So our illustruous leaders have decided that what teenagers need is a "Britishness" day, and requiring oaths of allegience to the Queen.
It really goes to show that politicians are completely out of touch of what engages anyone nowadays.
Recently in war on terror Category
Via Boing Boing
Phil from the UK anti-ID-register group NO2ID sends in this nugget -- note the call to action there. We've got a sensitive government document revealing the British government's plan to trick us into a database state and we need as many copies as possible, as quickly as possible!If you mirror this document, please add a link to it in the comments for the post.
Mirrored !
Funnily enough I wasn't too bothered about having to carry an ID card, but now I am...so congratulations to the Gov for that!
So the news has been saying that the London Bombers were British, of Pakistani origins (3 of the 4 I think). So we now have the position what we're effectively killing ourselves. Not enough that we're doing it slowly through climate change, but now we let others “brainwash” us into attacking our own.
There was a very good point made on the BBC news by one important Muslim representative that we (the non-muslim population) must remember that these attacks were not done by Muslims, but by criminals (however misguided or misled is irrelevant in the end). It just happens that they were also Muslim, although through their actions show themselves not to be.
On the back of the previous post, I'd like to see the rhetoric (especially from the American govt.) being clearer on this. They are promulgating their “war on terror”, but still it seems to be a veiled “war on islam”. This cannot be the case, and they can and should do much to distance themselves from this perception.
In related news I've been reading some of the various sites that have quotes from Londoners as well as from others, and found one that I am particularly fond of:
[Insert “Tea” quote here]
It might be a little ireverrant but I think I'm going to make a t-shirt with it on. With the following quote on the back:
-British Empire was founded on cups of tea. And if you think I'm going to war without one, you've got another thing coming.
-You forgotten the guys haven't you, you tit
Watching the BBC News 24, and its covering George "Dubya" talking about the explosions in London. He spent a couple of minutes talking about "The Terrorists" and how all of them work for a freedom hating, totalitarian ideology. I'm sure you can really say that about the IRA and Eta. They are fundamentally there to gain freedom. OK they're doing it wrong, but they're not opposed to freedom and democracy etc.
Further more he says that they are trying to rebuild the Middle East to their own ends, and this I think is an unsubtle reference to Islamic fundamentalists, and from my point of view infers that he is against all Muslims, by virtue of "ignoring" all of the other terrorists that are out there in the world...
Well it seems that most of Scotland is gearing up for the G8 summit at the start of the July. A lot of people I know are planning to go and protest (or at least see what the whole thing is about), and one of them is actually going to have a wind turbine on display there (check out Renewable Devices).
As a public service broadcast, I've got some got some information from Scotrail about what they'll be doing to shift the large number of people expected and how their services will be affected...
Continue reading G8 In Edinburgh.
According to this story on Yahoo, John Ashcroft, former head of the Justice Department, is saying that Federal Judges are "jeopardizing national security by issuing rulings contradictory to President Bush" and that "Courts are not equipped to execute the law. They are not accountable to the people".
What an utter load of crud! As an outsider this appears to be a man who is critising all those who disagree with his bosses point of view, and is therefore marking them as unPatriotic or trying to undermine the rule of democracy.
Surely courts must be equipped to execute the law, otherwise who is? Would anyone give politicians that control? They already control the writing of laws and passing them, it is not appropriate that they are then responsible for the enforcement of them.
The judicial system in any country must be seen to be an agent for the Law as decreed by whomever is in power. Not being an expert in law, it has appeared to me that the process of legislation is to codify a set of rules/guidelines that society must abide by. If those laws are wrong it should be those that must administer them to raise those issues and rebalance them.
I think most people would say that any politician has a certain vested interest in any law they pass, and any advocate/dissenter of a law especially, so how can these people be appropriate to review and balance the law.
Some interesting comments regarding the "War On Terror" by linguistics Professor George Lakoff as well as the language used by progressives against conservatives in politics...worth a read....
You've said that progressives should never use the phrase "war on terror" — why?There are two reasons for that. Let's start with "terror." Terror is a general state, and it's internal to a person. Terror is not the person we're fighting, the "terrorist." The word terror activates your fear, and fear activates the strict father model, which is what conservatives want. The "war on terror" is not about stopping you from being afraid, it's about making you afraid.
Next, "war." How many terrorists are there — hundreds? Sure. Thousands? Maybe. Tens of thousands? Probably not. The point is, terrorists are actual people, and relatively small numbers of individuals, considering the size of our country and other countries. It's not a nation-state problem. War is a nation-state problem.
What about the "war on drugs" or the "war on poverty"?
Those are metaphorical. Real wars are wars against countries, and in the "war on terror," we are attacking countries. But those countries are not the same as the terrorists. We're acting at the wrong level. Meanwhile, by using this frame, we get a commander in chief, as the Republicans keep referring to Bush — a "war president" with "war powers," which imply that ordinary protections don't have to be observed. A "war president" has extraordinary powers. And the "war on terror," of course, never ends. There's no peace treaty with terror. It's a prescription for keeping conservatives in power indefinitely. In three words — "war on terror" — they've enacted vast political changes.
As most people know if you live outside the US you now have to (basically) apply for a visa and get your photo and fingerprints taken, in the name of fighting the "war on terror" (I'm gonna refuse to use caps on that from now on!). What a lot of people probably don't know (especially if your not from/in the States) is that there is a court case currently going on that is challenging the idea that presenting identification papers has any effect on terrorists carrying weapons. I picked this press release off the EFF, which says that
the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the plaintiff, arguing that compulsory ID checks at airports violate the Fourth Amendment.
So it appears that the US Government isn't just paranoid about "aliens" but also their own citizens, and that there is someone who has a problem with that.
Once again the paranoia that everyone thinks that the Bush administration suffers from is shown to be true, according to this article on El Reg.
Apparently the Bush administration have connected building plans to Al Quaeda, and decided that these plans must be targets, and that all of this is connected to ongoing plans to sabotage the election in November (easy way to do that...vote for Bush again!)
Fortunately our protector of personal privacy and civil liberties stepped in to berate the Americans shitstirring:
The information on which the Bushies decided to raise the terror alert level is "of dubious worth," Blunkett said, adding that such information should be published "only if it would prove useful in preventing injury and loss of life," which he obviously believes the Bush hysteria would not do."There has been column inch after column inch devoted to the fact that in the United States there is often high-profile commentary, followed - as in the most current case - by detailed scrutiny with the potential risk of inviting ridicule,"
yep, i'm talking about David "I've got a prize (and not a good one) named after me" Blunkett.
Piracy is now also a threat to National Security, in addition to funding terrorism.
Our economy is so based on intellectual property ideas
that, unless we can protect them, we're really looking at a situation
where it's going to hurt our ability to survive as a country
-David Israelite, Chairman of Anti-Intellectual Property TaskForce, US
Dept Of Justice
err right ok....
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