Rude!

Said the flapper with a sob...

History repeats itself

Here's a related message:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-05010.html

And this disclosure may provide another reason to refuse to answer any
questions in the census not authorized by the U.S. Constitution:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-01001.html

-Declan

---


        DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY OBTAINED
       DATA ON ARAB AMERICANS FROM CENSUS BUREAU

                -----------------------

   Documents Obtained under Freedom of Information Act
        Raise Questions About Use of Census Data

                -----------------------

       EPIC Calls for Congressional Investigation


WASHINGTON, DC - The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a
public interest organization in Washington DC, has obtained
documents revealing that the Census Bureau provided the Department
of Homeland Security statistical data on people who identified
themselves on the 2000 census as being of Arab ancestry. The special
tabulations were prepared specifically for the law enforcement
agency. There is no indication that the Department of Homeland
Security requested similar information about any other ethnic groups.

One tabulation shows cities with 1,000 or more people who indicated
they are of Arab ancestry. For each city, the tabulation provides
total population, population of Arab ancestry, and percent of the
total population that is of Arab ancestry.

A second tabulation, more than a thousand pages in length, shows the
number of census responses indicating Arab ancestry in certain zip
codes throughout the United States.  The responses are subdivided
into Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian,
Syrian, Arab/Arabic, and Other Arab.

The tabulations apparently contain information about United States
citizens, as well as individuals of Arab descent whose families have
lived in the United States for generations.

The heavily redacted documents show that in April 2004, a Census
Bureau analyst e-mailed a Department of Homeland Security official
and said, "You got a file of Arab ancestry information by ZIP Code
Tabulation Area from me last December (2003).  My superiors are now
asking questions about the usage of that data, given the sensitivity
of different data requests we have received about the Arab
population."

The same day, a Department of Homeland Security Customs and Border
Protection official e-mailed the analyst to explain, "At U.S.
International airports, U.S. Customs posts signage informing various
nationalities of the U.S. Customs regulations to report currency
brought into the US upon entry . . . .  My reason for asking for
U.S. demographic data is to aid the Outbound Passenger Program
Officer in identifying which language of signage, based on U.S.
ethnic nationality population, would be best to post at the major
International airports."

During World War II, the Census Bureau provided statistical
information to help the War Department round up more than 120,000
innocent Japanese Americans and confine them to internment camps.

EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said today, "the Department
of Homeland Security has compromised the mission of the Census
Bureau with this improper request for information about Arab
Americans.  The census requires the trust and cooperation of the
American public."

EPIC Staff Counsel Marcia Hofmann said, "The Census Bureau should
not become one-stop shopping for law enforcement agencies. It's time
for Congress to step in and make sure this is not repeated."

ABOUT EPIC

EPIC is a recognized leader in the use of the Freedom of
Information Act to obtain information about government policy on
emerging issues.  In the past year, EPIC's Freedom of Information
work resulted in significant disclosures about the Total
Information Awareness program, passenger screening developments,
and the growing number of privacy complaints that consumers have
sent to federal agencies.  These documents have been the subject of
Congressional hearings and news reports across the country.

The documents obtained by EPIC from the Census Bureau are
available at:

http://www.epic.org/privacy/census/foia/default.html

For more information about census privacy, see EPIC's Census
Privacy Page:

http://www.epic.org/privacy/census/default.html
_______________________________________________
Politech mailing list
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)

Now you have yet another example of why people do not fill out Census forms. You would have to be pretty stupid to fill one out after reading about the times they have used Census data to round up people. We dont have to look at the obvious hot potato European examples, this one will do fine. and this guy has it right.

FLATTERY_01

At first glance, it sounds like it would be the most absolutely boring thing ever, wow, let's just all go lay around, y-a-w-n, but sometime in your second or third hour, when you're totally relaxed, and the DJ is strumming your senses like a genital, you look around and realize, yep, they?re right, this is absolutely perfect: the peak of civilization, like a big ol? harem of pure luxury, just basking in the fact that you can. There?s just something indescribable about dreaming in a room with others. Magik Carpet on a stick, hang on tight, maybe it'll help. I attended a couple of the mentioned Cloudwatch parties in 1997 and was most definately split wide open in the most gente of possible ways. I had never experienced something like Loveless washing over dozing bodies, a dreamy woman's voice lulling us all into hearing those distant bop piano notes s - l - o - w - e - d down to bassy swells. Recommended if you are in the Balitmore area this weekend...

iRecordMusic

iRecordMusic I don't know if this has been posted yet, but it's a cool little app.

wang eruption

Bobby Wang, violin virtuoso, does a note-for-note rendition of the famous solo from 'Eruption' by Eddie Van Halen. http://www.bobbyyang.com/video/750kb.htm

Unreal life: Polychaetes

The polychaete Autolytus pachycerus from algal mats on rocks in the intertidal region at Bondi Beach. This animal buds off smaller individuals that fill with sperm or eggs and swim away to spawn with other 'epitokes'. For more information on annelids and polychaetes see the the links below: Photo of Autolytus by G.Rouse http://www.ees.adelaide.edu.au/people/enviro/gregr/index.html

Polychaetes

Gregory Rouse, School of Environmental Biology, University of Adelaide and South Australian Museum, Adelaide, and Fredrik Pleijel, Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris Price: �125.00 (cased + printed jckt) 0-19-850608-2 Publication date: 11 October 2001 362 pages, 16 pp full colour plates, numerous halftones and line drawings, 276x219

• 'This introductory section is succeeded by the detailed comparisons, which are not only excellently illustrated but complemented by a handsome set of colour pictures.' -Geological Magazine
• 'Whilst the core of the book is systematic, the overview at the beginning of the book is concise and invaluable.' -Geological Magazine
• 'In this magnificent volume Greg Rouse and Fredrik Pleijel present a masterly, fascinating and encyclopaedic summary on this important group of animals.' -Geological Magazine
• '[This book] is very well presented, with a swag of coloured photographs taken of live animals, some lovely micrographs of this amazing group of animals and line drawings for each family.' -Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology
• 'A book of this nature was clearly an enormous undertaking, and the authors are to be congratulated on the final product ... will be of immense value to anyone intending to study, or currently investigating, Africa's rich polychaete fauna.' -African Zoology
• '... chapters are informative and are excellent as a quick reference for information on any taxon. If more detail is needed, readers will find the text well referenced.' -African Zoology

Rouse provides unprecedented coverage of polychaete diversity. Lavishly illustrated, including colour plates, the beauty and variety of polychaetes has nowhere been better shown.

http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-850608-2

Osedax

Osedax or Osedax

Its beautiful

http://www.juno.co.uk/

Oh you didnt know

bladder control If there is one thing they are expert at, its taking the piss. BYKT!

