The latest large business to leave the USA is Dell

http://gizmodo.com/5045901/dell-to-sell-most-or-all-of-its-factories-in-18-months

Why?

Because america is bad for business.

If america were good for business, companies would be moving TO there, and not FROM there to other countries.

Biden and that wannabe mass murderer Obomba keep talking about helping factories and jobs stay in america, but they know nothing about economics, every businessman knows it, and the people who own Dell are taking pre-emptive measures to escape the Socialist Homeland that is going to emerge when those two take power.

Down wiv school: children are best educated at home
This week need not be back-to-school week. Parents as well as their kids can benefit from home education

It is back-to-school this week. All over the country, stressed parents made last-minute dashes to the shops to force children to try on clumpy school shoes. Then they got up early, hurried their children into cars or on to buses, got stuck in jams, arrived later than intended and said a rushed goodbye. Then they found that the children had gone. Relief may have been mixed with melancholy, loss and a hope that the children were all right behind those high windows, told what to do by strangers.

The return to school is a well-established part of the journey of life. It seems normal, right and inevitable. But actually it is none of these things. Yes, it is normal in the early 21st century. But if modern civilisation started about 10,000 years ago, this way of treating children has been “normal” only for the last 2 per cent of the time. It is a new, artificial construct designed to provide education at low cost. It certainly was not created to provide a pleasant or socialising experience for children.

Schools are not clearly “right”, either. People tend to think that what everyone does and what they themselves experienced must be right. But there is nothing obviously ideal about delivering your children to other people who do not love them as you do, and who are likely to teach them things with which you may disagree. And sending children to school is not inevitable. Under the law, children must be educated. But they do not have to be educated at a school. There is another way.

Home education is not for everyone – not even a large minority. It is a luxury in most cases. The parent who becomes a home teacher earns no money. There have to be savings, or partners, husbands or wives must be willing to pay the bills. But lots of well-educated wives do not work and could save money by home educating. For those who can find a way, home-educating is a glorious, liberating, empowering, profoundly fulfilling thing to do. Far more people should try it. At present it is estimated that about 50,000 children are taught this way. The number has jumped from a decade ago but is still very few compared with America.

I have just finished two years of teaching my younger daughter, Alex, now 11. We have become very close. Many fathers see their children at supper time and a bit more at weekends. Alex and I were with each other all day, every weekday, in all sorts of places and circumstances. We knew and shared thoughts, ideas and feelings. I believe the closeness that we developed will benefit our relationship for the rest of our lives.

We had enjoyable educational trips to France, Italy and China. Instead of learning about the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius from a text book, Alex and I climbed up to the rim and peered into the still-smoking crater. We visited Pompeii and Oplontis to see the parts of Roman civilisation that had been preserved by the most famous of its eruptions.

One of the beauties of home education is that you can teach children things that you want them to know – some of which are not taught in most schools. I wanted Alex to know something of the origin of the Universe, and astronomy. We studied far more history than schools do, including overviews of Rome, China and Britain. We looked at the Second World War, using DVDs of the superb Channel 4 series on it. We started learning Italian. But all parents would have different ideas of what they want their children to know. You can go for whatever you think important. This is freedom, thrilling freedom. You don’t have to teach just what some civil servant in Whitehall has lighted upon and stuck in the national curriculum.

[…]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4677730.ece

A deceptive and unfortunate title (remember the wall-mart sold t-shirts that were removed because they disparaged Home Schoolers?) but I digress.

This is a brilliant article, written by James Bartholomew who authored a book ‘The Welfare State We’re In’ that was praised by Milton Friedman.

Its about time an article like this was printed in a national newspaper, and we can expect more I am sure, as the truth about Home Schooling spreads organically through the mass. Yes, ‘the mass‘.

And as we can read from some of the many comments on this article:

Hope that the homeschoolers will begin to withold the part of the Council tax and Government taxes that go into social engineering and dumbed down twaddle that passes for curriculum content in those holding pens of misery called schools.
chris, Dorchester, England

It is a little scary to think that every child in this country is taught exactly the same thing by the powers that be; education or indoctrination of government approved ideologies?

Children become adults by learning and socialising with adullts: parents and family. Not insecure teenagers!
Nathan, Cambridge, UK

It has already started!

Sonny Scott

Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, Ms.

You see them at the grocery, or in a discount store.

It’s a big family by today’s standards – “just like stair steps,” as the old folks say. Freshly scrubbed boys with neatly trimmed hair and girls with braids, in clean but unfashionable clothes follow mom through the store as she fills her no-frills shopping list.

There’s no begging for gimcracks, no fretting, and no threats from mom. The older watch the younger, freeing mom to go peacefully about her task.

You are looking at some of the estimated 2 million children being home schooled in the U.S., and the number is growing. Their reputation for academic achievement has caused colleges to begin aggressively recruiting them. Savings to the taxpayers in instructional costs are conservatively estimated at $4 billion, and some place the figure as high as $9 billion. When you consider that these families pay taxes to support public schools, but demand nothing from them, it seems quite a deal for the public.

Home schooling parents are usually better educated than the norm, and are more likely to attend worship services. Their motives are many and varied. Some fear contagion from the anti-clericalism, coarse speech, suggestive behavior and hedonistic values that characterize secular schools. Others are concerned for their children’s safety. Some want their children to be challenged beyond the minimal competencies of the public schools. Concern for a theistic world view largely permeates the movement.

Indications are that home schooling is working well for the kids, and the parents are pleased with their choice, but the practice is coming under increasing suspicion, and even official attack, as in California.

Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?

Methinks American middle-class people are uncomfortable around the homeschooled for the same reason the alcoholic is uneasy around the teetotaler.

Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar’s be, but they draw the line at their children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state (and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in return.

Just as the jealous Chaldeans schemed to bring the wrath of the king upon the Hebrew eunuchs, we are happy to sic the state’s bureaucrats on these “trouble makers.” Their implicit rejection of America’s most venerated idol, Materialism, (a.k.a. “Individualism”) spurs us to heat the furnace and feed the lions.

Young families must make the decision: Will junior go to day care and day school, or will mom stay home and raise him? The rationalizations begin. “A family just can’t make it on one income.” (Our parents did.) “It just costs so much to raise a child nowadays.” (Yeah, if you buy brand-name clothing, pre-prepared food, join every club and activity, and spend half the cost of a house on the daughter’s wedding, it does.) And so, the decision is made. We give up the bulk of our waking hours with our children, as well as the formation of their minds, philosophies, and attitudes, to strangers. We compensate by getting a boat to take them to the river, a van to carry them to Little League, a 2,800-square-foot house, an ATV, a zero-turn Cub Cadet, and a fund to finance a brand-name college education. And most significantly, we claim “our right” to pursue a career for our own “self-fulfillment.”

Deep down, however, we know that our generation has eaten its seed corn. We lack the discipline and the vision to deny ourselves in the hope of something enduring and worthy for our posterity. We are tired from working extra jobs, and the looming depression threatens our 401k’s. Credit cards are nearly maxed, and it costs a $100 to fuel the Suburban.

Now the kid is raising h… again, demanding the latest Play Station as his price for doing his school work … and there goes that modest young woman in the home-made dress with her four bright-eyed, well-behaved home-schooled children in tow. Wouldn’t you just love to wipe that serene look right off her smug face?

Is it any wonder we hate her so?

[…]

http://www.djournal.com/pages/default.asp

And this of course, is why the people at the TES, The Guardian and irrational talking heads like Professor Alan Smithers and all the other imbeciles, child hating teachers and other ignorant, absurd, family hating, liberty destroying anti-education zombies hate home schooling and home schoolers.

They hate our freedom.

They hate anyone that has the freedom they do not have, the success they do not have and the relationships they do not have and are incapable of fostering. Instead of learning from people who are better than they are and who live better lives than they do, and changing their own lives, they want to destroy anyone that does not mindlessly suffer as they do. They hate the fact that the reward for choosing non-conformity is a fast track into university. They hate the fact that home schoolers appear to have their cake and eat it…and not get fat children. They are frightened of difference. They are the same people who were for segregation and every other artificial social barrier enshrined in the law. They are the same people who were for Apartheid, Jim Crow and all those other, nasty, inhuman laws.

Yes indeed, these home school haters are everywhere. You know the type:

• They are officious whilst not having any official capacity.
• They speak with a loud, authoritative voice that leaves no space for rebuttal.
• They have no imagination, no idea of what liberty is and hate all that is not conforming.
• They always say, “but what would happen if……” thinking that only bad things can happen outside of the ‘norm’.
• They don’t know any history, and never look for it before they open their mouths.
• They are creatures of pure bitterness and are driven by pure jealousy.

I pity them as much as I despise them; as much as they hate the home schooler and the world view that they come from.

Home schooling is growing at a fantastic rate. In the end, it will seem as ordinary as rain.

In the meantime, we will have to contend with many ill considered articles written by ignorant self hating pigs. Thankfully, the internets make it possible for each of these articles to be instantly rebutted and shot down. The internets make it possible for home schoolers to connect with one another creating an impenetrable shield of truth that no lying education correspondent can cut through; home schoolers will never be alone, isolated and ripe for attack.

The retards amongst you will require a disclaimer.

If you choose to work and send your child to school are you a bad parent? Does it indicate that you do not love your child as much as a home schooling parent does? Of course not. Sending your child to school is your absolute right, and no one has the right to say to you that you are doing the wrong thing, and you should do what someone else is doing.

That is the difference between US and THEM; WE accept that it is a parent’s right to bring up their children in any way that they see fit, no matter what anyone thinks. THEY believe that there is only ONE good and proper way to rear a child, and that way is THEIR way, and all people who do not accept this must be made to conform to THEIR way of thinking and doing.

We are better than them®

And that is a FACT.

Would you like to know more?

Laura Margottini at the NewScientist.com news service wrote the following:

Snoop software makes surveillance a cinch

“THIS data allows investigators to identify suspects, examine their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time.”

So said the UK Home Office last week as it announced plans to give law-enforcement agencies, local councils and other public bodies access to the details of people’s text messages, emails and internet activity. The move followed its announcement in May that it was considering creating a massive central database to store all this data, as a tool to help the security services tackle crime and terrorism.

Meanwhile in the US the FISA Amendments Act, which became law in July, allows the security services to intercept anyone’s international phone calls and emails without a warrant for up to seven days. Governments around the world are developing increasingly sophisticated electronic surveillance methods in a bid to identify terrorist cells or spot criminal activity.

However, technology companies, in particular telecommunications firms and internet service providers, have often been criticised for assisting governments in what many see as unwarranted intrusion, most notably in China.

Now German electronics company Siemens has gone a step further, developing a complete “surveillance in a box” system called the Intelligence Platform, designed for security services in Europe and Asia. It has already sold the system to 60 countries.

According to a document obtained by New Scientist, the system integrates tasks typically done by separate surveillance teams or machines, pooling data from sources such as telephone calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions and insurance records. It then sorts through this mountain of information using software that Siemens dubs “intelligence modules”.

This software is trained on a large number of sample documents to pick out items such as names, phone numbers and places from generic text. This means it can spot names or numbers that crop up alongside anyone already of interest to the authorities, and then catalogue any documents that contain such associates.

Once a person is being monitored, pattern-recognition software first identifies their typical behaviour, such as repeated calls to certain numbers over a period of a few months. The software can then identify any deviations from the norm and flag up unusual activities, such as transactions with a foreign bank, or contact with someone who is also under surveillance, so that analysts can take a closer look.

Included within the package is a phone call “monitoring centre”, developed by the joint-venture company Nokia Siemens Networks.

