Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Year End Bang: Whitehouse Conceeds Aliens May Be In Our Solar System

Scanning the 'news' at BBQ this morning, we come across this story; about a group of people visiting RAF Bentwaters, the location of a spectacular sighting of a structured UFO. On the 'See also' sidebar is a very old and odd piece of propaganda written by Dr David Whitehouse, 'Science' Editor at BBQ from December 3 2002. It is a classic skeptic piece of ridicule masquerading as Science. In this rather pathetic and illogical diatribe, we are treated to the following gem right at the outset:
UFOs in the sense of unexplained lights in the sky certainly exist. But flying saucers, that is, alien spacecraft, never have. It really is about time we put down the whole UFO-spaceship thing as part of the past; part of an old-fashioned view of the mysteries of space. At best, they were a delusion, wishful thinking by some who didn't want to know better.
I had actually read this piece before, thanks to a post from Alun. The above is an amazing proclamation, given what we read at this website, Invitation to ETI, to which he is a signatory. This website is an invitation to ETI (Aliens) to contact David Whitehouse and 99 other crackpots. And I quoth:
  • What if one or more extraterrestrial civilizations long ago began probing the cosmos, to study their galactic neighbors?
  • What if one of their autonomous space probes should happen to reach planet Earth?
  • What if its super-smart Artificial Intelligence could figure out how to tap into the Earthlings' worldwide computer network?
  • What if ET's advanced robotic emissary were reading this very page, right now?
Welcome to Invitation to ETI, a Web-based, scientifically credible SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) experiment built around those speculative questions. In these pages, you will find an invitation, issued by an informal group of approximately 100 scientists, artists and futurists from around Planet Earth, to any Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI) having the capability to read it. This invitation is issued in hopes of establishing a constructive dialog between humanity and our cosmic companions.
I'm not making this up obviously. The most hilarious line above is 'scientifically credible'. Of course, this absurd and ridiculous project is only slightly more "scientifically credible" than SETI itself is...but that is not all. On their 'Security During the First thirty Days' page we see these idiots take apart their own project. First things first however. They say that,"The scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) seeks irrefutable evidence of alien intelligence." This is of course, a lie. SETI is not interested in irrefutable evidence of alien intelligence, and it never has been. They are interested in...no one really knows what exactly. They refuse to consider any evidence that does not fit in with thier broken model of the universe, so quite what they are after is anyone's guess. Now lets look at the rest of this fascinating page. It goes on to describe 'the six problems likely to arise in the first 30 days after one SETI project or another achieves genuine contact'. Number three is this extraordinary paragraph:

3. GOVERNMENT CONTROL

We cannot rule out the possibility that powerful authorities from one or more national governments will make covert and/or overt efforts to control, hijack, or terminate the SETI project and the dialogue with ETI. These authorities or agents could be based in security and intelligence agencies, the military, national police departments, or emergency measures organizations. Agents from several nations may enter the nation of discovery in order to conduct covert operations. We may also find ourselves dealing with people with less legal authority but with very high status or strong moral authority, such as leaders of certain UN agencies/departments, major religious leaders, and high-status leaders in the international scientific community.

Several sorts of motives could lead to this sort of behaviour by national governments.[8] First, some nations will hate losing their superiority. Second, national governments, spy and police agencies, and multi-national corporations will be desperately eager to get ETI's information first (and keep it secret) for economic and military advantage. Third, security agencies charged with preventing breaches of security are going to feel very nervous about ETI's capacity because all they will see is the potential threat. Government officials charged with maintaining public order may insist that they monitor all our communications with ETI and that they be our gatekeepers and spokespersons for public/media information. They would do this for public safety, to avoid public panic and a stock market crash, to feel in control, and for national prestige.

It is important for SETI scientists to face the chilling reality of government power. If a national government becomes strongly displeased with a small group of SETI scientists, then in actual practice there is almost no limit to what that government could do. Let's face it, if they choose to do so, the authorities could impound all of their computers and files and data, terminate their capacity to interact with their colleagues, arrest anyone who tries to help them, try to close down all relevant websites, even jail them or make them disappear. It is foolish and dangerous to underestimate the covert and overt capacities of major national governments when they are determined, frightened, or angry.

