profit for people who are already incredibly wealthy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/10/privacy.it
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/20/facebook.privacy

‘Hang on, you seem to be fucking me up the arse and have been doing for some time but I’ve only just noticed!’

No pity for fools here. Just contempt for what passes as insightful journalism.

Gah!

Our unelected Prime Minister Gordon Brown still does not seem to have grasped the fundamentals of his NuLabour compulsory centralised biometric database the National Identity Register scheme according to this propaganda interview with The Observer newspaper this Sunday

Gordon Brown demonstrated how shockingly out of touch with the real world, by trying to justify the multi-billion pound compulsory national population surveillance and control infrastructure that is the National Identity Register, partly because of some small scale, unproven fingerprint biometric trials in some US and, allegedly, European shops, even though there have been no such successful trials in the UK, and no major UK retailer has decided that the idea is worth spending money on nationally.

The Yorkshire Ranter got in ahead of us, to point out some of the obvious flaws in Gordon Brown’s muddled answers to the rather soft and friendly questioning by The Observer regarding so called “ID Cards”.

Maybe when you go to a supermarket, as happens in some parts of the States and Europe, you are going to be safer, instead of carrying a credit card which can easily be stolen, to use your biometrics to shop.

This has to be some kind of record for biometric scienciness; the Government has historically always handwaved reality-based objections to ID cards away by claiming that we wouldn’t need them very often, whilst also floating insanely grandiose visions of biometric imperialism. Charles Clarke, we may recall, advertised them as “making it easier to rent videos”; as well as offering horrific new possibilities for total surveillance, this would have blasted the Government’s hazy costings down to nothing, demanding vast numbers of readers and numbers of transactions per second that even telecoms engineers would consider ambitious. To say nothing of insulting our intelligence.

This idea is both ridiculous, and, typically for Gordon Brown, a re-tread of a previously announced idea – see Gordon Brown – part 3 of the Chatham House speech on the 10th of October 2006, when he was still Chancellor of the Exchequer, trying unsuccessfully to pretend that he had a grasp on “security” and foreign affairs.

See also this NO2ID discussion forum thread on this latest spin by Gordon Brown.

See also Ideal Government, for another dissection of Gordon Brown’s ideas on “ID Cards” as outlined in the Observer interview.

We have not forgotten the other recent, dishonest and misleading attempts by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and by his “no longer a safe pair of hands” sidekick Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, who tried to pretend that the ongoing missing HMRC data .privacy and security breach scandal , which has not gone away, for which they are personally responsibler, would somehow have been less serious, if the the wretched biometric National Identity Register had been in place and linked to the missing Child Benefit Award database.

These political lies were punctured elegantly by this open letter from leading academic experts, who described them as a “fairy-land” scenario.

[…]

From Spyblog

Is any of this really a surprise?

Gordon Brown is a piece of shapeless grey clay in motion; imaginationless, artless, without personality or a soul; a creature, a tool, a lifeless monster. He has not a single idea of his own; his only reason for being is to attain a place where people will bow to him and where he can rub shoulders with ‘the great and the good’. This is why he hates Prime Ministers Questions he is not the PM to be grilled and made to look bad; he is there to shmooze with Richard Branson and make speeches on the New World Order world stage.

All that needs to be done is to completely refuse to comply with any aspect of the ID card scheme. The market is taking care of Mr Brown from their angle.

A bastard like Brown cannot survive a simultaneous attack from every side.

These people are so terrified of the public that they have to go out with security for even the smallest thing.

And while we are at it, look at the sort of FILTH these beasts eat:

Honestly, people who don’t know enough not to eat SHIT like that have no business telling ANYONE ANYTHING about ANYTHING.

Look at all the great comments over at this Guardian Blogs post:

Ron Paul places second in Nevada. Now that’s news. Bad news for Rudy Giuliani, whose Florida-or-bust strategy likely didn’t account for America’s mayor losing to the likes of Paul in Iowa and Michigan as well. Good news for Mitt Romney, who’s watching John McCain’s image recede in the rear-view mirror. For a few hours anyway. Interesting news for the rest of us. Does America really want a return to the gold standard? Concealed weapons to become commonplace? We know you Ron Paul supporters are online. Tell us what you think of the man’s coup earlier today

Hmph! Lets take a look:

Dr. Paul is the only uncorrupted and uncorruptible candidate running in the primaries for both parties.He is the only candidate that speaks humbly in terms of spending the people’s money and blood. Every other candidate speaks arrogantly of the “government’s” money, blood and resources.You trivialize the significance of his experience, his sincere empathy for this country’s history and that which is uniquely “American”, as well as the logic and breadth of his proposals by seizing upon a couple aspects of a very broad ideological discussion that has been going on for — well at least a hundred years.

