Vandals keep changing the letter ‘L’ to a ‘C’ on the village’s signs

Residents living in a graffiti-plagued village in Merseyside are being asked to consider changing its name to tackle vandals who alter signs in the village.

Lunt, which dates back to Medieval times, has been repeatedly targeted by vandals who change the “L” to a “C”.

[…]

The transmitter equipment is regularly worn by BBC radio reporters

A BBC radio reporter was held to the ground and searched by police under the Terrorism Act after his transmitter equipment was mistaken for a bomb.

Five officers forced BBC Radio Stoke’s Max Khan to his knees and held him face down in Stoke-on-Trent on Monday.

He was wearing a backpack with protruding wires and aerials. Staffordshire Police have apologised.

Earlier this year armed police tackled a man in the city after fearing his MP3 player was a gun.

Mr Khan said he was targeted after police were told an “Arabic-looking man was acting suspiciously” outside the Potteries Shopping Centre in Hanley.

[…]

Arrested, caged and DNA tested – for using MP3

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Safe and sound: Darren Nixon recovers from his ordeal

A commuter was arrested at gunpoint and had his DNA and fingerprints taken simply for listening to his MP3 player while waiting for a bus.

Darren Nixon was surrounded by armed police after his music player was mistaken for a gun.

When a passer-by saw the 28-year-old get out his black Philips machine to change tracks, she panicked and dialled 999.

Police tracked Mr Nixon using CCTV. As he got off the bus home from work he was surrounded by a firearms unit, who bundled him into a van.

He was then put in a cell and his fingerprints, DNA and mugshot were taken before he was released.

Although police realised it was a false alarm, Mr Nixon, from Stoke-on-Trent, now has to live with his DNA stored on a national database.

The force will also keep on record that he was arrested on suspicion of a firearms offence.

[…]

From the ridiculous to the Kafkaesque.

Is there still anyone out there clinging to the pathetic excuse that ‘I’ve got nothing to hide, they’ll never come for me.’

‘I’m alright Jack’ works fine until its you on your knees with a gun at your head for ‘looking Arabic’ or brandishing an MP3 player in a public place.

“Innocent until We decide otherwise.”

I just had an eerie experience.

Whilst surfing around, I went to the Paul Smith site, which has a section called ‘music’.

In there, is a link to Tom Ravenscroft.

Tom Ravenscroft is the son of John Peel. He does a show for Channel 4 Radio.

I clicked on the latest show to hear what it is like. When his voice came down the internets, I felt a tingle run down my spine.

Any of you who used to listen to John Peel will know exactly what I am talking about.

What a life!

Schools could be raided by police to crack down on knife crime, Ken Livingstone proposed today.

The Mayor suggested that fingerprinting and DNA profiling could be used to help to identify youngsters who threw away weapons. He also called for tougher sentencing for those involved in stabbings to prevent others going down the same route.

What this actually means is that all pupils in London need to be fingerprinted, DNA swabbed and put into a database so that when they find the one or two bad guys (or girls) with knives, they can be identified.

Ken Livinston is certifiably insane; the true inheritor of Stalin’s mantle, after the living reincarnation of Stalin himself, Gordon Brown.

However, there are likely to be concerns over the civil liberties implications of his proposals for schools.

Right!

Mr Livingstone told LBC radio: “So many kids now are carrying a knife because they think someone else might try and stab them and, of course, very often they end up being stabbed with their own knife.

So many. So we have to rape them all in order to stop them. Ken, you are a scumbag, full stop.

“I think you need a really high-profile crackdown and I’d be quite prepared where we know some schools have a particular problem – as long as the teachers and parents are up for this – you suddenly flood the school with police and you arrest everyone carrying a knife.

As long as the parents are ‘up for this’ its OK to rape children. Riiiiiiiiight.

“I know a lot of them will drop them on the ground but with fingerprints, DNA profiling, we’ll identify most of the people carrying those knives.”

Ken is a police state fantacist, a hideous gargoyle control addict, and a monster. Only his will matters, as we saw with the extension of the Congestion Charge zone, despite 70% of residents saying ‘no’ he went ahead anyway.

