Smuggled letters from Tariq Aziz, political prisoner

Writing in Arabic, Aziz says: 'We are totally isolated from the world. There are 13 other detainees here, but we have no meetings or telephone contacts wth our families. I have been accused unjustly, but to date no proper investigation has taken place. It is imperative that there is intervention into our dire situation and treatment. It is totally in contradiction to international law, the Geneva Convention and Iraqi law as we know it.' http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Observer/documents/2005/05/28/letters.pdf The astonishing Observer says that these pleas are 'extraordinary'. Of course, if it was a british journalist being held without charge, these would suddenly not be 'extraordinary pleas' but 'cries for help' and the situation would be described as 'outrageous' and a 'flagrant violation of international law'. The fair application of the Geneva conventions is not reserved for western journalists, niether is freedom of speech or any other right for that matter. The fact that they will not support Tariq Aziz proves that they are against the freedom and equality of all men, and reserve such 'priveledges' for their own hides.

Downing Street Memo; irrelevant

"Despite the memo’s disturbing and explosive revelations, there has been a virtual media blackout with some newspapers deliberately turning a blind eye to the Downing Street memo. Contact the media and ask them to do their job in reporting and investigating the information in the memo. Write a letter to the editor, call in to radio shows. It's time for the media to address real news." http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/takeaction.html

And here is the fatal flaw of all campaigners against the war and corruption/conspiracy in western government. They still believe like the most naïve of children, that the public can be motivated by the media, and that somehow, scandal still matters. Everyone should now understand completely that scandal, being caught out in a blantant lie, mass murder - none of these things, when exposed to the public via the media, can bring a polititian or government down. The only way to stop the warmongering, mass murdering, criminal, immoral governments is to take a true action against them. 'Taking action' does not mean getting the media to report that a lie has been told; even if the media did report it widely, a single report, dozens of reports, would have no conssequences. A true action entails a cutting off of the means to wage war and to govern. It means mass non cooperation with any illigitimate government. It means refusing to finance government until you get the government that you require, i.e., one that uses your money only for shools, hospitals, road maintenance and everything else you want and nothing that you don't want (war). Anyone who calls for demonstrations, petitions, pleas to the media and any other 20^th century style action is a part of the problem. Only one type of action is left, one last weapon; a cutting off of the sole reason why your enemies do what they do - money.

No Sale!

For those... Paying attention!!!

One Chip to Rule them All

US wants to be able to access Britons' ID cards

By Kim Sengupta

27 May 2005

The United States wants Britain's proposed identity cards to have the same microchip and technology as the ones used on American documents.

The aim of getting the same microchip is to ensure compatability in screening terrorist suspects. But it will also mean that information contained in the British cards can be accessed across the Atlantic.

Michael Chertoff, the newly appointed US Secretary for Homeland Security, has already had talks with the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, and the Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, to discuss the matter.

Mr Chertoff said yesterday that it was vital to seek compatibility, holding up the example of the "video war" of 25 years ago, when VHS and Betamax were in fierce competition to win the status of industry standard for video recording systems.

"I certainly hope we have the same chip... It would be very bad if we all invested huge amounts of money in biometric systems and they didn't work with each other.Hopefully, we are not going to do VHS and Betamax with our chips. I was one of the ones who bought Betamax, and that's now in the garbage," he said. [...]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=641731

Of course, if there is one manufacturer, thats another 60 million sheep to be sheard on a decanual basis. I presume that the manufacturer of the us system is in the usa...either way, they are gunning for the one manufacturer over all others. Imagine it; that momentum could mean that there is one company making these chips world wide for BILLIONS of sheep.

That is a wet dream beyond wet dreams, the very definition of a licence to print money.

And of course, you will already be aware that Northrop Grumman got the contract for the UK Police IDENT1 system, so there is a precedent for the usa having access to UK citizens data. YES, criminals in the uk are still UK citizens. Whats that you say? Northrop would not back door the system so that CIA would be denied access? YOU FOOL!!!!

Sun is for fun

"There's always the sun" Indeed. I went here after work today, and it was fantastic. Salt water is so nice to swim in. Though the lengths are very long (137m) and my swimming needs practise. The pool isn't divided into lanes either, so sometimes you are faced with 15 strong swimmers heading towards you, and you must push through the current they create. Killer. Also, Alun, I followed your link for Chris Watson to TouchRadio, and he has made an audio dairy of his trip to the Galapagos Islands. Amazing!

What did you expect?

WTF?!?!? This cannot be a surprise to anyone can it? They can't even chew bubblegum. You know, the capabilities of the biometric net as detailed today are not the end of the feature set. As time goes on, they will add features to it at will, untill the system is unrecognisable compared to the original specification. It will be like comparing windows 1 to windows XP. It will get into every corner of your life, you will constantly be scanned and recorded, and guess what, your children will not even care that it is being done to them. Already people are willing to be fingerprinted and photographed by the USVISIT system because they need to do business or see relatives. This is how it starts; a limited barely reasonable sounding feature set which will feature creep into a global soviet style world where everyone is enslaved. The American Militia people were right. The 'conspiracy theorists' ARE right. If you dont' believe it now, you are among the stupid. Scramble scramble scramble...shuffle shuffle shuffle...where IS that button?!?!?!?

Here comes that phrase again

Biometrics: From Reel to Real

Exclusive from:

Thu May 19, 3:00 AM ET

Dan Tynan

Are you who you say you are? Answering that question may soon involve more than simply handing over your ID. You may also need to hand over part of your personal biology by submitting to a biometric scan.

Voice, face, and eye scanners have been a staple of Hollywood science fiction for years. Now they're rapidly becoming a part of everyday life, as the spike in identity theft and fears over terrorism have created a biometrics boom.

Today, facial recognition is used in airports to identify potential terrorists and at casinos to finger card sharks. Schools use fingerprint and hand scanners to restrict access to employees and students. Iris scanners help secure border checkpoints and nuclear power plants, while banks are starting to use voice prints to verify transactions made over the phone.

A company called Food Service Solutions sells fingerprint-scanning systems to K-12 schools around the United States. The schools mainly use the systems in cafeterias to speed kids through lines by linking them to a personal cash account that pays for their lunches. Reviews have been mixed on whether lines have gotten shorter.

Grocery stores have also begun experimenting with fingerprint scans to hurry shoppers on their way and protect debit accounts from illegal use.

But what's the potential downside? Privacy watchers say that as biometric scanners become more widespread, it becomes possible for organizations--companies, the government--to create a detailed dossier of your physical movements as you pass from one scanner to the next. If Starbucks can easily track your movements, so can Uncle Sam, or your insurance company, or your spouse's divorce attorney, and so on. [...]

Yahoo!

I must be blunt

So I guess you dont like schizophrenic, blunt smoking rappers I loathe them absolutely, and If I could kill them all with a press of a button, I would do so without the slightest hesitation. That 'culture' and the bastardised music that comes from it is corrosive, destructive, counter productive, stupid, negative, bad, wrong-headed, evil, abominable, atrocious, awful, beastly, rubbishy, cheap, cheesy, crappy, cruddy, crummy, deficient, anti-intellectual, racist, dreadful, erroneous, fallacious, faulty, garbage, god-awful, gross, grungy, icky, imperfect, inadequate, incorrect, inferior, junky, lousy, poor, pathetic, rough, sad, scuzzy, sleazy, slipshod, stinking, substandard, unacceptable, unsatisfactory and total BULLSHIT. Now of course, this is just my worthless opinion, which you can gleefully throw away as the words of a rather stupid 'seen and heard too much' geezer, BUT bear in mind that I used to live in the Tri State Area in the 80's and I was THERE when the REAL hip-hop was the most creative music being made in arguably the whole world. So potent was that original movement that it has now spread all over the world and sadly has been transformed into this debased themetune for criminals without edge, without merit, counterproductive, dysfunctional, feckless, fruitless, futile, good-for-nothing, hopeless, idle, incompetent, ineffective, ineffectual, inept, meaningless, no good, pointless, purposeless, stupid, vain, valueless, worthless trash that has stolen the imaginations of millions of idiotic tracksuit wearing nincompoops world wide. Yes indeed. It's your round. Mine's a pint of bitter. Oh the irony!