This proves it

This paragraph:

Government databases The MPs express concerns about the proliferation of official databases - the overlap between the registrar general's proposed population register, called the Citizen Information Project, and the ID cards database. MPs say there is no coordination here, but also warn against a government database of all information. But the ID card database should be comprehensive enough to mean that no more than one government-issued card is needed. http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1272206,00.html

Proves that the all-party group of MPs who wrote this have no clear understanding of what they were asked to look into. They dont understand that the single number attached to a person is the key danger in an ID card scheme, and that many of the concerns flow from this one "feature". Of course, even an ID card without this feature is still unnaceptable, simply because it will be continually demanded innapropriately. Look at this:

They have your number As a privacy watchdog bestows its latest awards for super-snoopers, Mark Oliver looks at a powerful new surveillance system being rolled out at service stations Thursday July 29, 2004 For the stream of shoppers driving into the supermarket petrol station just outside Bradford, the CCTV camera has been such a familiar sight it may as well have been invisible.

But from this month, it is not just fuel-dodgers who the camera is there to monitor; up to 3,000 number plates an hour from the forecourt will now be fed into a police database.

In theory, the camera in the Sainsbury's forecourt, in the Greengates area of Bradford, is meant to recognise people who have previously not paid for fuel and vehicles with warrants on them. But, for the first time, it will provide police with a round-the-clock "intelligence" feed, a spin-off from the project that has raised concerns among civil liberties campaigners.

The pilot scheme, which uses the latest automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology, was launched in Bradford, West Yorkshire, three weeks ago and will be rolled out to a further six petrol stations. Two garages are already using the cameras and all 53 stations in the Bradford area have been invited to take part. One stumbling block to a 100% take-up is that the garages have to pay �5,000 for the cameras while the only outlay from the police is a small support team to channel them information.

The scheme is the latest example of how, in the post-September-11 world, ANPR is being used increasingly nationwide as Britain's reliance on surveillance grows. On average, Londoners can each expect to be monitored on as many as 300 CCTV cameras a day as they go about their business. [...]

Undeniably, ANPR can be effective. In an earlier pilot scheme involving 23 police forces, including West Yorkshire, between summer last year and April this year, APNR accounted for more than 10,000 arrests.

The technology emerged to combat Irish republican terrorism, when the city of London demanded its deployment after the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing. An early incarnation of ANPR was used in the capital as part of the "ring of steel" thrown around the City of London in 1997.

West Yorkshire police say the petrol station project is intended to stop what is known as "bilking", using a fuel pump and then driving off without paying. But they also say it is a "valuable source of intelligence". [...]

He says: "The Police Information Technology Organisation [which liases with forces about the use of technology] has policy documents saying how in the future they want ANPR to be everywhere. They will use it to police uninsured drivers, or those who have not paid road tax."

Of the Bradford scheme, he says: "It's total overkill to monitor everyone's registration to catch a tiny proportion of people not paying. Is it necessary? They already have CCTV cameras where they can record vehicles' number plates, or staff can take them down. This is the kind of scheme the Big Brother awards are for."

Mr Brown says that, in the past 15 years, the Home Office has spent huge sums on CCTV, but a study by the crime reduction charity Nacro found the technology only reduced crime by 3% to 4%, while better street lighting led to a decrease of 20%. [...]

A spokesman for the information commissioner's office, which enforces the data protection legislation, says: "We don't want to get in the way of the police doing their jobs. We only have concerns if CCTV cameras are being used illegitimately."

"For example you could not have the boss of a shop take CCTV footage of you and then cross reference that with a loyalty card to build up a profile of you," he says. [...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrights/story/0,7369,1271120,00.html

<> My emphasis on the last paragraph. Clearly there are some people for whom the light is turning on. Its clear that this is precisely what will happen. You will drive into a petrol station forecourt, and then by the time you are ready to pay, the man at the till will have all three of your credit cards already set to pay your bill for you, because he subscribes to ten different companies that together contain every bit of information about you.

A unique number attached to you is the key to joined up government, joined up commerce and complete surveillance.

The fact that a very few people steal drops of petrol in Bradford is not a reason to create a surveillance system that connect to the Police. All they need to do to stop people stealing gas is to put up an automatic barrier, similar to the ones that M&S and Tesco use to protect their car parks. Its simple. You have to collect a ticket to leave the station with your petrol. You get this ticket when you pay for your petrol. If you do not have a ticket, your car cannot exit.

The simple solutions are the best. Of course, the simple solutions are not what the ANPR system sellers want to sell. They have to pile in secondary uses (often connected to the irrational fear of terrorism) so that they look more attractive than they really are.

What is going to happen is this; one day, in what will seem like a spontaneous event, all the systems that are being rolled out, both privately and publicly will be connected by the convergence of top level services and government meaning that anything you do, from walking out of your house to buying a newspaper, will be knowable. Of course, the people who will benefit from this will be anyone that can afford the subscription fees to these services (the word subscription also means "bribe") and everyone else will be in the dark. Before you go anywhere, everything about you will be known; they will onlly ask you questions to see if you lie, not to find out any fact about you. When people know everything about you, you live in an enviornment in which you are owned. Everything you do, and by that I mean the knowledge of it and record of it, belongs to you. When people capture data from you and sell it, they are literally stealing from you, and it is a sort of theft that is more than someone stealing �5 from your pocket. When people steal your personal data, they steal something that gives power to other people; power to control and manipulate you and your interactions with the world. This power over you acts like a prison, where you are not free to interact in a non compromised way with anyone. Without these systems, you are free to travel without consequence, you are free to read without consequence, you are free to choose what you want to eat, see and listen to, all without consequence. As soon as these systems are put in place, and they reach the point of critical mass where everything is knowable, you cannot do anything without there being a consequence. You might buy The Guardian. This will be known. Someone with whom you are going to interact will be able to know this, and that will contaminate your interaction, especiall if this person has a low regard for Guardian readers, or pr0n surfers, or Greenpeace contributors, or people who have worked for $you name the company. Before you say "Greenpeace would never reveal who is in their database" thiink about this; anyone who sends Greenpeace money electronically, say by Direct Debit, is compromised; the database that controls your Direct Debits will have your number on it, which will be tied to your name, and of course, HMG will have access to this, so they will know that you contribute to Oxfam AND Greenpeace. All it takes is one person with access to HMG systems for this information to leak out into "Grey Databases", which will be everywhere, run by private detective firms and the like. Anyone will be able to "subscribe" to them. Nothing will be able to escape this network of systems, not a single fact, and the scenario that I gave above is the hard way that grey databases will be filled up with your private information; compromised or incorectly configured systems (anything running an M$ OS) will be routinely raided; this information will be worth its weight in gold. People all over the world will be attacking these machines night and day. It is better that these systems, which do not solve the problems they are being rolled out for, are not created in the first place. This jail that they are making, this invisible bubble from which you will not be able to escape, unless you completely remove your physical body from the country covered by this system, will be an unprecedented nightmare. The British will be living like the East Germans did under the STASI, only much worse. Everyone will be second guessing their every move, as they realise that everything they do has an immediate and eternally fixed consequence and impact on their lives. People who publish will be constantly self censoring, people who buy publications will be wondering if its is an appropriate purchase. And so on. Only the most stupid of people thinks that this is a good idea, and we certainly should not wait and see if it all comes together like this or not. We should not take the risk. We should not trust the motives of the people who are advocating these plans. They must be rejected absolutely, nothing less will do, and anything less would not be British!

exited?

i dont get the 'exited' joke. or is it a joke? i spell that word with a C. unless drunk.  which i wish i was right now.