He added: “Judges have got to recognise the need for exemplary sentencing to get the message home – carry a knife, you’ll go to prison. You can’t carry a knife then expect to get 20 hours community service.”

Judges are best suited to interpret the law. Ken should get a broom out and sweep the streets of London. He cannot even do that correctly. Many parts of London are no better than pig styes and he is responsible for it.

The Mayor was accused of insensitivity to the families of two teenagers stabbed to death last week when he declared that “if it bleeds, it leads” the news. His aides said he made the comments before he had heard about the murders.

Ken is insensitive to anything but his own perverted desire for absolute power.

Mr Livingstone admitted there would be civil liberties concerns over his proposals on knife crime. There could also be legal issues as police must arrest suspects before taking fingerprints or DNA swabs.

In other words, guilty until proven innocent, yet again.

The total aim of police state boosters like Fascist Ken.

Ken, Brown, Smith and the other mass murdering perverts like to sprinkle the magic sauce of DNA technology on every problem. Now they want to sprinkie it onto children. The fact of the matter is that the problems that create knife crime will not be stopped by taking knives out of the hands of people who need them. These measures are plasters applied to shotgun wounds. But I digress. This ‘plan’ has not been thought out, will be rejected as absurd, and shows Ken Livingston scrambling around for big headlines because he is running scared of Boris Johnson. That is what this is all about, pure and simple.

Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Brian Paddick said the support of local communities was more important, adding: “The way to tackle gun and knife crime is not to demonise young people but to rebuild trust between police and the community.”

[…]

Evening Standard

What-ever.

All of these people are vile, repulsive beasts, and none of them have even the slightest bit of imagination.

Let us help them.

If you want to stop knives entering a school, you expel all of the trouble-making students.

And that is it.

Teachers know intimately who the bad people in their schools are. If they were allowed to run their schools AS schools and not makeshift borstals then this problem would disappear over night.

Q: But what happens when the children that are expelled are out roaming the streets like feral beasts?
A: That is the problem of the negligent parents and the police.

etc etc.

Barak Obama’s first act as president will be to lie under oath.

When he is sworn in at his inauguration ceremony, he will swear, on the Holy Bible, the following oath:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

He will swear that he will, “to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.

When Obama says this, he will be lying.

Thanks to Kurt Nimmo and Raw Story we have a clip that demonstrates Obama’s unctuous frictionless, expert facility to lie. In this video, which is is a segment of a ‘Town Hall’ meeting where audience members get to ask questions, someone comes to the microphone and asks:

AUDIENCE MEMBER
Its been reported that you and your wife are in the globalist ‘CFR’ which is the Council on Foreign Relations. I would like to know if that is true, and I would also like to know where you stand on the North American Union, which has been confirmed recently in the press (Ron Paul actually spoke about it and the Congress has spent some money on it) This North American union involves a union much like the European Union, only with Canada Mexico and the United States, and the possible merging of the money system into a piece called the Amero which would actually strip the United States of some of its sovereignty and perhaps our rights. Where do you stand on that?

OBAMA
Well first of all uh, im not uh, the Council on Foreign Relations, uh I don’t know if I am a official member, I have spoken there before. Uh it basically is just a forum where a bunch of people talk about foreign policy. Uh and, so there’s nothing, uh there’s no official membership…i don’t have a card or a special handshake or anything like that. (LAUGHTER) um, the, in terms of this North America…uh, what did you?…Union! This has been, uh, something i know Ron Paul has been talking about and people have been talking about. I have to say with all due respect that I see no evidence of this actually taking place. I think that this has been something that has been ginned up in certain blogs on the internet……there’s no evidence that that’s taking place (a Union like the European Union).

I don’t think there’s some conspiracy to create uh, this one, you know, continental government between Canada and Mexico, all right?

Next!

What the subsequent questioner should have asked is wether or not Obama would nullify any treaty or agreement signed by Bush under the SPP agreements that are the precursor to the NAU, should he find out that such a plan exists, i.e. he finds that there is evidence of such a plan.

