July 30, 2008

Rep. Ron Paul, M.D.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution, which is yet another meaningless but provocative condemnation of China . It is this kind of jingoism that has led to such a low opinion of the United States abroad. Certainly I do not condone human rights abuses, wherever they may occur, but as Members of the US House of Representatives we have no authority over the Chinese government. It is our Constitutional responsibility to deal with abuses in our own country or those created abroad by our own foreign policies. Yet we are not debating a bill to close Guantanamo , where abuses have been documented. We are not debating a bill to withdraw from Iraq , where scores of innocents have been killed, injured, and abused due to our unprovoked attack on that country. We are not debating a bill to reverse the odious FISA bill passed recently which will result in extreme abuses of Americans by gutting the Fourth Amendment.

Instead of addressing these and scores of other pressing issues over which we do have authority, we prefer to spend our time criticizing a foreign government over which we have no authority and foreign domestic problems about which we have very little accurate information.

I do find it ironic that this resolution “calls on the Government of the People’s Republic of China to begin earnest negotiations, without preconditions, directly with His Holiness the Dalai Lama or his representatives.” For years US policy has been that no meeting or negotiation could take place with Iran until certain preconditions are met by Iran . Among these is a demand that Iran cease uranium enrichment, which Iran has the right to do under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is little wonder why some claim that resolutions like this are hypocritical.

Instead of lecturing China, where I have no doubt there are problems as there are everywhere, I would suggest that we turn our attention to the very real threats in a United States where our civil liberties and human rights are being eroded on a steady basis. The Bible cautions against pointing out the speck in a neighbor’s eye while ignoring the log in one’s own. I suggest we contemplate this sound advice before bringing up such ill-conceived resolutions in the future.

[…]

http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2008/cr0730a08h.htm

Have you ever seen magnesium ribbon burning?

It is one of the most pure and bright white lights you are ever likely to have to hand.

That’s what Ron Paul is like, compared to everyone else in american politics.

We have our Recommended Films and Documentaries list posted now; by all means take a look, and leech away.

Some things we’ve been playing to feel cool:

Oval – Dok
Biosphere – Substrata
The Hafler Trio – Hljóðmynd
Morton Feldman – String Quartet II
CM von Hausswolff – Operations of Spirit Communication
Scott Walker – Tilt
Mika Vainio – Kajo
Esther Venrooy – Shift Coordinate Points
Coil – ANS

First, lets start with a word from a QC:

‘I refuse to be fingerprinted’

Nigel Rumfitt QC, terrorism specialist, explains why he is opposed to compulsory fingerprinting at Heathrow.

Everyone using the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow for domestic flights will have to be fingerprinted. Who says so? Not Parliament. The British Airports Authority, a Spanish-owned private company, and British Airways say so. Why? It’s a government requirement, they tell us. But in free societies, government requirements come in the form of laws. Who made the requirement, when and in what terms?

Fingerprinting has been around for more than 100 years. In this country it has been used only to catch and identify criminals. No doubt that is why it carries a stigma. Compulsory mass fingerprinting is regarded as “unBritish”, but the present Government seems determined to change our attitude.

A few years ago, with little publicity, the law was altered to allow the indefinite retention of fingerprints and DNA taken from suspects later acquitted or even released without charge. Police powers of arrest have been extended recently, allowing the more widespread obtaining of this data. Nonetheless, the Government has not yet dared to make mass fingerprinting compulsory. What this Government fears to do openly it tries to do by stealth.

Because you cannot be compelled to provide your fingerprints, both BAA and British Airways are saying that by choosing to fly through Terminal 5 you are “consenting” to the taking of your prints. That is disingenuous, to put it mildly. True, some people will not mind; others will object, but will not be prepared to abandon an important journey in order to register that objection. In practice, and without legislation, we will have become a nation that restricts the internal movement of its citizens by government decree.

Imagine how people would have reacted in the 1950s to the proposition that before boarding the Flying Scotsman at King’s Cross you had to provide your fingerprints because the Home Secretary thought it a good idea.