Meau is correct and eloquent on ID proposals

It looks as though ID cards are going to be largely touted on their alleged efficacy against credit/benefit fraud using falsified identity information. The Force is strong with you meau. Yes indeed, they have changed their tune. You are completely right about fraud being a PRIVATE matter between a bank and its client. In order to defeat fraud completely, all a bank needs to do is set up a tiered system of security, from which a customer can choose. If you select the highest level, your account and its funds are insured against theft. If you select the lowest end, then the loss of your money is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. Watch as the millions of customer rush to be fingerprinted to protect their accounts from theft! This satisfies everyone. The Shlumbergers get to make billions from ID systems, fraud is eliminated, and people who want privacy get privacy. It's all optional, it costs the state nothing and the government's latest excuse for introducing the card is solved. It really is as simple as that. This whole proposal is as fradulent as the Iraq invasion, and everyone with a single working brain cell knows it.

Computer illiterates and total morons

I've already warned Sarah that we may have to leave the country. And go where? And how will you leave fortress UK without getting a new passport and getting registered in the process? (presuming that you leave in several years time of course, and your passport expiring.). Also, if other countries start registering you at the border, your prints, name, address and photograph will be in the system once you go through and then thats it. No. The British have to make their stand here, and now. Everyone where they live has to do the same. There is no where to run. And as for that BBC 'have your say' page, its another example of the low quality of some of the British public, who can sometimes be amongst the most stupid people in creation. Those who say all the things about this proposal that make your blood boil are the same morons who think that democracy is real and that demonstrating in the street is 'our democratic right'. They are the same ones that write to newspapers, complain about hosepipe bans and who sheepishly follow every regulation and rule put in front of them. I am afraid there is little we can do about them....unless we make a TV programme dramatizing how this system will be used against them. TV they listen to.

Time's Up

I had a listen to this track by 'Quasimoto' after looking at a really cool game cabinet of the same name thanks to a google search. I have to say that this track is most unimpressive. I really don't have time for re-hashed 21 year old ideas made by 21 year olds. Listening to this it's like Sun Ra, Davis and every other intelligent music maker never lived. These uneducated, uninteresting, happy slapping, truanting morons need to stop wasting time, plastic and everyone's patience, get a haircut and do something real with their flesh.

BPI Radar

Now there's TWO of them! http://www.magnetbox.com/bpi/

The Crypto Wars are Over: Let the ID Wars Begin!

  Release time: 00.01, 25th May 2005


    The Crypto Wars Are Over!


The "crypto wars" are finally over - and we've won!

On 25th May 2005, Part I of the Electronic Communications Act 2000
will be torn out of the statute book and shredded, finally removing
the risk of the UK Government taking powers to regulate companies
selling encryption services.

The crypto wars started in the 1970s when the US government started
treating cryptographic algorithms and software as munitions and
interfering with university research in cryptography. In the early
1990s, the Clinton administration tried to get industry to adopt the
Clipper chip - an encryption chip for which the government had a
back-door key.  When this failed, they tried to introduce key escrow -
a policy that all encryption systems should leave a spare key with a
`trusted third party' that would hand the key over to the FBI on
demand. They tried to crack down on encryption products that did not
contain key escrow. When software developer Phil Zimmermann developed
PGP, a free mass-market encryption product for emails and files, the
US government even started to prosecute him, because someone had
exported his software from the USA without government permission.

In its dying days, John Major's Conservative Government proposed
draconian controls in the UK too. Any provider of encryption services
would have to be licensed and encryption keys would have to be placed
in escrow just in case the Government wanted to read your email. New
Labour opposed crypto controls in opposition, which got them a lot of
support from the IT and civil liberties communities. They changed
their minds, though, after they came to power in May 1997 and the US
government lobbied them.

However, encryption was rapidly becoming an important technology for
commercial use of the Internet - and the new industry was deeply
opposed to any bureaucracy which prevented them from innovating and
imposed unnecessary costs. So was the banking industry, which worried
about threats to payment systems from corrupt officials. In 1998, the
Foundation for Information Policy Research was established by
cryptographers, lawyers, academics and civil liberty groups, with
industry support, and helped campaign for digital freedoms.

In the autumn of 1999, Tony Blair finally conceded that controls would
be counterproductive. But the intelligence agencies remained nervous
about his decision, and in the May 2000 Electronic Communications Act
the Home Office left in a vestigial power to create a registration
regime for encryption services.  That power was subject to a five year
"sunset clause", whose clock finally runs out on 25th May 2005.

Ross Anderson, chair of the Foundation of Information Policy Research
(FIPR) and a key campaigner against government control of encryption
commented, "We told government at the time that there was no real
conflict between privacy and security. On the encryption issue, time
has proved us right. The same applies to many other issues too - so
long as lawmakers take the trouble to understand a technology before
they regulate it."

Phil Zimmermann, a FIPR Advisory Council member and the man whose role
in developing PGP was crucial to winning the crypto wars in the USA
commented, "It's nice to see the last remnant of the crypto wars
in Great Britain finally laid to rest, and I feel good about our win.
Now we must focus on the other erosions of privacy in the post-9/11
world."

Press release - Foundation for Information Policy research <www.fipr.org>

Now, let the ID Wars begin, and this time there is no way we can let them rage on for years as we loose troops to registration. Registration is the battle ground in the ID wars. To be a soldier in this war, you must not register. You must recruit your friends and family so that they do not register. The enemy gains territory as people register; people and their data are the battleground. Right now, we have the high ground, because registration has not even begun. In the board gaming sense we are already in the winning position. By incremental registration, we will slowly loose this war. Every individual's resistance to registration is a battleground. You do understand this, right?

RealID Rebellion Part 2

The REAL ID Act: How It Violates U.S. Treaty Obligations, Insults International Law, Undermines Our Security, and Betrays Eleanor Roosevelt's Legacy By NOAH S. LEAVITT

Monday, May. 09, 2005

Late last week, the U.S. House of Representatives quickly approved an $82 billion appropriations bill to fund America's military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. This bill is headed to the Senate in the next few days, and President Bush has indicated his strong support.

Tucked inside this massive funding package are some of the most sweeping - and, many have said, harshest - changes to immigration law in years. Representative James Sensenbrenner (R - Wis), the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is the primary sponsor of this legislation, which is known as the "REAL ID" Act.

The most high-profile provision of REAL ID would mandate that applicants for state drivers' licenses must prove they are in the U.S. legally, in order to get identification that may be used at federal facilities (airports, national parks, government offices, and so on.).

However, REAL ID is much broader than that. It will fundamentally reshape the U.S.'s policies governing the admittance and removal of foreigners from our country. And this change, in turn, will alter the way the rest of the world thinks about the United States.