But I digress. Just because he does not know of the evidence, doesn’t mean it does not exist. The point is, do you, Barack Hussein Obama, intend to obey your oath of office and to the best of your ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?

Are you going to PRESERVE the constitution, i.e. absolutely reject anything that dilutes the authority and force of the constitution?

Are you going to PROTECT the constitution from attacks no matter where they emanate from?

Are you going to DEFEND the constitution by striking down all unconstitutional measures, legislation and bodies?

Your position on the theoretical idea, the hypothetical concept, of a North American Union and a converged currency, should be immediate and unambiguous. Your response should have been:

“Such an idea is repugnant to me as it should be to all Americans. When I take my oath of office, I will do what I swear I will do; to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That rules out the possibility of a North American Union or an Amero, and I guarantee that neither of those scenarios will come to pass under my administration, and I further promise to dismantle any groundwork that could potentially produce such a union or currency in the future, should I become aware of it during the course of my Presidency.”

So much for the ‘words from our fantasy presidential candidate’.

Lets now show that Barak Obama actually knows about the CFR, and what it really is all about. The clues to this are in his dismissive description of it and his use of ridicule to attack and discredit the questioner and deflect attention from this subject.

He says that the CFR is, “basically is just a forum where a bunch of people talk about foreign policy” this is a gross understatement of what the CFR is and who its membership is composed of. There is no way that anyone other than a deceiver would describe the CFR membership as, “a bunch of people”. The membership reads like a who’s who of every powerful person on this planet spanning continents and decades. Go read the membership list for yourself
. And what sort of man describes his wife as part of a collective ‘a bunch of people’?. They do not just ‘talk about foreign policy’ they exert influence on foreign policy world wide.

Only the most simple minded of people would assert that they are talking foreign policy ‘just for the fun of it’. These people are steering world events, and that is a fact. We should expect people to gather together and trade ideas and steer events; that is what human beings do, no matter what sphere they are in.

What is wrong with these groups is that government officials swear oaths of loyalty to their countries and their constituents and they should take orders only from the latter and never from anywhere else.

Barak Obama understands what the CFR is, and the influence it has over world affairs. That is why he mentioned specifically that there is no ‘special handshake’. Special handshakes are associated with secret societies like the Masons; shadowy, conspiratorial, unaccountable, operating at the highest levels of society – not at all like the CFR, which is just ‘a bunch of people’. This code language is well understood, and that is why everyone laughed when he used it; he used it to ridicule and smear the questioner, deflect and discredit the serious nature of the question and to reassure his audience that, in fact, he is not one of these mysterious ‘globalists’.

Next Obama does exactly what septuagenerian adulterer Gary Hart does when he is asked about the North American Union at a book signing. He deftly feigns ignorance of it.

Before we address this, we need to say that it is an absolute impossibility that Gary Hart does not know about The North American Union.

Gary Hart (CFR member) is promoting his new book, ‘Under the Eagle’s wing‘ which is described as:

Description: Aimed at the new administration of 2009, this work provides a sound national security strategy for the new century. “Under the Eagle’s Wing” makes a compelling plea for America’s leaders to embrace a new world order, in which the U.S. and other nations draw strength from a united approach.

By all means, look at the video and watch how he pretends not to know about the NAU. Any author writing about, ‘drawing strength from a united approach’ would certainly know about all competing attempts to bring about a global government. No one is THAT STUPID. Not only does he pretend not to know about it, but he pretends to not have ever heard the phrase ‘North American Union’, asking the audience member to repeat the name to try and reaffirm that he really has not heard of it. He then asks the audience if they have heard of it, trying to isolate the questioner, and then something wonderful happens, they ALL KNOW ABOUT IT, and Hart is made to look like he is out of the loop!

I have to say that this confrontation is one of the best ever by We are Change. No shouting, no aggression, no baseball caps, signs, just a room full of very polite, well dressed people who very gently humiliate and rattle and ultimately destroy a transparent liar.