These measures, it is said, will protect us against terrorism. That is nonsense. Modern Islamist terrorists want the world to know who they are. That’s why they make video wills to show everyone exactly who has been martyred for the cause. Would any recent terrorist outrage have been prevented by ID cards or fingerprint records? If it would, why bring in vital security measures by the back door and confine them to domestic flights?

Another danger is that, at Terminal 5, illegal immigrants can swap boarding passes with domestic passengers and get into the country unchecked. This is because greedy BAA wants all passengers – domestic and international – to mingle in the same shopping mall before flying.

If this is only about verifying identity at the gate, why take four prints and not just one? Why keep these prints on file for “only” 24 hours instead of destroying them at the gate? To what use will the prints be put in that time? The Data Protection Act, quoted by BAA, in fact allows police access to this material.

This is not about security. It is about paving the way towards the database state, making it easier to force us to “consent” to giving our fingerprints when we apply for a passport. That’s the final step before the compulsory ID card.

I already refuse to visit the United States because of oppressive security and I have indicated to BAA that I shall refuse to provide fingerprints unless I can be satisfied that it has a legal right to demand them. If the law has been changed to allow BAA to behave in this way, I shall find another airline.

Nigel Rumfitt QC is a specialist in serious crime, including terrorism.

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/839199/Comment-%27I-refuse-to-be-fingerprinted%27.html

And this is the offending news:

Millions of passengers flying from British airports will be fingerprinted from next year under the latest controversial Government anti-terror plans.

The measures, which will apply to both domestic and international passengers, are being introduced despite opposition from the Information Commissioner, Britain’s privacy watchdog.

The Commissioner forced Heathrow to abandon a similar plan earlier this year after warning that it was potentially illegal under data protection laws.

Critics say the main reason for the scheme is that airport operators want to maximise profits by ensuring all passengers are able to spend money in ‘duty-free’ shops.

[…]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Courtesy of Richard Rogers, BAA, BBC, Fascist new Labour and millions of sheeple.

Another great post from George Washington:

Fearmongering As a Form of Warfare

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

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

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

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

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

Or

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

You’ve seen this, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sadly, I was proved right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thankfully, it is not an intractable problem.

Illegal downloaders to get warning letter in government clampdown

Internet service providers have struck a deal with government and the music industry to help clamp down on illegal downloading.

The deal, to be announced later today, is thought to include an agreement for ISPs to send out hundreds of thousands of letters to account holders responsible for illegal downloading.

The memorandum of understanding, struck with the BPI, the body that represents record labels, and the government, will be announced today ahead of the launch of a consultation on the introduction of legislation to clampdown on offending.

The memorandum of understanding has been struck with the UK’s six biggest ISPs – BT, Virgin, Carphone Warehouse, Orange, Tiscali and BSkyB – and includes a deal for all parties to work together to develop ways to deal with repeat offenders.

The agreement has been reached ahead of an announcement expected later today by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform of a consultation on regulatory options to punish ISPs if they fail to take action against the illegal downloading of music, films and TV programmes.

“We have looked to ISPs to acknowledge their responsibility to help deal with illegal filesharing, engage in communicating the issue to their customers, and put in place procedures necessary to effectively tackle repeated unlawful filesharing,” said a spokesman for the BPI.

“Achieving this would represent a significant step forward and demonstrate clearly the collective will that exists to tackle this serious issue.”

It is thought that BSkyB’s announcement of a digital music joint venture with Universal Music earlier this week – the venture has no name, no pricing and no launch date – could have been a move to prove that ISPs are supporting new, innovative, legal digital models ahead of the announcements today.

In February, the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, raised the possibility of introducing legislation to crack down of illegal filesharing as part of a wide-ranging strategy paper designed to look at ways of supporting the UK creative industries and digital intellectual property.

At the time Burnham said that the government preferred to find “voluntary, preferably commercial, solutions” but that it would look to introduce legislation next April if necessary.

The strong stance by the government has alarmed ISPs, which believe that regulation is a step too far.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/24/digitalmedia.piracy

The Grauniad is up to their usual slack jawed shenanigans again, this time, acting as the mouthpiece for arch criminal Andy Burnham and the buggy whip entertainment industry.