However, it is far from clear whether the technology will prove accurate. Security experts warn that data-fusion technologies tend to produce a huge number of false positives, flagging up perfectly innocent people as suspicious.

[…]

New Scientist

Once again, ‘scientists’ (or in this case, a science writer) fails to connect the dots.

What is most amusing about this failure is that the article is about… connecting the dots!

We all know that everyone is separated by Six Degrees of Separation thanks to a recent thorough test of the theory.

Since this is true, that means that everyone, everywhere is Six Degrees of Separation away from a ‘criminal’. The only thing left to measure in a system like the Fusion Centers and this completely bogus software from Siemens is the level of criminality of the focus person.

This is absolutely the case because all people are connected, and so if you are going to investigate (violate) someone because they are two steps away from a ‘criminal’ you will have to assign a threat level to that person; everyone everywhere ‘knows’ or is ‘close to’ a ‘criminal’ and I put the word criminal in single quotes because what a criminal is or is not is highly variable.

The massively connected nature of people is the reason why these systems cannot possibly work. It also explains why there are an irrationally large number of people on the ‘terrorist’ watch list in the USA; if they are secretly using this software or something like it to see who is connected to who, they will find that everyone is connected to everyone, and everyone is a potential terrorist according to the software. That is why there are literally millions of people falsely listed as ‘potential terrorists’ in the USA. Just to be clear, I do not accept that there is such a thing as a ‘potential terrorist’ in the first place.

No one working with the systems has had the guts to stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes, and that it is impossible for this many people to all be potential terrorists. Eternal shame upon them.

The writer of this New Scientist article should know about Six Degrees of Separation, that it has very recently been demonstrated to be true, and she should have made the insight jump and use this to make the case that these ‘services’ cannot ever work and to explain why they should not be deployed.

If the terrorist threat is real, and you are doing this to try and catch terrorists, then these systems should not be used because they throw up too many false positives and put too many people into the system that have no relation to ‘the enemy’. This confusion would stop you from getting to the real bad guys and stopping what you are trying to stop. The Six Degrees factor makes it even worse, as you are bound to be putting everyone in the system since everyone ‘knows’ everyone. These systems are actually dangerous in the physical sense AND the moral sense.

It is clear that these systems should not be deployed because they do not help you do what you need to do. This is quite apart from the moral aspect of mass violation of innocent people. Guilt by Association is known by people who can use the Google to be an inductive form of fallacy:

An association fallacy is an inductive formal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association. The two types are sometimes referred to as guilt by association and honor by association. Association fallacies are a special case of red herring, and can be based on an appeal to emotion.

[…]

Wikipedia

Everyone who worked on this software will have been aware of all of this. They are selling software, and will have simply given the authorities who are computer and maths illiterates what they asked for. The question is, what is the real reason they want it in the first place.

It is clear that the people who ordered these systems are not interested in ‘terrorists’. They want this to use against enemy corporations, politicians that need to be shut down and every other nefarious thing you can imagine. Do you remember the arrest of the British executives for ‘gambling offences’ the USVISIT system and the passenger list data are being used not to stop ‘terrorists’ but to capture people, in this case, who are not even criminals at all.

That is what this is all about. Anyone who says otherwise is completely delusional. All the evidence points to this, and all the other evidence that no one wants to accept is the icing on the cake.

Do I have to actually type out that the ID Card and the NIR would be used as a key part of a guilt by association system? Oyster is already being used in this way; they have the swipes of all the Oyster cards at a certain time / location locus and then they investigate every one. You will be in BIG TROUBLE if purely by chance you were the passenger that swiped just before or after a criminal; the software would assume that you were traveling together since you were in such close proximity.

And this brings us to the final point in this post.

Once cash is banished from public transport, the only way to travel on it will be with Oyster. That means that they will be surveilling everyone by default, and the guilt by association will be used against you by default.

Now extend this to the cash you use every day to by anything.

Once cash is driven out of the marketplace, the same systems will be used universally; only much much worse.

Lets say that you pay a plumber to do some work for you, and that plumber did work on the black market. Everyone who paid him in the new Beast Money® would immediately be subject to investigation to see how they were connected to the black economy. This scenario is faulty of course, because in the cashless society, the state will extract its payments automatically and you will have no control over your money at all, never mind privacy.

The bottom line is that the engineers, architects, programmers, scientists and everyone who can make systems needs to have a moral code instilled in them so that no one will be willing to supply the mortar, or the bricks or the door hinges or anything else for the gas chambers. It takes a very small number of people to devise and deploy these systems and in the networked world, everyone everywhere can be involuntarily plugged into them and made to suffer, barring a massive, unprecedented revolt.

I fear that an appeal to high standards may fall on deaf ears.

We shall see.

There were two marketing men and a clinical research director sitting in a pub… ‘Why did the chickenpox vaccine cross the road?’ ‘To get to the mass market on the other side!’

‘Thats not funny. There is no market for chickenpox vaccine.’ ‘Oh yes there is, they just don’t know it yet…’

……………….

Now, substitute chickenpox with ‘human papillomavirus’ (HPV) and you have this year’s new mass market. And the size of that market, as we’ve said before, is every child alive now and forever. And if Merck get their way, every older woman too.

Today, girls in Scotland have been brought into the HPV vaccination programme, having been told that they will be at less risk of cervical cancer.

Schools start cancer vaccinations

Every secondary schoolgirl in the UK is to be offered the injections

Scottish schoolgirls are to become the first in the UK to be vaccinated against cervical cancer.

Schools in the Lanarkshire, Tayside, Grampian and Western Isles NHS areas are to begin vaccinating 12 and 13-year-old girls from this week.

Pupils in other areas of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland will follow in the coming weeks.

All girls aged between 12 and 17 should have been offered the vaccine by August next year.

The immunisation programme is to get under way in Scotland before other parts of the UK because its school term has already started.

The Cervarix vaccine works by targeting HPV, the virus which causes cervical cancer. Its manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, said it should prevent 70% of cases – saving about 70 lives a year in Scotland.

HMG chose Cervarix over Gardasil, for as yet unspecified reasons and despite Gardasil being a better choice healthwise – always assuming you want the vaccine in the first place!

The vaccine is given in three separate doses and – at about £240 for a course – is the most expensive vaccine to be routinely offered by the NHS.

£240 for every girl now and forever direct from taxpayers coffers to GSK shareholders.  “Wow! There’s the money river! Pa, bring the buckets!”

Dr McKenzie added: “They must understand that the vaccine is fantastic news for preventing cervical cancer, but it can only be combated by using cervical screening and the vaccine.

“So when they are called for screening aged 20 they really must come along whether they have had the vaccine or not.”

The number of girls aged between 20 and 25 who come forward for cervical smears is already declining.

Some fears have been expressed that the vaccination programme will cause even fewer to attend screening, while questions have also been asked about why so much money is being spent on saving the lives of less that 100 Scottish women a year.

Good fears, good questions, as yet not satisfactorily explained. There is the question about how long protection lasts, meaning boosters are inevitable at current estimates. And questions as to whether a drop in screening rates would completely abolish any success in prevention, given the small numbers of patients involved.

But really, this is all so much fluff covering the truth of modern pharmaceutical marketing techniques: by using available media, you (the gullible sheeple) can be made to fear absolutely anything. You will then buy any snake-oil BigPharma comes up with to protect you against The Fear.

This technique even has a name. ‘Astro-turfing‘.

Not only this, but BigPharma can then wine, dine and otherwise bribe your ‘elected’ officials into committing hundreds of millions of pounds worth of public funds towards the cost of Snake-Oil.

Not convinced? Try this excellent and pretty comprehensive, utterly compelling, ‘how it works’ piece from the New York Times:

One of the vaccines, Gardasil, from Merck, is made available to the poorest girls in the country, up to age 18, at a potential cost to the United States government of more than $1 billion; proposals to mandate the vaccine for girls in middle schools have been offered in 24 states, and one will take effect in Virginia this fall. Even the normally stingy British National Health Service will start giving the other vaccine — Cervarix, from GlaxoSmithKline — to all 12-year-old girls at school this September.

The lightning-fast transition from newly minted vaccine to must-have injection in the United States and Europe represents a triumph of what the manufacturers call education and their critics call marketing. The vaccines, which offer some protection against infection from sexually transmitted viruses, are far more expensive than earlier vaccines against other diseases — Gardasil’s list price is $360 for the three-dose series, and the total cost is typically $400 to nearly $1,000 with markup and office visits (and often only partially covered by health insurance).

Award-winning advertising has promoted the vaccines. Before the film “Sex and the City,” some moviegoers in the United States saw ads for Gardasil. On YouTube and in advertisements on popular shows like “Law and Order,” a multiethnic cast of young professionals urges girls to become “one less statistic” by getting vaccinated.

The vaccine makers have also brought attention to cervical cancer by providing money for activities by patients’ and women’s groups, doctors and medical experts, lobbyists and political organizations interested in the disease, sometimes in ways that skirt disclosure requirements or obscure the companies’ involvement.

…

In the United States, hundreds of doctors have been recruited and trained to give talks about Gardasil — $4,500 for a lecture — and some have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Politicians have been lobbied and invited to receptions urging them to legislate against a global killer. And former state officials have been recruited to lobby their former colleagues.

“There was incredible pressure from industry and politics,” said Dr. Jon Abramson, a professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest University who was chairman of the committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommended the vaccine for all girls once they reached 11 or 12.

“This big push is making people crazy — thinking they’re bad moms if they don’t get their kids vaccinated,” said Dr. Abby Lippman, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and policy director of the Canadian Women’s Health Network. Canada will spend $300 million on a cervical cancer vaccine program.

…And why the sudden alarm in developed countries about cervical cancer, some experts ask. A major killer in the developing world, particularly Africa, where the vaccines are too expensive for use, cervical cancer is classified as very rare in the West because it is almost always preventable through regular Pap smears, which detect precancerous cells early enough for effective treatment. Indeed, because the vaccines prevent only 70 percent of cervical cancers, Pap smear screening must continue anyway.

“Merck lobbied every opinion leader, women’s group, medical society, politicians, and went directly to the people — it created a sense of panic that says you have to have this vaccine now,” said Dr. Diane Harper, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Harper was a principal investigator on the clinical trials of both Gardasil and Cervarix, and she spent 2006-7 on sabbatical at the World Health Organization developing plans for cervical cancer vaccine programs around the world. […]

In television advertisements, a cast of hip people in their 20s — artists, writers and professionals — describe why they got the shots, in the language of liberation, such as, “I chose to get vaccinated because my dreams don’t include cervical cancer.” The advertisements direct viewers to gardasil.com, which includes patients’ stories, buddy icons and downloads for holding an event at sororities.

Girls of any age who have had one dose of the vaccine can ask for text-message “reminders” from Merck to get the next two shots. The offers come with another reminder: “I understand that the information I provide will be used by Merck or those working on behalf of Merck for market research purposes.”

For such efforts, Merck last May swept the 2008 Pharmaceutical Advertising and Marketing Excellence awards, and Gardasil was named Brand of the Year by Pharmaceutical Executive magazine.

The marketing helped make Gardasil one of Merck’s best sellers, with a projected sales of $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion outside Europe this year, and more from sales in Europe, where Merck sells the vaccine through a joint venture with Sanofi Aventis.

…

Gregory A. Poland, a vaccine expert at the Mayo Clinic, was a nonvoting member on the C.D.C. panel that recommended Gardasil in 2006 and has publicly defended the panel’s decision. Records show he received at least $27,420 in expenses and consulting fees from Merck from 1999 to 2007. Both the C.D.C. and Dr. Michael Camilleri, chairman of the Mayo Clinic Conflict of Interest Review Board, speaking on Dr. Poland’s behalf, said the payments complied with institutional requirements.