Who do you love?

Hmmm.......No one? Let us answer, you have to wait for the reply. And not too long, since we all have "spare time" to post illuminating blogdialian claptrap. And I like the word claptrap. I also love the phrase "twaddle peddler" (one of my pet phrases for this year, on this occasion shortened from "philistinical twaddle peddler") Nick Ferrarri of LBC is a Twaddle Peddler 1^st class. Now, on to business. I think Dennis Skinner is a great MP. George Galloway MP is obviously great. Anthony Wedgwood Benn is beyond great (even though he personally killed the British Space Programme because "rockets for exploration can also be used to carry warheads"). There are three examples for you, all of them men of the highest calibre. When Tony Benn is on Question time, or any TV debate programme, he wipes the floor with incorrect panelists with his extraordinary memory, experience and moral fortitude. I dont get "excited" by them, and I dont think that we should be excited by polititians, any more than we should get excited by garbage men. The theoretical best polititian would be just like a garbage man; keeping the streets clean, and keeping out of the way of the population as they do the cleaning.

dnc speech

Your meeting is over; great! Thanks, it was a good meeting! For the life of me, this speech sounds inadequate. When the world is about to be destroyed by a metorite, I hope that whoever gets to make the last speech does a better job. This wasn't supposed to be that speech. The reason I liked it is because it signals a (hopefully) coming change in American politics; i.e., not the same old white dude up on the podium. Yeah, I admit the rhetoric is a bit same-same, but who do you guys have over in old boy country that I should be getting excited about? Hmmm.......No one? Side note:  I admit I'm a culprit as well, but it gets irritating when large images are posted and then every time someone posts a long reply, the text wrapping gets all fucked up and you have to scroll left to right to read.  That's not cool.

NO2ID Strikes back

----------------------------------------------------------------------
You have received this message from the FIPR Bulletin mailing list run
by the Foundation for Information Policy Research  http://www.fipr.org
----------------------------------------------------------------------


FIPR is forwarding this press release on behalf of the coalition

Please note that the contact email is  press@no2id.net  NOT! FIPR

---------- Forwarded message ----------

ID Cards Report: Reaction

============================================
EMBARGO: 00:01, FRIDAY 30TH JULY 2004
============================================

Civil liberties groups and privacy campaigners have called upon David
Blunkett to shleve his plans for a national identity card in the wake of
today's damning report from the Home Affairs Select Committee.

A coalition of anti-ID card groups has pledged to defeat the proposals in
Parliament should a Bill be put forward later this year. With senior
Cabinet Ministers including Jack Straw and Patricia Hewitt known to be
opposed to Blunkett's Plan, campaigners believe that if legislation can be
held up until after the General Election, the ID cards may never see the
light of day.

Mark Littlewood, national co-ordinator of the NO2ID Coalition said:

"The more people hear about ID cards, the less they like them. With
opinion polls showing that around 3.5million adults would refuse to carry
a card, the government needs to ask itself exactly how many more enemies
it can afford to make. Proposals for national identity cards should be
sheleved immediately and permanently."

Dr. Ian Brown, Director of FIPR (Foundation for Information Policy
Research) - a supporter of no2id - said:

"The committee has raised a whole series of very grave concerns about the
scheme. ID cards won't tackle terrorism, won't cut fraud and won't reduce
crime. The government's plans are an expensive and dangerous folly."

ID cards expert, Owen Blacker of internet privacy group Stand said:

"This report should cause the Home Secretary to rethink. Not only do ID
cards present a very real threat to individual privacy, but they would be
a technological disaster. The government's record on IT porjects is truly
awful. If they press ahead, people should brace themselves for this
running way over budget and experiencing major malfunctions."

For further information or to arrange interviews, please contact:
Mark Littlewood - 07974 569 299
Ian Brown - 07970 164 526
Simon Davies - 07958 466 552

[END]

Note to Editors:
1 - The No2ID coalition is an organization with a broad membership of
individuals and supported by several organizations, including Liberty,
Charter88, FIPR, Stand.org.uk and Privacy International.
2- More information about no2id can be found at http://www.no2id.net

[END]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Are you a Friend of FIPR yet? Receive daily updates on information policy stories and events -> http://www.fipr.org/friends.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join No2ID right now.

Looking up

Your meeting is over; great! I have been looking up this "Barack Obama" chap, and the hysteria surrouinding him is flying through all the channels. So much so, I re-read his speech just to be sure I wasnt totally mental when I slashed it up; could this be the same speech that I read from the other day, this same speech that everyone is saying is "a speech for the ages"? For the life of me, this speech sounds inadequate. When the world is about to be destroyed by a metorite, I hope that whoever gets to make the last speech does a better job. Our problem here is the unease that we all feel thanks to american foreign policy. That speech is now being read all over the world; how much better it would have been if it contained some glimmer of retreat, of re-assessment, or even self assessment, of re-positioning, adjustment. A confession, a will to relent. Instead, we got more dreams, and as I read in some accounts of the speech, as it was delivered... tears. Of all the responses, I loathe tears the most; I loathe the way they spill them with the same ease that they spill the blood of "foreigners". Tears are a solution to nothing. If you must shed them, cry for the girl who had her foot blown off by an illegal bombing raid. Cry for the orphaned children. Cry for the murdered people, killed at your command and with your consent. Tears of this kind are an insult, and nothing less.

Barack Obama, running unopposed for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, wowed 'em. Speech, video, homepage are all here.

Snagged from a blog found via Politics.tehcnorati. the bbc chimes in with what we REALLY want to know about:

Mr Obama was an early critic of the Iraq war, speaking out against the prospect of war several months before the March 2003 invasion.

When he addressed Democrats in Boston, he praised the men and women serving in Iraq, and said more should be done to financially support the families of those killed.

"When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world," he said. [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3936013.stm Hmmm he is a lawyer; was it illegal or not. We need a legal opinion, ANY opinion. This is worrying:

But despite Mr Clinton's endorsement, opinion polls suggested a decline in voter support for the White House challenger.