I find these possibilities deeply worrisome, and have little to suggest as a solution. Perhaps the SETI League, for the benefit of its members, could establish a task force to explore the matter deeply. Perhaps this be done in partnership with the IAA's SETI Permanent Study Group, or with a private benefactor, or with the SETI Institute or SETI Australia.

Anyone with any knowledge of UFO evidence will understand why this piece of writing is amazing; what this paragraph describes is exactly what the Governments that have knowledge of the UFO reality have already done. Why is this paragraph extraordinary? It is extraordinary because David Whitehouse and co. believe that governments will only do this if they are personally involved in the discovery. He does not believe that governments have already done this, because only he and his 99 SETI cultists are the gatekeepers of reality; anything that does not happen within their gaze simply cannot exist. Now, look at these lines from the same page:
[...] Called the Invitation to ETI, [4] this project assumes it is quite possible that at least one highly intelligent extraterrestrial probe has reached our solar system[...] [...] If ETI is within the solar system, it may be reluctant to interact with humanity before we are ready for contact. [...]
Astonishing. Why all of a sudden is this a valid assumption to make? What has changed between 2002 and now in David's small mind? Given the second of those two lines, what sort of behaviour would we expect from such explorers? Firstly they would almost certainly be carrying small probes, and they would launch them to observe and study us just as we dropped the Huygens probe on Titan from the Cassini spacecraft. Such probes would not be dropping down on a parachute however. They would most likely be stealthy, small, intelligently controlled, manouverable, evasive and recoverable. What would such a thing look like should we be fortunate enough to catch site of one? When you ask these questions, credible UFO sightings start to fit the model. Of course, you have to be open minded enough to ask these questions in the first place; David Whitehouse is not one of these open minded people. If he were, he would have already come to the conclusion that all reasonable people have come to and not become a signatory of that rather puzzling website. If you assume that aliens could be stationed in our solar system now, there is absolutely no reason not to believe that they have been in our solar system for thousands of years, studying us in a long term project. To think that they could only have arrived in our lifetimes is very small minded, egocentric and frankly, stupid. Any alien explorer that has the tools mentioned above would evenetually be discovered. Its clear to anyone with common sense and the ability to read that the above or something like it is the case right now; alien spacecraft are already visiting us in a furtive, 'hands off' manner, and it is only now that we have come to realize what they are and that they are here. Working backwards from paragraph 3, a reasonable person can imagine the sort of behaviour that a government would be diaplaying had they accepted that some UFOs are alien spacecraft. They would set up commitees, working groups, commissioned briefing documents from the best scientific minds - they would do everything that governments do when faced with a problem of any kind. If we were then to find such documents, through any means, this would be proof that governments took UFOs seriously; the complete opposite (for whatever reason) of their public stance. We would then be forced to concede (if we were reasonable) that there is indeed, something to the UFO problem; that this is not a fantasy or anything other than absolute reality. Once down this road, we can diminish or totally abandon listening for signals with radio antennae, since aliens are already here. We would then, being reasonable scientific people, take a close look at the best UFO evidence. This means visual radar cases made by credible professional people with no agenda. There are many such cases, the Wallonia Triangle case being one of the best:

The Belgian Air Force has gone on record with the details of its Black Triangle pursuit. It released its radar video footage and its conclusions, ruling out the following origins of the object in question:

  1. Balloons. Impossible due to the highly variable speeds (confirmed visually and by radar).
  2. ULM. Same as for balloons.
  3. RPV. Impossible due to the hovering characteristics.
  4. Aircraft (including Stealth). Same as for RPV. No noise.
  5. Laser projections or Mirages. Unlikely due to lack of projection surface (no clouds). Light spots have been observed from different locations. Light spots moved over distance of more than 15 NM. Form of unlighted part of spots has been observed with spectacles. Laser projections or mirages can not be detected by radar.

The report concludes that the Belgian Air Force was, "unable to identify neither the nature nor the origin of the phenomena".