Let me get this right. You would expect American voters to view as freakish a candidate who proposed the cessation of spending a trillion dollars a year of money borrowed from ideological adversaries simply in order to sponsor a military presence in 170 countries via 300 bases? To reject the only candidate that has proposed logical and sanely compassionate solutions for funding transitional economic and political solutions for a country on the verge of bankruptcy? You would expect American voters to reject a candidate that views the sacred function of government is to honor its founding covenants? You would expect American voters to view with contempt the only candidate that treats them as thinking citizens, capable of digesting the good, bad and ugly—and not subscribing to pandering, platitude and pervasive mendacity?And here is the real perversion of modern media. Here is the clarion call to citizens around the world that the almighty intellectually elite members of the vaunted fourth or fifth estate of “democracy” have subscribed to their own form of corruption.

This is a statesman whose campaign exists solely and thoroughly only through the contributions of individual donors. Did you hear that? Individual donors. Not Hillary’s and Obama’s $125 million of corporate donors, not the personal fortunes of one like Romney, not the insider connections of the apologist McCain—but regular folks.And we’re nationwide. And maybe some day in the future, we’ll go worldwide. And then maybe again the good and decent people in Europe, Russia, China, Asia, the Middle East will be able to understand what it means to be free. To be truly free.

Because what we are inheriting now is, in the end, slavery.

…

I wonder how the writers of our constitution would vote nowdays between the guy who:

1. wants money backed by something, or money backed by borrowing from the chinese?
2. Spreading our resourses so thin that we are effectively bankrupt and selling our industries to foreigners, or someone who wants to cut spending down to sustainable operations?
3. The guy that supports eroding personal liberties that they struggled so hard to achieve, or the guy that wants to keep big brother out of your business?

It is no contest….

Ron Paul would win if the founding fathers were voting. Our country has drifted so far off course that most have lost sight of what is important. Studying history might give us an insight as to how the great nations of the past slipped into nothingness, but I suspect that it is really to late to stop our slide. We probably have to crash and burn before hopefully something better will crawl out of the ashes. Even then there will probably be some kind of NY Banker to extend him credit.

…

“Does America really want a return to the gold standard? Concealed weapons to become commonplace?” Second question first. The vast majority of US states already have liberal handgun carry permit laws that allow law-abiding citizens to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon. (Actually, in one or two states you don’t even need a permit.) As each of these laws was proposed, anti-gun propagandists predicted that an orgy of “wild-west” shootouts would result. They have been proven wrong. If anything, the implementation of liberal handgun carry legislation has been associated with slightly reduced levels of violent crime. The real question is whether people should be rendered defenseless against violent criminals who (we may be sure) will get guns, legally or not. Apparently that’s what you folks in Britain want. Maybe that’s why your levels of violent crime have gone up so much in recent years. First question. The idea of a gold- or commodity-backed standard is to control government spending. Can’t just print more gold. Also, the value of the money would be relatively stable, which helps people plan for the future. Sounds like a good idea to me.

I think its pretty clear, from these and the rest of the comments that people in the usa with at least one firing brain cell, understand that guns are not the issue, and that they actually supress crime levels.

Of all the issues Ron Paul stands for, this article, naturally, picks the most controversial. He may be right on the Gold standard and weapons, or not, but these are side issues. It would be silly to concentrate on those in a time when democracy is being replaced by a belligerent, mad plutocracy that plunges Western societies and the world into chaos and war.

that last one was a very insightful comment, and I agree with it; typical of the prissy, limp wristed fear-mongering, scared of loud noises, Health & Safety Fascist, nanny-statist, control freak, scumbag, lying mouth, traitor loo paper Guardian to focus on things that are just not central to the Ron Paul platform, but which immediately pander to the worst ‘instincts’ of the modern British; FEAR.

But I digress. I posted this because reading those comments helped to wipe away my despair at meeting two very stupid americans, who can be further explained by this, which comes from another comment on that page:

One of the best quotes I found out there which sums it up a bit is from gambling911.com: “Sadly, it has become clear that without a fair shake in the media, it is really difficult to make a realistic run for the White House. On a very unscientific survey of anecdotal evidence (something that seems to be just a reliable as the polling methods these day that all but inagurated Obama in New Hampshire) I have found that roughly 90% of the population has never heard Ron Paul’s message. However, of those that hear the whole message, and not the twisted distorted filtered garbage the main stream media puts out, 80% become supporters….Over and over I hear that people like Ron Paul, would love to have him as President, they believe in his views, but alas, they don’t think he can win so they are willing to vote for someone they don’t like who will give them things they don’t want and take away their rights and liberties. It boggles the mind.” Check out Ron for yourself. Tell your friends. The best place to point them if they show ANY interest at all is here: http://thecaseforronpaul.com

Boggles indeed.