…

In the United States, 41 states have passed or begun considering legislation on cervical cancer, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and 24 have considered proposals to mandate the vaccine for girls, generally in middle school…

The only state to pass a bill requiring the vaccine for school entry is Virginia; it takes effect in October, after school begins, so will first apply in 2009.

Merck has a growing economic interest in Virginia. In December 2006, Merck announced it would invest $57 million to expand its Elkton, Va., plant to make Gardasil, helped by a $700,000 grant from a state economic development agency that is part of the executive branch. Two months later, Gov. Tim Kaine, who has been mentioned as a possible Democratic vice presidential candidate, signed legislation requiring Gardasil for schoolgirls. Four months after that, Merck pledged to invest $193 million more in the plant to make drugs and vaccines, helped by a state grant of $1.5 million.

…

In Texas, Merck hired Gov. Rick Perry’s former chief of staff as a lobbyist, and contributed $6,000 to the governor and $38,000 to other legislators. Last February, Mr. Perry ordered that all schoolgirls be inoculated with Gardasil, a pronouncement that was overturned by the Texas Legislature, 181 to 3, a few months after the financial conflicts were revealed.

…

One rationale for inoculating boys is that entire populations should be vaccinated to achieve what is called herd immunity. But critics ask whether it is worth conducting a campaign on the scale of the one used against polio to eliminate a generally harmless virus.

Said Dr. Raffle, the British cervical cancer specialist: “Oh, dear. If we give it to boys, then all pretense of scientific worth and cost analysis goes out the window.”

My emphases. What a great article. Balanced, factual, well-written, undramatic. Take note, BBQ.

The anti-HPV push appears to have recruited BBQ, who try to attach a team of wild horses to your heartstrings to make sure you get the message. Embarassing and irrelevant to the real story.

So, like chickenpox vaccine before it, and who-knows-what after it, BigPharma take the population as one big cash cow and milk it, regardless of need or healthcare priorities, regardless of how better public money may be spent, regardless of fully examining any potential health hazards associated with their products.

Do you trust a vaccine created to fulfil a market created out of a need for profit?

We previously addressed the ‘encouragement’ of HPV vaccination for minors, particularly girls, with the vaccine Gardasil.

For summary, we may conclude;

1. Gardasil has not been proven to directly cause any deaths.

2. Gardasil appears to have been contrived to open a new market rather than address a pressing healthcare issue.

3. The efficacy of Gardasil (how long protection lasts and how good that protection is) is questionable and still undetermined. Available estimates indicate 3-5 year protection from 3 doses.

4. Fear-mongering works both ways.

5. While it may be hard to see the truth, it must be looked for. Merck, GlaxoSmithkline and your goverments (US and UK at least) wish you to submit your daughters (and possibly sons) to yet another injection or their say-so. Are you sure you have no questions?

Today the vaccination of Scottish girls begins, and with it a lesson in how to manipulate a population for profit, and with no regard for their health. This will be addressed shortly.

There were several comments to the initial Gardasil post, some of which were via email and were not published at the time, and which now follow below, for completeness:

PLEASE (RE-)READ THE PUBLISHED COMMENTS FIRST.
Response 5:

May I burn down that straw man?

Aspirin is safe; that is the difference between it and Guadakill. Aspirin was initially prepared from the bark of trees. It is a naturally occurring medicine, unlike Guardakill which is a man made poison.

There is *no straw man here*. Aspirin and STW are used, in my context, to denounce your point on alum, i.e. that just because you don’t understand how something works doesn’t mean it must be distrusted. One could apply this to all homeopathy, I just picked SJW at random. According to ‘the science’ SJW is no more effective than a placebo. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/stjohnswort/#science And that from the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

St Johns Wort is also a naturally occurring plant, and is therefore much safer and preferable as a medicine. It also has a long history of safe use.

Now, HERE is a straw man. I would guess there are many more deaths from digitalis than Gardasil will ever manage, despite also being a plant with a long history of safe use. Aspirin kills 500 people in the US per year, apparently. Just a stat, and probably through misuse, but its still a killer. One can twist anything… omigoditsachemical! …. its all about context. Alum has been used for /just/ 60 years and has recently been ‘proven’ safe on paper, when anyone who has used it has known it is safe in vivo. And yes, I’ve used it and taken it. http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=49797-alum-given-clean Together we could say “Who do you trust?”. Or, “Why trust one drug and not the other?”, as someone clever once said. Now we both know the answers to /those/ questions.

Mankind is much better off living inside and with his environment. Guardakill is an unnatural medicine; the need for it is artificial, the lust behind its making is the lust for money, and while the medicine itself is not evil, the people who make it most certainly are.

I would agree with this. What I wouldn’t agree with is throwing petrol and matches on non-existant straw men. There should be enough real, substantive data and well-argued opinion (and there is) to let people come to their own conclusion… that only a fool would inject their child with ‘GovDrugX’.

Guardasil has killed people. That is a fact.

No it’s not! You can show people the reality, but you can’t make up ‘the truth’. Those FDA reports should put enough doubt in anyones mind about Gardasil, but there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”. If one starts sounding like the Daily Mail, credibility flies out of the window.

The rules of peer review do not extend into the coroners office, and those recorded deaths and the numbers of people damaged are *not* opinion. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is not going to falsely attribute death to a vaccine (I would imagine) which is where those numbers come from.

Wrong again! I read all the FDA/VAERS reports last night and not a single one attributes death to Gardasil.

Not.
A.
Single.
One.

They merely report adverse effects in anything from minutes to weeks following Gardasil vaccination. Many of the patients had other injections at the same time. Many had so long between jab and death that mentioning Gardasil seems nothing more than thoroughness.

You KNOW what [we] think of these ‘medicines’, and you know what [we] will do for our daughters. If drugs like Gardasil and chickenpox vaccine are to exposed for the fraudulent, greed-soaked tripe that they are then it must be done through strong, coherent argument and not by setting flame to reality.
——————————————————-

Response 6/7 combined:

>> Guardasil has killed people. That is a fact.
>>
>> No it’s not! You can show people the reality, but you can’t make up ‘the
>> truth’. Those FDA reports should put enough doubt in anyones mind about
>> Gardasil, but there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”. If one starts
>> sounding like the Daily Mail, credibility flies out of the window.
>>

>
> So you are telling me that the report that attributes the deaths of
> those girls to Gardasil is false, yes?
>
>

JudicialWatch’s conclusion that G-causes-D is OPINION based on a misinterpretation of official documents. The reports never link G and D. They are simple, clear reports which state known facts about each case.

> then what you are saying is that Judicial Watch are libeling Merc. Both
> things cannot be true at the same time.
>
> http://www.judicialwatch.org/6428.shtml says unambiguously that the
> deaths are related to Gardasil. Are you saying that they are lying?
>

Not lying per se, but distorting beyond reasonable limits. As I said previously, this does no good and leaves them looking like rabid haters without the ability to construct a strong enough argument from the available information, without resorting to screeching FEAR! EVIL! DEATH!

>
> http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2007/GardasilVAERSUpdatedDeaths0907.pdf
>
> ??? so the above is a forgery? Help me out here!
>
> That is a VAERS report listing Gardasil as the cause of death!
>

NO!!! Read that pdf!
Lets see…

1st page: ‘Gardasil did not cause the patients death’

P.2 ‘Cause of death was sudden death’. Other factors involved. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.3 All just hearsay! A nurse who heard from a nurse… and anaphylaxis DOES NOT occur 3 days after exposure. It’s a bit quicker than that. Ask anyone with a peanut/bee sting allergy. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.4 Hearsay! Bloodclot 2 weeks after vacc. Could have been any cause!Does not blame Gardasil.

P.5 Death 2 weeks after vacc. No direct link at all. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.6 Another 2 week gap Does not blame Gardasil.

P.7 States ‘manner of death natural’!!!! Does not blame Gardasil.

P.8 History of heart problems, died of heart problem. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.9 Viral sepsis and secondary infection. Symptoms started BEFORE last vaccine. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.10 Hearsay, no cause of death reported. Does not blame Gardasil.

Are you now seeing the difference between the official VAERS reports and the conlusions/opinions in the JudWac piece?

> then they would NEVER list Gardasil as the cause of death if they were
> not absolutely sure would they not?
>

See above Gardasil is NEVER listed as cause of death by VAERS.

Why trust one source and not another?
Just because JudWac appear to agree with our stance on BigPharma does not mean they are virtuous truth-givers. They have their agenda, just as Merck does.

We at Blogdial should know better though, and decide for ourselves.

Now, who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? ((C) Groucho)

> What have I missed here?
>

The blindingly obvious! That Mercks clinical trial, and JudWac’s take on the VAERS reports are all spin to support a position, and somewhere under it all, crushed and splintered, lies the reality.

> I’m not sure what the reality is; VARERS says ‘death by Gardasil’ you
> say no such reports even exist.
>

VAERS NEVER EVER says death by Gardasil. See above. See the BMJ article on safety.

> The ambiguity, the complexity, everything about it screams out to me
> that it must be totally shunned. An impenetrable reality is as bad as a
> lie, and in the face of that, taking the risk is just not an option.
>

But we can find the reality, when we remember to treat JudWac with the same basic scepticism that we treat Merck. I would like to believe JudWac, but they give me no reason to do so when I look at the reality behind what they are saying.

> Then add into the mix that Justice Watch had to sue for the information,
> the case is closed; these guys are evil and their medicine is no good!
>

And JudWac are misguided, severely biased, narrow-minded, blinkered scaremongers whose stance does not stand up to the most preliminary of scrutinies. But we have found this out, and we can understand the reality. We can take each for what it is and still know that Merck is evil, and that JudWac is at least trying to stand on the right side.

Because… as someone clever once said… We Are The Best.

The white heat of public outrage is crisping this sham:

The launch of the Government’s flagship database of every child living in England has been delayed just days after The Daily Telegraph exposed serious concerns about its purpose.

ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in the country, as well as detailed information on their parents, GPs and schools.

It was announced in the wake of the murder of Victoria Climbié as a way to protect children by connecting the different services dealing with them, but this newspaper discovered that it will actually be used by police to hunt for evidence of crime.

The £224million computer system was meant to come into operation in April 2008 but was delayed following the loss of data discs containing 25 million child benefit records by HM Revenue & Customs last year, which triggered fears that ContactPoint records could easily find their way into the hands of paedophiles.

A review of its security – which the Government refused to publish in full – found the risk of a data breach could never be eliminated and the launch of ContactPoint was pushed back to October.

Now, just weeks before its planned launch and days after the Telegraph disclosed concerns that it will be used to increase the criminalisation and surveillance of England’s youth, ministers have announced that ContactPoint will not become operational until the New Year at the earliest.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families claimed that the new delay was not down to security or privacy fears, however, but simply because of “glitches” that had emerged during testing of the system, which is being built by the IT firm CapGemini.

The children’s minister, Kevin Brennan, told fellow MPs: “We have identified some issues as a result of recent system tests which we are working urgently to address.

“I have therefore taken a decision today to postpone deployment until January 2009 to allow sufficient time to continue to test the system.”

However opposition MPs said the Government should now take the opportunity to scrap the whole project.

The Shadow Families Minister, Maria Miller, said: “We repeatedly warned the Government of the problems with ContactPoint but they pressed ahead regardless, ignoring our calls to allow time to sort them out.

“There were clear indications in February of significant security concerns with this database. Only now, with just weeks to go until the project is supposed to go live, have they finally agreed to pull back to try to iron out some of the problems. Ministers now need to come clean and confirm whether this delay is because children’s personal information is at risk.”

The Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary, David Laws, added: “Instead of delaying the launch of the database, this intrusive project must be scrapped altogether.

“A recent independent review has already undermined all of the Government’s assurances that the database will be secure. The discovery of further technical issues does not bode well for the future.

“The Government has proven itself untrustworthy with large databases containing sensitive data. Parents have every right to demand that their children’s personal details are not put at risk.”

Of course, ContactPoint should be scrapped entirely, and readers of BLOGDIAL know the reasons why.

If it is scrapped, (and it should be because ContactPoint can never be made secure) then the same reasons why it is being scrapped will apply to the rationale behind scrapping of the NIR and the ID Card.

No database can ever be secured. Once the data gets out, it is out forever. Internal leaks are a great hazard, and most of the biggest data escapes have been from this source, like the DVDR posted in the post and LOST, containing the personal details of 25 million children and parents.

This submission has a good summary of these risks, and why databases can never be secured.

The fact of the matter is if children need to be protected from paedophiles by not implementing ContactPoint, then the rest of the population should also be protected from identity thieves, stalkers, rapists, and every other sort of criminal that will be willing to pay millions for access to the NIR data. Of course, all of these correct objections are completely separate from the moral objections that are to do with children not being the property of the state, privacy, liberty and all the rest.

ContactPoint is part of the irrational mania for registers that computer illiterate ministers are suffering from which threatens to plunge Britain into an abyss of unprecedented blackness and horror.

I am getting a sense that this is a step too far for the mild mannered, infinitely patient Great British Public™; that the reaction of the public has been violently antagonistic to ContactPoint, and ministers have been feeling the incandescent rage of anyone they encounter who knows about this abominable system. Even a rabid dog knows when to turn tail and flee when it is confronted by its own destruction, and it may be the case that Neu Labor is that rabid dog when it comes to ContactPoint.

It should not be long before the same reasoning is applied to the NIR and ID Cards and then the whole identity sham will come down on them.

“This is your freedom. This is the freedom of the British. And to you, it’s gold. And you don’t get it. Because to give freedom to you is just throwing it away. Freedom is for closers.”

In the Queen’s speech this autumn Gordon Brown’s government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and “made accessible” to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and “other public bodies”.

This fact should be in equal parts incredible and nauseating. It is certainly enraging and despicable. Not even George Orwell in his most febrile moments could have envisaged a world in which every citizen could be so thoroughly monitored every moment of the day, spied upon, eavesdropped, watched, tracked, followed by CCTV cameras, recorded and scrutinised. Our words and web searches, our messages and intimacies, are to be stored and made available to the police, the spooks, the local council – the local council! – and “other public bodies”.

This Orwellian nightmare, additionally, is proposed for a world in which leading soi-disant liberal democracies run, and/or permit rendition flights to, Guantanamo Bay. How many steps separate an innocent British citizen from some misinterpretation or interference or error in the collected and ‘made accessible’ data of text messages and emails, and a forthcoming home-grown version of Guantanamo Bay for people whose pattern of phone calls does not fit the police definition of acceptable?

Two things have made this ghastly development possible: the technology, and politicians. The technology is way ahead of the game: Siemens of Germany are already supplying 60 countries with a device that monitors and integrates data from phone, email and internet activity; its software establishes patterns of uses and alerts monitoring staff to deviations from the patterns. As New Scientist reports, the system is already known to throw up huge numbers of false positives; that could have been predicted by a rudimentary acquaintance with human nature and human life. But it is a fact that has to be added to the brilliance and reliability of government and law enforcement agencies in keeping data secure, unhackable and unlosable.

The second point concerns the quality of our politicians. They say they are putting us all under suspicion for our own good. They wish to protect us against terrorists and criminals, and to make bureaucracy more efficient. The efficiency of bureaucracy has one of its finest moments in the neat and sorted piles of false teeth, hair and spectacles at the gas chamber doors. Oh no: better the milling crowd than the police-disciplined queues of bureaucratic efficiency; better the irritation of dealing with human fallibility than the fear of dealing with jack-booted gendarmes whose grip on one’s arms follows stepping out of the queue.

But as to the first matter: protecting us – by making us all suspects, all potential criminals and terrorists – from terrorism and criminality. Well: the first duty of our politicians should be to protect our liberties, and to encourage us to see that liberty carries risks, which we should be trusted to understand and accept so that we can make our own lives our own way. But no: these politicians – Brown and Labour, once the party of the people – are going to keep us safe by not keeping our liberties safe; they are going to keep us safe by making us unfree. Yet the putative benefit of protecting us from terrorism and crime is unattainable. They themselves say ‘there is no 100% guarantee of safety’: but they are going to spy on us all anyway! In fact they are going to create crime: a huge new criminal industry awaits for stealing, copying, falsely creating and manipulating that newly-created precious commodity, “identity”. A huge new impetus awaits for techno-crime to disrupt the monitoring and data storage systems on which the government intends to spend billions of our tax money, creating its unblinking eye in our bedrooms. As surely as night follows day, the new surveillance society will do more harm than good.

[…]

Grauniad

We have been saying this for almost a decade, and with all the technical facts included.

We are far ahead of AC Grayling and all the others who write in these newspapers, and have been for many years.

What none of these people want to face is the fact that government will NEVER bestow (or in this case, return) freedom on its citizens. If AC Grayling wants his civil liberties back, he is going to have to become uncivil to a very distasteful degree.

The potential for profoundly negative uses of technology has escaped us. It is with despair that I conclude that we have to start all over again with the demos and resistance, the campaigns and arguments, to roll back this huge and ultimately destructive assault on our civil liberties.

That is not going to cut it. The police are armed like Japanese manga characters, and have powers to lock you up indefinitely should you dare to riot. Once again, BLOGDIAL is way ahead of you. Rioting and demonstrating do not work. They did not work to save the Iraquis (who were murdered to the tune of one million people), and they will not work to restore your liberties. Do you really think that people who are capable of mass murder (Gordon Brown) will be in any way moved by a demonstration or a riot?

Are you really that Naïve?

In any case, how are you going to organize a resistance when they can know your every move in advance? This is assuming that you will not seek permission for your demonstration or gathering of more than 99 people in advance. You will not be able to surprise the police state with a demonstration or a riot, which in any case, even if you managed to organize it flash mob style, would not produce the result you require; the restoration of your liberties.

We need to stop this assault on civil liberties going further, we need to roll back the attritions they have already suffered, and we need a rock solid written constitution to protect us from those who aim to make us all suspects in the gaze of the unblinking universal eye.

Wow, you really ARE that Naïve!

The United States of America has a written constitution, and it has been summarily torn to shreds by the legislature in the last seven years.

A written Constitution is useless against this sort of onslaught. That should be plainly obvious to everyone by now.

If you have even a shred of common sense, you should be coming to the conclusion that all bets are off, that something VERY UNCIVIL has to happen if you are going to ever be free again.

Thankfully freedom returning to this beautiful island is not impossible. It will take some clear thinking, some twenty first century thinking (combined with some eighteenth) to make this happen.

Your freedom is out there, just waiting for you to take it. Are you man enough to take it?

If you are not prepared to face these facts, if you are not prepared to stare this problem in the face as you would a leaking roof, then all is lost, and all you and Henry Porter will have are your columns.

Oh…have I got your attention now?

A flagship database intended to protect every child in the country will be used by police to hunt for evidence of crime in a “shocking” extension of its original purpose, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in England as well as information on their parents, GPs, schools and support services such as social workers.

The £224 million computer system was announced in the wake of the death of Victoria Climbié, who was abused and then murdered after a string of missed opportunities to intervene by the authorities, as a way to connect the different services dealing with children.

It has always been portrayed as a way for professionals to find out which other agencies are working with a particular child, to make their work easier and provide a better service for young people.

However, it has now emerged that police officers, council staff, head teachers, doctors and care workers will use the records to search for evidence of criminality and wrongdoing to help them launch prosecutions against those on the database – even long after they have reached adulthood.

It comes amid growing concern about the increasing criminalisation of Britain’s youth and the extent of the country’s surveillance society.

Only this week a report warned that teenagers were being dragged into the criminal justice system rather than being given an old-fashioned “ticking-off”, while it has also been disclosed that the DNA profiles of almost 40,000 innocent children are now being kept on the national database.

An estimated 330,000 people will have access to the data stored on ContactPoint, which is due to launch this autumn despite fears the Government’s poor record on data security will mean it puts children at risk from paedophiles.

The records will be updated until children turn 18 then kept in an archive for six years before being destroyed, meaning they can be accessed until a young person reaches 24. Those who have learning difficulties or who are in care will remain on the live system until they turn 25, so their archived records will be available into their 30s.

Little-noticed guidance published by the Government discloses that ContactPoint users can request administrators to give them archived data for a number of reasons, including “for the prevention or detection of crime” and “for the prosecution of offenders”.

The disclosure has led civil liberties campaigners to warn the entire database will be open for investigators to trawl for evidence that links young people to crime or anti-social behaviour.

ContactPoint will not include detailed case information on children, but will record if they have contact with a Youth Offending Team or “sensitive services” such as drug abuse workers, which critics say will mean it is obvious which young people have criminal records.

Investigators opening a ContactPoint file would be able to see at a glance where they had lived throughout their childhood, where they had gone to school, what contact they had with social services and who their parents or carers were, and use the information to link them to known gangs or areas of criminal or anti-social activity.

Baroness Miller, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman in the House of Lords, said: “This is truly shocking. It’s exactly the definition of a police state. The police will have the details of a whole generation for so-called crime prevention.

“It raises a lot of issues and we haven’t had a debate in Parliament about it.”

The proposed use of ContactPoint to collect evidence will raise further fears about the extent to which citizens are being spied on by the state.

Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country, and its local authorities are increasingly using powers designed to prevent terrorism to spy on people suspected of petty crimes such as littering and failing to pick up dog mess. Ministers are also pressing ahead with a £20 billion scheme to issue all UK residents over the age of 16 with ID cards.

The launch of ContactPoint was delayed following the loss of data discs containing 25 million child benefit records by HM Revenue & Customs last year. A review of its security – which the Government refused to publish in full – found the risk of a data breach could never be eliminated.

Because of fears that certain children, including those of MPs and celebrities as well as abuse victims, will be at particular risk, a “shield function” has been created within ContactPoint to hide their addresses.

However, the new guidance states that this can be overridden if police or social workers deem it an emergency. One of the stated reasons why this may be carried out is “an investigation of a crime toward or by the child”, in a further confirmation of the intended uses of the database.

Prof Ross Anderson, an expert in security at Cambridge University, said: “This is yet another revelation about the database state that is shocking but not surprising.

“The police have always been able to look into whatever they want, but the information age changes the scale of that completely.”

Phil Booth, national co-ordinator for the civil liberties campaign group No2ID, added: “Parents should know that this is not for the protection of their children, it could be used to prosecute them. This is a serious step on from what little has been told to the public.”

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families insisted: “The purpose of ContactPoint is not crime detection, it is to help improve services to children, including safeguarding vulnerable children.

“To access ContactPoint for the purposes of prevention or detection of crime or for the prosecution of offenders, police would have to make a special request directly to the Secretary of State or Local Authority and make a case for disclosure.”

ContactPoint will be put into use by 17 councils in the North West in October and then rolled out across the country.

[…]

Telegraph

You were warned.