Despite the extensive debate around REAL ID over the past several months, one vital fact has surprisingly been overlooked: Many provisions of the legislation violate treaties that are part of U.S. law. Others insult well-established international norms, including norms the U.S. itself helped develop; often, they betray Eleanor Roosevelt's great legacy.

In the end, this aspect of the Act may be its biggest flaw. It also, as I will argue, may undermine the Act's very justification - by making America less, rather than more, secure. [...]

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/leavitt/20050509.html

Real ID Resistance

Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/05/20/more-on-rfid/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: percussive maintenance Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 16:14:02 -0500 From: Jim Davidson To: Declan McCullagh Dear Declan,

perfectly usable for all conventional CC purposes after the chip is treated with a hammer.

Best idea yet. In related news, here is something on the RealIDRebellion: "Sunni Maravillosa has created a blog to coordinate resistance to the Real ID Act. Stop by, read the comments and links, add your site to the list of "REAL ID Rebels." http://realidrebellion.blogspot.com/ There's nothing about my property in a car that ought to require me to pay some extortionist a license. And the RealID can't steal my freedom if I burn it, or never apply for it. Several jurisdictions in North America are considering offering driver "license" type documents for those who wish to have identity papers without being "RealID'd". Regards, Jim http://indomitus.net/ _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)

"the RealID can't steal my freedom if I burn it, or never apply for it." Oh dear. If this is the quality of the thinking behind the RealID resistance then they have a BIG PROBLEM. ID is not about carrying around a card. Repeat; ID is not about carrying around a card. ID is about a system of controls, which include laws, regulations and software systems. When laws are passed saying that you cannot travel or (like it is in Belgium) leave your house without your ID, your freedom is very much stolen even if you don't register. If you burn the card, you can't leave your house legally; Freedom stolen. You cant open a bank account without it....Freedom stolen. Do you get the picture? Of course, when you are fingerprinted at birth and put into the system, you will have been registered without your consent, you will carry your papers, literally, in your hands....but I digress - if you want to fight against these systems you need to understand what they really are and what they really entail.

Several jurisdictions in North America are considering offering driver "license" type documents for those who wish to have identity papers without being "RealID'd".

State delivered ID systems with unique identifiers and the associated legislation forcing you to carry them and register for them are the problem. If these states create 'ID that are not RealID'd' they will still be 'offering' systems that can be harvested and integrated into the larger federal system. Let me spell it out for you. The goals of the anti RealID campaign should be as follows:

1. The permanent forbidding of ID cards in the USA
2. Permanent removal of all legislation requiring persons to identify themselvs with state ID for any purpose.
3. Permanent and stringent restrictions on the aggregating of personal identifiers and data by the state and any other entity.
4. Permanent enshrining of the right to travel without documents and the right to refuse to identify yourself .

And anything else you might care to add that will permanently stop the creation of the systems of control that make up all ID proposals.

Bittorrent Search Engine

There is going to be a Bittorrent Search engine, run by Cohen and some money guys. Methinks they are doing this to challenge the law, because any other reason simply doesn't make sense. update: that link was yanked 30 seconds after I posted it!

Star Wars and the American Empire

Star Wars and the American Empire

by Scott Horton

[Spoiler warning: This article gives away important details about the new movie.] "For a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the Dark Times. Before the Empire." – Ben Kenobi "This is how liberty dies: with thundering applause." – Senator Padme Amidala Many of us grew up on Star Wars, and some of us, as 10-year-olds on rainy Saturday afternoons, even spent time trying to piece together the story before the story. What were the Clone Wars? How did the Old Republic become the Empire? How could the emperor have defeated what were presumably thousands of Jedi and taken over the galaxy? Now we know the answer: Deception. Just like in the real world. Before the movie was even released, people began making the connection between the war on terror and Vader's declaration near the end of Revenge of the Sith, "You are either with me – or you are my enemy." Lucas, however, when asked if this was a reference to the War on Terror, said at the Cannes film festival, "When I wrote it, [the current war in] Iraq didn't exist. We were just funding Saddam Hussein, giving him weapons of mass destruction; we didn't think of him as an enemy at that point. We were going after Iran, using [Saddam] as our surrogate – just as we were doing in Vietnam. This really came out of the Vietnam era – and the parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable." [...] http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=6041

This film has turned out to be the biggest grosser of all time. Could this be the meme vaccination that prevents the real life Sith taking over the whole world with their New World Order?! One thing is for sure, everyone 'gets it'; its an unambiguous attack spelt out in the clearest of terms. So, no Oscar for George then!!!!!

General greivous and The Galactic Empire

Ha ha very funny; someone has gamed Google so that when you search for "General Greivous" and select 'large' for the image size you get HRH Prince Charles as the first result! "But I thought gaming google was impossible!" "Not for the Sith."

Musical Baton

Musical Baton

Magnetbox passed me the Musical Baton. Normally I don't answer stuff like this, but I am a viral addict, and the geometric explosion of a theme (or do I mean meme?) is just too tempting to not be a part of. And since it came from Magnetbox, it must therefore be cool. Strangely enough, I rushed to read the pass the baton email thinking that Magnetbox was giving up running his manly and utterly superb RIAA Radar site, which would be a disaster of sorts. I was wrong, thankfully, and look what I got instead!

Total volume of music on my computer 11,063 songs, taking up 55.67GB of an internal hard drive. This is 833 artists according to iTunes, spread over a possible 35.8 days of continuous listening. And I've pruned it down.

The last CD I bought Bruce Gilbert's 'Ordier'. And I bought two copies.

Song playing right now Now playing: 'Oxygene 3', by Jeanne-Michel Jarre.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me Marin Marais Charley Patton Bruce Gilbert Forqueray Miles Davis

These are five artists that I listen to alot, snarfed from my audioscrobbler prifile. Yes, prifile. I listen to alot of music, and love alot of it. It's pointless to be pinned down to a small list - better to embrace it all and swim in it. How could I possibly pick a single Davis cut to enter into that list? I will say that I have recently been listening to 'Sugar Ray' and everything else from the 'Jack Johnson' sessions. Wow. Anyone who doesn't like Modern Miles is just a fool. Marais and Forqueray (and to a similiar extent Couperin) hit it with me so perfectly that it is almost like the music is a part of my very soul.

Bruce Gilbert is simply the greatest ever sculptor of sound.

Charley Patton..."I'm gonna buy me a Banty; put i'm in my back yawd". Priceless.

Five people to whom I'm passing the baton I'm passing it on to people who love music and who I know run or contribute to some sort of regularly updated site, or who can pass this baton on to someone who does. That means Alex_t, Mary 13, Meau², Alun Kirby, and Cardiffteam.

Revenge of the Sith

George Lucas goes straight for the jugular, with this blantant, brilliant cinematic j'accuse exercise. We note the following: 'He was too dangerous to leave alive" (Bush and Bliar on Sadam) "Execute order 66: The Clones" (The US Army, who will follow ANY order no matter how immoral) "The Sith" (The Neocons) "The Senate" (The US Congress) "The First Great Galactic Empire" (The New World Order) "I will bring you peace and security" (Just what bush says) "You are either for me or against me" (You are either with us, or with the terrorists) "The Trade Federation" (The British) Need I go on? What a ride!

"are who they say they are"

'are who they say they are' This is the idiotic mantra for this year. Witness from slashdot: FearUncertaintyDoubt writes "Three libraries in Naperville, IL, soon will start requiring patrons who use the library's PCs to provide a fingerprint scan. The article says, ' Library officials say the added security is necessary to ensure people who are using the computers are who they say they are. Officials promise to protect the confidentiality of the fingerprint records.'" And from the Evening Standard:

City workers first to get hi-tech ID cards By Sam Lyon, Evening Standard

Britain's first hi-tech identity cards are being issued to London workers today, the Evening Standard can reveal.