Sadly, I will not be able to report to you wether or not those nincompoops did what they said they would do, and wether or not they changed their minds. That they are able to and do is all that counts in the end.

This afternoon, we went up to Notting Hill for a late lunch.

Sitting to the right of us was a softly spoken american couple. Many americans in London have loud voices where the letter ‘R’ is brutally over pronounced and the work ‘like’ is used liberally and inappropriately. These two were not of that type. The female was reading a Sunday Tabloid paper, and spontaneously started tutting loudly.

I bit.

“Thats why I don’t read newspapers in the UK”.

“Oh! I know, they are so TERRIBLE!”

Then it came to, via a circuitous route, to the 2008 election.

They did not know who Ron Paul Was.

It transpired that these two people are using ‘The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from, and How You Can Choose‘. as their method of deciding who to vote for.

They did not know that america is borrowing money from China to run the war in Iraq.

They did not know that the head of the GAO is, in an unprecedented move, sounding the alarm about america’s debt crisis.

I told them that it would be useful for their decision making process to look up Ron Paul on the internets.

The man sitting to our right said that he is supporting John McCain, because, “He (John McCain) is against the earmarks and pork spending of Washington.”

I pointed out that John McCain wants to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years. I also pointed out again that america doesn’t have the money to pay for this, and that america is borrowing money from China to run this ‘war’.

“Even if you agree with John McCain in principle, who is going to pay for this adventure?”, said I.

He said, “america needs to keep troops all over the world. The Soviet Union fell because of those troops, and they help spread democracy. I’ll pay for it.”, said the man.

And we petty much left it at that.

This is the level of insanity and pure ignorance that the american public is operating at, and these people were not the lowest common denominator, but very educated, well spoken types.

Then the female came out with, “what is the central part of Ron Paul’s platform?”.

“Obey the Constitution, small government, no nation building, don’t be the policeman of the world. You can see him talking about this all over the internet, and when you read up about him and his background you will see that he is not like any other candidate”, I replied.

“Does that mean he is for americans being able to own guns, because if he follows the constitution, that means he is for guns, and I am against guns”.

I’m not making any of this up.

This is a person who has just been told that america is about to go bankrupt, there is a dream candidate whose voting record is perfect, who wants to end the insane wars and hatred that is (rightfully) tilted against america, that america is borrowing from China to run its wars….and she is concerned about GUN OWNERSHIP.

That is like a rat being concerned about finding a warm place to sleep on the Titanic.

They both promised that they would ‘Google Ron Paul’, being intrigued as to why it was that they had not heard or read about a man who has just won second place in the Nevada caucus.

Once thing is for certain; american international adventurism is over. The question now is how is it going to end. The idiots who still believe in the lies and false reasoning of the type that John McCain spouts are going to get a nasty wake up call in the future if they do not wake up right now. In any case, the world is a much bigger place than the usa; there are more genius level people in China than there are people in the usa and there are more people learning English in China than the entire population of the US. The world will go ahead without america; she will become a dream, a thing of the past, with only a flag on the moon to remember her by…and that will be plucked out of the lunar soil by Chinese lunar colonists.

People like this charming couple have a choice. They either wake up and hunker down, or have america subsumed after a disastrous crash the likes of which they have not got the brains to imagine.

All of this in around ten minutes.

What a life!

Ahmed Quraishi: Do we have a logistical problem in handling or managing our strategic assets?

Air Commodore Khalid Banuri: It is laughable. We did make the bomb, didn’t we? The world thought we couldn’t do it. We, too, were always concerned about how to protect it. Since 1998, when South Asia went overtly nuclear … this is 2007, we have consistently augmented our systems, a point that many people forget or overlook.

Ahmed Quraishi: Who holds the authority to push the nuclear button in Pakistan?

Khalid Banuri: The short answer is very easy: Not an individual but the National Command Authority, comprised of all the senior decision makers of the country, [they] would look at all the issues including the deployment, if it ever comes to that.

AQ: Is it possible there could be a scientist on the inside, an extremist with links to terrorists, maybe Osama bin Laden, who could steal a Pakistani weapon …

KB: In a Tom Clancy fiction that could be a possibility. We are very sure of what our systems are.

AQ: What about the reports before 9/11 that mentioned the links between some of the scientists in our strategic programs, names, who met terrorists in Afghanistan?