“UFO ignorance is political rather than scientific”- that’s the conclusion of two prominent university professors who had the results of their research on UFOs published in the August 2008 edition of Political Theory. It was the first time a major political science journal had published an article dealing with the UFO phenomenon so it has predictably sparked controversy in the academic world. The joint authors of “Sovereignty and the UFO,” are Alexander Wendt, Professor of International Security at Ohio State University; and Professor Raymond Duvall, Chair of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Their article breaks new ground in opening up for academic debate the way in which evidence of UFOs has not been seriously analyzed in the modern era. Their main argument is that this is due to a “metaphysical threat” that UFOs pose to the sovereignty of modern states. This threat comes not from the reality of UFOs as an inexplicable physical phenomenon that ultimately have mundane explanations, but the implicit assumption that UFOs are intelligently guided vehicles controlled by extraterrestrial intelligences (the extraterrestrial hypothesis).

Wendt and Duvall argue that a serious study of UFOs could undermine the “anthropomorphic sovereignty” under which modern states operate. They explain in their paper: “When sovereignty is contested today, therefore, it is always and only among humans, horizontally so to speak, rather than vertically with Nature or God. In this way modern sovereignty is fundamentally anthropocentric (pp.607-608).” Put simply, only humans compete for sovereignty over the population, resources and territory of the planet.

In the absence of any conclusive scientific evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, political sovereignty remains an exclusively human affair. This is why, according to Wendt and Duvall, modern states have not devoted sufficient scientific resources to the UFO problem.

since 1947 over 100,000 UFOs have been reported worldwide, many by militaries. However, neither the scientific community nor states have made serious efforts to identify them, the vast majority remaining uninvestigated…. For both science and the state, it seems, the UFO is not an “object” at all, but a non-object, something not just unidentified but unseen and thus ignored (p. 610).

This directly led to Wendt and Duvall concluding that states are deliberately promoting an “epistemology of ignorance.” They write: “our puzzle is not the familiar question of ufology, “What are UFOs?” but, “Why are they dismissed by the authorities?” Why is human ignorance not only unacknowledged, but so emphatically denied? In short, why a taboo?” (p. 611).

One critic, Henry Farrell, responded to their paper arguing that “the evidence is inadequate to the claims made.” . In their online response to Farrell´s criticism , Wendt and Duvall agreed that they had supplied insufficient evidence in support of their theory but that the “intent in the paper is not in any case to test our theory: it is to demonstrate the existence of an unacknowledged puzzle, and then, in the spirit of systematic theorization, offer what we think is a plausible solution to it.”

Farrell´s criticism is the familiar skeptical position used not only to challenge the evidence supporting UFO research and the extraterrestrial hypothesis in the first place, but also claims that governments are systematically covering up, or in denial over, the evidence. Wendt and Duvall are not positing a systematic government cover up of the evidence, but are proposing the theory that there exists a deep denial by the modern state over the significance of UFO evidence: “the sovereign represses the UFO out of fear of what it would reveal about itself (p. 625).

UFO researchers have long claimed that the governments have covered up evidence confirming the extraterrestrial hypothesis, or are in denial over the evidence. Terms such as “Cosmic Watergate” have been coined to describe the government UFO cover-up, and how this systematically has influenced public perceptions over the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Other researchers have referred instead to a government “foul-up” which is that governments basically have mangled the scientific research of UFOs, and it´s up to civilian researchers to shepherd government authorities back onto the right track.

Wendt´s and Duvall´s theory is a variation of the government foul-up argument. Rather than governments consciously choosing to neglect the serious study of UFOs through a deliberately thought out public policy process, this denial is expressed unconsciously due to the metaphysical threat posed by UFOs. They point out that these “are questions of social rather than physical science, and do not presuppose that any UFOs are ETs. Only that they might be” (p. 611). Consequently, this leads to arguably Wendt´s and Duvall´s most significant observation about the fundamental nature of the UFO issue stated at the beginning of this article, “UFO ignorance is political rather than scientific” (p. 613).

The greatest contribution of Wendt’s and Duvall’s article is that it correctly casts light on the political factors that contextualize evidence of UFOs and the extraterrestrial hypothesis. For decades, many have argued that the study of UFOs is a scientific problem that requires a strict application of the scientific method to get definitive answers. The scientific approach has made little progress since political factors have not been properly accounted for in the way modern states are in denial about the evidence (the foul-up thesis), and/or cover-up hard evidence supporting the extraterrestrial hypothesis. The shift from a purely scientific approach to a more politically oriented understanding ought to be greatly welcomed. It will provide greater awareness of how modern states participate in the study of UFOs and the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Wendt´s and Duvall´s “Sovereignty and the UFO,” moves academia one step closer to formal political studies of evidence concerning the extraterrestrial hypothesis, and its public policy implications. That will ultimately lead, as I argue elsewhere , to the development of ´exopolitics´ as the formal political discipline for studying the public policy implications of extraterrestrial life.

[…]

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0090591708317902

Read the paper for yourself (PDF).

Anyone who has been reading BLOGDIAL since 2001 knows our position on UFOs (in other words, the facts).

There is an interseting subtext to this great article: the assumption that government is the first choice for the designated entity to investigate UFOs. There is no reason why this should be the case, and in fact, there is no reason why the controllers of UFOs should ‘naturally’ seek out any branch of any government before, say Raytheon or Lockheed Martin, or indeed Nuclear Physicist Stanton Friedman:

or anyone that they happen to come upon.

There is no ‘coverup’; there is a ‘lack of derivative product in the hands of the general public’. Its crazy to go to the government, cap in hand, begging to be told the greatest secret ever. They are not going to talk, ever, about this if they can. The members of the public who are interested in this subject need to group together to solve the UFO problem, and by that, I mean the problem of getting hold of the technology and commercializing it, since the debate about the nature of UFOs is now very strongly favoring the ETH.

Anything that can be shot down, killed, snagged by the government can be shot down, killed, or snagged privately. Anyone can stumble upon a crash site; in fact, this is what happened in the 1950s; the farmer called the military instead of collecting the garbage and mailing the pieces to as many companies, museums, metallurgists, universities and journalist as he could (not forgetting his lawyer and the patent office).

The greatest delusion that men suffer from today is in fact the belief that government is responsible for everything; government is responsible, is the representative of all men, is the highest authority, the first choice in all matters of health, safety, policy, personal morality, interactions between the peoples of nations and in this case, the interaction between the ‘nationals’ of other planets and us.

We have already written about the ostrich posturing ‘scientists’ who absolutely refuse to look at the evidence, and who maintain deliberate and shameful ignorance so that they can satisfy their addiction to their salaries.

The veneer of sheer stupidity, willful ignorance, dullardry and intrigue has not only started to crack, but it is rapidly peeling away. Soon, someone will get hold of a piece of information that will cause a revolution; it will probably come in the form of a formula for an alloy combined with some maths that will turn out to be of great benefit. Hopefully it will be something that cannot cause an explosion of any kind…other than social!

Shyam Sunder, NIST lead investigator has said that all ‘designers’ (meaning architects) need to revisit their designs to make sure that they cannot fail in the way that he is claiming that WTC-7 Building seven collapsed.

This is the greatest error of Shyam Sunder and NIST.

Now he is saying that all architects throughout the USA have designed buildings with steel which will now need to be retrofitted because of his false assertion that a fire fueled by office furniture could cause the collapse of an entire steel framed building.

If I were an architect, I would be insulted and incandescent with rage at this proclamation.

By all means, Shyam Sunder and NIST can concoct any lie they like about WTC-7; that is what they are being paid to do. What they CANNOT do, is say that safety conscious, responsible and professional architects should now re-visit their sound designs at the behest of a liar and his absurd, unscientific and nonsensical assertion.

If it is the case that these architects are going to be forced to re-examine their works, this would be a financial disaster for them. No steel framed building would be insurable unless it passes this absurd and bogus WTC-7-NIST certification. No retrofitting would be claimable against insurance, since the architects would have guaranteed their work.

The only way they are going to be able to fight this is to band together and then prove that WTC-7 could not have fallen down in the way that ‘Mr. Sham’ Shyam Sunder and NIST said that it did.

Their reputations are on the line, and so are their businesses.

This is the greatest error that Shyam Sunder could have possibly made. Any architect and engineer with balls isn’t going to take this lying down. If they do, they are in for years of loss making inspections and useless retrofitting.

Furthermore, I would like to hear directly from the firm that originally designed WTC-7. Are they really going to take this lying down, NIST saying that their building could not stand the heat generated by burning office furniture?!

Finally, after three years, this is the best lie they could come up with.

That is simply astonishing, and I have a feeling that Shyam Sunder knows how stupid he sounds. Look at his body language during the press conference. This is the behavior of a man who is lying, and you do not have to be an expert in behavior analysis to see it.

Wether you think that 911 was an inside job or not, this explanation of why WTC-7 fell is inadequate. It will make more people suspicious of the rest of the 911 mythology, and will cause architects and engineers everywhere to defend themselves and their work, and by virtue of that action, discredit this explanation.

If architects do not get a hold of the original blueprints of WTC-7 and perform their own independent investigation they will have only themselves to blame for the negative effects of this NIST report.

Signing a petition demanding that Congress do their work for them (conducting a truly independent investigation) is insane.

Here is a comprehensive rebuttal, the first of many no doubt.

Captain Davros, longtime BLOGDIAL poster, fine artist, SWL and guitarist has a “new” record out of demos from 98 and 99, ‘The Autumn Tapes by Spunkle’:

The Autumn Tapes Preview from FirstFold Records on Vimeo.

There are only 90 copies for sale, each having a hand-pulled three colour screenprint by Captain D in them as well as a CD.

Captain Davros is responsible for some of the spectacular BLOGDIAL pieces of art that randomly appear at the top of the blog, and I happen to be the proud owner of an actual 3D one made out of solidified and painted paper pulp, with raised lettering and a varnish finish. Utterly beautiiful!

Sent in by a particularly observant lurker:

Punters at a village pub have developed an ingenious way of beating the credit crunch without compromising on their daily pint.

Thrifty punters have begun bartering home-grown produce in exchange for beer and even pub meals.

Various items of fresh fruit, fish, meat and vegetables have been exchanged, with the amount of pints, meals or vouchers offered linked to the size, quantity and quality of the items presented.

A sign placed inside the pub says: ‘If you grow, breed, shoot or steal anything that may look at home on our menu, then bring it in and let’s do a deal.’

So far pints have been swapped in place of potatoes, mackerel and a kilo of fresh fruit.

Locally shot rabbits, pheasants and pigeons have also been exchanged for beer.

The Pigs pub, in Edgefield, near Holt, Norfolk, even encourages locals to contribute to its traditional food menu in return for free alcohol.

Manager Cloe Wasey, 24, said the offer has taken off as people have started to feel the pinch financially.

‘We’ve been doing it for almost two years now but the success of it has only just recently started to boom with the credit crunch setting in,’ she added.

‘People need to find different ways to go out and this helps.

‘It’s also great for us because we get produce at a good price, although we have high standards so the food we get in has to meet those.

‘We find the home grown stuff is often much better than what we can get from the suppliers.

‘Someone will say “that rabbit tasted great” and we say ‘here, meet the person who shot it”.’

Driver Derek Feast, 64, a regular in the pub, recently swapped some of the free range chicken eggs he breeds for a pint.

‘I have a job where I earn the national minimum wage so this little bit of extra money helps me get out,’ he said. ‘The odd penny here and there really helps.’

Miss Wasey, who runs the pub with her business partner Tim Abbott, 24, who is head chef, said the scheme has helped cement the pub’s place at the heart of the village community.

‘It gives us a more local feel,’ she said.

[…]

Daily Mail

People without any exposure to the ideas of economics in the abstract understand and are attracted to barter on a gut level.

With barter, there is no middle man. There is no VAT, no record of transaction, in short, there is no law involved.