Only 46% backed him against 48% for Mr Bush, said a Washington Post/ABC poll. Respondents said they did not know enough about Mr Kerry's policies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3936673.stm WELL thinks me, where is the list of Kerry's policys online, how hard can it be to find a simple list of them? "Lets find out"what Google says: :: John Kerry for President - Foreign Policy :: File not found!!! Google cache lives. and cherry picking:

Winning the Peace in Iraq

To establish security and move forward with the transition to Iraqi sovereignty, the President must show true leadership in going to the major powers to secure their support of Lakhdar Brahimi?s mission, the establishment of a high commissioner for governance and reconstruction, and the creation of a NATO mission for Iraq. These steps are critical to creating a stable Iraq with a representative government and secure in its borders. Meeting this objective is in the interests of NATO member states, Iraq?s neighbors and all members of the international community. True leadership means sharing authority and responsibility for Iraq with others who have an interest in Iraq?s success. Sharing responsibility is the only way to gain new military and financial commitments, allowing America to truly share the burden and the risk.

uh oh.

Plan to Restore American Security in Honor of Pearl Harbor Day Plans to Enhance Intelligence, Improve Port Security

On September 11, 2001, America was again struck by a surprise attack from a hidden enemy, and again we paid a terrible price. This time, however, the President's response was very different. Where President Roosevelt sought answers, President Bush has sought to avoid blame, repeatedly stonewalling the 9/11 Commission and Congressional efforts to understand the intelligence mistakes that led up to September 11th. In fact, the Bush Administration has not even completed the National Intelligence Review mandated at the beginning of the Administration. Nor has the Bush Administration taken the necessary steps to improve homeland security by making our ports safer.

uh oh spaghettios. lets comb throug the LIVE pages. We find under the "plans>>National Security" section:

Modernize The World's Most Powerful Military To Meet New Threats John Kerry and John Edwards have a plan to transform the world's most powerful military to better address the modern threats of terrorism and proliferation, while ensuring that we have enough properly trained and equipped troops to meet our enduring strategic and regional missions.

no!

Deploy All That Is In America's Arsenal The war on terror cannot be won by military might alone. As president, John Kerry will deploy all the forces in America's arsenal - our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, and the appeal of our values and ideas - to make America more secure and prevent a new generation of terrorists from emerging.

no no!

Free America From Its Dangerous Dependence On Mideast Oil To secure our full independence and freedom, we must free America from its dangerous dependence on Mideast oil. By tapping American ingenuity, we can achieve that goal while growing our economy and protecting our environment.

Very sexy, very intelligent. Last on the list. Under "Homeland Security": (note, this post /concept shouldnt even exist and should be abolished)

Track And Stop Terrorists Many of the intelligence problems that allowed terrorists to slip into our country before 9/11 have not been addressed. John Kerry and John Edwards will improve our ability to gather, analyze, and share information so we can track down and stop terrorists before they cause harm.

no! you cant track and stop terrorists without tracking and stopping everyone. And they certainly know this. If they dont, they should not be in office. Its amazing that they can understand that the dependence on foreign oil is deadly, but not understand that this false war on terror is equally deadly, to the very core of what america is. Fools! My emphasis btw. Those two words, which translate to "joined up government" are the death of liberty.

Protect Our Borders And Shores Today, our borders, our ports, and our airports are not as secure as they must be. John Kerry and John Edwards will make our airports, seaports, and borders more secure without intruding upon personal liberties.

Sounds good, HOW are you going to do this?

Harden Vulnerable Targets Chemical industry lobbying has kept the Bush administration from strengthening security at chemical plants, where an attack could endanger 1 million Americans. John Kerry and John Edwards will always put Americans' safety ahead of big business interests and take strong measures to harden likely targets-including nuclear plants, trains, and subways-against possible attack.

Fortress America? Insane!

Improve Domestic Readiness Our first defenders will respond to any attack with courage and heroism-but they also need the equipment and manpower to do the job. John Kerry and John Edwards will back up their words with resources and ensure that America's first responders have everything they need to protect their communities.

"More Fear" This doesnt sound very good does it?

Guard Liberty. We must always remember that terrorists do not just target our lives - they target our way of life. John Kerry and John Edwards believe in an America that is safe and free, and they will protect our personal liberties as well as our personal security.

The next line starts with"By..." But it doesnt. Well, after reading this its no wonder no one in the USA knows what his policies are if these vague soundbytes are all we are being given to go on. Rather than rebutting each one, what we need to se are detailed plans demonstrating an in depth knowledge of cause and effect in the field of foreign policy. What we do NOT want to see is anything like what is on this website, which are not solutoins at all, but what looks very much like business as usual, tweaked. I SAID there would be more didnt I?

barack obama

Excepted from The New Yorker: THE CANDIDATE by WILLIAM FINNEGAN How the son of a Kenyan economist became an Illinois Everyman. Issue of 2004-05-31 Posted 2004-05-24 [...] "...Obama left organizing to attend Harvard Law School, and in 1990 he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Abner Mikva, a five-term congressman from Illinois who was at that time Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit, tried to recruit Obama as a clerk, a position considered a stepping stone to clerking on the Supreme Court, but Obama turned him down. ?He could have gone to the most opulent of law firms,? David Axelrod, a longtime friend who is now Obama?s media adviser, said. ?After Harvard, Obama could have done anything he wanted.? What he wanted was to practice civil-rights law in Chicago, and he did, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation for a small public-interest firm. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, although he declined to pursue a tenure-track post, hoping to save time for politics. And when he got the chance to run for the state senate in his district, which included both Hyde Park?the home of the university?and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side, he jumped at it. "People are whupped,? Obama told me. ?I?m whupped. My wife is whupped. Unless it?s your job to be curious, who really has the time to sit and ask questions and explore issues?? [...] Americans aren?t simply too tired to think about politics, he said; they?re being deliberately turned off. ?If you make political discourse sufficiently negative, more people will become cynical and stop paying attention. That leaves more space for special interests to pursue their agendas, and that?s how we end up with drug companies making drug policy, energy companies making energy policy, and multinationals making trade policy.? http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040531fa_fact1

Pithy comments

Let's call the kettle black here; you may not like the word opinionated, but you are, That was way too easy! and you cause/encourage this perceived anger way more than I actually feel it. We can only go by what you write, and if you write nothing, or something that looks like something that it isnt then it gets woven into the thread, right or wrong. Thats why you get asked to actually say something at length, because we are obviously not getting enough / ESP is down today. Remember: We don't have a lot to get excited about here, politcally. I'm taking what I can get. We are also taking what you get; this is the problem. You know what sort of things we say here about Labour every other day; what I cannot understand is the near silence from people who appear to know better about american polititians and policy, and when we lay into them to fill the gaps, we have "a mentality". yes yes, but its 7PM in the real world. What does that even mean? as much as your GMT post did, isnt that obvious? Seriously, I'm sorry I don't have the (this is my perception) immense amount of free time that you do to post long, detailed investigations into world affairs. Ah yes, the thinly veiled barbe of having too much time on ones hands. Adds nothing. How can we answer this? "Type faster and think harder". Thats good enough! I think it's great you can do that, but I have a job. I have a meeting right now. I'm going to that meeting. You could have taken the time it took you to post that post to give us an example of what you have been asked for two times in one day; what does it look like from where you are? What do you THINK? We actually care, we want to read it, thats why we ask for it. And here ends another few lines of opinionated blogdialian claptrap. There will be more. "Its going to get worse" Not a guarantee. Your rights remain unaffected. Subject to change without notice.