The cards, containing details of credit history, criminal records and immigration status, are being introduced to combat identity theft and illegal working.

Hundreds of staff at City banks, blue chip companies and government departments are being issued with them. Thousands more are expected to follow.

But critics condemned the scheme, which is being administered by a private-sector company, as an "unprecedented invasion of people's privacy".

Phil Booth, national coordinator of the No 2 ID campaign, said: "This is very worrying. Soon there will be no aspect of our lives which isn't sucked into the identity system."

The cards are linked to a database containing personal details gathered during a vetting process and held by private investigators Crocker Stolten. Unique identifiers such as fingerprints can also be added.

Former fraud squad officer Lionel Stolten, the man behind the London Identicheck scheme, said: "Companies need to know who is entering their buildings and that those people really are who they say they are, especially major corporations which hold sensitive information."

Most of the cards are being issued to foreign nationals, who work as contract cleaners, restaurant and mailroom staff.

Workers at Birkin Cleaning Services, whose cl ients include the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence, and MailSource UK, whose clients include Barclays, Shell, Deutsche Bank, the BBC and Channel 4, will be among the first to receive the cards.

There is already growing controversy over government plans to introduce national ID cards from 2008, to combat identity theft, organised crime and terrorism, and help stamp out benefit fraud.

The cards, which are not expected to become compulsory before 2012, will carry either fingerprints or an eye scan.

But Mr Stolten said: "I doubt the Government's plan for ID cards will include thorough searches of people's identity. It would take an army of staff."

Figures issued by Equifax, a credit rating firm leading the fight against ID fraud, suggest 31 per cent of Londoners have already been a victim.

External affairs director Neil Munroe said: "Companies are increasingly looking at more checks on people they employ. It protects the organisation."

So, workers who will have access to sites with sensitive data, have to hand over their sensitive data to make sure that they dont tamper with sensitive data, and of course, their sensitive data will be added to the sensitive data they are going to be allowed acces to. It's totally InSaNe. It would be much better not to keep sensitive data all in one place, in plaintext. In this way, people impersonating cleaners will not be able to go in and copy anything. For decades banks and all institutions have done without ID cards and everything worked very well - this is a false problem created by 'security' vendors, and everyone is being whipped up into a frenzy to adopt this nonsense. Whenever you hear someone advocating it their diatribes include the phrase, "are who they say they are". Keep an ear/eye out for it. If you want to keep a building from letting in people who are not authorized, you don't need to roll out an ID card that holds all sorts of personal data linked to a central database. You vet the person you want to hire, and then once that person is accepted, if you REALLY want to, you can have a finger print system that is totally internal to your facility; in other words, a bespoke system that doesnt involve cards or access to any external system. You guarantee your employees that the system is only internal to the company, and that your fingerprint will NEVER be released to any third party for ANY reason, and then you have a barely acceptable access control system. The vendor above is totally over the top, feature creeped-out and does nothing to really protect a building or a system. They collect and hold data just because they can and thats never a reason to violate someones stuff. Any of those workers can be compromised after they are vetted; this if the fatal flaw and reason why you cannot put a great deal of trust in these systems. Who ysay you are and being able to prove it doesn't give any indication of what your intentions will be in the future.

Test Chips and Torx Tools

Even less than that, all players would have to have a 'backdoor' In the past you could buy 'test chips' to install in your Jerrold cable TV box, to get unlimited access to all the pay services. When you ordered these test chips, they arrived in the mail with detailed instructions; you had to open the box with a torx screwdriver and the you had to (on some models) open the box in the dark because there was a light sensitive booby trap that zapped one of the ICs if light struck a sensor in the box. Normally, you would locate this sensor, and put a piece of bubblegum over it so that you could swap in the test chip with the lights on. Some models required you to solder a single wire from an IC pin to somewhere else, but normally it was a simple swap. People have been chipping game consoles for years now, and no doubt, someone will develop a hack for this system if it ever gets deployed. The entire point is that there are now many routes through which any content can escape, wether the box it is in is software or hardware.

Evil DVD Rental System in Development

Researchers in Los Angeles are developing a new form of piracy protection for DVDs that could make common practices like loaning a movie to a friend impossible. University of California at Los Angeles engineering professor Rajit Gadh is leading research to turn radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags into an extremely restrictive form of digital rights management to protect DVD movies. RFID tags have been called "wireless bar codes" -- though they hold more data -- and are commonly used for things like ID badges or keeping track of inventory in a retail store or hospital. Though RFID tags are usually read by a wireless data reader, the proposed DVD-protection scheme would make no use of RFID's wireless capabilities. Rather, the researchers are interested in the ability to write data to the tags, which can't be done on a DVD once it's been burned. Here's how the system might work: At the store, someone buying a new DVD would have to provide a password or some kind of biometric data, like a fingerprint or iris scan, which would be added to the DVD's RFID tag. Then, when the DVD was popped into a specially equipped DVD player, the viewer would be required to re-enter his or her password or fingerprint. The system would require consumers to buy new DVD players with RFID readers. Gadh said his research group is trying to address the problem of piracy for the movie industry. [...] http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67556,00.html?tw=rss.TOP Its pure evil. Of course, all it will take is a single person to release a DVD rip to make this nonsense moot.

To Refuse: No2IDs last stand

Dear friends,

I'm writing to you now as the Government prepares to steamroller its
"Identity Cards" Bill through Parliament.  Each one of you can do
something immediately that will help in the fight against this
unnecessary, oppressive and invasive legislation.

Even the polls which the Government portray as indicating 'overwhelming
support' for ID cards clearly indicate that there are 3 to 4 million
people in Britain who are strongly opposed to ID cards.  What I would
like you to do now is quite simple.  Get as many of these people (and
others) as you can to sign NO2ID's petition before the Second Reading of
the Bill in early June.

When we tried this last year, we were hundreds strong and thousands
signed in two weeks - now we are ten thousands strong our impact should
be that much greater.

Two ways to go about this are:

1) Promote the petition on your website, blog, lists or (best of all) by
e-mail to people you know - please do not spam! A personal request to
just five friends or colleagues will take just a few minutes.  The
online petition is at http://www.no2id-petition.net/.

2) Attached to this mail is a PDF copy of our petition, a downloadable
version is available at
http://www.no2id.net/downloads/forms/NO2ID%20Petition.pdf.  Print it out
and collect as many names and addresses as you can - some supporters
have already sent in dozens gathered from their work, college, church or
pub in just a few hours.  The address to send completed sheets to is on
the bottom of the page.  Don't worry if you can't fill a sheet, send us
what you have got.

Thank you for helping us. Please act now.

Phil Booth
National Coordinator, NO2ID
www.no2id.net

Matters Beyond BT’s Reasonable Control

11 Matters Beyond BT’s Reasonable Control Sometimes BT may be unable to do what it has agreed because of something beyond its reasonable control. If this happens BT is not liable to the Customer.