The next clear step is to organize barter with cards and computers, and there have been some attempts at this, the biggest one seems to be Bartercard, which started in Australia:

Bartercard is unlike any other credit or debit card because you fund our card with your own goods and services…NOT CASH. Bartercard currently helps over 55,000 smart businesses in 12 countries around the world (over 4,000 in the UK) to increase sales, customer base, cash-flow and profit. Bartercard enables member businesses to exchange goods and services with other Member businesses, saving valuable cash, without having to engage in a direct swap of goods.

Bartercard runs to facilitate Business to Business barter. Some interesting feedback on it thanks to the Google. It is run as a franchise world-wide

The next step has already been taken; one example can be found in the form of the Totnes Pound, where the idea of barter is pushed into the background and the (more understandable) idea of alternative currency is in the foreground.

After this the next step is to create a barter system that works on mobile phones, specifically the iPhone and iPod touch. A barter system running on a mobile platform, exposed to millions of people, could pick up enough momentum to become a powerful alternative to debt based, inflation cursed, corrupt currencies and the organized crime gangs that operate them.

PARIS – France’s broadcast authority has banned French channels from airing TV shows aimed at children under 3 years old, to shield them from developmental risks it says television viewing poses at that age.

The High Audiovisual Council, in a ruling published Wednesday, said it wanted to “protect children under 3 from the effects of television.”

France’s minister for culture and communication, Christine Albanel, issued a “cry of alarm” to parents in June about channels dedicated 24 hours a day to baby-targeted programming. In a newspaper interview, she called them “a danger” and urged parents not to use them to help their children get to sleep.

She was referring to two foreign channels that can be seen in France on cable television, BabyFirstTV and Baby TV.

The council’s ruling aims to prevent the development of such programming on French channels. It also orders French cable operators that air foreign channels with programs for babies to broadcast warning messages to parents. The messages will read: “Watching television can slow the development of children under 3, even when it involves channels aimed specifically at them.”

The ruling cites health experts as saying that interaction with other people is crucial to early child development.

“Television viewing hurts the development of children under 3 years old and poses a certain number of risks, encouraging passivity, slow language acquisition, over-excitedness, troubles with sleep and concentration as well as dependence on screens,” the ruling said.

When BabyFirstTV first aired in the United States in 2006, it escalated an already heated national debate. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said babies should be kept away from television altogether.

BabyFirstTV and other companies say their products are designed to be watched by babies and parents together in an interactive manner. Critics say such channels are used as a baby sitter.

Baby TV is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The three companies behind BabyFirstTV are Regency Enterprises, a film and TV production company that is a partner of News Corp.’s Fox Entertainment; Kardan N.V, an investment group based in the Netherlands and Israel; and Bellco Capital, a private Los Angeles-based investment fund.

http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080820/ap_on_en_tv/france_baby_tv_ban

France controls music with lyrics not in English.
France shuns Fast Food.
France bans BabyFirstTV.

Vive La France!

Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana hit out at the religious values of the Italian government on Monday as the furore over a plan by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni to fingerprint all children in the country’s gypsy camps rumbled on.

“The ‘Catholic’ ministers of Silvio Berlusconi’s government have fallen at the first hurdle, without appeal,” said the weekly, which slammed the newly formed government in April for failing to include staunch Catholics in its line-up.

“The dignity of man is worth nothing to them. No-one has raised his hand to counter Maroni and his indecent racist proposal“.

The weekly went on to attack the granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Alessandra Mussolini, who had previously failed to comment on Maroni’s plan despite her recent appointment as president of the Parliamentary Children’s Committee.

“Mussolini’s silence is not surprising, since ethnic and religious registers are part of her family DNA and finally return as government heritage“, it said.

The Catholic paper went on to suggest that the fingerprints of parliamentarians and their children should be taken first.

“The registering of a Roma child, who has committed no crime, violates human dignity,” it said,

“We would have given more credit to the minister if, together with the register, he had explained how he would get all the Roma children into schools and take them away from the camps they share with rats. What help has he planned? Nothing”.

Mussolini described the editorial as “a mixture of confusion and intolerance”, adding that she “could not fail” to support a plan that would “save and defend” the Roma children.

But the president of the Italian branch of the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) echoed Famiglia Cristiana’s fears.

“Not only do we fail to understand how this register can bring positive results, but there is a risk of criminalising the victims – the children themselves,” said Vincenzo Spadafora, appealing for a meeting with Maroni.

“I think the minister would do well to open dialogue on this issue rather than repeating his position,” he added.

A former Italian president, Francesco Cossiga, added to the chorus of nay-sayers, asking what Maroni had planned next.

“I think the minister’s next step will be to cut the first phalange from the little finger of the right or left hand of gypsy children, or even better a piece of the lobe from the right or left ear so that they can be immediately recognised,” he said.

MARONI DEFENDS PLAN.

But Maroni’s proposal received support from Foreign Affairs Minister Franco Frattini, despite unofficial comments from the EC last week that the plan would be unacceptable.

“I think that Maroni has done well to continue along this path. This measure is above all in the interests of the children who have no identity. We can help them (by removing them) from the ignoble state of abandonment in which they find themselves,” said Frattini, a former European Commissioner for Justice and Security.

“It’s not about registers or anything like that but about identifying those who live in our country. These things are done in many other European countries without any scandal and they will also be done here,” he added. Maroni hit back at critics, describing his plan as a “logical measure” that conformed to European directives.

“All the polemics are unfounded, the fruit of ignorance or ideological prejudice,” he said.

Maroni also pointed to an EU law passed in April that requires member states to take the fingerprints from migrant minors coming from outside the EU from the age of six and up.

Under Maroni’s proposal, fingerprints will be taken during a census of all gypsy camps in a bid to establish who is in the country legally and who is not.

Gypsies found without the correct paperwork will be expelled after three months.

The government eventually plans to dismantle all illegal camps as well as authorised camps that do not have adequate facilities.

The proposal has come under heavy fire from opposition politicians, children’s rights organisations, Catholic immigration foundation Migrantes and international bodies including the European Union and the Council of Europe for discriminating against an ethnic minority.

[…]

http://www.italymag.co.uk/italy/politics/catholic-weekly-slams-fingerprints

My emphasis.

Well well well; it seems like the Catholics are finally smelling the stench of fascism and are beginning to say something about it.

Note how Franco Frattini, Fascist, justifies dehumanizing people because it is a logical measure.

Note also how these vermin lie through their teeth; they say:

It’s not about registers or anything like that but about identifying those who live in our country

how can you identify who should or should not be in the country without keeping a register of who is legal? The whole ‘logic’ of fingerprinting and biometrics is that you keep a permanent register and then constantly check people against it. If this man does not understand this, he is incompetent. If he does understand it and said those words, he is a liar. Either way, he has no place being in charge of any of this.

All the usual excuses are rolled out:

These things are done in many other European countries without any scandal and they will also be done here

Translation: “other states violate peoples rights, and so we will also”.

Italy would be far better off simply rounding up all Roma and expelling them en-masse, as they bulldoze their camps.

That way, the people of Italy will be spared the creation of their own police state biometric apparatus; which is the REAL reason why this is being done. Once the apparatus is in place, ‘logic’ will be used to justify putting all Italians in the database, and using it for any and all purposes.

This is how they build these systems. This is how the Germans built their early computer driven police state apparatus; on the back of the threat of the Baader Meinhof gang.

Wake up Italians; you may not like the Roma, but your problem is not them, it is what is being planned for YOU!

“Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends… …when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.” Isabel Paterson ‘The God of the Machine’

There is a new consultation, hot on the heels of the last one outlining the proposed guidelines for Local Authorities who have a ‘…a new duty to establish the identities of children missing education.’

Everything that could be wrong, is wrong with this. Lets pull it apart section by section:

1.1.1 There is wide agreement about the outcomes we all want for every child – they should be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic wellbeing.

That is completely wrong. There is no ‘wide agreement about the outcomes that we want for every child’. That is why millions of families are home educating. There is no ‘we’ in all of this. Each family is separate, and there is no collective ownership of children. Any normal parent wants their child to, “be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve”. The shape that that takes is up to each family, and has nothing to do with and cannot be defined by the state.

None of this is negotiable.

The same goes for ‘economic well-being’ this is not something that can be defined by the state, especially when it concerns future economic well-being. And for an idea of what a country looks like where everyone has a degree, just look at third world countries where there are so many people with them that many of them are bus conductors. No parent wants their child to be a bus conductor, and yet, if everyone in the country achieved a university degree, would not this eventually be the case? But I digress.

1.1.3 The guidance in this document aims to help Local Authorities (LAs) to effectively implement the duty to identify children not receiving a suitable education. […]

Everything in this document (except the database references) would be acceptable if all mention of home education was removed. Home education is not relevant to this in any way, and if this document was designed to guide Local Authorities for all cases of bad children or children at risk (which home educated children are not a subset of) then it would be fairly innocuous. Sadly, the imbeciles who authored this are clearly against home education and have, from the outset, wanted to create a system of organized harassment to suppress home education in the UK.

As I have said before, no one in a Local Authority has the right to tell a parent what is or is not ‘suitable education’ anyone with even a single brain cell can see that this is the case. A parent may want their children educated and nurtured in their culture and religion; no Local Authority Apparatchik has the right to come into your house and tell you that your child must receive facts deemed by the state to be necessary to life. The very idea should be anathema to all decent people.

1.1.4 Children not receiving a suitable education are clearly at risk of a range of negative outcomes that could have long term damaging consequences for their life chances. For example they are at risk of not attaining the skills and qualifications they need to succeed in life, and are at significant risk of becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training) once they have reached the compulsory school leaving age. They are also are more likely to be vulnerable in one way or another. They may be from disadvantaged families, (experiencing multiple risks such as poverty, substance misuse, mental ill-health and poor housing), travelling communities, immigrant families, be unaccompanied asylum seeking or trafficked children, or be at risk of neglect or abuse or disengaged from education.

The schools that the state runs produce negative outcomes that have long term damaging consequences for the life chances of British children. That is why so many people choose to home educate. Many state educated children do not attain the skills and qualifications they need to succeed in life. The system is so bad that they have to reduce the difficulty of exams so that these educationally impoverished children have a chance of getting a ‘passing’ grade. This is why universities and commercial enterprises have to set their own exams to see who can do what after 100 candidates all with 5 grade ‘A’ A-Levels come to interview but none of them can spell.

Disadvantaged families, families in poverty, substance abusers, mental health cases, travelers, immigrant families, asylum seekers, trafficked children – none of these categories have anything whatsoever to do with home educated children, and it is illogical and offensive to mention them in the same breath as the unfortunates in that list. The Local Authorities already have many duties related to these groups. They cannot run the schools they are already tasked with organizing. New Labour ministers avoid them like the plague; what is it that they fear so much about home educators that they must lump them in with these trouble cases?

This is a direct attack on a philosophical difference that home educators have with the collectivists in New Labour. New Labour does not want any child left behind…from the indoctrination and brainwashing that creates mindless drones who will believe anything that they are told, who cannot think at all, never mind think for themselves. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’; look at the results of the schools they have been running. They produced a generation of people capable of enjoying ‘Lad Mags’, an epidemic of binge alcoholism, feral street children and decent people fleeing their ‘education’ system.

1.1.5 Local authorities, through their Children’s Trust, must have robust measures in place both to identify quickly when a child is not receiving a suitable education, and to follow through with effective tracking and enquiry systems. These measures should be at the heart of the local strategies for preventing negative outcomes for children and young people, and ensuring their safety and well-being.