What is interesting is how any criticism of any kind inflames you. This thread started with a lashing of a sppech, to which we got a "hold on there buddy" response, as if criticising the american government is a personal attack on Ken Meier!   Untrue.  Let's call the kettle black here; you may not like the word opinionated, but you are, and you cause/encourage this perceived anger way more than I actually feel it.  I'm not pissed off, I just happen to like Barack Obama.  Quite a lot.  He's a law professor here at the U of C, a candidate for Illinois state Senate, a good role model, and essentially one of the most dynamic and interesting politicans currently in the Democratic party.  Have you done any research on him?  If you haven't, um, you should.  Also: I'm not taking anything you say as a personal attack, just saying I thought it was a pretty good speech, so I wanted to stand up for it.  I also liked Clinton's.  Really. Remember: We don't have a lot to get excited about here, politcally.  I'm taking what I can get. yes yes, but its 7PM in the real world.   What does that even mean?  Seriously, I'm sorry I don't have the (this is my perception) immense amount of free time that you do to post long, detailed investigations into world affairs.  I think it's great you can do that, but I have a job.  I have a meeting right now.  I'm going to that meeting.

Words that I like

Since like is better than hate: Exception, comma Duality, insane Damnation, surgeon Dullard, enbalm Slice, enumerate Pyramid, muscle Pollen, clock And I adore flipping throug Roget's Thesaurus; it is often very funny! Meau2 the peacebringer!

Words that I hate

opinionated

\O*pin"ion*a`ted\, a. Stiff in opinion; firmly or unduly adhering to one's own opinion or to preconceived notions; obstinate in opinion. --Sir W. Scott.

<> I loathe the word "opinionated" especially as it is used in the UK, where more often than not, it refers to anyone that can string a sentence together in English that does not jibe with what is the current group-think. What words I wonder, do YOU hate?

What what what?

blogdialian claptrap. There is no such thing as " blogdialian claptrap", but dont you just love it?!

The cracks begin to widen

MPs attack Blunkett ID card plan Committee will criticise secrecy, costings and voice fears over intelligence services Patrick Wintour Thursday July 29, 2004 The Guardian David Blunkett's plan for compulsory identity cards will be condemned by MPs tomorrow as improperly costed, poorly thought out, secretive and "lacking in clarity both over the scheme's scope and practical operation".

The MPs, on the home affairs select committee, stress that they do not oppose ID cards in principle. But they express alarm about what they describe as "function creep" once a national identity register is in place. They warn that ministers are already planning to use the ID card scheme as a cover to introduce a national fingerprint system within five years.

Identities may soon be checkable on the national register from CCTV pictures, they predict.

In the report, due to be published tomorrow but seen by the Guardian, the MPs call for parliament to be given powers to oversee the development of ID cards to prevent them encroaching into new areas.

The report warns that once the cards become compulsory it is conceivable that private companies will be able to demand access to the full information held on an individual on the register as a condition of providing a service. The access is "well in excess of what is justified in the fight against serious crime or terrorism".

What took you so long?

They go on to insist that individuals must have full access to the information about them held on the database.

Someone has "got to them" obviously. Perhaps their computer literate children have demonstrated to them just how Google works, then made them imagine Google as the front end to this database. That should scare the shite out of any sane person.

They also warn that the technology involved in biometric testing - implanting a digital facial or fingerprint record into the ID card - is unproven. It is uncomfortable for the individual, and may not prove reliable without highly trained staff.

"There should be exhaustive testing of the biometrics chosen and the results assessed by independent experts, perhaps led by the government's chief scientific officer," the Labour-controlled committee says. Initial tests show as many as one in 100 matches are incorrect.

And they have probably caught wind of the sort of world this biometric noonsense creates; thanks to the immoral debacle that is USVISIT, we can see just how such a system will abuse and injure every ordinary person subjected to it on a daily basis.

The select committee's scepticism was echoed yesterday by a leading academic, Dr Farzin Deravi, who runs a re search group on biometrics at the University of Kent. "People get the impression biometrics are ready for large scale deployment, but there are still many unresolved issues and challenges," he said.

Despite their criticisms, the MPs are clear that the Home Office should proceed with the cards because of "their significant role in fighting terrorism", adding that there is no overwhelming constitutional objection to a compulsory scheme.

Did I say this before? During the IRA era, the Irish, who are for all intents and purposes invisible in the UK, could come and go as they pleased. No one talked about fingerprinting all the Irish, or the British for that matter, and the IRA problem was put to bed without this great country being brought to its knees, or being changed beyond all recognition. The British will not fall for this war on terror double talk; they know how to conduct themselvs, and how to properly protect their way of life; fingerprinting everyone and subjecting them to ID cards is not how it is done....because it is not the done thing.

Mr Blunkett said at the weekend he was "really very pleased with the kind of support we're getting ... over 80% in all focus group and opinion polls now saying that people are up for this".

bwa hahahahahahah hahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!

Two MPs, Labour's David Winnick and Bob Russell of the Liberal Democrats, will issue a minority report rejecting ID cards altogether. [...]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1271351,00.html

David Winnick is an interesting chap; I wonder where they are going to publish this "Minority Report". Ha ha for the name boys.

Show and tell

i'm just tired of this america vs. everyone mentality. um, there are americans who disagree with america's politics, ok? This is in no way a "mentality". Saying that it is a mentality implies that everyone in the rest of the world is somhow involved in a flimsy posture, that this week, the american government is the bad guy, next week, it will be someone else. The words you continually read from everywhere in the world are not habitual, but are the result of the illegal things the US government is doing. They are the effect that followed a cause; a Newtonian equal and opposite reaction. Note that it is equal and opposite, proportional, rational and since decent people are in the equation, completely expected. It is not a fad, or something cooked up by the newspapers and TV; it is real, a genuine groundswell and very strongly felt by the vast majority. I said, that the american government is putting its citizens in the line of fire. That is plain english. No one is is "vs the american people"; this has been said time and time again by just about everyone everywhere. What is interesting is how any criticism of any kind inflames you. This thread started with a lashing of a sppech, to which we got a "hold on there buddy" response, as if criticising the american government is a personal attack on Ken Meier! If you realy "dont agree with americas politics" please, for the love of the ends of my fingertips, show that you clearly understand what we are talking about in the rest of the world. Lets hear what you really think, how you want your country to change, how you want the world's feelings about it to change, what you would do if you could personally change it all...something, ANYTHING other than rushing to defend some vague notion that the american public has been besmirched because everyone in the world knows its government is crap, and some newspapers and bloggers have the gall to say it. 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; you simply cannot expect everyone to say nothing while the world and its hard fought treaties, international laws and important bodies are cast into the fire by a handful of monsters. Put your words in line, and prove that you dissagree with your country's government and foreign policy. This is not done by the way, by posting twaddle like that speech, which any French teenager can see is nothing but papier mache . It is also not done by petulantly saying "you cant tell us what to do", "you dont have any say in our election, we do". when i post this, it's 7 pm cst, not 1 am gmt. it's not 1 am everywhere in the world. yes yes, but its 7PM in the real world.