This account is only one amongst many others of this type. Combining the assumption above, the paper trail that we would expect to find should governments be actively persuing UFOs and the plethora of credible radar visual cases like this, the reasonable person, the true scientist, can come to only one conclusion; searching with radio telescopes for evidence of alien civilization is pointless when these aliens already here. What real scientists need to do is think about how we are going to deal with them right here and now, and not in some absurd ostrich posturing 'what if' scenario. This 'Security' page is actually about how SETI can stop the project beign taken away from them, so that they, the faux scientists can remain as the sole gatekeepers to this earth shattering event. These people are obsessed with being the sole arbiters of reality. Their treatment of anything outside their dogma proves however, that they are singularly unqualified to be the gatekeepers of anything at all, never mind interacting with aliens on our first contact. If I had to choose between a group of scientists and the CIA being the first people to be in contact with aliens, I would have to choose the CIA. The CIA are honest; they admit that they are liars, wheras scientists (of the SETI/Skeptic type) are completely self deluded, believing that they know and tell the truth about the world as they find it, when the opposite is the case. David Whitehouse and his cohorts have created this website, presumably so that aliens can email them upon reading the page. Should an alien email them from a hidden base somewhere in the solar system, how would they verify its source as being from a actual alien, and why should anyone believe them any more than they believe the people who claim to have seen UFOs or worse, been abducted by aliens? Can you see how totally absurd this website is? And out of all the people who run websites on this subject, surely after having read both the BBQ piece and this page, no alien with any sense would contact David Whitehouse or anyone from that site, since they are clearly irrational - there are far more qualified, scientific and credible people on the web who would be better candidates for that first contact email. In his BBQ piece, David Whitehouse said alien spacecraft 'have never existed'. Clearly something has happened to him since he wrote that, or, he was lying when he wrote it. Either way, this is a person who should not be trusted when it comes to this subject, quite apart from the fact that he is a member of SETI, which in this case stands for Simpleminded English Terran Irrationalist. I did say 'bang' didn't I?

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Movements of all cars in Britain to be monitored by evil sytem

Movements of all cars in Britain to be monitored by evil sytem.

The movements of all vehicles on the roads in Britain are to be recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records of scanned number plates of all cars that use the roads. 100% Apalling. [...]

Now, what I want to know is this:

Who and what gives the right to the police to creat this system unsupervised and unnacounted for, without any oversignt, special legislation, consultation or debate?

The public roads are precisely that, the property of the public, not the police - after all, the public payed for their construction and continues to pay for their maintenance. If you cannot drive down the road (or walk for that matter, because face recognition is surely next) without being under surveillance, then the freedom to travel unencumbered dissapears.

The police say that they want to "deny use of the roads to criminals". If the justice system worked correctly, those involved in violent crime and burglary would be denied the use of the roads because they are in gaol, not because a totally bogus surveillance system is place, whose true purpose is streamlined / automated road violation fining, swingeing car taxation and punishment of ordinary drivers.

The only reason why the state can get away with this is because no one in the UK gives a fuck. They go around like nothing is changing, continuing to pay for the prison to built around them whilst the deafening noise of construcion rages all around them. They are all going to get what they deserve.

Once again, the Independent simply recounts the facts in a dry, emotionless manner, when in fact, they should be screaming. If the newspapers in Poland during their revolution took the same tone that the British papers are taking while the UK is being dismantled, the Berlin wall would still be up.

Digg is the new Slashdot by the way. My second ever submission to Digg and its on the front page. Digg is agendaless and that is the advantage that trumps Slashdot.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

A Cobbler's Tale

5. Lastly a story that made me laugh: a friend of mine went into a jeweller in Burnley and asked the young girl behind the counter for a Crucifix. She asked what he menat and when he explained she said she thought she had some in the back. She went to look and after a few miutes shouted back to him, "do you want a plain one or one with a man on it". It's only funny because it's true. Taken from the letter sent out by Tim Little.

Suckers!

