The Telegraph seems to have a feast of articles today:

Home Office plans to create ‘Big brother’ database for phones calls, emails and web use

This appears to be either a whistleblower or a ‘feeler’ leak about yet another attempt by the Home Office to ‘store the details of every phone call made, every email sent and every web page visited by British citizens in the previous year’ – even as other countries tighten the protection of their citizens online activity.

Once again it is allegedly in the cause of fighting terrorism, so nothing to be worried about when every single piece of online activity you have made has been kept, that’s not just which website you have been to, but every unencrypted email will be available – searchable – somewhere out of your control. even if you send each of your emails encrypted you will still likely receive many unencrypted, e-receipts being the most bothersome culprit.

Out of your control? Once on a database, you can almost guarantee the data no matter how sensitive will be copied and carried across the country only to be lost who-knows-where, thusly:

NHS disc containing sensitive data lost

A computer disc containing the medical records of more than 38,000 NHS patients went missing when it was sent to a software company to be backed up – in case the records got lost.

The information, which dates back 10 years, was mislaid somewhere between London and Sandown Health Centre on the Isle of Wight.

It was given to courier company City Link in March, but the health centre only spotted it was missing in May.

A spokesman for the South Central Strategic Health Authority said the courier company – which is supposed to track every item at every stage – demonstrated a “clear failure” by losing all record of the disc once it passed into their hands.

Perhaps time to trust a ‘non-evil’ private company?

I would say not, the only people who should ‘host’ your healthcare record should be yourself or your personal doctor and it should not be networked in any way.

Finally the Conservative Party seems to be turning towards the right direction on CCTV but only partially:

Tories pledge to curb use of CCTV cameras

Unfortunately whilst looking to restrict the amount of CCTV they still echo the opinion of the Met that the solution is higher resolution CCTV rather better forms of policing i.e. more active police actually on the streets, replacing the ‘need’ for CCTV surveillance.

To the People of the United States of America,

I am writing today because no one has asked my opinion in any poll. No candidate has sought my vote, and no lobbyist taken up my cause. It seems that of all of the “special interests” in America, mine is forgotten – unworthy of notice by politicians, activists, media commentators, and the press.

It may be because I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat, nor represented by lobbyists for the disabled, senior citizens, minorities, trade unions, nor any other lobby. In fact, I am not a member of any group whatsoever.

I am the individual. Our Constitution was written to protect me from the majority. I am the victim of Democracy, which has overwhelmed the safeguards of the old Republic and replaced the Republic with mob rule. I am raising my voice now, while I am still able to raise it, if for no other reason than to let posterity know that I was still here when the ruins of our Republic are examined.

I have lived my life in a country that proclaims itself to the world to be the “land of the free,” but have watched my freedoms erode. The most basic right I had – ownership of the fruits of my labor – has been taken from me. Now, politicians argue over what portion of my labor will purchase medical care for the poor and elderly, what portion will pay social security, what portion will educate other people’s children, and what paltry sum I will be allowed to keep so that I may go out tomorrow and work another day.

I once lived in a country which recognized my right to do as I pleased, as long as I did not violate the rights of others. Now, mountains of laws and regulations have been passed in the perverse effort to prevent me from having even the opportunity to commit a crime. As a result, I am rendered paralyzed, as there is almost no action that I can take, beyond rising from my bed, that cannot be construed by someone to be a crime or violation.

More of my property is seized to support grand adventures in foreign lands, where my government spreads “freedom” through the crosshairs of its guns. My government’s invasion of countries that pose no military threat to us whatsoever has made me hated throughout the world, merely for being an American, and helped enslave my children to unserviceable debts.

Most ominously, even the legal protections of my person have been revoked in the name of protecting my fellow citizens against “terrorism. ”

While the Constitution guarantees me sound money, as only gold and silver shall be legal tender, I am nevertheless forced to use the worthless paper notes of a private banking cartel that decreases their value daily, providing me no safe store of value to save for my future. To aid financial speculators who produce nothing whatsoever, the volume of these notes is increased out of all reason whenever these gamblers and thieves stand to suffer a loss. As a result, the purchasing power of this slave currency is constantly decreased, widening the gap between rich and poor, and destroying the middle class. I am left with no practical means to participate in free trade and civil society.

I give my fellow citizens the benefit of the doubt, and believe that they have merely forgotten what the true nature and purpose of government is. I remind them that government is nothing more than the collective use of force – and that the use of force is never justified except in defense. It is, by definition, a last resort. Government has almost limitless power, but very few rights. It has no right to do anything beyond protecting my life and my freedom.

Government has no right to provide for the needy with monies extorted at gunpoint from its citizens. I will gladly work with my fellow citizens to help those in need, once I have a choice. In the meantime, I demand that my labor cease to be taken from me without my consent.

Government has no right to bring freedom to the oppressed by initiating force. I remind my fellow citizens that all of the tyrants of history justified their conquests under the false guise of “liberation. “I will gladly stand with my countrymen to fight any foreign power that truly threatens us, but I demand that my government immediately cease to invade foreign countries in my name.

Government has no right to “manage the economy. “Trade is only truly trade when it is free – the result of exchanges between people by mutual, voluntary consent. There is no role for government in this whatsoever. I demand that my right to trade freely with my fellow citizens and citizens abroad be respected and no longer subject to inspection or interference.

Government has no right to “prevent crime. “It may only punish activities that are truly criminal, and those are relatively few compared to the ocean of laws and regulations that have been passed. I demand that any law prohibiting an act that does not directly harm another person be repealed, along with any law that prohibits unpopular thoughts or speech. Neither the threat of terrorism, poverty, natural disaster, nor epidemic justifies the surrender of one ounce of liberty. I demand that habeas corpus be restored.

Finally, government has no right to rob me of my property by forcing me to use paper currency whose value is subject to its whim. I demand that gold and silver no longer be taxed as capital gain if it rises in price relative to paper currency.

While I owe my fellow citizens nothing in return for heeding these demands, I nevertheless offer a thousand-fold in return. My fellow citizens are running out of fossil fuel – I will discover a new, renewable energy source. Our planet is growing crowded – I will unlock the secrets of traveling to others. The productive members of our society will soon be outnumbered by those less able or unable to produce any longer – I will feed them all. For it was I – the free individual – that gave you everything you have. It was I that invented the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, and the computer. It was I that devised methods to produce mass amounts of goods, making them affordable and available to everyone. It was I that devised a system of government where the rule of the jungle was replaced by the rule of just laws.

In return for restoring my rights, you will again free my creative power to give you more than you can possibly imagine, and solve problems which you are unable to solve without me. I ask nothing more in return, for it is no more my right to make claims upon my fellow citizens than it is their right to make claims upon me. I hereby waive any supposed “entitlement” to public welfare, medical care, retirement benefits, or any other benefit that requires coercion of my fellow citizens to provide it. In return I demand that my liberty be restored. As I believe that I am the last individual left on earth, I do not believe that my tax money will be missed. However, if there are other individuals besides me that would claim their freedom as well, I invite them to join me, and to them I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor.

Regards,

Publius

[…]

http://www.restoretherepublic.com/content/view/1165/71/

This is beautiful, but there is something crucial missing.

• I demand that my labor cease to be taken from me without my consent.
• I demand that my government immediately cease to invade foreign countries in my name.
• I demand that my right to trade freely with my fellow citizens and citizens abroad be respected and no longer subject to inspection or interference.
• I demand that habeas corpus be restored.
• I demand that gold and silver no longer be taxed as capital gain if it rises in price relative to paper currency.

And what if these ‘demands’ are not met?

What makes you think that demanding anything will be met with nothing more than silence?

Ask the two million people who marched in London against the mass murder campaign what the result of ‘demanding’ is.