Obama knows about the NAU, the SPP and everything else that is going on in that area. His behavior demonstrates this. His reluctance to frame the CFR in the correct terms demonstrates his loyalty to it and the agenda of its members. This loyalty is incompatible with the oath that he is going to take. Their agenda is diametrically opposed to the sovereignty of the United States, and his oath binds him over to protect that country from the likes of the CFR and all its partner organizations.

You cannot serve two masters. Obama claims that he is a Christian, and so he should know this.

This man is a slippery liar and actor; another complete nightmare.

Tonight’s vinyl listening was Pauline Oliveros, a piece from 1968, released a few years ago on Table of the Elements; and Head Slash Bausch, by Antje Greie Fuchs. Highly recommended in both cases.

… ’Cause if you don’t, the world will come to an end
And it won’t take long

Ivor Cutler

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV“). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.

First, the new media — particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) — have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world — even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned — call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.

Secondly, Botros’s broadcasts are in Arabic — the language of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature — much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations — and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.

Read the rest of this entry »

On the afternoon of 27th March I received a telephone call, at work, from a ‘journalist’ working for the London Evening Standard. He introduced himself as Joshua Neicho, apparently partly responsible for the Letters section of that newspaper. Joshua told me he had found my details from Teh Internets after reading our postings on Blogdial concerning Heathrow T5 and the implications of design on security issues.

Now, tracking me down via Blogdial isn’t so hard to do. I’m sure Joshua would have preferred to contact Irdial, the first author of those posts, but Irdial isn’t silly enough to leave a simple trail to their private telephone number pasted all over the web.

Anyway, Joshua asked me to provide 200 words on T5, security and architecture within about 4 hours. Since this is a nice Blogdialian topic, I agreed. Fitting this writing into the last few hours of my already crowded work day was a shit, but here’s what I came up with. Not thrilling by Blogdial standards, just a concise resume of the position:

Much attention has been focussed on the architecture and security measures of Heathrow T5, but unfortunately not at the same time. Design and security at T5 are not only intimately linked, but invasive security measures (fingerprinting and photographing every passenger) are necessary precisely because of the architectural design.

BAA and the architects must have agreed on a non-segregated floorplan where passengers for domestic and international flights mix. Obviously, BAA (and HMG, who work closely with BAA on airport security) must have understood the security issues arising from this design. One may conclude that the design was intended to generate exactly this situation – a wonderful opportunity for testing biometric scanning procedures and public compliance on millions of people per year. Not only this, but that BAA, the architects and the government were complicit in the entire process!

Unbelievable? The alternative is that the architects design is flawed, but this went unnoticed by the architects, BAA and HMG until one day during the build itself! ‘Hang on! If we mix up internal and external… oh no! Now we’ll have to fingerprint everyone!’ Can one imagine Lord Rogers making such a big mistake in designing T5? I can’t.

I duly mailed this to Joshua Neicho (Old Etonian; Oxford University) asking to be kept informed of any use, and haven’t heard a peep from him since – something other bloggers have also reported. And blogged. I’m not sure what they teach students at Eton and Oxford, but I’m surprised simple manners isn’t included in the curriculum.

However, this post is to show ‘Why Print Journalism Is A Rotting Corpse’.

On 28th March, when T5 was in chaos on its opening day, here (and linked here) are the two letters chosen for the T5 design/security issue:

One, an analysis of design. The other, a tirade against invasive security. What is wrong with this picture? Forgoing my usual modesty (ahem!), may I just remind you of the first sentence of our unused letter.

Much attention has been focussed on the architecture and security measures of Heathrow T5, but unfortunately not at the same time.

The published viewpoints, editorially chosen by people like Joshua Neicho, are like having your face pressed up to a cinema screen by a long-dead shuffling zombie, swathed in the stench of nepotism, laziness, corruption and self-interest. Not to mention a lack of manners! And for putting up with that disgusting experience all you get to see is the tiny bit of the picture thats right in front of your face, distorted and given a disproportionate importance.

But you’re reading Blogdial.

Best seat in the house!