KB: Those names, when you actually go into the details, had nothing to do with the classified side of our programs,[they might have been] some people from the system who perhaps were power plant engineers who had some sympathies and were doing some charity work.

The key thing here is that Pakistan investigated those situations and now we have a system that takes care of all aspects, even for our very respected scientists who retire. There is a system where they will be occupied in various ways and we will know what they are doing.

AQ: Let’s say there is a violent change of government in Islamabad. Someone hiding in the foothills of Islamabad breaks into one of your facilities, kills 5 or 6 guards, goes inside, picks up one of those nuclear weapons held in a very elaborate security parameter, takes it out, comes out of the building, puts it in the back of a truck or van and speeds away. How possible is this scenario?

KB: Absolutely not possible. But it is a fair question. We have several layers—a multitude of systems of security and technical solutions for security, some of which are non-intrusive and invisible. There are no exceptions for anyone from the outside going into a facility. There are various levels of access. Then there is the issue of insider threat. Not possible. We look at each individual who works within the system very closely. We look at them from various angles, something that the West knows at ‘persona reliability’, the human factor. We look into everything, background checks, medical records, police records, any history of possible impulsive behavior. And if there is anyone who doesn’t have a smooth graph of behavior, they are not put into any sensitive jobs. Even if there is someone in personal distress, for example because of a death in the family, there is a way for relieving them for a few days from sensitive responsibility.

AQ: So the cinematic perception of a Pakistani equivalent of a suitcase carried at all times by the President or the Prime Minister, containing the button for a nuclear missile or something, is not correct?

KB: The decision making about nuclear assets is very carefully thought out. It’s not a hair trigger situation. We all have seen many Cold War movies and many of these idea come from them.

AQ: Well said. Where are we keeping our nuclear bombs?

KB: The response to this question is in two words: Strategic Ambiguity. If anyone even claims he knows where our weapons are, they are wrong. And if they think they do, they are in for a rude shock. Even within the system, if someone doesn’t need to know about sensitive sites, they don’t have that information. So very few in Pakistan would know where they are. And I’m not going to tell you [smiling].

AQ: Really, I was kind of hoping for a hint. Okay, are the safeguards in the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, Israel and India any better than the Pakistani nuclear safeguards?

KB: Even if I sound arrogant, ours are better. We have the advantage of hindsight. We have worked hard, we have trained hard, and we are very sure of what we have. We have learned from the best international practices. We don’t have aircrafts flying around with unauthorized nuclear missiles and we have a short nuclear history compared to some of the countries you mentioned.

AQ: Media reports have suggested that the Americans have helped Pakistan secure its nuclear assets, which implies that the Americans have access to Pakistani nukes?

KB: Ensuring nuclear security is our own interest. We made the bomb, we have the means to protect it, and we’re confident of that security. But we do not mind exposure to education and awareness, but in a completely non-intrusive way.

AQ: So you’re saying you have exchanged ideas with the Americans but not given them any access?

KB: Absolutely. That’s out of the question. That’s the red line that was defined even before we got into this exchange of ideas. We do have some rudimentary equipment and some training [from the U.S.]. And the kinds of figures you have seen in the media [about U.S. financial aid to secure Pakistani nuclear assets] are highly exaggerated.

AQ: The figure quoted was in the tens of millions …

KB: A $100 million was quoted in one report [New York Times, Nov. 2007]. Nowhere in that range.

AQ: Really?

KB: Nowhere.

AQ: Some Pakistanis are concerned and are asking what if the rudimentary equipment handed over to you contained a transmitter that could send out signals to a satellite or something exposing where our installations are?

KB: You have responded to the question yourself. Anyone concerned in Pakistan would have thought about this. The Pakistani nuclear establishment is always concerned about even the remotest of possibilities. We have this responsibility on behalf of this whole nation. It’s a sacred responsibility.

AQ: So let me put this to rest once and for all: you have not given access to the Americans as part of accepting their ‘help’?

KB: No access whatsoever. There are no foreigners who have any access to any Pakistani assets and they will never have. There are very few Pakistanis, even within our policy circle, who have all the information.

AQ: Does everyone concerned inside and outside the region understand there will be consequences if Pakistan’s strategic assets are attacked?

KB: Let me say it in plain words: Those who have hostile intent would know that any endeavor to attack Pakistan in any way will not be successful and it will be disastrous. Our weapons are meant for deterrence and not for [aggression]. But we have the capability to deal with any threat.

AQ: So we will respond if we are attacked?

KB: My message is: Don’t mess with us.