The time of demanding is OVER. Like the Founding Fathers, you must TAKE what is rightfully yours, and no longer ASK for your freedom, otherwise, the red coats will simply come to your house and kill you and your family and steal what is left of your property.

You want to keep the fruits of your labor? KEEP THEM.
You want ‘your’ government to stop the war machine? KEEP THE FRUITS OF YOUR LABOR.
You want to trade freely with your fellow citizens? CREATE A LOCAL CURRENCY, STOP USING THE DOLLAR.
You want habeas corpus to be restored? MOVE TO ARIZONA.

The last one is just completely absurd. What gold you have or do not have is no one’s business in the first instance, and so it should not be subject to any tax whatsoever. The very fact that you acknowledge that there is such a thing as ‘capital gains tax’ and that someone has the right to levy it on you, shows that you are not yet awake. This is further demonstrated by your use of the phrase ‘my government’. That government has not belonged to the people of the USA for….a very long time, certainly, you and your father and his father never lived in a time when it belonged to the people.

What is nice about this is that people are slowly coming to the inevitable, inescapable conclusion that there is only one way out of their trouble. Once all of this demanding fails to work, they are going to have to put their feet down and say ‘THAT IS IT’, and then the showdown will come.

That is what the Arizona legislation is all about; they are at the point where they will not accept any further erosion of the tiny pebble shaped remnants of their freedom that was once a granite boulder. They have drawn a line in the sand and dared the federal government to cross it.

What ‘Publius’ needed to say is:

• I withdraw my labor and will no longer allow its fruits to be taken from me without my consent.
• I withdraw the fruits of my labor from this illegitimate government henceforth until it immediately ceases to invade and occupy in any way and to any extent, foreign countries in my name.
• I assert my right to trade freely with my fellow citizens and citizens abroad and shall longer submit to inspection or interference.
• I declare habeas corpus to be restored and put on notice all law enforcement that the citizens of this country will punish violators of habeas corpus.
• I withdraw my wealth from the fiat currency system and shall only transact in debt free currencies including but not limited to gold and silver, as I see fit.

Now, this would be something that has some teeth, and which will actually cause something to be DONE, instead of begging like a leper, bowl in hand, at the feet of war criminals and organized crime!

It cannot be long before someone somewhere does this, even at the legislative level. ‘The Arizona Event’, I am sure, is about to be followed by declarations of this sort, and in fact, they naturally flow from that legislation; if Arizona declares the federal government nullified, then all federal laws are simultaneously abolished and that laundry list is automagically done.

On May 15, the White House Moron, in a war-planning visit to Israel, justified the naked aggression he and Olmert are planning against Iran as the only alternative to “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

But the White House Moron has the roles reversed. It is not Iran that is threatening war. It is Bush. It is not Bush who is appeasing. It is Iran.

Iran has not responded in kind to any of Bush’s warlike moves and provocations. Iran has not sunk a single one of our sitting-duck ships and has not given the Iraqi insurgents any weapons that would easily turn the tide of war against the US.

It is Bush, not Iran, who sounds like Adolf Hitler blustering and threatening. It is Bush’s American Brownshirts, the neocons, who express the view: “what’s the good of nuclear weapons if you can’t use them.”

It is the US that is funding assassination teams inside Iran and using taxpayer dollars to fund dissident and violent organizations opposed to the Iranian government. Iran is doing no such thing here.

It is members of the Bush Regime and US generals who continue to lie through their teeth about Iranian support for insurgents, for which they can supply no evidence, and about Iranian nuclear weapons programs, for which the IAEA inspectors can find no sign.

It is the US print and TV media that serves the Bush Regime as propaganda ministry for its lies of aggression.

All the war crimes that are being planned are being planned by Bush and Olmert.

What would George Orwell make of the Bush Regime’s position that anything less than a direct act of naked aggression is appeasement?

The Chicago City Council has passed a resolution “opposing any US attack on Iran and urging the Bush Administration to pursue diplomatic engagement with that nation.” But the White House Moron says diplomacy is appeasement. He learned this false equivalence from the neocon Brownshirts whose control over his administration has made America despised throughout the world, with the exception of Israel.

After broadcasting false claims for weeks from US generals and Bush Regime spokespersons that the US has “definite proof” in the form of captured Iranian weapons that Iranians were “responsible for killing American troops,” the great free American media went silent when LA Times correspondent Tina Susman reported from Baghdad: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was cancelled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran.”

A people devoid of a media are sitting ducks for tyrannical government, which is what the US has.

What is the difference between Hitler’s concocted excuses for his acts of naked aggression and the Bush Regime’s plan to use a briefing by General Petraeus, with “captured Iranian weapons” as props, as proof of Iranian complicity in US deaths in Iraq as a means to break down public and congressional resistance to an attack on Iran?

Why has the Bush Regime suffered no consequences for this blatant attempt to orchestrate an excuse for another war?

Why have there been no consequences to the Regime for the blatant lies it told in order to attack Iraq?

Why has the Bush Regime suffered no consequences for its violation of US statutory laws against spying without warrants and against torture?

In the US criminal justice system, three strikes and you are out.

For the Bush Regime is there any limit on its lawless behavior?

How many strikes? A dozen? Thirty? Three hundred?

Is there a limit?

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts246.html

Wow
Wow³

----------------------------------------------------------------
 ¦ REFERENCE TITLE: abolish federal government; state sovereignty ¦
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 ¦                                                             ¦
 ¦                                                             ¦
 ¦                                                             ¦
 ¦ State of Arizona                                            ¦
 ¦ House of Representatives                                    ¦
 ¦ Forty-fourth Legislature                                    ¦
 ¦ Second Regular Session                                      ¦
 ¦ 2000                                                        ¦
 ¦                                                             ¦
 ¦                                                             ¦
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 ¦                          HCR 2034                           ¦
 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 ¦                       Introduced by                         ¦
 ¦              Representatives Johnson, Cooley                ¦
 ----------------------------------------------------------------

A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

PROPOSING THE DISSOLUTION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IF CERTAIN CONDITIONS OCCUR.

(TEXT OF BILL BEGINS ON NEXT PAGE)

Whereas, on July 4, 1776, our founding fathers proclaimed that the people had the right to alter or abolish their government and declared thirteen British colonies to be free and independent, or sovereign, states; and

Whereas, on March 1, 1781, the thirteen states formed a central government they called the United States of America under a charter known as the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, which stated that “each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence”; and

Whereas, on September 17, 1787, the leaders of the Continental Congress signed the present Constitution of the United States, which was then transmitted to the thirteen states for ratification and the formation of a new central government; and

Whereas, several of the states delayed ratification of the Constitution and three states made clear their position regarding sovereignty by stating that “the powers of government may be resumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness”; and

Whereas, eventually all thirteen of the independent states ratified the Constitution of the United States and joined the new Union, while retaining their sovereignty as states. The states made the new central government sovereign only to the extent that the states delegated to it limited and specific powers; and

Whereas, the Constitution of the United States is merely a treaty among sovereigns, and under treaty law when one party violates the treaty the other parties are automatically released from further adherence to it unless they wish to continue; and

Whereas, the fifty current principals, or signatories, to the treaty have done well in honoring and obeying it, yet the federal agent has, for decades, violated it in both word and spirit. The many violations of the Constitution of the United States by the federal government include disposing of federal property without the approval of Congress, usurping jurisdiction from the states in such matters as abortion and firearms rights and seeking control of public lands within state borders; and

Whereas, under Article V, Constitution of the United States, three-fourths of the states may abolish the federal government. In the alternative, if the states choose to exercise their inherent right as sovereigns, fewer than thirty-eight states may lawfully choose to ignore Article V, Constitution of the United States, and establish a new federal government for themselves by following the precedent established by Article VII, Constitution of the United States, in which nine of the existing thirteen states dissolved the existing Union under the Articles of Confederation and automatically superceded the Articles.