It appears that 'The Phone Disc' is alive and kicking. The lines above are from the terms and conditions. Here are the details:

BT Phone DiscTM Single User version

Phone DiscTM Single User version For use on a single PC* £36.00 +VAT (Cost for a single Disc) Or call us on 0800 833400 and select Option 2

The Phone DiscTM Single User version contains approximately 15.5 million telephone number listings across the whole of the UK (including those from other Licenced Operators and the Channel Islands).** Ideal as a source of number information, this CD offers 3 search categories, "people", "business" and "all" using sophisticated interactive searching techniques. A range of other very useful features include:

UK and International code de-coders A personal directory facility enabling most frequently required numbers to be stored separately Auto-dial facility to call a number once retrieved *** Useful numbers directory along with easy to follow help pages Free of charge technical support is available from a specialist BT Support Team A Print / export facility allows downloads of individual listings into other applications that accept tab-delimited format ( such as MS-Word, Excel or Access)

The data

The Phone DiscTM Single User version contains a national data download from the BT Directory Solutions OSIS database. New versions are produced every quarter and can be searched for 12 months following each release. Phone Disc is activated with search credits following installation, either via a dedicated website or through calling our BT Customer Support Team

Google Cache [...] Now, what BT are saying that they are not responsible for abuses of The Phone disc, it means that once this data is harvested and duplicated everywhere...tough shit. You rent a telephone line and the service from BT and then they sell your address (the details of which are none of their business) to anyone who wants it for £39. Your address is your property, and really if BT want to sell that information, you should be remunerated. If BT ran a customer centred business, you should be able to control wether or not your address is available to be sold in aggregate with other names and addresses. Its going to have to come to this; personal data is going to have to be assigned a monetary value before it can be protected and violators of it prosecuted. If BT allow a name and number to be leeched from their database without the owners permission, then they should be liable for that. Clearly this means that BT should not store the address in question with the number at the particular address. It should be anonymous, and the data available only to engineers because they actually need to have the associated address. Operators dont need this information. It does not need to be in any directory anywhere, except an elite engineers one. Can engineers be trusted? Hmmmmmm. I wonder if ther is a 'Gas Disc', 'Electricity Disc', 'Water Disc' etc. Why should there not be? If BT can sell your name and number,, why should not these other utility companies be able to do so? Its absurd!

I am My Own Hand

http://fontshop.com/iam/index.cfm?pagenum=1 I am 'My Own Hand' Thats why graphology works.

Car Crash Coming

Personal Data for the Taking

By TOM ZELLER Jr.

enator Ted Stevens wanted to know just how much the Internet had turned private lives into open books. So the senator, a Republican from Alaska and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, instructed his staff to steal his identity.

"I regret to say they were successful," the senator reported at a hearing he held last week on data theft.

His staff, Mr. Stevens reported, had come back not just with digital breadcrumbs on the senator, but also with insights on his daughter's rental property and some of the comings and goings of his son, a student in California. "For $65 they were told they could get my Social Security number," he said.

That would not surprise 41 graduate students in a computer security course at Johns Hopkins University. With less money than that, they became mini-data-brokers themselves over the last semester.

They proved what privacy advocates have been saying for years and what Senator Stevens recently learned: all it takes to obtain reams of personal data is Internet access, a few dollars and some spare time.

Working with a strict requirement to use only legal, public sources of information, groups of three to four students set out to vacuum up not just tidbits on citizens of Baltimore, but whole databases: death records, property tax information, campaign donations, occupational license registries. They then cleaned and linked the databases they had collected, making it possible to enter a single name and generate multiple layers of information on individuals. Each group could spend no more than $50.

Although big data brokers can buy the databases they crave - from local governments as well as credit agencies, retail outlets and other sources that students would not have access to - the exercise replicated, on a small scale, the methods of such companies.

They include ChoicePoint and LexisNexis, which have been called before Congress to explain, after thieves stole consumer data from their troves, just what it is they do and whether government oversight is in order. And as concerns over data security mount, inherent conflicts between convenient access to public records and a desire for personal privacy are beginning to show. [...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/technology/18data.html?pagewanted=print&position=

Finally some journalist has caught up withh the tip of this iceberg.

Many years ago, there was a disc you could buy that contained all the BT telephone records. Called 'The Phone Disc' you could do forbidden 'reverse lookups' with it. It was the same data and programme used by Directory Inquiries.

Now. I guarantee you that there are DVDRs floating around with linked datasets of the american population, including SSNs and data from every available public record source and all the 'stolen' Choice Point and Lexis Nexis datasets. These DVDRs are changing hands for thousands of dollars now, but it won't be long before an ISO is available on USENET.

The point we need to understand is this; the UK, being still largely paper based for all of its important records should not go down the american road, which leads only to a spectacularly fatal car crash. It must not deploy a centralized database, because such a treasure trove will be copied and sold to people. The agents of HMG are constantly loosing laptops full of secret information; all it will take is someone to loose a tower or laptop containing a mirror of the complete database, or someone to retrieve an improperly sanitized hard drive from a garbage skip and then the pandoras box is open. Forever.

The computer illiteracy of the legislators elected by 22% of the electorate is no excuse for such an ill thought out idea to be adopted here. This legislation must be rejected outright, if not, then you can fasten your seatbelts all you like, you will be ground up in that car crash if you give in and register.

As for the public services you use, its long past the time to change the name of the billed person on all your accounts....right?

http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/

Along with the Galloway fellow, Britain is getting a lot of glowing press lately.

Standards Slipping

On Monday, I found out that my niece, twentyish, with English A-Level, didn't know what the word 'atheist' meant. Her uncle is an atheist. Her other uncle. :o I'm not making this up.

The reports of the Galloway Senate clash

The reports are coming in on the Galloway demolition of the buffoon Senators, and its being spun round faster than George Washingtons RPM since 911. Look at the testimony yourself via the link below, and see if your assessment of the proceedings matches what these journalists have written. The Times said:

"Here was an opportunity to demonstrate his cussedness and vanity on a genuinely global scale. Mr Galloway seized the limelight with both hands, proclaiming his own innocence before moving on to a full-blown recitation of the anti-war gospel according to St George."

I saw nothing vain about the way The RT Hon gentleman from Bethnal green conducted himself; I found it to be calm, reassured, measured and polite. As for 'cussedness' there is nothing stubborn about going into a kangaroo court and defending yourself against lies that have been told about you. This is a word carefully used to subtly mischaracterize and besmirch a man who has done nothing but say what he thinks. Astonishing.

"No wonder the senators began to look a little embarrassed at this ranting apparition in their midst."

I put it to you that they looked embarrassed because they had been catastrophically caught out as puppets and simple minded country bumpkins, without evidence or morality.

"It was an unequal battle. Senator Coleman had Mr Galloway’s name on a list: but Mr Galloway had something more, the gift of the Glasgow gab, a love of the stage and an inexhaustible fund of self-belief."

And....? The fact that these idiots had nothing on him. They had no evidence, and what they managed to have cobbled together for them was already in the public domain and totally discredited. This is what the right Hon. member had on his side, he was on the side of right, he knew it and he ran with it, and rightly so. The Times cant stand this. Shame on them. The Guardian said:

Then it was the Respect party leader's turn and any sense of judicial propriety was instantly shattered. The courtroom became a vaudeville theatre, as the MP lampooned his interrogators, accusing them of making "schoolboy howler" mistakes.

Vaudville? Lets make absolutely sure: Vaudville:

1. 1. Stage entertainment offering a variety of short acts such as slapstick turns, song-and-dance routines, and juggling performances.
   2. A theatrical performance of this kind; a variety show.
2. A light comic play that often includes songs, pantomime, and dances.
3. A popular, often satirical song.