What’s that you say? You recognise that name?!

You should.

Andy Burnham is the musical chairs minister who used to be in charge of the most illiberal, invasive, dehumanizing and wrong ID card in history. The card that prompted Danny Kruger to write in the Telegraph, in a headline, that New Labour are acting like Nazis.

Andy Burnham is the imbecile that tried to lie about the true capabilities of the ID card, as outlined in ‘Frances Stonor Saunders” email.

Andy Burnham is a bad guy, no doubt about it, and now this monster is in charge of Culture. Given his past, the title of this post is entirely appropriate.

First of all, file sharing is not stealing. The BBC had to do a big climbdown about this after transmitting a completely absurd ‘hit piece’ on file-sharing which equated it with theft, terrorism and … pedophilia. This is how the apology read:

First though, an apology. File sharing is not theft. It has never been theft. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong and has unthinkingly absorbed too many Recording Industry Association of America press releases. We know that script line was wrong. It was a mistake. We’re very, very sorry.

If copyright infringement was theft then I’d be in jail every time I accidentally used football pix on Newsnight without putting “Pictures from Sky Sport” in the top left corner of the screen. And I’m not. So it isn’t.

This groveling apology was needed because the first lines of this bogus ‘report’ started like this:

Now how could downloading a film affect the fight against terrorism or indeed paedophiles?

Well, it goes something like this; getting hold of movies, ‘Bittorrent File Sharing’ in the jargon…

So, child raping, mass murder, the name of a protocol and ‘File Sharing’ all in the first two sentences of one of the most scandalous reports ever on Newsnight. A report so absurd that even the ‘deny everything’ BBC had to climb down.

But I digress.

File sharing is not stealing. It never has been stealing. Anyone who says so (or who repeats it unchallenged like the Guardian just has) is either in the direct employ of the entertainment industry or computer illiterate.

In the case of Andy Burnham, we can safely say that he is in the direct employ of the music and film industry, just as he was in the direct employ of the ID card contract holders when he worked at the Home Office.

I do not need to go any further in this post about how filesharing is not stealing. We have been over this before on BLOGDIAL.

What is new is that Andy Burnham, a corporate enforcer and dongle without shame, is in the right place to introduce legislation that will be penned by the music and film industry – the buggy whip salesmen – to tax everyone with an internet account, and to prosecute those who are file sharing.

To bottom line it:

• It is completely wrong that ISPs have been blackmailed into sending these letters at their own expense.
• ISPs are not responsible for the actions of their users. The users are responsible for what they do. This is well understood by most people.
• It is not for ISPs to, “…support(ing) new, innovative, legal digital models”. The internet is a level playing field; it is up to the music industry to adapt or die, and it is completely wrong for them to use prostitutes like Andy Burnham to apply pressure or introduce legislation that harms the majority that are doing nothing illegal or wrong and industries that are changing the world for the better.

There is nothing that any of these people can do about file sharing, any more than they can stop sunlight from reaching the earth; the users of the internet will always have the upper hand if the entertainment industry takes this approach.

These morons should take a page out of Apple’s book; look at what just happened with native applications on the iPhone.

Apple wanted everyone to write web apps for the iPhone, keeping native apps exclusively for Apple itself in order to maintain complete control over the platform. Within a short amount of time, developers cracked the iPhone and created a set of tools making it possible for any developer to write native apps. They also created a way to explore, distribute, install and manage these apps that was simplicity itself.

Many developers wrote apps for this ‘black market’ of iPhone applications, and Apple didn’t like it.

Instead of running to the legislators to fix their problem, they did something smart, which the likes of the entertainment industry and Andy Burnham are incapable of doing.

They gave the people what they wanted.

Give the people what they want, and what you don’t want will go away.

Apple opened up the iPhone and created its own way to distribute apps. You can even make money from distributing an app with Apple’s App Store. Every developer that used to write apps for the old ecosystem now writes apps for the ‘legit’ Apple ecosystem. Apple gets what it wants (control over what apps go onto the iPhone) and the developers get what they want (the freedom to write apps for the iPhone and distribute them), and the users get what they want; the functionality of their iPhones exponentially multiplied.