Therefore

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the State of Arizona, the Senate concurring:

1. That when or if the President of the United States, the Congress of the United States or any other federal agent or agency declares the Constitution of the United States to be suspended or abolished, if the President or any other federal entity attempts to institute martial law or its equivalent without an official declaration in one or more of the states without the consent of that state or if any federal order attempts to make it unlawful for individual Americans to own firearms or to confiscate firearms, the State of Arizona, when joined by thirty-four of the other fifty states, declares as follows: that the states resume all state powers delegated by the Constitution of the United States and assume total sovereignty; that the states re-ratify and re-establish the present Constitution of the United States as the charter for the formation of a new federal government, to be followed by the election of a new Congress and President and the reorganization of a new judiciary, similarly following the precedent and procedures of the founding fathers; that individual members of the military return to their respective states and report to the Governor until a new President is elected; that each state assume a negotiated, prorated share of the national debt; that all land within the borders of a state belongs to the state until sold or ceded to the central government by the state’s Legislature and Governor; and that once thirty-five states have agreed to form a new government, each of the remaining fifteen be permitted to join the new confederation on application.

2. That the Secretary of State of the State of Arizona transmit copies of this Resolution to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and each Member of Congress from the State of Arizona.

[…]

http://www.azleg.state.az.us/legtext/44leg/2r/bills/hcr2034p.htm

This is taken directly from the official web site of the Arizona State Legislature.

This time it’s for real. We are reaching a tipping point, where the number of awake people will outnumber the sleeping and their collective momentum will be so great that the media will not be able to re-somnabulize them.

This is one of the greatest things I have ever read!

Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first

By Bruce Schneier
The Guardian
May 15 2008

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you’re entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.

But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it’s a fact. So how do you protect yourself?

Encrypting your entire hard drive, something you should certainly do for security in case your computer is lost or stolen, won’t work here. The border agent is likely to start this whole process with a “please type in your password”. Of course you can refuse, but the agent can search you further, detain you longer, refuse you entry into the country and otherwise ruin your day.

You’re going to have to hide your data. Set a portion of your hard drive to be encrypted with a different key – even if you also encrypt your entire hard drive – and keep your sensitive data there. Lots of programs allow you to do this. I use PGP Disk (from pgp.com). TrueCrypt (truecrypt.org) is also good, and free.

While customs agents might poke around on your laptop, they’re unlikely to find the encrypted partition. (You can make the icon invisible, for some added protection.) And if they download the contents of your hard drive to examine later, you won’t care.

Be sure to choose a strong encryption password. Details are too complicated for a quick tip, but basically anything easy to remember is easy to guess. (My advice is at tinyurl.com/4f8z4n.) Unfortunately, this isn’t a perfect solution. Your computer might have left a copy of the password on the disk somewhere, and (as I also describe at the above link) smart forensic software will find it.

So your best defence is to clean up your laptop. A customs agent can’t read what you don’t have. You don’t need five years’ worth of email and client data. You don’t need your old love letters and those photos (you know the ones I’m talking about). Delete everything you don’t absolutely need. And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you’re at it, delete your browser’s cookies, cache and browsing history. It’s nobody’s business what websites you’ve visited. And turn your computer off – don’t just put it to sleep – before you go through customs; that deletes other things. Think of all this as the last thing to do before you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they’ve entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good idea if you can do it.

If you can’t, consider putting your sensitive data on a USB drive or even a camera memory card: even 16GB cards are reasonably priced these days. Encrypt it, of course, because it’s easy to lose something that small. Slip it in your pocket, and it’s likely to remain unnoticed even if the customs agent pokes through your laptop. If someone does discover it, you can try saying: “I don’t know what’s on there. My boss told me to give it to the head of the New York office.” If you’ve chosen a strong encryption password, you won’t care if he confiscates it.

Lastly, don’t forget your phone and PDA. Customs agents can search those too: emails, your phone book, your calendar. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do here except delete things.

I know this all sounds like work, and that it’s easier to just ignore everything here and hope you don’t get searched. Today, the odds are in your favour. But new forensic tools are making automatic searches easier and easier, and the recent US court ruling is likely to embolden other countries. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

[…]

http://schneier.com/blog/

We of course, have written about this before, September 12th 2006 to be exact, and the solution we give is more or less the same.

There is one solution however, that is not on the table in this great article; do not travel to places where these practices are in place. But that is a different blog post.

It is obvious to even the most stupid person that searching a laptop for pornography is TOTALLY STUPID. Pr0n travels over the internetz, and the really devious pr0n people use encrypted VPN to share their stuff. All these measures do is industrialize humiliation and violation. It is pointless, corrosive and the act of utterly incompetent and ignorant people.

This is a war that they will never win. Storage devices are getting bigger in capacity whilst shrinking in size, and people are getting more and more savvy about storing all their goods online; soon, many people will not use any office suites on their laptops, they will access an online office suite securely. That means they will have secure access to massive file storage, and if the files are encrypted before they are stored online, no warrant can cause them to be opened, and there will be no covert ‘sneak and peek‘ raids that obtain anything of value.

In the end, privacy will win, because the tools will make it happen. All of these insane measures simply accelerate the development of the tools and their byproduct: privacy.

Who would have thought that PGP would spread as far and wide as it has? And now, with articles like this appearing in even the shittiest of newspapers, it will spread even further, as companies demand that their laptops are locked down, and individuals start to protect themselves with these easy to use, military grade, transparent tools.

On a side note, you will see that Bruce has used a Tinyurl in this article. That is what smart people do. To my utter amazement, people who run email lists that are concerned with these issues STILL sent out alerts that have long line wrapped URLs, making them unclickable, and of course, because they are line wrapped, you cannot select them in one go, you have to select copy and paste twice. It is a minor annoyance, but it displays something about them and their attitude and level of competence. They certainly know about Tinyurl, so do they not use it because they are lazy? I think that actually, they are just plain dumb; as dumb as the people who think searching laptops at a border is a good idea, but they are batting for the other side.

VATICAN CITY – Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican’s chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

“How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?” Funes said. “Just as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ‘sister,’ why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? It would still be part of creation.”

In the interview by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like “putting limits” on God’s creative freedom, he said.

The interview, headlined “The extraterrestrial is my brother,” covered a variety of topics including the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science, and the theological implications of the existence of alien life.

Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion, touching on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.

The Bible “is not a science book,” Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most “reasonable” explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

But he said he continues to believe that “God is the creator of the universe and that we are not the result of chance.”

Funes urged the church and the scientific community to leave behind divisions caused by Galileo’s persecution 400 years ago, saying the incident has “caused wounds.”

In 1633 the astronomer was tried as a heretic and forced to recant his theory that the Earth revolved around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

“The church has somehow recognized its mistakes,” he said. “Maybe it could have done it better, but now it’s time to heal those wounds and this can be done through calm dialogue and collaboration.”

Pope John Paul declared in 1992 that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from “tragic mutual incomprehension.”

The Vatican Observatory has been at the forefront of efforts to bridge the gap between religion and science. Its scientist-clerics have generated top-notch research and its meteorite collection is considered one of the world’s best.

The observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, is based in Castel Gandolfo, a lakeside town in the hills outside Rome where the pope has a summer residence. It also conducts research at an observatory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.

[…]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080513/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_aliens

Well. We can say one thing with absolute certainty; Aliens are not Catholics.