No, it doesn't fit does it?! There was nothing comical, slapstick song and dance or theatrical about this 'performance'. It was a deadly serious, measured and calmly piece of testimony. Using the word 'vaudville' wrongly characterizes what happened, and of course, The Guardian does not provide a link to the clip of the actual testimony so that you can watch it for yourself and double check their spin dynamic. As you would expect, The Telegraph completely misrepresents the entire episode. No need to quote from there! The blogosphere has taken over as the only place where you can get the facts about anything, newspapers fail it again and again, desperately and dishonestly trying to spin stories in a world where if you have a single braincell you can find out anything. Take a look at this:

"...Even so, it was a REMARKABLE and compelling performance. Crooks And Liars has an incredible video of the spectacle of Galloway ripping into U.S Iraq policy aiming his remarks at Norm Coleman. Two things on this. (1) This writer has supported the war, but reads and watches everything he can on the subject. (We realize that some on the left and right consider that treason — to read and watch everything you can — so we plead guilty on that.) (2) Galloway's statement is powerful stuff, delivered with no-holds-barred language and he seemingly makes the case that he has been correct on lots of things and HE is not having to backtrack with spinners trying to justify his earlier position... It doesn't matter if you support or oppose the war...this is must viewing (and Crooks And Liars as usual does a great job with giving you a hefty piece of high quality video). Watch it yourself." http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1116388846.shtml

This is how the Guardian piece should have read, if it were written honestly. It would have linked to the footage, and frankly, been honest in reporting what happened. Its rather stupid not to do this, since everyone can go and double check their reporting with six or seven clicks. That last link turns up in a Google News search, alongside links to traditional news sources; it really is Game Over for trying to spin these stories. But you know this!

George Galloway Slices Senators To Pieces

George Galloway ROASTS and DEMOLISHES US senators: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4556113.stm who present 'rabbit out of a hat' documents, absolutely no evidence of money transfers, and who have only pathetic, childish questions about the RT Hons. feelings about where monies for the charity he ran might have come from. Honestly, standards really have fallen over there! You can watch the entire testimony. I note that these idiots did not present evidence that the RT Hons. did not attempt to contact the committee, meaning that their earlier lies about him , told by a conveniently anonymous 'committee spokesman' saying that, "He said that "at no time" did he contact them by any means, "including but not limited to telephone, fax, email, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon". " are just that - another flagrant lie and attempt to assinate the character of this very thorough and moral man. These people, the Senators on this committee are mechanical lie dispensers, nothing more, as shameful as they are dishonourable. What a great pleasure it is, to see an honourable man with a very good memory and a gift for speaking, tear these people and their amaturish lies apart.

Letters...

*** ********* wrote: > Hi Irdial > > I wondered if you can help.I'm an old friend of *** ****** and lost touch > with him some time ago.I'd like to get in touch with him again. > I met him back in 1990 when he was staying with ****** for a while. > I also bought a keyboard from him in 98/99 and that was the last time we > spoke. > If have any idea how I can contact him that would be great! The last I heard of him he was working in a ***** **** and had given up music. I don't have his email address I'm afraid. > I like your website by the way, some challenging ideas there. Anything different these days is hard to find don't you find? > > I enjoyed this quote too: > "If a reward - money, awards, praise, or winning a contest - comes to be > seen as the reason one is engaging in an activity, that activity will be > viewed as less enjoyable in its own right." This is for certain, true but the actual nature of all acts remains the same; the context people put them in is a superimposition - and sometimes, they get it horribly wrong. There are many examples of this. Led Zepplin were despised in the late seventies when in fact we can see clearly today that they were brilliant. We all thought they were terrible because we superimposed some broken values on what they were doing...and we missed out! The trick is to see something for what it really is at the time that it is being done, so that you don't miss out, and get all the fun while its going. > > Thanks again, Sorry I couldn't be of more help. > > PS: I think I met you once long ago at "the brain" you were the first guy I > saw with earplugs. > !!! I always got strange looks because of them. The fun we had! ./a

Denver Colerado

http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_136125106.html !!!

chomskytorrents.org

http://www.chomskytorrents.org/Torrents.php leech it all, for all the good it will do you.

They have no idea what they are facing; a REAL person!

"Contrary to his assertions, at no time did Mr Galloway contact the permanent subcommittee on investigations by any means, including but not limited to telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon," Mr Coleman's office said in a statement. [...] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4541061.stm Yankee Doodle Fascists; Galloway will make mince meat of these ignorant bumpkins. They will now be shown to be liars, because we can presume that records are kept of the messages sent to them. 'Lickspittle'! From The Guardian:

The central allegations first surfaced in the Daily Telegraph in April 2003 when the paper claimed that Mr Galloway had personally profited from Iraqi oil deals. He sued for libel and last December won a resounding victory in the high court with £150,000 in damages.

A few days after the Telegraph's reports, another paper, the Christian Science Monitor, alleged it had documents to show that Mr Galloway had received $10m from the regime over 11 years. It, too, had to apologise and pay damages when the documents were shown to be forgeries.

The senate committee appears to have mixed up these two events.

A spokesman for the Telegraph said: "The committee appears to be confusing our documents with a set of alleged receipts that emerged in Baghdad some days after our story appeared. These purported to record direct payments to Mr Galloway in the early 1990s. They were offered to the Daily Telegraph but, as they were clearly crude forgeries, we declined to publish them."

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1483166,00.html

!!! These moronic senators cannot even use Google. Galloway is going to swat them like bugs, and if they can be sued for libel, I am sure that he will persue it and prevail. Again.

No need for balance The media and political elite now regards George Galloway as beyond the pale. So the normal rules of the game don't apply

I come not to praise George Galloway but - unlike almost the entire media - not to bury him either. There will be many who snort contemptuously when I say that Galloway is now more sinned against than sinning because he has become so unpopular with both the media and political elites that they regard him as outside the normal rules of the game.

Indeed, to defend him places the defender beyond the pale too. But the victim of what has all the hallmarks of a media feeding frenzy deserves a fair hearing, not only for his personal benefit, but for those he now represents - and in order to confront journalists with their own misguided agendas.

In quick succession since his election victory last week in Bethnal Green and Bow, Galloway has been subjected to a television mauling by Jeremy Paxman, a radio sandbagging by the MP he defeated and a raft of newspaper headlines about a set of reheated allegations which he has not only strenuously denied but which ended with him winning a major libel action.

In spite of Galloway's court victory and the accumulated evidence in his favour, the BBC saw fit to lead its news bulletins yesterday with the story of supposedly "new" accusations that he received money from Saddam Hussein's Iraq through its oil-for-food programme. Yet the only difference between the claims made against Galloway by the Daily Telegraph in April 2003 and a US Senate subcommittee this week was that they were based on (already published) documents allegedly retrieved from Iraq's oil ministry rather than its foreign ministry - and not, as wrongly claimed, that they covered different periods.

In all other essentials, the allegations made by the Senate committee are the same as those originally outlined in the Telegraph articles that resulted in Galloway being awarded £150,000 in libel damages and £1.2m in costs, though an appeal against the high court ruling in his favour is still outstanding.

[...]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1483078,00.html

Is brown beyond the pale? ???!!! Looks like it!!!!!! Haw haw haw!

The Revolution Begins...

National ID Battle Continues

By Kim Zetter
02:00 AM May. 12, 2005 PT

Legislation supporting a standardized national driver's license may have
won unanimous approval in the Senate on Tuesday, but the bill's
apparently smooth passage left some jagged edges in its wake.