AQ: Late Mrs. Benazir Bhutto had publicly warned a few weeks before her tragic death that extremists could descend on the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and take control of the nearby nuclear installations at Kahuta. Is this true?

KB: I don’t want to get into the politics of this statement. But I’d like to make two points. One, Pakistan’s nuclear assets are safe and secure. I say this with a lot of confidence. And, Two, I’d request all Pakistanis, wherever they are, that they should not mix politics with nuclear security.

[End of Interview]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19101.htm

“I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, “You’re too arrogant! And if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I’ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name. Be still and know that I’m God.”

Martin Luther King

See it here, reworked, and listen to the original.

500g assorted nuts; pecans, walnuts, cashews, brazils…

Roast on a baking sheet for 10mins at 180 C, until golden and aromatic

2 tablespoons chopped rosemary 

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons dark muscavado sugar

2 teaspoons maldon salt

1 tablespoon melted butter

Combine the above, add the nuts, toss very well and serve warm.

The only Nigella Lawson recipe I’ve ever known, and maybe its so good because she ‘borrowed’ it from a New York bar. These nuts are fantastic. I recommend an oloroso sherry, or a belgian beer such as Kasteel or Trappistes Rochefort to accompany.

The connection between over subsidised Departments and bad legislation is undeniable. Secretaries of State are continuing to turn taxes into turkeys.

The Guardian

The conventions of parliamentary democracy dictate that there should be a moment in the narrative arc of every term where the politicians are invited to petition voters and put their case as to why they deserve to be in government. In the US primaries this opportunity is presented in the form of a question. “What would it mean to you,” a pundit will ask, fixing a gaze suggestive of psychoanalytic importance, “to win Colorado?”

I don’t know what the producers originally expected this question to elicit, but if it was disclosure of burning liberal ambition, they must have been disappointed. Politicians gulp, mist up and synthesise all their young hopes and dreams for a future in the legislation industry in one tremulous sentence: “I’d be able to build a new secure country.”

Cynics might suggest that a more security for the US or UK is to political contestants what world peace was to Miss World entrants – an acceptable alibi for taxation. What is interesting, though, is not that their answer might be untrue. It’s that this is the most noble, vote-winning reply they can come up with. It seems to have literally not occurred to anyone that “devolving great powers” might be the most blameless dream of a competitor in a democratic contest. Either that, or it gets ruled out on the grounds of irrelevance. So entirely has direct democracy been excised from the values of a modern politician that the only distinction left between a worthy winner and a wannabe is how they intend to spend their billions.

The drastic job losses and cuts announced by the Home Office on Tuesday would normally, you might think, be a cause for concern among people who have some lobbied investment in the ‘security bubble’ of the country. There has been much righteous indignation about a former Secretary of State’s private equity firm taking over a famous biometric data company, and No2ID were probably accurate in their description of the regime as “a confused bull in a china shop” when they criticised the department last year.

But it is easy not to sympathise with the new bosses’ surprise at discovering entries in the Home Office’s accounts such as £200,000,000 for fresh fruit and flowers – a well-known industry euphemism for lobbyists’ partying requirements – or the fact that 30% of the advances they hand out never result in an legislation being made, let alone laws that people want to obey. But you do not need to audit a major government department’s accounts to know that there is a serious problem – just listen to Radio 4. Talk to anyone in the legislation industry, and they will admit that the parallel themes of gross tax burden and crap legislation are not unconnected.

The conflation of progressive taxation and wealth is an entirely modern, counter-rational innovation. Large taxation has historically been made by people who had no choice; it was war andd famine that drove them, not megalomaniac fantasies. The First World War was fought on a shoestring, and remains ‘The Great War’ as we speak. The tragedy of what happened next, several billion-pound wars later, was most vividly illustrated on the cover of Hello, which featured – without an apparent trace of irony – Gordon Brown in a Rolls-Royce.

Gordon Brown is described as “on autopilot” over the upheavals at HMG. His reasons for this may involve a lack of creative integrity – we don’t yet know – but anyone who refuses to pass legislation unless it will cost the public billions is probably working on legislation he does not wants to hear. HMG is sending a billion pounds worth of unused tax credits to China, where they will be laundered and used to pave the pockets of ‘business partners’. There is no logical reason why politicians should deserve to be powerful; it’s simply that, for many years, the market made them that way. If, because of re-evaluating libertarianism, the market is ceasing to do so, there is surely no alternative moral entitlement available to invoke.