There are some amongst you that will say this is part of the softening up exercise for the forthcoming Full Disclosure of the ET reality. Maybe. For certain, one of the reasons that are trotted out routinely as a reason why the ET reality has to be supressed is ‘the potential for cultural shock and social disorientation contained…‘ in the ET reality. By pre-empting the shock-wave with information (actually, propaganda) claiming that ALL creatures EVERYWHERE in the universe belong to the Catholic faith may go a long way to softening the blow. And of course, the Muslims and every other religion will simply substitute ‘Catholic’ for the name of their own religion.

And back to the title of this post, yes indeed, we can now say with 100% certainty that the Big Bang theory is incorrect, as laid out in this post.

Think ‘Epicycles‘.

By Kevin Poulsen
Threat Level
Wired.com
May 13, 2008

Five workers at the Internal Revenue Service’s Fresno, California, return processing center were charged Monday with computer fraud and unauthorized access to tax return information for allegedly peeking into taxpayers’ files for their own purposes.

“The IRS has a method for looking for unauthorized access, and it keeps audit trails, and occasionally it will pump out information about who’s done what,” says assistant U.S. attorney Mark McKoen, who’s prosecuting the cases in federal court in Fresno. “In general terms, IRS employees are only authorized to access the accounts of taxpayers who write in. They’re not allowed to access friends, relatives, neighbors, celebrities.”

With tax return information just a few keystrokes away, IRS employees succumb to curiosity often enough that the agency has its own word for such browsing: UNAX, (pronounced you-nacks) , for “unauthorized access.” In congressional testimony last month, a Treasury Department investigator said employee prying was on the rise, with 430 known cases in 1998, and 521 last year.

“Whether the intent is fraud or simply curiosity, the potential exists for unauthorized accesses to tax information of high-profile individuals and other taxpayers,” testified J. Russell George, the department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration. “The competing goals of protecting this information and achieving workplace efficiencies become even more difficult as technology becomes faster and more complex.”

The five charged this week are Corina Yepez, Melissa Moisa, Brenda Jurado, Irene Fierro and David Baker. Only 13 taxpayers were compromised — each worker allegedly peeked at one to four tax returns, in incidents from 2005 through last year.

The age of some of the incidents suggests the Inspector General’s office is breaking out new algorithms to find anomalies in audit trails going back years. The office declined to comment, as did the IRS.

Workers caught in a UNAX are typically subject to disciplinary measures like unpaid leave, and less commonly charged with misdemeanor violations of the Taxpayer Browsing Protection Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. There were 185 such prosecutions from 1998 to 2007, with offenders typically receiving probation.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/five-irs-employ.html

This, My Friends™, is what we call ‘a gift’.

‘UNAX’….ROTFL

Sign on IRS data manager’s desk ‘I am a UNAX sysadmin’!!!

Since it is un authorized, surely it should be ‘un-acks’, not ‘you-nack’s… but that would mean we pronounce UNIX as ‘un-ix’….

but I digress…

This is what The Google provides on UNAX from the Federal Employees Discussion Board:

Topic: UNAX
jschan77
Member posted June 17, 2002 10:52 AM
I have a UNAX problem.

They pulled my transcript on the IDRS, they found where I looked up an ex. I did this without thought and and it was found. It was so long ago that I didn’t even remember it. I have to pull calendars of my own notes to see if it was a possibility.
Well, the only thing I could find is where I was changeing my sons last name and I guess I did do it.
There is another lady in my office that looked up her son, as she had a fall out a long time ago and wanted to just find him.
She received 2 days LWOP. I am told I will be getting termination papers.
She admitted to doing it and why.
I did not remember until it was brought to my attention.

I think this is unfair.

She is a person who lives by the rule of “It’s not my job” and flexs for child care.
I live by the rule of “what can I help you with” and am getting the boot.
Is there anyway I can stop this?

I’ve been told that if I go to arbitration I can get this overturned. This is a 9 month to 1 year process. Who can afford to stay off that long. I am the main bread winner of the family.

I’ve also been told that arbitration costs money and comes out of our own pocket. I am in the union, I thought they paid for it.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks you all for your input.
I appreciated all you trying to help

Unfortunately, I ened up with –
No Douglas Factors taken into consideration.
I received a 30 LWOP suspension.

I tried to go to MSPB with a copy of another persons write up in our office whom admitted to doing the same thing and they only got a write up, and theirs were done more times than mine.
They gave me this line of I worked in SB/SE and they worked in W & I is why the difference, even tho when I had the phone interview with the judge, he seemed real suprised that he had not known about the other person.

So I lost the MSPB.

Anyway, I’m just happy to be STILL working and will bite my tounge for the next 12 years and 7 months. 17 years and 5 months done.

You can bet, I won’t be that stupid again.

Again, I thank you all for listening and you suggestions.

“””BECAUZE YOU KNOW WHAT THEY LIKE TO DO WHEN YOU ARE ON A SHEIT LIST..THEY MAKE YOUR LIFE A LIVING HELL UNTIL YOU QUIT..”””

Are you aware of the illegality of what you described?

It is referred to as Constructive Discharge. You may want to read up on it so you will recognize it when it begins to happen to you or someone around you.

It appears we must tow the line and obey the laws of the land. The govt on the otherhand….

Oh dear me.

Take a look at the site, and marvel at all the acronyms; they have a language all their own, separate from the language of non-government employees (the other 50% of the population). Could this be the beginning of an HG Wells split of the human population? The first thing that would change would be the language, the loyalty, and then the rights the food the accommodation….but I digress again.

Im sure that there are many UNIX people who could make a slew of funny UNAX/IX jokes ‘for the lulz’….

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was this guy named Aristotle. Pretty sharp fella; he thought up a lot of good things. But, occasionally he made a mistake.

One mistake he made was to toss an orange up in the air and watch it come straight back down to his hand. Aristotle reasoned that if he was moving, the orange would have flown off to one side as soon as it left his hand. Because the orange did not do so, Aristotle concluded he was not moving. On the basis of this one observed fact, and the assumption that there was no other explanation for what he observed, Aristotle concluded that the Earth does not move and that therefore the rest of the universe had to move around it.

Aristotle was a very sharp guy, but the fact is that there was another explanation for why the orange fell back into his hand, and it would wait about another 2000 years before another smart man, Sir Isaac Newton, explained just what it was Aristotle had overlooked, set forth in Newton’s laws of motion.

But for the early church, Aristotle’s conclusions fit in rather well with their theology, which had the Earth created as the center of the universe, unmoving, with the rest of the cosmos spinning about it.

Of course, there was empirical evidence available to all that cast doubt on the church-approved version of the Cosmos. One could see during eclipses that the Earth was not flat. The curved shape of the Earth’s shadow as it crossed the moon was the same no matter which place in the sky the eclipse took place.

A spherical Earth was the only shape that could produce such a result. Ships sailing over the horizon clearly vanished over a subtle curve (an observation which eventually inspired Columbus’ voyages). Nobody could explain the behavior of a Foucault’s Pendulum other than by the Earth spinning beneath it.

But by far the most troubling problem for the geocentric (earth centered) universe was the strange behavior of the planets. In an age before TV, or even books, the night sky was something every person was quite familiar with, even those who were not sailors or fortune tellers.

Watching the night sky over time, the paths of the planets were easily seen to occasionally pause, move in reverse for a time, then proceed forward.

This behavior was called retrograde motion. Ah, but this was a problem. The church did not have an explanation for this behavior. Indeed in the King James Version of the Bible, the word “planet” appears only once, and then only as an object to be sacrificed to.

There is a very simple explanation for retrograde motion. As the Earth, moving in its inner orbit, overtake an outer planet, it will appear to hesitate, reverse its path across the sky, then resume its normal path. But the idea that the Earth moved was contrary to Church Dogma and to Aristotle. What education was tolerated by the church was “encouraged” to find some way to explain retrograde motion in a way that did not conflict with the religious needs for a universe centered on an unmoving Earth. Rather than re-examine Aristotle’s basic claim, the learned men of the day grabbed onto a suggestion made by Claudius Ptolemy called “epicycles”. This theory explained retrograde motion around a motionless Earth by suggesting that the planets moved in large orbits called deferents, upon which were superimposed smaller orbits called epicycles which produced a “wobble” as seen from Earth.