Can you count, suckers? I say the future is ours if you can count .... You're standing right now with 9 delegates from 100 gangs. And there's a hundred more. That's twenty thousand hard core members, 40,000 counting affiliates, and 20,000 more not organized, but ready to fight. 60,000 soldiers.... now there ain't but 20,000 police in the whole town. Can you dig it. Can you dig it? CAAAANNN YOUUUU DIG AAAATTT!!!!!! Now here's the sum total. One gang could run this city. One gang. Nothing would move, without us allowing it to happen. Tax the crime syndicates, the police, because we've got the street, suckers! CAAAANNN YOUUUU DIG AAAATTT! The problem in the past has been the man turning us against one another. We have been unable to see the truth, because we've been fighting for ten square feet of ground. Our turf, our little piece of turf. That's crap brothers. The turf is ours by right, because it's our turf. All we have to do is keep up the general truce. We take over one borough at a time. Secure our territory. Secure our turf. Because it's ALL our turf! CAAAANNN YOUUUU DIG AAAATTT!!!!!
NBC (General Electric) & CBS (Westinghouse) are evil and the LARGEST EXPORTERS OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ON THE PLANET. They PROFIT from MURDER, DEATH & DESTRUCTION using the oldest tool on the planet, "Divide and Conquer". Here is a brief description: 1) Keep the Majority (of the population) Stupid. Give them cute labels like 'Soccer Moms' and 'NASCAR Dads' when you need their support. 2) If the Majority show any signs of intelligence, create 'Have' and 'Have Not's', by giving Have something and Have Not Nothing. Then get them to fight one another for failure to share. 3) Sell both sides tools of destruction to fight/destroy and then sell them the tools to rebuild. Owning Major media makes it easier to implement divide and conquer, which produces massive profit, has nothing to do with humanity and would indicate talking heads are tools of the Legions of Darkness. It makes one wonder if purchases of their sponsor's products support EVIL & THIS ? 85% of the people in the United States are Christian. GOD said, "thou shall not kill" and Jesus extended this concept when he said, "Christians are to no longer execute sinners, so they should not wage carnal war, but spiritual warfare (John 18:36; 2 Corinthians 10:1-6; Ephesians 6:10-18; 1 Timothy 1:18-20; 6:11-14; 2 Timothy 2:3-5; 4:6-8). Christians must be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9, Romans 14:19), forgiving those who do them harm (Ephesians 4:29-32; Colossians 3:12-14; Matthew 6:9-15; Mark 11:25-26), treating their enemies with love (Luke 6:27-36) and not seeking revenge (Romans 12:17-21; 1 Peter 3:8-12). Hatred which is the same as murder (1 John 3:15), is unforgiving, vengeful and hostile towards one's enemies"; which begs the question, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING ? So, I wish a great Saturnalia or Yule to all my NON-Christians friends, psychic youth, left-hand path, occultist, gnostic, psychonaut, thelemite, rajneeshan, zen Buddhist, wiccan, kaote, discordian, taoist, kali yogi, outcasts, Shivaïte, discerning real individuals, non-dogmatic and unrelated creative and whatever akin peoples. All ther rest and their commercial Christmas hypocrisy: bug off, keep your charities for action. Hail Eris! Celebrate Yule!, Io Saturnalia!

Whew!

I am starting my Christmas baking, and could not find my recipe for butter tarts! Then I remembered I posted the recipe here, can you believe, in 2002:
Mom's Butter Tarts (it just isn't the holidays without them ...) 12 unbaked tart shells (try to make these yourself, but the plug-and-play work too) Beat 1 egg, mix in 1 cup of brown sugar. Beat in the juice of 1/2 a lemon, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2 tablespoons melted butter. Stir in 1 cup of raisins and 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts. You can use currants, pecans, coconut, whatever. Spoon into tart shells. Bake at 375 for 8-12 minutes, until filling is bubbling. MMMphphphphph!
Thank you Blogdial!