This is what it looks like

This is what it reads like when someone is taking a close look at their government, and letting them have it:

Another government scam heaped upon the public. The "diverse and qualified (sic)" 9/11 Commission is made up of a lawyer, a lawyer, a lawyer, a career politician, a lawyer, a college president, a lawyer, a former secretary of the Navy, a lawyer and a lawyer. Not a single authority on terrorism. Not one FBI, CIA or police expert. Not even an individual immersed in Middle East politics. No wonder their opinions are rather hackneyed. A group of intelligent teenagers could have arrived at very similar conclusions for virtually every incident from Pearl Harbor to the Kennedy assassination. Government waste at its very best, with the purpose being to deflect blame away from Congress and the true culprits. In life, "stuff happens." Unfortunately, it is trial lawyers like John Edwards who have given our society an excuse for everything. The words "accident" and "unpreventable" are being removed from our lexicon. Instead, blame, fault, "I want to get paid" or "Let's create a new government bureaucracy" have become Washington's false gods. Commissioners/Counselors Hamilton, Ben-Veniste, Fielding, Gorelick, Gorton, Roemer and Thompson all believe their legal expertise has made America safer. Among the remaining three non attorney commissioners, only former Secretary of the Navy Lehman seems qualified. Messrs. Kerry and Hamilton actually walked out on the President and Vice President during testimony at the White House, because they probably had more important things to do. Yet this "diverse" Commission ultimately concluded, "With dismay, we think more could have been done since 9/11 to detect and defeat terrorist plots." What more could possibly have been accomplished, with no successful attacks on American soil? [...] http://michnews.com/artman/publish/article_4482.shtml

Thanks to a lurker for emailing this to me. There are people out there with a full deck, a keyboard and some grapefruits.

preaching to the converted

notice how the timestamp on blogdial posts is gmt? when i post this, it's 7 pm cst, not 1 am gmt. it's not 1 am everywhere in the world.

ongoing political stuff

ok, mr. semantics. i get it. like we all don't understand that fox news isn't a relevant news source? we can 'debate' back and forth all you want on the issues, but my point is, i don't see anyone (besides people like us) making any headway on the 'republicans vs. democrats' issue...do you? have they ever? will they ever? it's like that old bill hicks routine 'i prefer the puppet on the left! well, i think the puppet on the right is more to my liking.' ugh. again -- i don't disagree. i'm just tired of this america vs. everyone mentality. um, there are americans who disagree with america's politics, ok? yeah, we exist. for reals.

Debate?

here's a perfect example of this debate Ahem. That istnt what we call "debate" over here. Fox News never has true debate in its shedule, it only ever has bar room brawling, bad-mouthing and fighting words. Have a look at what TV debating looks like: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/progs/question_time/latest.ram "Question Time" is far from perfect, but at least when you watch it you can hear each person speak, and people have a chance to both speak and think, and there is a broad range of opinion from both the panelists and the invited audience. You will note that this programme is one hour long. Ill leave out the pointless barbs about attention spans...or will I?!

FOXNews.com - The O'Reilly Factor - Moore: Bush 'Didn't Tell the Truth'

FAIR AND BALANCED? akin: here's a perfect example of this debate. you and i side with mr. moore, i assume. a fair majority of the united states, however, sides with bill o'reilly. -- MOORE: Look, let me tell you something in the 1990s look at all the brutal dictators that were removed. Things were done; you take any of a number of countries whether its Eastern Europe, the people rose up. South Africa the whole world boycotted? O'REILLY: When Reagan was building up the arms, you were against that. MOORE: And the dictators were gone. Building up the arms did not cause the fall of Eastern Europe. O'REILLY: Of course it did, it bankrupted the Soviet Union and then it collapsed. MOORE: The people rose up. O'REILLY: Why? Because they went bankrupt. MOORE: the same way we did in our country, the way we had our revolution. People rose up? O'REILLY: All right, all right. MOORE: ?that?s how you, let me ask you this question. O'REILLY: One more. MOORE: How do you deliver democracy to a country? You don?t do it down the barrel of a gun. That?s not how you deliver it. O'REILLY: You give the people some kind of self-determination, which they never would have had under Saddam? MOORE: Why didn?t they rise up? O'REILLY: Because they couldn?t, it was a Gestapo-led place where they got their heads cut off? MOORE: Well that?s true in many countries throughout the world? O'REILLY: It is, it?s a shame? MOORE: ?and you know what people have done, they?ve risen up. You can do it in a number of ways . You can do it our way through a violent revolution, which we won, the French did it that way. You can do it by boycotting South Africa, they overthrew the dictator there. There?s many ways? O'REILLY: I?m glad we?ve had this discussion because it just shows you that I see the world my way, you see the world your way, alright and the audience is watching us here and they can decide who is right and who is wrong and that?s the fair way to do it. -- FOXNews.com - The O'Reilly Factor - Moore: Bush 'Didn't Tell the Truth' watch the video!

BLOGDIAL : We are the best

Telling the world to "MYOB" about this election is just too outrageous for words! not saying that. at all. i am just telling you how it is. it's not like i'm condoning it. LOOK, I LIVE HERE!!!!!!!!!

The facts

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!

Ivotuk

rebuttal

um, hey akin: the 'world' isn't electing the new american president. and this bullshit about 'national security' is what the american populous is currently most interested in. i agree with what you have to say -- honestly -- but trust me, electability is just as important as being truthful right now. after your whole tirade against nader, one would think 'you would know this.' kerry won't get elected if he says our new foreign policy won't include kicking ass. (and yes, i think thats despicable)

Talk is cheap

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 "persued and defeated"; everyone in the entire world (including you, as in "But you know this") except American polititians 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 Ameican 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 foerign 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 untravelled 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?! (bold part translated by babelfish)

George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics

George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics: "With Republicans controlling the Senate, the House, and the White House and enjoying a large margin of victory for California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's clear that the Democratic Party is in crisis. George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and cognitive science, thinks he knows why. Conservatives have spent decades defining their ideas, carefully choosing the language with which to present them, and building an infrastructure to communicate them, says Lakoff. The work has paid off: by dictating the terms of national debate, conservatives have put progressives firmly on the defensive. "

Barack Obama

I watched Obama's speech last night, it was excellent. Just caught it on tv, flicking around. I am so glad I did, it was inspiring, hopeful. If you can find a video, watch it. He is a phenomenal speaker, and his truth is powerful. The crowd was roaring.