Epicycles were extremely popular with the church, and scholars at universities with religious affiliations were “encouraged” to refine this theory. And it needed refinement, badly, because the epicycle theory did not accurately predict what was being seen in the sky. Generations of effort was expended trying to figure out why the models did not predict the actual motions of the planets. At one point, it was even suggested that the epicycles had epicycles. No matter how many times the observed results did not match the predictions, the approved course of action was to refine the theory, but never to question the basic assumption. Those who dared point to the evidence suggesting that Aristotle (and by extension the church) were in error in postulating a geocentric universe were “discouraged”. Galileo was tortured into recanting his conclusions that the Earth moved. Giordano Bruno was burned alive at the stake for suggesting that the sun was really just another star, only close up, and that the other stars had their own planets.

In recent times, our expanding technology has confirmed that Galileo and Bruno were right, and Aristotle and the church were flat out wrong. The Earth does move. There are no deferents or epicycles, or even epicycles on the epicycles. The models of the universe which are based on a moving Earth are quite accurate and able to predict the behaviors of the planets as evidence by the fact that we send spacecraft to those planets on a regular basis.

The theory of a geocentric universe and the theory of epicycles were not science. It was religious doctrine masked as science.

The church has never really dealt with the reality of the universe very well. They only apologized for their treatment of Galileo recently and still refuse to discuss Bruno. The Bible, presumed to be the perfect word of a perfect God, still teaches that the Earth is flat, rests on pillars (Job 26:11), and does not move (Psalms 19:5-6 93:1 96:10 104:5).

It seems that some mistakes are destined to be repeated again, despite our technological prowess.

In 1929, a Cal-Tech astronomer named Edwin Hubble observed that objects which appeared to be much further away showed a more pronounced shift towards the red end of the spectrum. Scientists building on Hubble’s discovery concluded that the farther an object was away from Earth, the faster it was receding, and calculated the relationship between distance and velocity, called the “Hubble Constant” and concluded on the basis of this one observed fact and the assumption that there was no other explanation for that observed fact that the universe was expanding.

[…]

Of course, since you read BLOGDIAL, you know that the subject of UFO’s and the non acceptance of the truth about them (that some of them are the spacecraft of Extraterrestrial Scientists) is subject to this same predilection for religiosity that plagues ‘scientists’. I put scientists in single quotes because REAL scientists accept that some UFOs are ET craft, and have no problem dealing with that undeniable truth.

Read on, for the rest of this brilliant article, snarfed from Whatreallyhappened.

Read the rest of this entry »

Am avid lurker writes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/13/aids.hiv

The most interesting thing I read today. It has significant implications regarding scientific funding, not to mention funding of public healthcare which she implies is worthless. Furthermore, it strengthens the argument that US ‘aid’ to ‘the Africa’ – that great nation! ;-) – is merely propping up the profits of drug companies by maximising and subsidising the market for ARVs. In South Africa this has come through voluntary licensing, which means Glaxo et al still get their cut without any manufacturing costs. Then there is the whole ‘faith-based’ aid agencies… and yet again today (Lebanon and Gaza, Burma and the whole HIV-infected sphere is highlighted in just one day) we see how the US just cannot keep its interfering dirty great stinking hooter out of other peoples business.

And I quoth:

“HIV is mostly about people doing stupid things in the pursuit of pleasure or money,” declares the cover on a proof copy of the book. “We’re just not allowed to say so.” She suspects she will never work in the Aids industry again for saying so. “But it’s true.”

Pisani, 43, spent 10 years working in the field of HIV, first for Unaids and then for a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Indonesia. As an epidemiologist, she quickly identified the risk of the virus spreading among drug injectors, gay men and the sex trade across Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe – underdeveloped countries with inadequate resources to prevent an epidemic. That placed 100 million at risk in Asia alone – equivalent to a third of the population of the Africa. But the data was clear: “HIV wasn’t going to rage through the billions in the ‘general population’. And we knew it.”

Like most of her colleagues, however, she also quickly realised that “governments don’t like spending money on sex workers, gay men and drug addicts”. So she put her skills as a former journalist to work, and began producing the sort of reports that persuaded politicians in Washington and the west that it is not “wicked people” but “innocent wives” at risk. “Aids couldn’t be about sex and drugs,” she explains. “So suddenly it had to be about development, and gender, and blah blah blah.”

The strategy was more successful than she could ever have imagined. “All these obsessively politically correct things started getting introduced.” HIV publications and conferences began devoting more time and attention to issues such as poverty, gender, development, vulnerability, leadership – what Pisani calls “sacred cows” – than to condoms and clean needles. “I’m just waiting for ‘climate change and Aids’,” she jokes sarcastically in her book – and sure enough, this week a headline appeared in an Australian newspaper: “Global warming set to fan HIV.”

[…]

As the veneer of political correctness starts to fade….

When people like this start to wake up and then go on to expose the nonsense, a large scale abandonment of brainwashing cannot be far behind.

Say goodbye to ‘hate speech’, political correctness, the surveillance mania, the terror fad, security theatre, cult environmentalism, [prefix] o phobia, [prefix] o fascism, the health and safety fad, the police state, and all the other garbage that has erupted like ear to ear scarlet acne on the beautiful face of Britain.

WASHINGTON — A German graduate student in oceanography at M.I.T. applied to the Transportation Security Administration for a new ID card allowing him to work around ships and docks.

What the student, Wilken-Jon von Appen, received in return was a letter that not only turned him down but added an ominous warning from John M. Busch, a security administration official: “I have determined that you pose a security threat.”

Similar letters have gone to 5,000 applicants across the country who have at least initially been turned down for a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, an ID card meant to guard against acts of terrorism, agency officials said Monday.

The officials also said they were sorry about the language, which they may change in the future, but had no intention of withdrawing letters already sent.

“It’s an unfortunate choice of words in a bureaucratic letter,” said Ellen Howe, a security agency spokeswoman.

Ms. Howe and Maurine Fanguy, who oversees the new ID card program, said that most foreign students did not qualify for the identity cards, but that the letters were not intended to label the recipients as potential terrorists. (Some applicants are also turned down because of criminal records.)

Mr. von Appen, 23, one of at least four oceanography students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who received identical letters, said he was stunned by its language.

“I was pretty much speechless and quite intimidated,” said Mr. von Appen, whose research is supported by a $65,000-a-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

A British student at M.I.T. who was rejected, Sophie Clayton, 28, said that at first she was amused at what appeared to be a bureaucratic absurdity. But as she pondered the designation, Ms. Clayton said she grew worried. “The two words ‘security threat’ are now in the files next to my name, my photograph and my fingerprints,” she said.

My emphasis.

You will get no sympathy here.

You have no business being in the USA, where they fingerprint you like a criminal just to enter. It is people like you, who blithely behave like there is nothing wrong with USVISIT that have made it so deeply entrenched.

Now that you are tasting what it REALLY Means, you are ‘worried’. You should have been worried BEFORE you submitted to the humiliation and violation of being fingerprinted. Now you are in their system, marked as a ‘security threat’ for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, and as we can see below, there is nothing you can do about it, the government is unrepentant, and refuses to correct your records.

Institute officials were also disturbed. The agency controls airport security, and “our students travel in and out of the country a lot,” said Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook, associate dean and director of the international student office at M.I.T.

And the agency is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration matters, including student visas.

Ms. Guichard-Ashbrook said the security agency should remove the misleading language from all files and issue new letters formally withdrawing the “threat” label.