The Real ID Act appeared in take-it-or-leave-it spending legislation,
which effectively forced lawmakers to sign on to the whole measure even
if they disagreed with a portion of it. Several Republican and Democrat
senators who cast favorable votes for the bill simultaneously railed
against the provision authorizing the new driver's license rules.

They're not the only ones refusing to accept the bill peacefully. The
National Governors Association is threatening lawsuits to fight the
legislation. And some states are threatening to ignore the legislation
because they say it will cost up to $700 million for states to comply
and will place a heavy burden on Department of Motor Vehicles workers.

A spokeswoman for the governors' association did not return calls for
comment. But Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, told the
Associated Press this week[1] that "if more than half of the governors
agree we're not going down without a fight on this, Congress will have
to consider changing" the rules.

In the meantime, mobilization against the legislation is also occurring
on the citizen front. Civil liberties activist Bill Scannell, who
launched a website[2] this week to protest the legislation, said that
visitors to his site sent more than 20,000 faxes to senators within 24
hours.

"One by one (senators) got up and said, 'This is a real stinker but
you've got a gun to our heads so we've got to vote for it,'" Scannell
said. "This is an incredibly sleazy way to push something that pushes
the very nature and foundations of our democracy."

The act passed in the Senate with a 100-0 vote Tuesday and passed
through the House twice -- first as a stand-alone bill in February and
again last week as part of a larger spending bill. But several senators,
such as Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), said
the legislation would have unintended consequences and likely wouldn't
improve national security.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, said more than 600 organizations -- including state legislation
associations, civil liberties groups and pro-immigrant advocates --
opposed the bill. And he said organizers will gather next week to
discuss plans to press Congress to revisit its decision.

"This is one of the biggest mistakes Congress has ever made," Rotenberg
said. "This is not over by any means."

Supporters of the bill say it would prevent terrorists and undocumented
immigrants from obtaining legitimate documents that would help them move
freely through the country. Last year, the 9/11 Commission called for
tightening control over government-issued IDs because 18 of the 19
hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks used U.S. IDs to pass
through airport security.

But opponents of the bill say it would create a national ID card and a
de facto national database -- a concept that Congress rejected when it
was first proposed several years ago.

The act would force states to produce standardized, tamper-resistant
driver's licenses that would include machine-readable, encoded data.
States wouldn't be required to comply. But those that don't comply would
create hardship for residents, who wouldn't be able to use their
licenses as official identification to travel on airplanes, collect
federal benefits or gain access to federal buildings.

All drivers, including current license holders, would have to provide
multiple documents to verify their identity before they could obtain a
license or renew one. Drivers would have to provide several types of
documentation, such as a photo ID, birth certificate, proof that their
Social Security number is legitimate and something that verifies the
applicant's full home address.

Some critics call the legislation anti-immigration because it would
prohibit undocumented immigrants from obtaining a driver's license.

The law would compel DMV workers to verify the documents against federal
databases and store the documents and a digital photo of the card holder
in a database. Critics say the mandates would result in higher costs and
longer lines at the DMV.

"It's a controversial measure and a controversial manner in which to
pass it," Rotenberg said. "We want them to know that in passing (the
Real ID Act), Congress mandated the collection of sensitive personal
information by state DMVs at the same time that the state DMVs have
become the target of attacks."

Since March, there have been at least three reported incidents of
personal data being stolen for the sake of identity theft from DMV
offices in Nevada, Florida and Maryland.

Senators opposing the act[3] reluctantly passed it because it was
slipped into a larger spending appropriations bill[4] that authorized
emergency funding for the Iraq war and tsunami victim relief.

Last month, 12 lawmakers -- six Republicans and six Democrats -- called
on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) to prevent the ID
bill from being slipped into other must-pass legislation. They asked
Frist to refer the bill separately to the Senate Judiciary Committee,
where it could receive a hearing and debate.

"Legislation in such a complex area without the benefit of hearings and
expert testimony is a dubious exercise and one that subverts the
Senate's deliberative process," the senators wrote in a letter to Frist.

Among the senators who signed the letter were Alexander, Durbin, John
McCain (R-Arizona), Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), John Sununu (R-New
Hampshire), Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Richard Lugar
(R-Indiana).

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) wrote the Real ID Act and tried
unsuccessfully to slip it into different must-pass legislation last
year. But many lawmakers objected, which forced Sensenbrenner to try
again this year.

Rotenberg said groups didn't mobilize strongly before the bill passed
this week because they were hoping and expecting the Senate would keep
the bill separate from other legislation to give it a proper hearing.
Once it became clear last week that the Senate was not going to do this,
there was little time to mobilize.

Jeff Lungren, spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee, which
Sensenbrenner chairs, acknowledges that the bill wasn't debated on its
own in the Senate, but he says the legislation was discussed extensively
last year when Sensenbrenner first proposed placing it in another bill.

"We had plenty of debate," he said. "It started in September; it was in
various committees of Congress. It was in the (9/11 bill) that the House
passed (last October). It was the main bone of contention ... last year.
It was also very much in the headlines in the news everywhere last
November.... If some members (of Congress) chose not to deal with it
(then) that's their fault."

Lungren said that senators told Sensenbrenner last year to put the
provisions in a separate bill so they could consider the proposals.

"So we did that," Lungren said. "Nobody should be surprised or whine
about lack of debate on these provisions."

Rotenberg disagrees.

"There were no hearings on the bill in the Congress, just a lot of
procedural maneuvering," he said. "And how can he say that they agreed
to allow the Senate to consider the bill separately when that is exactly
what they prevented during the conference (where proponents pushed to
have the bill inserted into the spending bill)?"

As for the idea that states might choose not to comply with the
legislation, Lungren said they would "probably have some feedback from
their residents if (residents) can't use their driver's license as a
form of identification. But that's their call to make and we're hopeful
they'll work with us to improve the security standards (of their
cards)."

Lungren said the main standard put forth by the legislation regards
verifying that people obtaining a state ID card are legally present in
the state. He said 41 states currently have such requirements that meet
the Real ID Act standard.

"It's the ... other states that have low standards," Lungren said.
"Because of those low standards they put all Americans at risk."

President Bush is expected to sign the Iraq spending appropriations bill
this week.

© Copyright 2005, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[1]  http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,67490,00.html
[2]  http://www.unrealid.com/index.html
[3]  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.00418:
[4]  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.01268:

Liars Liars Liars Cowards Cowards Cowards

The film US TV networks dare not show Adam Curtis has recut his explosive war on terror documentary The Power of Nightmares into a feature film - and is taking it to the festival. But he's no Michael Moore, he tells Stuart Jeffries [...] "What happens on US TV now is that you have a theatre of confrontation so that people avoid having to seriously analyse what the modern world is like - perhaps because of the emotional shock of September 11," says Curtis. "People take so-called left or right positions and shout at each other. It's almost like the court of Louis XIV - people taking elaborate positions and not thinking very much."

And yet the documentary's success in being selected for Cannes has resulted in Pathé buying up distribution rights to exhibit The Power of Nightmares in cinemas around the world. "They think there's a massive market for this." As a result, there is every possibility that his film will be shown in American cinemas, though Curtis worries that it will as a result become marginalised to art houses. As with the Channel 4 drama Yasmin about a Muslim Yorkshirewoman's travails in post 9/11 Britain, it seems important that the topical Power of Nightmares be seen by as many people as possible rather than savoured by a relatively small number of aesthetes in indie houses. "I work in TV because it's a more powerful medium and it reaches more people. It would be good for it to be shown on American TV, though they might think it's a bit dull to stimulate discussion. Are they too frightened to have the debate?"