The industry’s excuse for levying taxes so highly has always been that it funds the development of new social enterprises. But the track record of governments in this department is woeful – in the past five years they have more or less stopped trying. New providers today are hoping to use venture capital, friendly societies and enterprising managers to bring themselves to our attention. That’s certainly a lot more challenging than banking a fat tax cheque, and spending it on drugs and middle management. But as a quality-control mechanism for filtering out the politicians chiefly interested in levying even more taxation, it is probably a radical improvement.

We start the year in Britain with a challenge to our essential nature, for 2008 might turn out to be the year when we decide to rip up the Magna Carta.

Among the basic civil rights in this country, there has always been, at least in theory, an inclination towards liberal democracy, which includes a tolerance of an individual’s right to privacy.

We are born free and have the right to decide what freedom means, each for ourselves, and to have control over our outward existence, yet that will no longer be the case if we agree to identity cards.

Britain is already the most self-watching country in the world, with the largest network of security cameras; a new study suggests we are now every bit as poor at protecting privacy as Russia, China and America.

But surveillance cameras and lost data will prove minuscule problems next to ID cards, which will obliterate the fundamental right to walk around in society as an unknown.

Some of you may have taken that freedom so much for granted that you forget how basic and important it is, but in every country where ID cards have ever been introduced, they have changed the relation between the individual and the state in a way that has not proved beneficial to the individual. I am not just talking Nazi Germany, but everywhere.

It is also a spiritual matter: a person’s identity is for him or her to decide and to control, and if someone decides to invest the details of their person in a higher authority, then it should not be the Home Office.

The compulsory ID card scheme is a sickness born of too much suspicion and too little regard for the meaning of tolerance and privacy in modern life.

Hooking individuals up to a system of instantly accessible data is an obscenity – not only a system waiting to be abused, but a system already abusing.

Though we don’t pay much attention to moral philosophy in the mass media now – Bertrand Russell having long been exchanged for the Jeremy Kyle Show – it may be worth remembering that Britain has a tradition of excellence when it comes to distinguishing and upholding basic rights and laws in the face of excessive power.

The ID cards issue should be raising the most stimulating arguments about who we are and how we are – but no, it is not: we nose the grass like sheep and prepare to be herded once again.

It seems the only person speaking up with a broad sense of what this all means is Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, who has devoted much of his new year message to underlining the sheer horribleness of the scheme.

He has said he will go to jail rather than bow to this “expensive, invasive and unnecessary” affront to “our natural liberal tendencies”.

I have to say I cheered when I heard this, not only because I agree, but because it is entirely salutary, in these sheepish times, to see a British politician express his personal feelings so strongly.

Many people on the other side of the argument make what might be called a category mistake when they say: “If you’ve nothing to hide, why object to carrying a card?”

Making it compulsory to prove oneself, in advance, not to be a threat to society is an insult to one’s right not to be pre-judged or vetted.

Our system of justice is based on evidence, not on prior selection, and the onus on proving criminality is a matter for the justice system, where proof is of the essence.

Many regrettable things occur as a result of freedom – some teenage girls get pregnant, some businessmen steal from their shareholders, some soldiers torture their enemies, some priests exploit children – but these cases would not, in a liberal society, require us to end the private existence of all people just in case.

If the existence of terrorists, these few desperate extremists, makes it necessary for everybody in Britain to carry an ID card then it is a price too high.

It is more than a price, it is a defeat, and one that we will repent at our leisure. Challenges to security should, in fact, make us more protective of our basic freedoms; it should, indeed, make us warm to our rights.

In another age, it was thought sensible to try to understand the hatred in the eyes of our enemies, but now it seems we consider it wiser just to devalue the nature of our citizenship.

What’s more – it won’t work. Nick Clegg has pointed to the gigantic cost and fantastic hubris involved in this scheme, but recent gaffes with personal information have shown just how difficult it is to control and protect data.

A poll of doctors undertaken by doctors.net.uk has today shown that a majority of doctors believe that the National Programme for IT – seeking to contain all the country’s medical records – will not be secure.

In fact, it is causing great worry. Many medical professionals fear that detailed information about each of us will soon be whizzing haphazardly from one place to another, leaving patients at the mercy of the negligent, the nosy, the opportunistic and the exploitative.

“Only people with something to hide will fear the introduction of compulsory ID cards.”

That is what they say, and it sounds perfectly practical. If you think about it for a minute, though, it begins to sound less than practical and more like an affront to the reasonable (and traditional) notion that the state should mind its own business.

In a just society, what you have to hide is your business, until such times as your actions make it the business of others. Infringing people’s rights is not an ethical form of defence against imaginary insult.

You shouldn’t have to tell the government your eye colour if you don’t want to, never mind your maiden name, your height, your personal persuasions in this or that direction, all to be printed up on a laminated card under some compulsory picture, to say you’re one of us.