This solution has something for everybody, and it even pays Apple and the developers.

Now that is smart.

Andy Burnham is not smart. He is the opposite of smart.

If he were smart, he would tell the entertainment industry to go back to the drawing board before it’s too late (which it already is).

Instead, he is trying to put the genie back into the bottle with his puppet hands flailing about in the wind of change.

Yes, I wrote that.

Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister and one of the world’s most wanted men, has been arrested, British government and judicial sources have said.

The office of the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, confirmed that Blair had been arrested in London. He was detained and taken to see judges of the war crimes court.

Blair, leader of the British Parliament during the Iraq war, was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague in July 2010 for authorizing the killing of civilians during the “Shock And Awe” bombing of Iraq.

He was indicted for genocide a second time four months later for orchestrating the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Falluja in eastern Iraq.

He went underground in 2007 after losing power.

Blair was one of three fugitives wanted by the UN Iraq war crimes tribunal who were still at large. He refuses to accept the legitimacy of the UN tribunal.

If Blair is extradited, he would be the 44th British suspect extradited to the tribunal. The others include former Home Secretary Charles Clarke, who was ousted in 2006 and died in 2007 of morbid obesity while on trial on war crimes charges.

The arrest of Blair and other indicted war criminals and their delivery to the Hague war crimes tribunal has been one of the main conditions of British Government’s progress towards legitimacy.

The West is also pressing for the arrest of the former American Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/21/warcrimes.internationalcrime

The face of a traitor:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why We Underestimate Our Chances

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t Quit Now

Bottom line . . . don’t quit now.

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

[…]

George Washington

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

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

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

Sent to me by a lurker, this image:

seen today on a church noticeboard behind the national gallery

and if you Google “have stood aside watched”

You get:

I have stood aside and watched while the once greatest, most civilized, and most humane nation in history was being converted into a jungle.

I have stood aside and watched white the greatest good will the world has ever seen between multiple white nationalities within one nation, was being deliberately changed into suspicion, dissension and hatred.

I have stood aside and watched while this “land of the free and the home of the brave” was being conditioned by traitors to seek peace at any price-even at the price of independence and freedom.

I have stood aside and watched while our courts encouraged and our press glorified the perpetrators of crime who have spread riots, vandalism, robbery, and murder across our land.

I have stood aside and watched while our colleges have been taken over by misguided children without the slightest understanding of the civilization they have inherited, or of the evil forces by which they have been duped by.

I have stood aside and watched while our great system of public education has been turned into a propaganda agency for revolution and spawning ground for homosexuality, race mixing, sex abuse and crime.

I have stood aside and watched while meretricious scoundrels, using our television media, our motion picture screens, our newsstands, and other available means, have contrived to bring about a breakdown of morality that is reducing millions of Americans to the level of animals.

I have stood aside and watched while the basic human loyalties- loyalty to God, loyalty to country, and loyalty to family- were being destroyed by evil forces, which now permeate every segment of American life.

And I have had enough. I am only one person, but I shall no longer refuse “to get involved” what about you? How much longer will you stand aside????

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to unveil plans to shock the Cabinet of Gordon Brown into a greater awareness of the impact of reckless warmongering on victims.

His proposals include visits to hospitals where people are being treated for shrapnel wounds.

The measures form part of the Iranian government’s response to a spate of saber rattling.

A man in his 30s was blown to pieces at a wedding in Deh Bala in the early hours of Sunday morning.

On Thursday, a five year old girl was killed in Bagdad and another died after a bomb attack in Amman.

I want to ensure that the British government is taking the issue of war crime very seriously
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mr Ahmadinejad’s proposals will see members of the Brown Cabinet who are contemplating an attack on Iran being made to go to accident and emergency wards in Iraq, to see for themselves the consequences of bombings.

They will meet families of victims, and make prison visits to people convicted of war crimes.