But Ms. Howe, the agency spokeswoman, said that the letters were legal, if flawed, and that there were no plans to send replacements.

She said she did not believe the denial letters would cause students any problems with visa renewal or airport security checks. They will even be able to enter secure ports and ships for their work as long as they are accompanied by someone with the new ID, Ms. Howe said.

The Transportation Worker Identification Credential requirement is being phased in starting Oct. 15. The cards cost the applicant $132.50 and have been issued to 275,000 people so far of 1.2 million people expected to receive the credential, officials said.

My epmhasis once again.

What the last bold words mean, is that this very stupid girl could have saved herself the besmirching of her records and simply gone with someone who had the ID. Not only that, but if anyone can go into these ‘secure’ areas simply by being vouched by someone who has the right ID, the whole system is worthless as a means to secure an area.

This is a perfect example of Security Theatre.

It is beyond stupid, beyond absurd, and everyone that goes along with it, like ‘Sophie Clayton‘ helps solidify the insanity.

WHEREAS, The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies are engaging in a systematic campaign to convince the American people that the Islamic Republic of Iran poses an imminent threat to the American nation, American troops in the Middle East and U.S. allies, and

WHEREAS, This campaign bears a strong resemblance to that waged during the lead-up to the Iraq War and occupation, with the use of unreliable sources, exaggerated threat assessments, the selective use of information, unsubstantiated accusations about Iran’s nuclear program and its supply of weapons to Iraqi forces as centerpieces of their case to the American people for aggressive action against Iran, and

WHEREAS, Iran has not threatened to attack the United States, and no compelling evidence has been presented that Iran poses a real and imminent threat to the security and safety of the United States that would justify an unprovoked unilateral pre-emptive military attack; and

WHEREAS, We support the people of Iran who are struggling for freedom and democracy, and nothing herein should be construed as supportive of their government, the Islamic Republic of Iran, but a unilateral, pre-emptive U.S. military attack on Iran could well prove counterproductive to the cause of promoting freedom and democracy in that country; and

WHEREAS, A 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), representing the consensus view all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, concluded that Iran froze its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and an earlier NIE concluded that Iran’s involvement in Iraq “is not likely to be a major driver of violence” there, and

WHEREAS, An attack on Iran is likely to cause untold thousands of American and Iranian casualties, lead to major economic dislocations, and threaten a much wider and more disastrous war in the Middle East, and

WHEREAS, a pre-emptive U.S. military attack on Iran would violate international law and our commitments under the U.N. Charter and further isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world; and

WHEREAS, An attack on Iran is likely to inflame hatred for the U.S. in the Middle East and elsewhere, inspire terrorism, and lessen the security of Americans in Chicago and worldwide, and

WHEREAS, The Iraq war and occupation has already cost the lives of over 4,000 American soldiers, the maiming and wounding of over 38,000 American soldiers, the death and maiming of over one million Iraqi civilians, and

WHEREAS, According to the nonpartisan National Priorities Project, the Iraq War and occupation has cost American taxpayers more than $500 billion, the citizens of Chicago nearly $5.2 billion, and the citizens of each of Chicago’s 50 wards an average of $104 million.

WHEREAS, Any conflict with Iran is likely to incur far greater costs and divert more precious national resources away from critical human needs in Chicago and its 50 wards, now therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED, That the City Council of the City of Chicago does hereby urge the Illinois Congressional delegation to clearly express the will of the people of Chicago in opposing any U.S. attack on Iran, and urging the Bush Administration to pursue diplomatic engagement with that nation, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That suitable copies of the resolution be forwarded to President George W. Bush and all members of the Chicago Congressional delegation.

JOSEPH A. MOORE
49th Ward

ROBERT W. FIORETTI
2nd Ward

TONI PRECKWINKLE
4th Ward

FREDDRENNA M. LYLE
6th Ward

SANDI JACKSON
7th Ward

RICARDO MUNOZ
22nd Ward

EUGENE C. SCHULTER
47th Ward

MARY ANN SMITH
48th Ward

http://www.nowaroniran-chicago.org/resolution.htm

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080511_taking_a_stand_against_war/

[…]

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that any resident of the City of Chicago shall be indicted and charged with murder or as an accessory to murder should they participate in any way whatsoever with an attack on Iran.

Now it is complete!

By the way, have you ever read The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran?

The gipsy mother who forced her daughter of 13 to marry a 14-year-old boy yesterday dismissed British values as irrelevant to her.

Renata Gural said she was unconcerned by the outrage over the teenagers’ Romany wedding ceremony at a pub in East London.

Mrs Gural, 31, who is pregnant with her sixth child, said: “I’m not bothered what anyone thinks.

“I’ll be the one who decides if my daughter is old enough to marry. I got married when I was 14 in such a ceremony and it hasn’t done me any harm.

“Just because I live in Britain doesn’t mean I’ve got to behave the way you lot think is right. I’ll live my life the way I want and that includes the way I bring up my kids.

“I don’t care what the neighbours think, or social services. It’s not my problem people around here don’t understand our culture and values.”

I, of course, agree with her 100%.

The Daily Mail revealed earlier this month how her daughter, Bozena, married Bezo, the son of another gipsy family originally from Poland, in front of 150 guests at the Central pub in East Ham.

A community elder clasped the couple to his chest, bound their hands in a scarf, kissed them both on the lips and pronounced them man and wife.

The guests then danced all night as a Polish band played raucous gipsy music.

Sounds like fun!

No Coke for me thanks!

Bozena said yesterday she was “really happy” with married life, adding: “For the first time in my life I feel like a proper grown-up.

“Before I was just a little girl and then suddenly there I was – married. That’s every girl’s dream isn’t it?”

It is every decent girl’s dream, of course; many modern British girls are not decent, and the whirlwind of problems that have been whipped up by their poor upbringing are turning parts of Britain into violent, ‘no go’, prison-like pig styes.

Bozena continues to share a cramped two-bedroom terraced house in East Ham, with 14 relatives. Her parents do not make her, or any of her siblings, go to school.

Quite right too.

Neighbours say the family, who live on benefits and do not pay rent, are terrorising the street by playing loud music late at night, throwing rubbish into neighbours’ gardens and spitting on their windows.

Now, if that is true, that is bad.

IF it is true; remember, this is a newspaper story.

Bezo wants his young bride Bozena to move in with him and his parents two miles away in Manor Park.

But she wants to stay at home, saying she would miss her mother if she left.

Her mother insisted the young couple had not consummated the marriage and that she will not allow her daughter to have sex until she is 18.

Proper parental care. These people are decent, caring people, who look after their children with the sort of ferocity that is sadly gone from the average British heart, which is now more than likely to be pumping milk rather than blood. And skimmed milk at that.

Their marriage is not recognised under British law, but there are fears that similar underground ceremonies could become common as the number of gypsies in Britain rises following the eastwards expansion of the EU.

They are probably less likely to be divorced also, unlike the average brit, who is more likely to get divorced than anyone else in Europe.

Romania and Poland, which have large Romany gipsy (or Roma) populations, have taken a tough stance on such weddings by threatening prosecutions on underage sex charges.

Only because they want to be in the EU and are trying to ‘normalize’ ‘their’ ‘cultures’.

This has led to concerns that they may move to the UK instead.

Because Britian, amazingly, is still a free(er) country, and as long as these people do not spit on their neighbor’s windows, they will be left alone to get on with their lives and be happy.

That is the way it is supposed to be.

Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Nicholson, a long-time campaigner against child weddings, claimed the young couple would “be scarred for life” by the experience.

I took a quick look around for some facks (yes, ‘facks’) to smash Emma with; it seems she never married, has no children and was a computer programmer.