You weren’t born to be one of us, that is something you choose, and to take the choice out of it is wrong. It marks the end of privacy, the end of civic volition, the end of true citizenship.

[…]

Telegraph

Well, the hammer has finally struck.

Several months ago, I wrote a column in which I described the strategy the establishment would use to attack Ron Paul’s candidacy:

The first step is already in play. The establishment will start by simply ignoring him, by using its power in the mainstream media and their influence over campaign donors. If possible, they will find ways of excluding him from the debates.

This strategy is already failing. The internet and talk radio are outside the elite’s direct control and are being used effectively by Rep. Paul to “get the message out.” (And mark my words, sooner or later the oligarchy will come for the internet. This medium has been a royal pain in their derriere from day one.)

If this strategy fizzles, the establishment will move on to ridicule and fear mongering. Ron’s ideas will be grotesquely distorted in establishment media “hit pieces.” They’ll say he wants to permit heroin use in public schools, or that he wants old people to die in the streets without their social security checks, or that he wants to allow greedy industrialists to dump toxic waste into our drinking water.

The next arrow in the oligarchy’s quiver will be scandal – real or fabricated. Usually, this takes the form of pictures, billing records, etc. involving financial or sexual hi-jinks. For folks with the right motivation and abilities, it would be child’s play to implicate him in some sort of phony ethical, moral, or financial skullduggery (e.g., doctored pictures, sordid media accounts from “eyewitnesses,” etc.)

Since the first two tactics met with limited success, they predictably moved on to the third (scandal) in the form of a scurrilous article in The New Republic. In that screed, James Kirchick accused Rep. Paul of authoring a series of articles that insulted blacks, gays, and a myriad of other “groups.”

Ron responded quickly. In a Reason interview, he noted that he did not write the articles in question and did not edit them. To his credit, he did take moral responsibility for inadequately policing the content of a newsletter associated with his name.

What is particularly nauseating about this hit-piece is the host of glaring double standards it represents.

James Kirchick is a prototypical neocon and a supporter of Rudy Giuliani’s candidacy for president. Rudy has been, from the start, a staunch supporter of Bush’s “War on Terror,” including the invasion of Iraq.

That invasion was conceived long before 9/11 and has taken the lives of somewhere between five hundred thousand and a million Iraqi civilians. Nearly four thousand American soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands more are physically and/or emotionally crippled. Our nation’s reputation has been soiled, perhaps irrevocably.

As has been exhaustively documented, that war was launched in a fog of lies, propaganda, and fabricated intelligence.

So now, five years into the war, we are forced to endure an attack by these same neocons, who are accusing the one viable antiwar candidate of…what?

Even if Ron Paul wrote every word in every one of those articles, how does that compare to the death and destruction the neocons have rained down on Iraq? It takes unimaginable chutzpah, nearly pathological gall, to stand amid mounds of smoking corpses and accuse Rep. Paul of cultural insensitivity.

Has America become so politically egocentric, so utterly consumed with its own cultural fetishes, that we could tolerate watching those who perpetrated the Iraq atrocity (or who supported it) smear a decent man for inadequately supervising a newsletter?

If Ron Paul’s candidacy is now tainted for (allegedly) slandering people of color, what should be the political punishment for Giuliani, McCain, Romney, and others who supported mass death and dismemberment of a third world country?

Even though I anticipated this sort of thing, it is infuriating to watch it unfold before my eyes.

Are we to be spared nothing?

In a very fundamental way, there are really only two candidates running for president this year: Ron Paul, and all the others.

This is because there are really only two issues at stake.

The first issue is our out-of-control foreign policy. America is embroiled in shooting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spend more on our military than nearly the rest of the world combined. We have troops stationed in over a hundred foreign countries. Manic interventionism has stretched our military to the breaking point, and has ruined our nation’s reputation.

The second issue is our impending economic implosion. Our government, which has shed the last vestiges of constitutional restraint, has made a myriad of promises that it cannot keep. Our outstanding obligations to fund social security, government health care programs, and everything else under the sun are rapidly bankrupting our nation. To maintain these Ponzi schemes, the Fed is debasing our currency and igniting an ugly bout of hyperinflation.

Our predicament is severe and profound. We must immediately begin to shed our overseas obligations and put our domestic house in order. Otherwise, we will find ourselves reenacting the collapse of the Soviet Union right here at home.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who is willing to address these issues. He is the only one who is willing to speak frankly with the American people about our predicament and the painful actions which must be taken to prevent a real catastrophe.

And rather than offering solutions, Obama, McCain, Clinton and Romney, (and the other political hacks running for president) are not even willing to talk honestly about the problems.