The measures will focus on a number of areas including Iraq, Afganistan, Somalia, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Angola and Darfur.

President Ahmadinejad said: “I am absolutely shocked at the tragic and senseless loss of life we have seen recently.

“I want to reassure everyone that the Iranian government is taking the issue of war crime very seriously.

“I am particularly concerned about the young age of the victims – that is why I am again emphasising what action we have taken and what new action we are demanding.”

President Ahmadinejad also revealed he has written to all the members of the UN Security Council, reminding them of their powers to require rogue nations like the USA and those that are associated with state sponsored terror to refrain from such actions.

Early warnings

Iranian Ministers are also looking at how citizens of rogue nations might work to help the victim nations identify potential attacks without breaking national security oaths.

The announcement comes ahead of the publication on Tuesday of the Iranian government’s €100m war crime action plan to be launched by President Ahmadinejad, chairman of the Iranian parliament Ali Ardashir Larijan and the chairman of the Assembly of Experts Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the recent un-justified war deaths were “niether shocking nor tragic,” and promised the obliteration of Tehran in furtherance of the ‘New World Order’.

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said children should be targeted in the first strikes to prevent them from turning to Jihad later.

He said there are primary targets where “we can point out… children who are going to be a serious problem”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7503845.stm

[…]

And there you have it.

Do you not wonder how it is that Gordon Brown can show images of people beaten to death to the G8 to ‘convince’ them to vote for sanctions against Zimbabwe, but this same inhuman monster can be FOR the bombing of Iran AFTER having participated PERSONALLY in ordering the rape of Iraq?

I wonder if any of these subhuman beasts have ever seen photographs of the carnage they unleashed in Iraq; if they are so squeamish that they can be swayed by the image of a single beaten up man, or even think that such images can sway opinion, how is it that they can STILL have an attack on Iran ‘on the table’ when there are so many graphic images of Iraqi children blown to bits? Children blown to bits BY THEIR OWN HAND.

IT DOESNT MAKE ANY SENSE!

Defective by design have just sent out a call to not buy the new iPhone. Lets pull it to bits:

=================================
DefectiveByDesign.org DefectiveByDesign.org
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The 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G

* iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones.

The iPhone OS has been reverse engineered, by people who are not defeatists. There are literally millions of Jailbroken iPhones in circulation, all of them making and receiving phone calls and running free software, the source for which is available under the GPL. Instead of complaining about this brilliant hardware platform, perhaps Defective By Design should spend time developing or promoting the development of software for the iPhone so that they can realize their goals. Certainly, asking people not to buy an iPhone is not going to work in any meaningful way.

* iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.

Once again, this is solved by writing software, not by complaining.

* iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.

ALL cellular telephones do this. If this is the level of expertise that these people have then their movement is doomed.

* iPhone won’t play patent and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.

Then write a player for it. Even better; why don’t you port Videolan to iPhone and distribute it via Installer.APP? You would have access to millions of users in a very short amount of time, and you would not be exposing yourself to legal attack from Apple, because someone else is actively developing Installer.APP and its ecosystem; you would be interfacing with the iPhone community by that means and not directly. It could not be easier for you. The development tools are out there, the source for robust players to decode the formats you love is available, all it takes is the will to do it or to pay someone else to do it if it is that important.

There are alot of things that the iPhone cannot do, and you can solve any of them that you like, by writing some software.

* iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don’t spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software — like the FreeRunner (http://www.openmoko.com).

A phone in the hand is better than two on the horizon. Especially if you want to make phone calls. And I would love to see how those ‘on the horizon’ phones connect to the GSM network without knowing where you and your phone are.

We can trade our freedom and our money to get something flashy on the surface, or we can spend a little more money, keep our freedom, and support a better kind of business. If we want businesses to be ethical, we have to reward the ones that are. By not enriching companies that want to take away our freedom and by rewarding those that respect us, we will be helping to bring about a better future.

OR we can use our imagination and expertise to fix the problems in products like the iPhone so that they work in the way that they want, give us the shiny phone we want, AND preserve our freedom. We can have our cake and eat it. This has been very successfully done by the people who have created the Jailbroken iPhone community. Really, you should understand this.