Yahoo! News - Text of Obama's Address at Convention

On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, land of Lincoln, let me express my deep gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention. Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let's face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant.

Never give in until they crack

http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk/

FTV

http://www.ftv.com/vmc/live.asp

Meau's Short life

Ha! Its quality not quantity we are after. Ummmmm.......? What meau said.

Yo, grumpy!

You are already immortal. But you know this.

Fuck the future

Looks like you wont be posting with me Mary:

Your calculated health span is 93.4 years. Below, please find the reasoning behind the questions, which you answered that made your score less than it should be:

In time: a thousand, two thousand years.

Copyscape

Copyscape

Hmmmm.

Find copies of your content on the Web.

[...]] I cut and pasted that from another website. I wonder if they will find it? This is going to provide many hours of fun; it works brilliantly, checking for whole chunks of text from your target page, and then highlighting the chunks in a googlesque cache of the "offending" pages.

Let's all live a long and healthy life!

Your calculated health span is 88.1 years. The Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator� Will I still be posting to Blogdial when I am 88 ?!?

text version of the 9/11 commission's report

You Have Bad Taste in Music

bahahahahahaha! You Have Bad Taste in Music [via TMN]

Firefox

GooglePreview

What is it? A Mozilla Firefox 0.9+ browser extension that inserts preview images (thumbnails) of web sites, Amazon products and stock charts into the Google search results page. http://ackroyd.de/googlepreview/

SI.com - Tour de France 2004 - Armstrong collects record sixth Tour title - Sunday July 25, 2004 5:34PM

SI.com - Tour de France 2004 - Armstrong collects record sixth Tour title - Sunday July 25, 2004 5:34PM 'YOU'RE AWESOME.' - Pres. Bush

Nothing lasts forever. Get over it.

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the Foundation for Information Policy Research      http://www.fipr.org/
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Great letter replying to the Indie article 
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/news/story.jsp?story=544670 by
our geek-in-residence Steve Coast  :) 
--
Sir: Though some might think otherwise, Elvis is widely believed dead.
Therefore I find it hard to give credence to the BPI's whinging that
Presley's early works will soon fall out of copyright ("That's not all
right, says music business as first rock classic goes out of copyright",
26th July).

Copyright is intended to be a balance between allowing an author of a
work to make money whilst ensuring others may build on that creativity.
This is achieved by conferring rights for a limited term monopoly to an
author on condition that the work is released to the publlic domain
later. This is no 'loophole' or 'quirk of law'.

As Elvis has passed on, it appears clear that the main beneficiary of
his work is now BMG. EMI is not being 'exploited' as Sinatra songs fall
out of copyright, they were privileged in being given a (very long)
amount of time to enjoy a monopoly. They were granted this on condition
the public would be later given that work. In effect, they want to go
back on that deal.

The current trend amoungst intellectual property holders is to demand
more rights and longer and retrospective monopoly terms. Indeed, Mickey
Mouse should have fallen out of copyright many times. I would suggest
that a copyright renewal fee would be far healthier for the public
domain. It would allow the vast majority of other work not as famous as
Elvis, as well as books and video recordings, to fall in to the public
domain. Whilst doing so it allows the poor deprived record bosses to
squeeze more money from dead artists.

Stephen Coast
[Address deleted]


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Dame Pauline Neville-Jones strikes back

Poles call 9/11 film 'propaganda'

Michael Moore's contentious film Fahrenheit 9/11 has opened in Poland, with some film critics likening it to totalitarian propaganda.

Gazeta Wyborcza reviewer Jacek Szczerba called the film a "foul pamphlet".

He said it was too biased to be called a documentary and was similar to work by Nazi propaganda director Leni Riefenstahl.

But politicians opposed to Poland's involvement in the US-led occupation of Iraq have urged people to see the film.

"In criticising Moore, I have to admit that he has certain abilities - Leni Riefenstahl had them too," Mr Szczerba said in his review.

"Michael Moore will not convince Poles with his film," the Rzeczpospolita newspaper said in its review.

'A lot of truth'

"People are very sensitive to aggressive propaganda, especially when it pretends to be an objective documentary or a work of art."

The Polish government has supported the US-led operations in Iraq, and the Poles are in charge of a 6,200-strong force in southern Iraq. More than 2,000 Polish troops are currently serving in Iraq.

"The film contained some propaganda, but there was also a lot of truth in it," Pole Elzbieta Karwinska, 58, said after seeing the film.

"But I see no direct connection between the film and the Polish army in Iraq. I think that Poland is in Iraq for completely different reasons," she said.

This week, an Australian government minister described Moore as "the quintessential ugly American", after the film maker criticised the Australian prime minister's support of US President George Bush, saying: "What is John Howard doing in bed with an idiot?". [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3923385.stm

This piece is from the BBC; Dame Pauline Neville-Jones has obviously orchestrated the shock troops at the BBC to begin the counter offensive in the Propaganda war that she admits they are loosing.

This story is a typical lie piece, it has no author, so we cannot pull up the person who wrote it or monitor the writers output for extreme nonsense writing. It is an invisible back stab of a knife in the middle of the night, a cowardly, vile, stupid and clumsy piece of nonsense that no one will be disuaded by.

Dame Pauline, if this is the best that you can muster, you are not losing the propaganda war, you have already lost it.

And before we get sucked into your agenda and way of thinking, this is not a propaganda war at all. This is a celluar automaton, game of life, scenario where we have a rule that tries to make the cells lie and spread lies and another rule trying to make cells replicate and spread the truth...ok I guess it IS a war!!!

This is for certain; no article that appears on the BBC TV or Website should ever be published without the name of the author attached to it. This is the only way we can monitor just who taking commands directly from The Dark Dame.

The data capture begins

The Sunday Times July 25, 2004 All children to go on big brother computer Robert Winnett and David Leppard A NATIONAL database containing confidential details about every child in Britain is to be set up by the government. An identifying number will be assigned to each child so that the authorities can access their records. Details of the proposals affecting all 13.5m children in Britain under the age of 18 are contained in cabinet papers leaked to The Sunday Times. All parents will receive letters from the government informing them of the plan, which will be added to the Childrens Bill in the autumn. The central electronic register will hold information on a childs school achievements, GP and hospital visits, police and social services records and home address. It will also include information on their families, such as whether parents are divorced or separated [...] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1190990,00.html Of course, this is the beginning of the creation of the national ID database. Even if the rollout of ID cards is cancelled by the Tories, this relatively small database of 13.5 million individuals can be grown as more children are born and names added to the database incrementally. This means that they can iron out the bugs over a long period of time, and future generations will grow up to find that they already have a number assigned to them without their consent. It is clearly the duty of all parents to absolutely reject this assignment of a number right now, so that their children may have a choice in the matter when they become adults. Its an insidious piece of sheep shearing, being done without the consent of the parents in the UK, and without consultation with them. The government has no right to assign a number to any child, in the same way that they do not have the right to assign a name to a child. They can offer this as a service, but they do not have the right to compel a parent to submit to this. [...] It has commissioned a feasibility study into the plans and held negotiations with several firms including Experian, which runs national credit-checking services. According to the leaked minutes: ?To overcome the technical problems associated with a national database it might be better to start small and build up.? [...] And there you have it. Can you hear the buzz of the shears?!