The best way to ensure that children do not have ‘negative outcomes’ is to make the schools that they attend good enough to achieve these results. When they are able to make the schools perform properly, the incentive to home educate will be eliminated, and the only people left doing it will be those with children who have special needs. Until they have done this, they do not have a leg to stand on on this front, quite apart from the moral aspect of a parent’s right to educate and nurture their children in whatever way they see fit.

1.2.1 This document is issued under the section 436A (inserted before section 437 in Chapter 2, Part 6 of the Education Act 1996 (school attendance) by the Education and Inspections Act 2006), which provides that local authorities must have regard to statutory guidance issued by the Secretary of State. This document provides that statutory guidance and applies to England only. Local authorities in England must take this guidance into account and, if they decide to depart from it, have clear reasons for doing so.

My emphasis.

What this means is what I asserted before. These guidelines are not new law, they are guidelines, and as such, you are free to ignore them, just as the Local Authorities are free to ignore them.

1.2.2 This document is a revised version of original statutory guidance issued in February 2007, updated to place implementation of the duty in the revised strategic context following on from publication of the Children’s Plan (December 2007); to reflect priorities that emerged since the original version was published; and to reflect local authorities’ initial experience of implementing the duty.

Translation: “We could not have possibly put all of this in the original guidelines, otherwise there might have been a rebellion.”

1.2.3 Section 436A requires all local authorities to make arrangements to enable them to establish (so far as it is possible to do so) the identities of children residing in their area who are not receiving a suitable education. In relation to children, by ‘suitable education’ we mean efficient full-time education suitable to her/his age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs the child may have.

And here is the true purpose of this entire exercise.

This is the way they are going to get every child in England into and justify the existence of ContactPoint.

Quite apart from that, this section is absurd on its face. It is not the place of the state to determine what is or is not a suitable education. It is not the place of the state to say what is or is not an efficient education, and neither is it their place to mandate full-time education.

1.2.4 The duty applies in relation to children of compulsory school age who are not on a school roll, and who are not receiving a suitable education otherwise than being at school, for example, at home, privately, or in alternative provision.

The goal of these guidelines is to create a way to sweep up all the home educating children in the UK, identify them, categorize them and put them on a database, together with the names of their parents, siblings, ethnicity and other details. See below. Once again, children who are being educated at home, privately, or in alternative provision should not be subject to being identified for this purpose, since they are being eductated quite legally. Are they going to go to all the private schools in the UK and ask for their student registers? If the Local Authority has a duty to identify every child who is not on a school roll, how are they to know which ones are being home educated and which are in private schools? The only way to know would be to collect in a database, a list of all children who are in any type of school and then the numbers that are left are ‘at risk’, and lo and behold, further in the report, we have:

Access to rolls for all providers
6.19 When the named person(s) receive notification about a child believed to be in their area it may be necessary to check the child’s name and other details, if available, against all alternative provision rolls in the local area held by the local authority and schools to see if they are already registered. One way to achieve this is to have all names of school-aged children kept on a central database which is frequently updated and can be checked by the staff members who require access. (This is not a requirement to set up new IT systems for children not receiving education. See paragraph 6.37 for suggestions for utilising existing databases).

6.20 Another way to check a child’s name and other details would be via communication links with all educational providers: this includes all schools; Pupil Referral Units; custodial institutions and other providers of alternative provision (local authorities and schools should establish a contractual agreement that providers of alternative provision will keep a register to check if the child is registered with them.

God help you if your child has the same name as another child who is a bad egg deep in the system. All it will take is for one of these Apparatchiks to misidentify you and your life will be turned into a living hell. If you let them.

They are actually saying that PRIVATE schools must turn over the rolls of their students to the Local Authority. It simply beggars belief, but it is totally logical; they want EVERY CHILD IN THE DATABASE, and being able to afford private education is not going to be an exception.

1.2.5 In order to help local authorities achieve consistency in how they share information in order to meet this duty, this version of the guidance includes, at Appendix 1, a workbook that provides standard data definitions. The data definitions were produced taking into account the views of local authorities based on their experience of implementing the duty since its introduction in February 2007.

This is unacceptable. Period.

1.2.7 Local authorities have a duty to make arrangements to enable them to establish whether a child who is being educated at home (under section 7 of the Education Act 1997) is not receiving suitable education.

This is perhaps the worst part of all, and it is something we have covered at length. No public servant has the right or the ability to say what is or is not a suitable education, and by including this in the guidelines, they are opening the door for widespread harassment and abuse. Once again, for many parents the lack of provision of a suitable education by the Local Authority is the very reason why parents are opting to home educate. It is completely absurd that they should now be given guidelines that say they should pass judgement on families when they are manifestly incapable of providing themselves what they are looking for in a home educator.

What this boils down to is mandatory inspection. And if you do not measure up, you can be compelled to send your child to receive an inferior education.

1.2.8 ContactPoint, to be implemented across England by mid 2009, will help local authorities discharge the duty by recording the place where a child is being educated, where that is known. Where it is known that a child is being educated at home, that would also be recorded. This will enable local authorities to focus their efforts on identifying children who are not receiving education, and putting in place the necessary support. ContactPoint will also show whether a Common Assessment Framework has been undertaken with a child, and whether the child has a ‘lead professional’ co-ordinating any support required.

And there you have it. They are going to use ContactPoint to list all home educators and then pick them off one by one for inspection and shut-down. This section is completely absurd. It says that where a child is being EDUCATED at home, ContactPoint will enable Local Authorities to find children who are NOT BEING EDUCATED!

1.3.2 The duty to identify children not receiving a suitable education can make a cross-cutting contribution to a number of local priorities and should strengthen and complement existing duties. It should be incorporated into the local authority’s Children’s Trust governance and strategic planning arrangements, which are made under section 17 of the Children Act 2004, and the cross-cutting arrangements of safeguarding and inter-agency co-operation to improve the well-being of children. (Children Act 2004 Guidance http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/strategy/guidance/).

1.3.3 The relevant partner agencies are: (these are the partners referred to in The Children Act 2004 in relation to a number of duties)

• Education (maintained schools, independent schools, Academies, Pupil Referral Units, special schools and City Technology Colleges)
• Children’s Social Care
• Health (Strategic Health Authorities, Primary Care Trusts)
• Police and police authorities
• Youth Offending Teams
• Community safety teams, anti-social behaviour teams
• Young Offender Institutions
• Secure Training Centres
• local authority Secure Children’s Homes
• Housing providers.

Other key partners are

• HM Revenue and Customs
• Connexions
• statutory and voluntary youth services
• UK Border Agency
• the Fire and Rescue Service
• Other Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership agencies
• voluntary and community organisations.

There may also be others, depending on local circumstances.

1.3.4 Information Sharing Guidance was published April 2006 and can be found on the Every Child Matters website.

??!!

No doubt sensitive data from ContactPoint will be shared with all of these agencies.

Simply ASTONISHING.

6.24 Local authorities should not make “blanket” enquires (by email or hard copy). Contacting all local authorities with a list of children asking them to search their databases is seen as poor practice and the majority of local authorities will ignore this request, as it is time consuming with little reward (very rare that they find the child in their area). It is also not secure. Best practice is for local authorities to carry out thorough local checks in their own authority area before contacting specific local authorities that they believe to be linked to the child/young person that they are looking for.

Amazing. Fishing expeditions are ‘seen’ as poor practice, they are not ACTUALLY poor practice, and, “don’t bother doing it anyway, since your request will probably be ignored”. Well, I feel so much better that these goons are concerned about security!

Of course, we know that ContactPoint itself is not secure, and here, we can see an example of why that is the case. They are going to share information on every child they can get their hands on, between all agencies with a computer, and Local Authorities will be able to search private and public databases at will for any child that they cannot find in their own databases. This is going to be one of the leakiest databases ever…and it will be a database of CHILDREN!

It gets worse:

Useful information to share with another local authority in England
To enable local authorities to make their best efforts to search for a child/young person on behalf of the enquiring local authority the following basic information could be shared (as appropriate) with the named officer:

• Name (plus any know aliases)
• Date of Birth
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Parents/carers names including who has parental responsibility
• Siblings names
• Previous Address
• Previous school and date of last attendance
• Possible new address and school if known or suspected
• Previous home education
• Date child/young person left area
• If recent entry to UK – their country of origin.

Absolutely unbelievable and unacceptable.

6.26 Care must be taken to ensure information is factual and evidence based. (Also consideration should be given to guidance on “custodians of child protection register”

This is absurd. First, they want to check every home educator to make sure that the provision is ‘suitable’, and then, they want to make sure that information is ‘evidence based’. You cannot have it both ways; you cannot on the one hand lump all home educators in one basket and say that they are all putting their children at risk based on no evidence at all and then say that information should be factual and evidence based. In the law, you are guilty until proven innocent. You cannot enter someone’s house or data or communications without probable cause. These guidelines violate some of the most important principles of the law and of free countries, this is quite apart from violating the sanctity and centrality of the family.

6.27 The following may give an indication of the level of vulnerability of child:

• reason for leaving if known
• home educated child where the local authority considers that the parent is not providing a suitable education
• the child is or has been the subject of a child protection plan

[…]

You see? Suspicion is generated by the mere fact that parents are home educators. Unacceptable!

6.34 Local authorities should keep a record of children who are known to be educated at home by parents. Parents are not, however, required to inform the local authority if they decide to home educate a child who has not previously attended school.

This is insane. Local Authorities need to keep a record of all home schoolers (why?) but parents are not required to inform the local authority. How are the Local Authority going to keep records of all home educators, as the guidelines say they must? Any self respecting parent will not offer up their children to this system, and so when the Local Authority come calling and the parent says nothing (as is their absolute right), a conflict will occur.

This is bad guidance, and like the last set of guidance that ignored all the consultation entries, it is full of contradictions, prejudice, ignorance and offensive, immoral twaddle.

One thing is for sure; these guidelines will only affect the most vulnerable home educating families – the ones without money or influence, the ones who are debilitated by having children with problems. Any parent with a powerful solicitor can simply have a single letter written and these Apparatchiks will be frightened off.

These new guidelines are offensive. They are offensive because they illogical, and do not take the reality of home and state education into account. They do not take the needs of children into account. They do not take the rights of parents into account. They recklessly and violently violate the privacy of parents and children, and then share their sensitive and private data with anyone they care to, without the consent of anyone.

These guidelines are what we expected; another step in the incrementalist approach to total control and outlawing of home education in the uk.

Another interesting aspect of this is related to the German home educators experience of their Hitler written home education law (its completely banned). Germans wishing to home educate have moved to the UK and even to Iran to live freely. When the state finally decides to outlaw home education here, will they deny parents the right to move out of the country? Will it be the case in the future that everyone needs an exit visa to leave the UK? Just as it is in Germany and as I said before, if all of this is genuinely being done for the good of the children, how cold you possibly let them leave the fatherland to be educated outside of the German system in Iran, or Britain or the USA? Logically, you would have to bar all movements of all children out of the country so that you can ensure that they are receiving a suitable education in the state system.

Under ideal circumstances, we would never be confronted by Local Authority guidelines like this, or the sinister databases or anything else in this wretched document. In a a slightly less than ideal world, we would expect to see a union of all home educators in the UK to combine as a single voice to say that these guidelines are moot and will not under any circumstances be obeyed. There would be a fighting fund, the most powerful lawyers hired, a hell of a stink raised and the state humiliated and sent packing.

Sadly, we live in the worst of all possible worlds; there are many home educators who will feel that all of this is perfectly OK, who will go along with it and who will deride anyone who thinks otherwise.

We have Local Authorities and government bodies that are completely and willfully ignorant about and hostile to home schooling, who will do anything to stamp it out and will hurt any number of children that they can in order to achieve their nefarious goals.