In solidarity,

John, Josh, Matt, and Peter

Calling for solidarity, demonstrations, boycotts are all fine, but in the end, it is the people who have an imagination that make a difference in the world. The Jailbreaking of the iPhone is a perfect example of how active people with skill and imagination can force change to happen. The only reason why Apple is allowing developers to write native software for the iPhone is the explosive and unprecedented success of Jailbreaking and Installer.APP. Everyone knows that 25% of all iPhones in circulation have been jailbroken. Because of their work, there are more telephones running free software than ever before, and this will continue with the new iPhone. Because of their work, the iPhone is now open to developers through the closed system, whereas before Apple wanted everyone to develop web apps that ran in Safari. Because of their work we now have a platform that will ensure that the iPhone is always open to developers of free software going forward.

At the end of the day, all the complaining in the world will not stop DRM. Only the writing of software will defeat it.

What we have to ask is this; what are you actually offering? You are not offering any solutions, you are not offering any new philosophy or any sort of strategy that will produce results, and you are completely ignoring the heroic work of the Jailbreakers and the millions of phones they have liberated as if it has not happened at all.

That is odd, to say the least.

From today’s Daily Mail:

Sharia law SHOULD be used in Britain, says UK’s top judge

The most senior judge in England yesterday gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.

He declared: ‘Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.’

In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments – and divorce rulings – complied with the law of the land.

But his remarks, which back the informal sharia courts operated by numerous mosques, provoked a barrage of criticism.

Lawyers warned that family and marital disputes settled by sharia could disadvantage women or the vulnerable.

[…]

Daily Mail

Of course, the hoards of ignorant pigs like the first commenter on this story:

UK, I am so sorry for you. That is incredible.

– Susan, Colorado, USA, 03/7/2008 20:14

are coming out howling about how this is such a terrible thing. What is the most terrible thing of all is that these people cannot think.

What this judge has said is that for private contracts people should be free to choose a Sharia court for resolutions of disputes.

Do you understand what that means?

It means that if you choose to be governed by Sharia Law in your financial or marital dealings, you should be free to do so.

There is absolutely no problem with this whatsoever. HSBC already offer Sharia Compliant bank accounts, and Mick Jagger excused himself from paying extortion money for his divorce since his marriage was governed by a different law to UK law. The article itself says that, “Orthodox Jews operate Beth Din courts which operate according to ancient Jewish Law”. And allow me to digress, but why do they not call Sharia Law, “ancient Sharia Law”?!?! Sharia Law is many things, but modern is not one of them!

What this judge is suggesting is a great thing.

It means that you are FREE to obey your conscience in whatever way you like, as long as you do not break the law of the UK. This judge is actually expanding the freedoms of the British, against the current trend of Parliament legislating away everything, every liberty that has been built over the last 1000 years, and the judiciary backing them up to the hilt.

What he is NOT saying is that Sharia Law should be incorporated into British law, and that everyone, muslim or not, should be made to obey it. That would be and should be completely unacceptable. Sadly, many people out there, like this ignoramus from Colorado, do not understand anything about their rights, the rights of others, and the many options you have as a free human being.

People who want to follow Sharia have the right to do so. That is none of my, or your business. They can get married in whatever way they like, divorce in whatever way they like, lend and borrow money in whatever way they like and pray in whatever way they like. That is what it means to be free, and anyone who is against that is not for Liberty. In fact, true libertarians hold that the state has no business sanctioning and regulating marriage in the first place.

Lawyers are against this because by settling disputes without them, they are cut out of the loop. The same goes for all the other professions that leech off of the law; anything that undercuts them and causes them to lose status and money is a threat. People solving their own problems privately and at liberty are a threat to the system. This judge, by going against that grain is actually demonstrating a great deal of wisdom and even handedness. He will be boiled in oil for it of course.