Curtis argues that there is a huge appetite for a serious critical analysis of the post-9/11 geopolitical world in the US. "It has been shown at the Tribeca and San Francisco film festivals. All the shows were sold out. There were queues around the block, and the discussions were extraordinary. Sometimes I would just sit back and let the audiences discuss it. But I was quite shocked that the audiences, very well-educated people mostly, did not know about Qutb, whose thinking, which was developed under torture in Egyptian jails, was a direct influence on Zawahiri, al-Qaida's number two. " [...]

How will al-Jazeera's audience respond to the uncut version tonight? "No idea."[...]

· The Power of Nightmares will be shown in three-hour form on al-Jazeera tonight, and at Cannes on Saturday. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Film/cannes2005/story/0,15927,1481970,00.html The mostly dreadful interview cut out to save your eyes.

World Without Parasites

The first inexpensive, effective electromedicine to destroy parasites(worms, bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc.) throughout the body World Without Parasites

Holy Joe

Now, if it had been [insert fatuous book title here] that got flushed.... if we insert: "The Origin of Species" iou would get this irrational behaviour. Presumably they are refusing to put their unprovable case because they take evolution as a matter of faith, and are sorely outraged that anyone could believe differently. Pot. Kettle. Scorched on a cavemans fire... OOPS! there were never any 'cave men'!

Downsize DC

You should join DownsizeDC.org in their attempt to pass the "Read the Bills Act of 2005". The Act would make it law for all bills to actually be read by each legislator, which could cut down considerably on unrelated riders. In any event, it has to be a good thing for lawmakers to have read the laws they're voting on!

Breaking the tightening grip

Re Meau's post about the post. Which should have been posted by now. Of course, I immediately thought, "how would you get around this?". Opening an anonymous mail drop would be the first thing, but in the future, all services like this would demand to see your state issued ID. Once again, we see why it is so important for everyone to refuse to register for this system, should they dare pass it into law. If you are not on the system, they cannot look at you. Zaba search is a perfect example of what will happen, only you need to increase its invasiveness by 30 orders of magnitude. Clearly you should never get a phone number or any sort of utility in your own name...Ill leave it to you to list the other things that you should not have in your own name.

Pure unadulterated evil

http://www.zabasearch.com/ Pure unadulterated evil; this is what it looks like.

The lowest depths

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/vote_2005/blog/4519553.stm

Real ID Resistance

Papers, Please!

Real ID = National ID Card

This Tuesday, the US Senate is scheduled to vote on the implementation of a national ID card system. The Real ID Act is nothing less than a Real National ID Act. The only thing left to the individual states is to decide which pretty picture they will choose to put on the card: everything else will be controlled by Washington DC bureaucrats.

The Real ID Act has never been debated on the US Senate floor. They've never talked about it in any committee. Heck, most of them haven't even read it! Yet they're planning to vote on it on Tuesday, no questions asked.

In order to make a single irresponsible Congressman with totalitarian leanings happy, the Senate leadership let him write the bill and then slipped it into a another bill, one that would keep our fighting men and women taken care of in Iraq and Afghanistan. Supporting our troops means making sure they come home to a free nation, not a surveillance state.

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Now you see!

This is the society we live in. NOW YOU SEE. When people used to (and do still) say things like "there is no such thing as society", you finally understand what it is that they mean, and the consequences of believing that there is such a thing as 'society'. By believing that there is such a thing as a 'society' that you 'belong to' (literally, like property it turns out) or 'live in' you empower all sorts of abuses like forced vaccination, medication, punitive taxation, control over your movements, finances and interperson interactions and every other kind of facist evil concievable by these dunderheads. Only people who understand that there is no society, only individuals who consent rather than obey really understand the true nature of their place in any group of people. As soon as you buy the lie of society, you sell yourself like a piece of property; you give up your right to move freely and refuse to obey the myriad nonsense that a small handfull of men concooct for profit. The messengers of these ideas were and are, sadly, charmless and mostly horrid, BUT this should not put you off of the truth of the message, which is so abundantly clear now that only the most stupid cannot see it. Democracy and society as you knew it is finished, and a new structure of total control down to the biological level is being constructed from which there will be little chace of escape, unless a high percentage of people simply refuse to obey. If this does not happen, you won't even have the option to commit suicide, that act being illegal in most states.

VE Day

...if we fail, the whole world, including the Unites States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Churchill June 18, 1940

Time Travellers Convention

Some thoughts on the MIT Time Travellers Convention: If Time Travellers FAIL to attend, it means possibly that:

1. News of the convention did not survive into the era of Time Travel.
2. News did survive into the era of Time Travel, but no one wants to attend.
3. Time Travel was/is never invented.
4. Time Travel is 'not possible'.
5. Time Travellers attend, but in timelines other than ours.
6. Time Travellers attend but no one knows it.
7. Your suggestion here.

blushing

will make your mouth water" oh geez. i'm all bashful now. still snow? Spring! Skiing! until June 5, and all year round on the glacier, if you are truly hardcore. I have hung up my skis till next year, even though my knee is much better. Kinky Boots?! that's top secret information!

crossing the river

This is a frustratingly fun logic game: http://freeweb.siol.net/danej/riverIQGame.swf Everybody has to cross the river, but there are rules: 1. Only 2 people on the raft at a time. 2. The father can not stay with any of the daughters without their mother's presence (or he will beat them). 3. The mother can not stay with any of the sons without their father's presence (or she will beat them). 4. The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family member if the Policeman is not there. 5. Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft. 6. To start click on the big blue circle on the right. 7. To move the people click on them. To move the raft click on the handle.

Consumate

http://www.consumating.com/ hmmmmm!

Hurt

Ahhhh. What a strange last few weeks. As you may or may not know, I tore the medial collateral ligament in my right knee, and was ordered to rest for 3 weeks to let it heal. eek! theres still snow there?! no yoga (terrible), time to bone up on your CSS (sorry, couldnt resist) and limited use of my lovely tall heeled boots (we did not listen to this one). WTF - Kinky Boots?! how often do we willingly slow down and take care? once a week, whenever possible. Yes, thats what I mean. And now... The windows either side of the sign are our living room and dining room. I'm in bed one floor above that, medieval timbers bridging the room. It's cosy. And we know where to 'get you'!!! Am now watching BBC election night coverage streaming on one side of my screen as I write this. So funny! I stayed up to watch the acceptance of Galloway. He, Dennis Skinner and Arthur Skargil are some of the best speakers ever. What a disaster, but a disaster of the Tories own making. When you have as your leader, an unctuous monster, who would, by his own admission, break the law and invade another country only because he thinks "he is right and you can dissagree if you want to", knowing in hindsight that all the reasons for going to war were completely fradulent, well, at least Bliar...honestly, that admission on television was the nail in the Tory vampire heart. What a total and utter moron. Only one set of labour supporters voted properly, but only because they were not given the candidate they wanted, not because their party is filled with liars murderers and cheats. Their candidate spluttered and whined about thier integrity and how they were not shown any respect - wtf? Every other idiot in the traditional safe labour seats - what about their integrity and the lack of respect shown to them by their liar leader? These people are so thick it beggars belief. Now the UK has a government put in power by "the smallest percentage of the electorate since Britainn became a democracy". No one (with a brain and any self respect) can claim that this government has any moral authority to tell anyone to do anything. But what elese did you expect? Actually, we all expected a rout like they had in Spain. But then, the sun shines over there....