As I noted in the previous article, the reason for this is simple: The establishment benefits from the status quo and would be disempowered by Ron Paul’s proposed solutions.

Specifically, as I noted in that previous article, Ron Paul is running on three ideas:

1. The federal government must function within the strict guidelines of the Constitution.

2. America should deconstruct its empire, withdraw our troops from around the world and reestablish a foreign policy based on noninterventionism.

3. America should abolish the Federal Reserve Bank, eliminate fiat currency and return to hard money.

This is not a political agenda. This is not a party platform. It is a revolution. The entire ruling oligarchy would be swept away if these ideas were ever implemented. Every sentence, every word, every jot and tittle of this agenda is unacceptable, repellent and hateful to America’s ruling elite.

So let us all be forewarned. If Ron Paul’s candidacy should rise to serious contention, that New Republic hit piece will be mild compared to whatever comes next.

The rulers of the universe will not go quietly.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/latulippe82.html

They might not go quietly, but they will go in the end, like the Roman Empire did, and hopefully in the manner that the Soviet Union ended…only much faster. After all, who has seventy years to wait before a totalitarian system collapses? The same will go for the European Union as the Soviet Union; people will spontaneously, Baudrillard Mass style, down tools and bring about the end through inertia; the inertia of The Mass.

Americans: They’re fucked up, they talk like fags and their shit’s retarded, to quote a prescient film.

On the other hand…

They are the only country that could produce a Ron Paul, and they are the only country where such a man had a actual chance to get elected to the highest office and turn the country around on a dime. That is what is literally needed in this case.

This is why everyone still has hope for America, that everyone still has hope that the greatest country of all cam somehow re-emerge from the utter darkness that has enveloped it.

Despair is useless, and in a situation where a candidate like Ron Paul exists and can win, it is insanely dangerous.

The Telegraph

Surveillance cameras do little, if anything, to prevent late night alcohol-fuelled crime and violence on Britain’s high streets, the country’s most senior police officer in the field has admitted.

[…]

He also admitted the public had been “misled” into believing that installing camera systems would have a big impact on anti-social behaviour.

The article goes on to say only those thinking ‘rationally’ about CCTV surveillance will be deterred from criminal activity. In fact most people don’t think about CCTV, never mind rationally even when sober – as a general tool it is bound to be a remarkably ineffective deterrent.

To combat the problem, Mr Gerrard said he would like all camera owners and operators to be required by law to produce high quality images using a standardised system so the police could use them effectively in court.

Unfortunately Mr Gerrard fails it. Higher quality images will not increase the ‘rationality’ of the ‘law-abiding’ general public. Higher quality images will not remedy the problem of indiscriminate (non-targeted) CCTV capturing irrelevant images of the public.

This year computer users will be more exposed to cybercriminals than ever before. It’s not just because online crime is so attractive to identity theft gangs but, ironically, because the computer security industry that is supposed to protect users has deteriorated – from one which shared everything about newly discovered weaknesses to what some within it now call a “protection racket”.

It may sound alarmist,

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/17/computersecurity

SNIP!

Yes, it IS alarmist, and yet another example of computer illiteracy at The Guardian.

The fact of the matter is that you can…anyone can… download and install Ubuntu and be free of this ‘problem’.

The fact of the matter is that writers like Sean Hargrave are a part of this ‘protection racket’ because they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge and spread the information that there are perfect alternatives to Winblows; i.e. Ubuntu, which Dell are now delivering on their machines pre-installed. By stopping people from dumping Windows, Hargrave is protecting the Windows monopoly and monoculture which is the source of all these problems, and many others.

There is no longer any excuse not to run Linux instead of Windows. It outperforms Windows in every way, and has everything you need that you find on Windows (office suite) but for FREE. Its user interface is now more sophisticated than Aero on Vista, and since you can buy it pre-installed, that problem is gone also.

The reason why The Guardian doesn’t like linux is because they are an old economy newspaper. They are against the free music, free publishing, and free software movements, and every time they have an article about anything to do with any of the aforementioned subjects, they always take the stand of ‘the man’.

The answer to this is not fear-mongering articles with pictures of devils menacing the lone Guardian believer in his C0₂ neutral hovel. The answer is ‘go open source’; then the secrecy that unscrupulous companies use to gain commercial advantage is erased and everyone benefits…unless you are in the pockets of the people who sell the crappy products that you are complaining about.

And then there is the ‘problem’ of having nothing to fearmonger about once Windows is dead. But then people like this always find something to try and scare everyone about.

I think we need a new category: ‘fear-mongering’.