Now, the ignorant amongst you will say, “but what about women’s rights!??!” We are not talking about women being forced by religious dictate to do anything that is illegal in the UK. We are not talking about illegal and repulsive Sharia punishments being legalized either. What we are talking about, and what this judge is talking about, are consensual contracts only; everything else to do with the ‘clash of cultures’ is completely covered by the law in the UK, the UK law takes precedence at all times, and the objectionable elements of Sharia law have absolutely nothing to do with the subject we are discussing right now.

There seems to be no end to the hoards of people eager to cut their own heads off in this insane hatred for all things Islam. Even when something comes along that increases freedom, real options (in this case, opt outs) people rail against it reflexively without THINKING and applying these scenarios to themselves.

This is our greatest problem today; the absence of THINKING.

ID cards: aviation industry a political pawn say airline bosses

Britain’s leading airline bosses have accused the government of using their industry as a political pawn in the national identity card debate by forcing aviation workers to join the scheme next year.

In a scathing letter to the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, the chief executives of British Airways, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic and BMI said that forcing airport workers to have an ID card from November next year was “unnecessary” and “unjustified”.

All airport airside workers, who work in departure areas and on runways, must enrol in the scheme from next year under government plans, but the aviation industry is claiming it will bring no security benefits.

“First and foremost, no additional security benefits have been identified. Indeed, there is a real risk that enrolment in the national ID scheme will be seen to provide an added, but ultimately false, sense of security to our processes,” said the British Air Transport Association (Bata) letter, signed by airline bosses including Willie Walsh of British Airways and Andy Harrison of easyJet.

It also accused the government of singling out the industry for politically motivated reasons, contradicting previous pledges that the scheme would be voluntary.

“This supports our view that the UK aviation industry is being used for political purposes on a project which has questionable public support,” said Bata.

The first wave of the ID card scheme will see the cards becoming compulsory for non-EU foreign nationals living in Britain this year, and for 200,000 airport workers and Olympic security staff from next year.

[…]

Guardian

At last, someone in the Aviation Industry is showing that they have a pair.

We now have a new feature of BLOGDIAL. It is called ‘a B³‘. It means BLOGDIAL Brass Balls. It looks like this:

And the first ever award goes to the chief executives of British Airways, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic and BMI.

The ID card scheme is a total scam. Everyone knows it. Now, some of the most prestigious and important figures in industry and the economy are openly saying so.

Now is the time to re-affirm your stance of absolute non compliance. Jacqui Smith can go straight to hell and she can burn there with her ID card, started off by that imbecile Blinkett, carried by the elephantine liar Clarke to be fluffed by this revolting hideous fashionless shit eating rights destroying MONSTER.

Hopefully now the unions will get in line with ID card resistance and there will be even more energy directed against this immoral, illegitimate, illogical, authoritarian, money spinning nonsense.

On Tuesday night we saw Debashish Bhattacharya play at the National Centre For Early Music.

He, and his brother on tabla, were wonderful, humble people so deeply in love with the music they were playing that it was all but tangible. The recital began with a raga played on Debashish’s largest guitar, which he designed himself at the age of 16. He is now 45, I think. It was a wonderful piece, spreading a mood evoking peaceful satisfaction with the day that has just been, a vivid and even violent, yet controlled, celebration and thanks for such a beautiful evening, for just being there.

The second raga, played on a guitar dreamed of for many years and only born in 1999, was in the equivalent of a minor harmonic scale. The effect of the music was to induce feelings of disturbing melancholy, a mood of longing, of something missing, almost anxious beauty.

Finally, a short piece on his baby guitar, Anandi, born in 2002 and named after the Sanskrit for ‘the sound of joy’. A 4-string ukelele played like a lap steel and sounding like the strangest sitar.

In between, some gracious words and explanations of his philosophy of music, the importance of listening, of the development of Indian classical music.  What generosity we were shown.

And it wasn’t even sold out.

Having just seen 180,000 people willing to pay through the nose and live in filth for a line-up described by a devoted ‘indie-music’ journalist as being mostly “Landfill Indie”, why were there not queues around the block to witness two musicians who have devoted their lives to producing something extraordinary?