Let Britain be rich

new business partnership with NatWest, which helped keep the regime afloat by supervising the sell-off of Serbian telecoms. Which one of these banks would we prefer to make a fortune out of Serbs Telecom?: NatWest Deutche Bank Banque Nationale Paris Chase Credit Suisse Ill opt for number one. Business is not evil in and of itself, and HMG and her agents should be doing this sort of thing. What is categorically evil is business manipulating government so that it may use the govererned as sheep to be fleeced. I am talking specifically about warmongering, compulsory vaccinating, or vaccinating without proper choice (MMR), compulsory ID cards...you get the picture; anything where a false need is created that can be catered for by a contractor. Building and installing x-ray machines for hospitals is not a false need. Creating and managing a DNA database for the government is. Creating and installing a congestion charging system that is also used to immorally track peoples movemnts is sheep shearing. Managing traffic and then deleting the data is not. Its a pretty simple rule behind this; can you make up your own ones? Helping to finance the reorganization of a country's telecoms system is not evil, and if someone has to do it, let them be British.

The Tools

Manifesto for the Reputation Society 
by Hassan Masum and Yi-Cheng Zhang

Information overload, challenges of evaluating quality, and the
opportunity to benefit from experiences of others have spurred the
development of reputation systems. Most Internet sites which mediate
between large numbers of people use some form of reputation mechanism:
Slashdot, eBay, ePinions, Amazon, and Google all make use of
collaborative filtering, recommender systems, or shared judgements of
quality.

But we suggest the potential utility of reputation services is far
greater, touching nearly every aspect of society. By leveraging our
limited and local human judgement power with collective networked
filtering, it is possible to promote an interconnected ecology of
socially beneficial reputation systems - to restrain the baser side of
human nature, while unleashing positive social changes and enabling the
realization of ever higher goals...

http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_7/masum/

You know you are a cute little heartbreaker

a good idea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage make that your homepage and have fun.

MSNBC - Bigger breasts offered as perk to U.S. soldiers

MSNBC - Bigger breasts offered as perk to U.S. soldiers

Mozilla extensions

An extension that enables the user to place the bookmarks file (in XML) on her FTP server so it can be accessible (and editable) by multiple computers. That is SUCH a good idea. Now I can synchronize the bookmarks on my laptop and desktop. Hmmm I wonder if many different people could share, edit and add to the same bookmarks file??!! What I would love to see for Mozilla Mail is collaborative spam filtering. Every time I mark spam ad my local filter file is updated, no one else gets the benefit of that effort. If I could share the filter file of millions of other people (it would be downloaded before I check my mail) then all the filtering of other people would be used to correctly mark spam; just like we presume Gmail does. Even If I was in a group of 100 people using this collaborative filtering, surely my performance would increase dramatically.

A better representation

Black Holes being in the news makes lots of artists representations of them appear everywhere. All of them seem... wrong, or at least, make you ask some questions; when observing such an object, would you see something like this: which is a sphereish thing surrounded by undistorted rings and background stars, or would not the gravitational lensing twist up space so that it looks more along the lines of this?: would gravitational lensing not let you look past a black hole in a straight line? The light passing through its influence would be bent, so how can the top picture show rings in an oval shape "orbiting" the hole undistorted right to the event horizon? Of course, they are both artists interpretations (the top one from NASA), and so they are made with a licence to show anything at all. I would love to see a computer modeled image of a black hole taking gravitational lensing into consideration, with different backgrounds and from different perspectives, from on the edge of the event horizon to millions of miles away...hmmmmmmmmm! google sends us:

The Photon Sphere

Mathematically speaking, the photon sphere occurs at 3/2 the Schwarzschild Radius.

The photosphere is a place where light rays can have unstable orbits around the black hole. To have a stable orbit the light ray has to travel at a high velocity (c= 3*10 ^8 m/s) as it gets nearer and nearer to the center of the black hole. As it gets farther from the center it doesn?t need such a high velocity. The farther the ray is from the center of the hole, the less the velocity of the ray. A light ray would have a hard time to keep its constant orbit, as there are other rays colliding with it and changing its velocity and trajectory, thus shifting it either into outer space or straight into the black hole. The idea is that in the photosphere nothing is stable: everything either is drawn at incredible speeds in the interior of the black hole or plunged into space but delayed for a few thousands of years.

Another interesting phenomenon is the movement of space. If one had a source of light, let?s say a reflector, at the black hole, then the light rays would start orbiting the hole. If the ray comes back after one rotation it would hit the reflector. Now if one would have a camera and try to move the camera towards the image forming in front of it, then the image would retreat and shrink. This is because the view of the camera is just like the view someone would have if they were standing behind it. If the camera stands behind the person and he would start moving forward, their image recedes.

Movie: circling the black hole from the photon sphere

Explanation: The apparent position of the photon sphere is easy to spot - it is the apparent dividing line between black hole and sky. Stars approaching the other side of the black hole from your point are greatly magnified and move with high angular speeds. You can only see one star moving very fast and get very brighter, and then another one appears.

From bremen.edu

"After one passes the event horizon, the obvious question is what happens. At the center of the black hole (actually there is no real center) the singularity plays its role. It is the point where all the mass is condensed at infinite density and zero volume. All objects which pass through the event horizon are then inevitably drawn towards the singularity and they hit it in a very short amount of time."

"infinite density and zero volume" The sound of one hand clapping A Loud Egg Brown is the new Black

Firefox extensions I currently have installed

Firefox extensions I currently have installed

All Music Guide corrector 0.1 After AMG's horrible redesign a couple of weeks ago (discussed in depth at waxy.org) functionality for the mozilla flavor of browsers (or any non-Windows non-IE user agent) has been horrible. This brilliant extension fixes some of those problems. Bookmarks Synchronizer 0.9.6 An extension that enables the user to place the bookmarks file (in XML) on her FTP server so it can be accessible (and editable) by multiple computers. An indispensible extension for someone like me who spends a lot of time at two (or more computers) and wishes to keep bookmarks organized and up-to-date. Web Developer 0.8 Adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. If you make webpages - especially standards compliant ones - you need this. DictionarySearch 0.6.1 Select a word, right click, "Dictionary Search for ...", and a new tab opens with the definition from your favorite online dictionary in a different tab. BugMeNot 0.3 As discussed earlier in these pages. Any other suggestions that blogdialians are using?