Any parent understands what it means to rear and nurture a child; Roma parents may want their children to grow up in a Roma culture. That is their absolute right, and Emma has no business saying that they will be ‘scarred for life’ by their own culture. It is patently absurd. Now, if these Roma adopted a 14 year old English Rose from Glostershire, and forced her to marry…well, that is a different story. Maybe.

They married on April 28 after a deal stuck between their fathers soon after they arrived in Britain three years ago.

There are estimated to be nearly 100,000 Roma in Britain, although no figures are available for how many have arrived from Eastern Europe. For centuries they have encouraged their children to marry young.

Often girls are “promised” to a boy from the age of seven or eight in return for a cash dowry. It is considered essential that the girl is a virgin.

Indeed. Just like it was considered essential that Diana was a virgin.

When you attack the Roma, you attack your own freedom to believe what you like and live the way you want to live.
Remember that when the outrage begins to well up as you read one of these stories.

By Sahil Nagpal
TopNews.in
May 9th, 2008

Hong Kong – A government investigation was underway Friday after it was revealed that confidential files from the Immigration Department had been mistakenly leaked on to the internet.

The list, which contained a list of the names of people for officers to watch, plus travel document information and travel records, has been available on the internet since Monday through a file-sharing programme called “Foxy.”

The blunder occurred after a newly-recruited immigration officer working at the Lok Ma Chau border point took home some old classified files to study without authorisation.

His computer contained the “Foxy” programme and when he connected to the internet, the files were distributed without his knowledge.

The security blunder is the latest in a series in Hong Kong in the last week.

Earlier this week, banking giant HSBC was forced to apologise to customers after it admitted it had lost the data of 159,000 accounts from a Hong Kong branch.

The data was held on a internet server which is understood to have gong missing in April from the Kwun Tong branch of the bank while it was undergoing renovation last month.

The Hospital Authority also admitted this week to the loss of data of thousands of patients in several incidents.

In one case, a USB flashdrive containing the files of 10,000 patients from the Prince of Wales Hospital was lost after a hospital worker who was transferring the data left it in a taxi.

Lawmaker James To, the vice-chairman of the Legislative Council security panel said the immigration department security breach was by far the most serious of all three.

“This data is more private, it gives the detailed record of people’s travelling history,” he said.

Chairman of the security panel Lau Kong-wah said the leak was unforgivable.

“The data is sensitive information. Not only the Immigration Department, but all government organisations should review their data-privacy systems to prevent similar cases,” he said.

Security Secretary Abromse Lee has said the officer concerned would face disciplinary action after an investigation. (dpa)

[…]

http://www.topnews.in/

My emphasis.

It is not only unforgivable, but it is also undoable, and the latter is more important.

If you read BLOGDIAL, you can relate this story in ‘the Google between your ears™’ to all the other BLOGDIAL posts on this subject.

Do you remember our first taste of Barak Obama? The speech that thrilled everyone in July of 2004?

There was a BLOGDIAL back then, and of course, we wrote about that speech, and this strange man who appeared out of nowhere with smooth and empty words, who now threatens to further dismantle The United States of America:

Now let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.

Now. This sort of totally absurd talk does not inspire one with confidence in the incoming US regime. Amercia has no enemies in the world. That is a fact. The American Government has bitter enemies, and it is that entitiy that is dragging the innocent American population into harms way, the way it did during Kerry’s youth.

There is no one out there that needs to be “pursued and defeated”; everyone in the entire world (including you, as in “But you know this”) except American politicians knows this. Perhaps this man should spend some time outside of America to re-acquaint himself with the real world. Spain will do; they are now off of the shit list because they, the Spanish population, have the common sense to elect people who will mind Spain’s business.

You know the song by Bread, the one with the lyric “Dreams are for those who sleep”; well, the American dream sounds like a dream of sleepers when it is spoken about in this way. They had better wake up to the real danger caused by the reckless, racist and insane foreign and internal policy that their government has put into high gear, and elect a government that will put the breaks on and do a u-turn before there is nothing left to save.

It would be much more comforting to have a candidate who had refused to go to Viet Nam rather than one that reveled in that pointless and illegal “war” … beggars cant be choosers.

Whatever happens, the entire world will still be faced with an unexposed and untraveled loose cannon congress, a society gripped by xenophobia and extreme paranoia rubber stamping their every misguided vote for aggression, and no real way out in sight.

Warm and fuzzy feel good speeches simply will not cut it. The world wants to know the answer to a very simple question; are you going to knock it off?!
posted by Irdial , 5:24 PM Þ

um, hey akin: the ‘world’ isn’t electing the new american president.

Perhaps if the whole world elected the american president, you might be given one that is reasonable. Certainly if a country is to be the policeman of the world, the very same world should have direct control over that country and its election process.

and this bullshit about ‘national security’ is what the american populous is currently most interested in.

Hence my point about the hysterical false concerns over security. The answer to this “problem” is clear, and has been demonstrated by Spain. Let me put it in terms anyone can understand; if you poke around in a hornets nest, you are going to get stung. There. Leave the hornets to do what the hornets do, and live life that you deserve, free, peacful, without fear and hopefully long.

i agree with what you have to say — honestly — but trust me, electability is just as important as being truthful right now.

So, the whole world should sit by and say nothing while one bunch of idiots replaces the last bunch? I think not. No one in the world would care if the americans voted Luke Skywalker of 2 Live Crew as their president (at least he has a passport uunlike half of the congressmen) if their government minded their own business, but it seems that they refuse to, and even intelligent people appear to be saying that we all have to put up with this hysteria and the interference that stems from it (and which caused it) “until we are done with it”. Not good enough.

after your whole tirade against nader, one would think ‘you would know this.’

I was responding to that template-made feelgood claptrap speech which did not impress or move me in the slightest bit. Bush has to go, at the very least, to cut off his freinds businesses from world access; we all know he will never face a war crimes tribunal, in the end, that wont matter, because its far more important that he will no longer be there pushing the world towards the precipice . We all want Bush to be replaced. Nader is insane for threatening this; thats just logic. Now, imagining that Kerry is going to win, we casually take a close look at him and find him utterly wanting, even on the surface. Still we would prefer him, just to see Bush and the Neocon armageddonite puppeteers thrown into the garbage where they belong.

kerry won’t get elected if he says our new foreign policy won’t include kicking ass. (and yes, i think thats despicable)

So, Kerry, to be elected, must promise to break international law, ignore treaties and pledge to continue america’s suicidal pre-emptive foreign policy just to be elected, and we must all put up with it in silence, because “its just like that”.

This is not reasonable.

And you know this.

At the very least, apologise for this dreadful state that the world has been deliberately thrown into, and beg forgiveness and forbearance from the civilized world while you clean your house out. It would be only words, but if that is all you have, we will gladly take them. Telling the world to “MYOB” about this election is just too outrageous for words!
posted by Irdial , 9:00 PM Þ

[…]
And I can tell you this; everyone everywhere is more tired of your warmongering government than you are of hearing how much we hate it.
[…]
posted by Irdial , 11:27 AM Þ

That was the way we did it.

Americans are now in the position of having a real choice in the presidential election; Ron Paul or anyone else (since all the other candidates represent the same faction).

They have the benefit of hindsight, a population that is more awake than it was in 2004 and an identical crisis on the horizon, in the form of an insanely murderous attack on Iran.

John McCain is promising more war “My Friends”; Hillary Clinton is using phrases like ‘obliterate Iran’ on television. Obama has an invasion of Pakistan on the cards. These people are INSANE.

Hillary is particularly offensive, because even in her own upside down reality of misremembered and misspoken events, she is a total idiot; this is the same monster who only a short time ago said that Obomba was “naïve” on foreign policy for his declaration on a hypothetical scenario involving Pakistan, yet this harpie uses phrases like ‘obliterate Iran’, when the whole world is watching.