Debashish Bhattacharya plays the Barbican tomorrow night (4th July).  Its on the FreeStage! Free! All you have to do is listen.

UFOs spotted by Navy engineer above the M5 motorway

Michael Madden, 25, said he watched in disbelief as the disc-shaped object floated above his head before it “zoomed off at incredible speed”.

He said the unidentified flying object flew for up to three minutes above junction 21 of the M5, near Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

Mr Madden was on his way back from Manchester with colleague Michael Casson, 22, at 9.50pm on Sunday June 29 when he saw the suspected ‘extra-terrestrial’ craft.

He said: “I work with aircraft and grew up next to Manchester Airport so I know exactly what a plane looks and sounds like. This was definitely not a plane.

“It was a circular disc which was glowing bright, hovering hundreds of metres up.

“Other people must have spotted it. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life. It really did look like the alien aircraft in films. It had an antenna fixed to the back.”

Mr Madden’s claim follows a string of recent UFO “sightings”.

On June 7 three soldiers said they saw 13 UFOs, which looked like “rotating cubes”, while on night patrol at Tern Hill military barracks near Market Drayton, Shropshire. One, Corporal Mark Proctor, 38, of the 1st Battalion of the Irish Regiment, recorded the sighting on his mobile phone and reported it to Army officers.

That sighting came just two hours before helicopter police officers reported an encounter with a huge craft 80 miles away near Cardiff. They claimed to have given chase to the “flying saucer-shaped” object after it almost collided with their aircraft near the Ministry of Defence base of St Athan.

Then Father-of-two David Osborne, 47, videoed 12 orange objects in the night sky above Basingstoke, Hampshire, at 10.40pm on June 28.

The alleged UFOs moved across the sky, switching from a D formation, to a random pattern, to a line then a triangle before disappearing.

[…]

Telegraph

Note some points about this article:

• It was printed.
• It is reported straight, without any ridiculing photos or ‘kill lines’.
• There are no ‘balancing’ quotes from ‘skeptics’ or ‘scientists’.
• No one told this military man to shut up.
• This military man was willing to be named.
• The report was printed immediately after the event.

It seems that we have reached a tipping point, where there is no further doubt about the reality of UFOs and there is a general consensus that this subject should be taken seriously.

What can we expect next?

A continuing flow of reports and perhaps another spectacular event over a major city, on the scale of the Phoenix Lights event or the Hudson Valley event; only this time, there will be thousands of witnesses and thousands of high quality video footage from thousands of vantage points.

For the record, read what we have to say about UFOs, here are the BLOGDIAL posts on this subject.

You need to watch the following UFO documentaries if you want to get a firm grip on this subject:

UFOs Are Real

Out of the blue

Wether we have a spectacular and irrefutable event or not, it seems that the ‘journalists’, editors and military authorities have turned a corner and are now willing to let information about UFOs flow like any other information.

There is speculation in the internetz that this is being done because one country is hoarding information about all of this. Many articles produced by India Daily on the subject are full of the sort of detail that is ‘too much’ for a daily newspaper. Now it seems (flowing from the original speculation) that the change in attitude in the newspapers here is a part of this campaign. Or maybe not.

Either way, this article is definitely indicative of a change in thinking (or maybe even a START in thinking) on this very important subject.
Or maybe the ‘journalists’ are reacting to the huge increase in hits they get when they run a UFO story, like the guys at the Chicago Tribune who ran the O’hare story; listen to them gush at how far the story spread.

UFO pieces make money.

This will have some economic effects changing the way newspapers treat these stories. They will go for higher quality UFO stories, because the more believable the report is, the more exiting it is to the public, and the more hits (money) they will make out of the article. An event reported by an ignorant hick is no where near as ‘newsworthy’ as a report from an MP or a military man or a pilot. As these credible people come forward and are not ridiculed, this will cause more credible people to come forward with their accounts; the negative feedback created by ridicule kept credible people away from this subject, now, the opposite is happening and this will accelerate the exposure of this phenomenon. Hoaxers will be discouraged as these journalists take more care about what sort of UFO stories they are printing.

This time, the cat really is out of the bag!