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

More unrepresentative madness

The European Parliament this morning voted in favour of a backroom deal that had been made between the two big parties in Brussels and the Council of Ministers, currently chaired by the UK. The deal completely ignored the amendmends proposed by the Parliament's Rapporteur and by the Justice and Civil Liberties Committee that was (well - officialy) in charge of the process. After a hot debate and a number of signs of cracks in the party blocks, a majority of 378 parliamentarians voted in favour of mandatory retention of telecommunications data, 197 against, 30 abstained. This is in short what we will get now: - retention of telephone and internet connection data (including email addresses) and location data for mobile phone calls - no harmonisation of the retention period (6 to 24 months but longer is allowed: Poland wants 15 years) - no harmonisation of cost reimbursement for the needed investments on the providers' side - no limitation to certain types of crimes for which access is allowed - retention of unsuccessful call attempts - no independent evaluation - no extra privacy safeguards - follow-up committee without representation from civil rights organisations Civil liberties organizations, consumers organizations and all the telco industry associations as well as journalists associations had been fighting like hell against this major and unprecedented surveillance plan until the last minute. We did not win (the outcome is in fact the worst possible, exactly what the UK home affairs minister Clarke wanted), but we at least raised a lot of awareness and disturbed the conservative and social-democrat party lines. But the UK council presidency had pushed so hard after the London bombings that this directive will enter the EU history as the one which took the shortest time ever from the first Commission draft to the final vote (less than three months - normally they need years). The next steps will be the adoption by the Council of Ministers (before christmas) and then the implementation process into national laws. There will be challenges to this plan before the constitutional courts. I am pretty sure that the German constitutional court will not like it, as it recently had ruled unconstitutional a major eavesdropping plan on phone calls - and that one was only directed at suspicious persons, whereas the EU directive applies to every single communication of all 450 Million inhabitants of the EU. More information, including recordings of the EP debate, is available at . Ralf (European Digital Rights, www.edri.org)

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Blessed are those who struggle

AM ' would go to jail' over ID cards IC Wales | December 12 2005 A prominent Plaid Cymru AM has vowed to go prison rather than carry an ID card. Leanne Wood said she has signed up to a civil disobedience campaign against the Government’s ID cards plan. Ms Wood, the Welsh Assembly’s shadow social justice minister, said the cards were an “expensive Big Brother device”. “If for some reason you get picked up by the police and you don’t have your card or you’ve lost it, you could well end up behind bars,” she said. “We in Wales may have saved ourselves from some of the waste of money by saying that devolved services will not have to deal with ID cards. “But the UK Government is forcing this plan through and, sooner or later, they will require people who refuse to carry ID cards to go to prison. “I’m ready to go to prison, if the Government presses ahead with this dangerous plan.” Ms Wood, a former probation officer, added: “I still hope the Bill will be defeated, but if not I am ready to go behind bars. “I do not believe that I should have to identify myself as a matter of course. I am also pledging that if plans go ahead to link the ID card to people’s right to hold a passport, I will challenge it in court.” [...] IC Wales

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Heros with money. Gotta love it.

"I'm a millionaire," Gilmore said. "I can do whatever the fuck I want, right? Why should I run around without an ID? Because no one else was paying attention to that and letting our liberties slip down the drain. I figured it was worth some amount of money and some amount of personal sacrifice to keep a free society." [...] http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,69774,00.html?tw=rss.TOP

Monday, December 05, 2005

Pointless yet effortless

Previous Politech messages: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/09/10/dutch-internet-providers/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/09/23/european-commission-proposes/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/06/16/feds-contemplate-forcing/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: URGENT: letter to European Parliament against data retention Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 15:34:39 +0100 From: Ralf Bendrath Reply-To: bendrath@zedat.f-berlin.de To: Declan McCullagh Declan, could you send this to politech quickly? It is pretty urgent... Thanks, Ralf --- Please spread widely and quickly --- The European Parliament - after heavy pressure and blackmailing from the council of ministers - is about to vote for mandatory retention of all communications, phone and location data in the EU for up to 2 years. This is outreageous. --> Please sign the open letter drafted by Privacy International and European Digital Rights. Deadline is tomorrow morning, 6 December, 9:00 CET. We especially welcome signatures from Data protection authorities, Consumer unions/organisations and Internet and Telecom providers. Signatures should be sent to Sjoera Nas, EDRI, and/or Gus Hosein, Privacy International, . Thanks for your support. Ralf Bendrath (European Digital Rights) http://www.privacyinternational.org/retentionlaunderingcampaign Open Letter to the European Parliament on Data Retention 05/12/2005 To all Members of the European Parliament We the undersigned are calling on you to reject the Directive of the European Parliament and the Council on the Retention of Data Processed in Connection with the Provision of Public Electronic Communication Services and Amending Directive 2002/58/EC. Adopting this Directive would cause an irreversible shift in civil liberties within the European Union. It will adversely affect consumer rights throughout Europe. And it will generate an unprecedented obstacle to the global competitiveness of European industry. (...) _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)