All three of these people are so manifestly inappropriate for the job, how could anyone possibly get it wrong this time?

The answers are, in case you are too thick to understand:

• If you are going to vote, vote for Ron Paul and NOT Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama or John McCain.
• Do not under any circumstances permit Iran to be attacked.
• Do not march in the streets to try and prevent an attack on Iran.

Obomba has americans so deeply hypnotized that it might be hard to derail him.

As for preventing an attack on Iran, we now know definitively that marching in the streets and vigils and every other 20th century tactic is useless; that is how the illegal, immoral, insane Iraq invasion and mass murder was given license to happen. You now know this to be true. If you march again, or hold a candle lit vigil, or do ANYTHING that was done before and shown to be useless, you are a COMPLETE IDIOT.

Ron Paul received more donations from active military than all the other candidates combined. All of these military personnel swear an oath:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God“

How is it that they can sit around watching America being dismantled and do absolutely nothing at all? Surely they must understand, up to the highest levels that ‘enemies domestic’ are in full operation, and that it is their sworn duty to excise them? Why has not a single shot been fired, why has there not been a breaking of ranks?

It is BIZARRE.

They are on the edge of engaging in another war crime, in historical terms, a page turn after Iraq, and not one of them is acting? No one is that stupid.

I would love to read an explanation for this inexplicable silence, this immoral inaction, this nauseating inertia; there must be an explanation – even the act of a lone maverick would exonerate them, but there is not one soldier amongst them (it seems) that actually understands what America really was.

Even the Nazis had high ranking soldiers willing to kill their despot. In their failure, they achieved the greatest honor for being on the right side of history.

In fact, we see that the army is doing exactly the opposite of what their oaths demand; they are preparing to take over the country and put decent people into concentration camps.

If only it were all a bad dream…

House Approves New Property Seizure Law

The criminals in the federal government are now trying to legalize the seizure of computers and other property under the guise of strengthening intellectual property laws. HR 4279 or the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, will give the government draconian powers to do just this. This legislation gives the government the power to seize property that facilitates the violation of intellectual property laws. The legislation also mandates the formation of a formal Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General to enforce this madness. In addition, a new office called the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative is created within the Executive Office of the President. If you boil it down to brass tax, this legislation allows the U.S. government to lawfully seize your computer if it has one unauthorized mp3 file on its hard drive. It also provides the authorization for the creation of offices within the executive branch to enforce a law that is impossible to enforce.

Below is taken from section 202 of HR 4279 that gives the federal government the authorization to seize property that may have been used to facilitate an intellectual property violation. The language in this section indicates that a violation would include downloading a single unauthorized mp3 file on to a computer.

d) Unauthorized Recording of Motion Pictures- Section 2319B(b) of title 18, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:

`(b) Forfeiture and Destruction; Restitution-

`(1) CIVIL FORFEITURE PROCEEDINGS- (A) The following property is subject to forfeiture to the United States:

`(i) Any copies of a motion picture or other audiovisual work protected under title 17 that are made without the authorization of the copyright owner.

`(ii) Any property constituting or derived from any proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of a violation of subsection (a).

`(iii) Any property used, or intended to be used, to commit or facilitate the commission of a violation of subsection (a) that is owned or predominantly controlled by the violator or by a person conspiring with or aiding and abetting the violator in committing the violation, except that property is subject to forfeiture under this clause only if the Government establishes that there was a substantial connection between the property and the violation of subsection (a).

This is the 1980s equivalent of the government being given the legal authority to seize cassette recorders if they were used in recording a song off of the radio. Under this legislation, downloading even a single mp3 file unauthorized by the copyright owner will give the federal government the power to take your computer. There is no way that the federal government can enforce this. In fact, it is insane that the U.S. House of Representatives is more concerned about keeping the record and movie industry happy by passing this legislation than they are with real issues. Incredibly, this bill was passed by a vote of 410-11. Two of the dissenting voters included Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

John Conyers a fascist and anti-Constitutionalist member of the U.S. House of Representatives who originally introduced this bill made the following statements describing the purpose of the legislation. His statements were republished in a Billboard Magazine report.

(1) prioritize intellectual property protection to the highest level of our government;

(2) make changes to IP law to enhance the ability of IP owners to effectively enforce their rights;

(3) make it easier to criminally prosecute repeat offenders;

(4) increase penalties for IP violations that endanger public health and safety.

Basically speaking, Conyers believes that downloading illegal mp3 and movie files endanger public health and safety. Conyers is either an insane individual that belongs in a mental institution for making such a ridiculous statement or he and everybody else who voted for this bill is in the back pockets of the RIAA, the MPAA and the rest of the music and movie industry. Common sense would dictate that such a law is unenforceable and should have not been seriously entertained. This is just another sign that this country is run by a bunch of fascists who are trying to find as many ways to undermine civil liberties under the guise of enforcing the law. What is really ridiculous about this, is the fact that the Constitution which is the supreme law of the land is violated by these fascist tyrants in Congress every single day of the week. If they were actually serious about enforcing the law, why are they not following the Constitution? Why do they reject it?

Maybe if the movie and music industry stopped putting out horrible content, their sales would be a little better. It seems as if they are trying to blame people who download unauthorized mp3 and movie files for their shortcomings in business. Perhaps they should do what smaller independent music and film production companies have done and embrace the technological revolution instead of stifling it by trying to push this anti-American legislation down our throats.

It is understandable to go after people who are illegally profiting off of selling material that isn’t their own but there really isn’t a need for government involvement. The record industry should sue those people if they believe that there are groups or individuals who are unfairly profiting off of their work. A court can decide if the claims they present are valid. However, to give powers to an already corrupt government to seize private property from people who are violating copyright laws by merely having downloaded mp3 files or movie files on their computer is unenforceable and beyond the scope of government. Section 301 of the bill establishes the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative and section 501 of the bill establishes the Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the Department of Justice under the office of the Deputy Attorney General. These particular offices will be established to serve as the enforcement arm for this legislation.

How many more powers is this corrupt legislature going to give to a renegade executive branch that is already engaging in perpetual war, setting up a police state, authorizing torture, destroying national sovereignty and other horrors? The federal government is full of petty bureaucrats and tyrants that can’t do anything right to begin with, and the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to expand government again through this legislation. With 410 of these tyrants voting for this legislation, it is doubtful that we will be successful in defeating this bill in the U.S Senate or if it goes to the dictator in chief.

[…]

Lee Rogers at Rogue Government

Pure unadulterated evil.

Let the ‘War on Piracy‘ begin!

This is a comment attached to this post, that I had to ‘promote’ to an entire post:

——-

The new wave of anti-organic propaganda: organic food is bad for the environment!

First, biased tripe masquerading as a magazine piece on BBQ. Previously they had this slightly more balanced piece.

And last week, the “7 Myths Of Organic Food” debunked by Robert Johnston, who claims to be an ‘environmental expert’ but I can’t find his credentials anywhere. “these foods are an indugence the world can’t afford, argues environmental expert Rob Johnston”.

“Robert Johnston is a doctor and freelance journalist. He was an executive producer for Lifetime Television in New York and medical adviser for the Millennium Dome Body Zone.”

His ‘article first appeared online before the Indescribablybad picked it up.

If these studies and articles have not been funded and placed by BigAgro then I’m a monkey’s uncle. The thrust of these articles is that only by intensive, chemical-driven farming can we save the world. And we’ll be healthier too.

Smacks of desperation, with a whiff of fear.

——-

It in fact, stinks.

When someone who has the brain of a researcher and who is honest turns the fire-hose of their logic onto these subjects, the shiny surface gets washed away to reveal the pure dirty evil underneath.

Note how it is the usual suspects who eagerly regurgitate the PR lies.