This document is literally sickening. Every aspect of it is nauseating and what is most insulting is the fact that no matter who complains and no matter what logic is applied to it, it will be published as written, without change, because the evil people behind it (and some of the dimwitted on the receiving end of it) simply do not care about anyone’s rights.

Another nail in the coffin of Great Britain.

Read all our other posts on this subject.

The anti-Russian bias of the Western media is really something to behold “Russia Invades Georgia,” “Russia Attacks Georgia,” and variations thereof have been some of the choice headlines reporting events in the Caucasus, but the reality is not only quite different, but the exact opposite. Sometimes this comes out in the third or fourth paragraph of the reportage, in which it is admitted that the Georgians tried to “retake” the “breakaway province” of South Ossetia. The Georgian bombing campaign and the civilian casualties – if they are mentioned at all – are downplayed and presented as subject to dispute. The Georgians have been openly engaging in a military buildup since last year, and President Mikhail Saakashvili and his party have been proclaiming from the rooftops their aim of re-conquering South Ossetia (and rebellious Abkhazia, while they’re at it). Avid readers of Antiwar.com saw this coming. In a column entitled “Wars to Watch Out For,” I wrote:

“As President Mikheil Saakashvili deflowers his own revolution and shuts down the opposition media, he could well try to divert attention away from his political problems by ginning up a fresh conflict with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are protected by Russian troops and regional militias.” That’s what Western reporters aren’t telling their readers: the South Ossetians (and the Abkhazians) have had de facto independence since 1991, when they rose up against their “democratic” central government, which had banned regional parties from participating in elections. They beat back the Georgian army, which, nonetheless, inflicted a lot of casualties and damage. A low-level war has been in progress ever since, with Saakashvili and his ultra-nationalist party using the rebels as a foil to divert attention from their repressive domestic policies and Georgia’s sad status as an economic basket case. As I wrote way back at the beginning of this year:

“Saakashvili, the great ‘democrat,’ is busy charging anyone who opposes him with being a pawn of the Russians (and therefore guilty of treason), but the West is calling on him to restore civil liberties – and, in an apparent effort to propitiate his Western benefactors, he has lifted some restrictions and called new elections. Widespread and growing opposition to his strong-arm tactics, even among many of his former supporters, spells political trouble for Saakashvili and his corrupt cohorts, however – and an appeal to Georgian ultra-nationalism (which was always the real ideological motivation of the Rose Revolutionaries) would bolster him in the polls and provide a much-needed distraction, at least from the ruling party’s point of view.” What’s particularly disgusting is the spectacle of the fraudulent Saakashvili’s smug mug all over Western television – the BBC and Bloomberg, for starters – invoking his great love of “democracy” and “freedom” and calling on the U.S. to intervene in the name of supposedly shared “values.” What drivel! Up until very recently, Saakashvili has been busy rounding up his political opponents and charging them with espionage, as his police beat demonstrators in the streets. When this happened, even our somnolent media sat up and took notice, but they seem to have forgotten.

Saakashvili uses the Western media as a platform to broadcast his great love for “freedom” and make the case against the Russian “aggressors,” comparing the present conflict with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s – and even the bloody 1956 repression of the Hungarians! This is nonsense. Russia is not the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain has long since been melted down for scrap metal, and, if anything, Saakashvili resembles the Hungarian satraps of the Kremlin rather than the heroic freedom-fighters, given his absolute fealty to his foreign masters in Washington, to whom he appeals for help in putting down an internal rebellion. In any case, it wasn’t too hard to have seen this coming a mile away, or to predict the American government’s response. As I wrote in “Wars To Watch Out For”: “In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, expect the U.S. to do what they have done for the duration of Georgia’s political crisis: proffer unconditional support to Saakashvili. With Russia aiding and giving political and diplomatic support to the Abkhazians and the Ossetians, and the Americans letting loose a flood of military aid to Tbilisi, this could be the first theater of actual conflict in the new cold war.”

Which is precisely what has occurred. The United States is denouncing the Russians as aggressors in the UN Security Council and accusing the Kremlin of engaging in a policy of “regime change,” in Ambassador Khalilzad’s phrase. The Russian response: “regime change” is “an American invention,” but, hey, in Saakashvili’s case, it might not be such a bad idea. They have a point. The Georgian strongman is a thug and an opportunist who does an excellent imitation of George W. Bush-times-10: whereas GWB merely implies his political opponents are traitors to the nation, Saakashvili comes right out and says it – then drags them into court on trumped up charges of high treason. GWB has presided over a regime that has legalized torture, but only for foreign “terrorists” (José Padilla excepted). Saakashvili, on the other hand, throws his domestic political opponents – whom he labels “terrorists” – in jail and tortures his own countrymen. Georgia’s notorious prisons are chock full of political dissidents. GWB justifies his aggression by invoking “democracy” and the doctrine of “preemption,” while Saakashvili doesn’t bother with such theoretical niceties, denying his aggression against South Ossetia in defiance of the plain facts.

In short: if you love GWB, you’ll love President Saakashvili. Therefore it’s no surprise John McCain is portraying the Georgians as the good guys and demanding that Russian troops leave “sovereign Georgian territory” without preconditions or delay. After all, when your chief foreign policy adviser has up until very recently been a paid shill for the Georgian government, what else could we expect? As I’ve pointed out on a few occasions in this space, Mad John has been spoiling for a fight with the Russians – in the Caucasus and elsewhere – for years, going so far as to travel to Georgia to proclaim his sympathy for Saakashvili’s cause. What’s really interesting, however, is how Barack Obama has taken up this same cause, albeit with less vehemence than the GOP nominee. As Politico.com reported:

“When violence broke out in the Caucasus on Friday morning, John McCain quickly issued a statement that was far more strident toward the Russians than that of President Bush, Barack Obama, and much of the West. But, as Russian warplanes pounded Georgian targets far beyond South Ossetia this weekend, Bush, Obama, and others have moved closer to McCain’s initial position.” While calling for mediation and international peacekeepers, Obama went with the War Party’s line that Russia, not Georgia, is the aggressor, as the Times of London reports: “Obama accused Russia of escalating the crisis ‘through it’s clear and continued violation of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.'” While his first statement on the outbreak of hostilities was more along the lines of “Can’t we all get along?”, the New York Times notes: “Mr. Obama did harden his rhetoric later on Friday, shortly before getting on a plane for a vacation in Hawaii. His initial statement, an adviser said, was released before there were confirmed reports of the Russian invasion. In his later statement, Mr. Obama said, ‘What is clear is that Russia has invaded Georgia’s sovereign – has encroached on Georgia’s sovereignty, and it is very important for us to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.'”

This nonsense about Georgia’s alleged “sovereignty” rides roughshod over the reality of the Ossetians’ apparent determination to free themselves from Saakashvili’s grip, and it’s the buzzword that identifies a shill for the Georgians. “I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions,” said Obama, “and reiterate my call for an immediate cease-fire.” This cease-fire business is meant to feed directly into the Georgians’ contention that they have offered to stop the conflict, even as they continue military operations in South Ossetia, which have already cost the lives of over a thousand of that country’s inhabitants. That didn’t stop the McCainiacs from attacking Obama as a tool of the Kremlin. Sunday the news talk shows were abuzz with rumors of Democratic discontent over Obama’s seeming inability to hit back at McCain’s viciously negative campaign, yet it’s much worse than that – it’s not an unwillingness, but an inherent inability to do so. I hate to cite Andrew Sullivan favorably, but he was one of the first to note the convergence of the Obama camp and the McCain campaign on such central issues as Iran, and the process continues with this confluence of opinion on the Russian question. While the Obama people have dutifully pointed out that Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy guru, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his public relations firm as a paid lobbyist for the Georgians, their own candidate’s position on the matter differs little from McCain’s, except, as the New York Times notes, in terms of “style.”

GWB recently assured Saakashvili that he would do his best to get the Georgians into NATO, but the Europeans – particularly the Germans – are balking, and this foray by the Georgian Napoleon into a direct conflict with the Russians seems to confirm their initial reluctance. The Euros are no dummies: they know Saakashvili’s recklessness could plunge the entire region into an armed conflict that would resemble World War I in its utter stupidity. I’ve written at length about the economic and political interests that stand to profit from a war in the Caucasus, and I won’t repeat myself here except to note that the timing of this – with attacking Iran on the War Party’s agenda – should alert us to the importance of what is happening. Russia has not only been opposed to Iran’s victimization at the hands of the West, but Putin and his successor have taken up Tehran’s cause, selling arms and technology to the Iranians and running diplomatic interference on their behalf. This is Washington’s counterattack by proxy.

Please don’t tell me Saakashvili just woke up one day and decided to attack Ossetia, and that the Americans weren’t notified well in advance. Georgia depends on U.S. military and economic aid, and Saakashvili is a savvy operator: he is pulling a Lebanon, having learned from the Israeli example, and the Bush administration is more than glad to oblige him. Georgian tanks would never have rolled into South Ossetia without being given a green light by Washington. Georgia has embarked on a very dangerous course, and it’s important to realize it hasn’t done so alone. Saakashvili has the implicit backing of Washington in his quest to re-conquer the “lost” provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia (and don’t forget Adjaria!) – or else what are 1,000 U.S. troops doing engaged in “joint military exercises” with the Georgian military, just as the crisis reaches a crescendo of violence? (The Brits, to their credit, have thought better of getting dragged into this one…) It’s too bad Obama is going along with the game plan, but then again, he was never good on the Russian question to begin with, so I can’t say I’m disappointed. South Ossetia is not now a part of “sovereign Georgian territory,” and it hasn’t been for nearly two decades, no matter what McCain and Obama would have us believe. If they, along with GWB, are going to stand by Saakashvili’s side as he mows down civilians and imposes martial law on a war-torn, dirt-poor, and much-abused people, then may they all be damned to hell – that is, if we can find a rung low enough for them.

It’s funny – if you like your humor black – but when Slobodan Milosevic was supposedly doing to Kosovo what Saakashvili is now doing to South Ossetia, the U.S. launched bombing raids and “liberated” the Kosovars from what we were told was to be a gruesome fate. There are many reasons to doubt that this attempted “genocide” ever took place, but given that something very bad was going on in the former Yugoslavia, one has to ask: why don’t the same standards apply to South Ossetia? I’ll tell you why: because the victims, this time, are Russians, Slavs who haven’t achieved official victim status in the lexicon of Western “humanitarians.” Imagine if, say, Colombia invaded Panama, and rained bombs down on the many U.S. citizens currently living there. Would the U.S. act to ensure their safety? You betcha! So somebody please tell me why Russia hasn’t the right to defend its own citizens, and even to deter and punish Georgian aggression. The War Party has been running on some pretty low energy lately, and this revival of the Cold War will no doubt recharge its batteries. The warmongers need a new enemy, a fresh face in their rogues’ gallery, to get the masses excited again, and Putin’s Russia fits the bill. I’ve been warning of this possibility for what seems like years, and now the moment is upon us. What’s interesting is how many left-liberal “peaceniks” are falling for the War Party’s guff and lining up behind McCain, their hero Obama, and the neocons in the march to confrontation with the Kremlin.

~ Justin Raimondo

In a single, concise, citation laden article, Justin Raimondo proves that he is a Blogger Without Peer™.

This is the sort of writing that I like to read, and is the sort of writing that everyone needs to read.

Absolutely brilliant.

And while you are at it, take a look at this tirbal map of Georgia and the surrounding region.

When you look at a map of the disputed area and then see a map like this, you start to get a real picture of what is actually going on there.