EU bureaucrats are openly over-ruling the will of its member states!
Some European nation states have already passed national law that make ACTA and ACTA-like monstrosities illegal in their countries.
EU bureaucrats say that’s too bad, they trump any national laws…
And, if the EU courts decide that ACTA is illegal, they’ll find some way to change the laws.
This is a very, very dangerous precedent!
From TechDirt:
‘In other words, De Gucht won’t accept the idea that the European electorate, through their representatives in the European Parliament, might possibly want to reject something they were not allowed to know about until late in the negotiating process, and to which they were unable to provide any meaningful input. In his view, ACTA must be passed, and ACTA will be passed — whatever anyone else thinks about it.’
And don’t forget, the EU is UN’s mini-me. As at the EU, so in the UN.
We will see this, more and more: bureaucrat-crafted ‘international agreements’ will be forced as laws on member nation states, whether they like it or not. In the EU and UN both!
Remember, the UN, chock-full of dictators and tyrants, is not big on Western values and civil liberties – and its laws/treaties reflect this. Even its Universal Declaration of Human Rights states clearly that human rights may only be enjoyed to the degree that local laws deem appropriate!!!
If you think this should not scare you, because you don’t live in the EU – don’t be so sure. The UN is just using the EU to work out some of the ‘how to’ kinks on its way to regulating humanity into virtual extinction!
‘Law of the Sea Treaty’ – LOST – is the set of invasive rules and regulations with which the UN has effectively replaced the ancient concept of ‘freedom of the seas’, which we have lived with for millenia.
Until now, that is.
It is hard to believe the implications of this thing, but if you read the treaty (and I have only read excerpts – it is not an easy read), it is beyond belief that any country would sign on to this lunacy!
In a nutshell, LOST is UN’s declaration that they and only they have full and unquestionable control over the world’s seas and oceans.
Any mining of any natural resources to be done in areas covered by seas – the UN must approve (and automatically owns the technology used in such mining) but also has the right to choose to develop it itself. Yes – a mining company must present their full plans with projections to the UN which then uses that intelligence to decide to mine itself, to grant the company permission to mine (for a large royalty, of course) or deny it out of hand.
But, it goes far, far beyond that.
In the name of protecting the world seas and oceans, LOST gives the UN unconditional control over waterways that flow into seas and oceans (like, isn’t that almost all of them?). As such, any development along rivers which might impact on the river (even hundreds of kilometers upstream) – and thus on the water flowing to the ocean – must be approved by the UN.
Exactly…
But, don’t take my word on it – check it out yourself. I could not possibly describe just how invasive LOST is…and, of course, we are going to see it applied incrementally, so that nobody would protest any single little tiny step along the way.
US military has, traditionally, supported LOST because it lets them use what other countries consider ‘internal water passages’ – but don’t really care about its other impacts. That is so irresponsible as to be criminal negligence, in my never-humble-opinion…
One of my most popular posts of all times is ‘Aspergers and Writing’, in which I explore some of the difficulties Aspies face when writing and, perhaps, some practical advice on how to improve this difficult-for-most-Aspies skill.
Over the years (yes, years…) since I have written it, it has received a lot of comments which update the post and keep it ‘fresh’.
Here is an example of a ‘conversation’ in the comments which shows how the comments people leave help others and keep the post relevant.
A reader called Riayn left this comment:
I’m an adult with Aspergers and what you have written rings very, very true.
As a child I had enormous problems with handwriting and had to undertake remedial handwriting classes. I never learnt how to form cursive handwriting that is legible. I even have problems signing my name that matches what I have signed on the back of my credit card as I can’t always form the letters properly. However, my printed handwriting, when I concentrate and take my time, is extremely neat.
When it comes to writing, I find there is a disconnect between my brain and the page. I know exactly what I want to say but I just can’t write it down. I blog to improve my writing abilities, but many of my posts sound fantastic in my head but come out completely different & inferior on the page.
I wish I could remove the mental block.
To this comment I replied:
I SO KNOW what you mean. I have found the same thing with my posts…
Though, I have found that if I write it – but not really finish, then I can’t get back into writing from where I stopped. Especially if I have had the chance to bounce the ideas off of someone else – to actually verbally ‘speak’ what it is I am trying to get across in the post.
Then, I find it easier to just start from the beginning again: complete different angle, and so on. The act of trying to write it, then saying it out loud (sometimes getting feedback – my poor family!), and then tackling it from a different angle seems to help me get more of my point across.
I also find it much easier to answer comments: then, it’s more like talking to a person, and it seems easier for me to type the words ‘naturally’ than if I am trying to compose a post. Perhaps that is connected to the fact we, Aspies, tend to be more verbally skilled than and less skilled at writing.
Have you tried recording yourself as you ‘speak’ your post – then transcribing it? I’ve been toying with the idea of, perhaps, doing a few of my blog posts by speaking them, instead of writing them down, just to see. Perhaps.
This exchange had been up in the comments for a while.
Then, a new reader named CD joined the conversation:
‘I’m an aspiring writer who has Asperger Syndrome. This post defines me to a “T”.
I can spend three hours sitting down in front of a computer, trying to compose a story, with no results.
Perfectionism is one deterrent.
Another is over thinking.
I don’t know what runs through other As minds, but I know my own. I over think things to death. The solution I incorporate is to write endlessly, uncontrollably, for a set time limit.
For example: I could write “The smoke descended the stairs. Shawn was the only person who saw it. He wanted to warn people….”
Well not my best but you get the idea. To write this simple sentence I’d begin like this: Smoke, grey, moves, stairs, horror, Shawn sees it, won’t talk, why, wants to…
Anything for an hour, like I said. Then I return a day later and piece the words together like a puzzle, trying to produce coherent meaning.
My ideas are so insightful. I won’t allow AS to prevent me from expressing them in any damned form I see fit. My goal is to write ‘endlessly and uncontrollably’ until I complete an entire story, then return to fix it up. After that, the process of general editing, which a normal person without As would’ve already completed, comes into play.
Though this may be a daunting task, it has worked for me.
Plus, taking care of your physical health is very important for an AS individual to hone and display his natural god given gifts. Just waking up everyday with AS and dealing with the world, not just writing, drains the persons health.
Anyway, I hope this long post helped. I’d like a personal email telling me how I helped. If you find the time that is. I don’t check blogs very often. Guess I should get started creating my own blog,huh?
Well that is another topic in and of itself. I’m rambling now so hope I was of some help.
Thanks.
CD’
I hope CD’s advice can help more people – which is why I am highligting it as a post in itself. Thank you, CD.
And if you have found strategies which work for you, please, share them!!! We need to try all the ideas we can get!!!
Clearly, his words were spoken before the Muslim Brotherhood candidate was declared the winner of the Egyptian presidential elections. But, he speaks of Egypt, from Egypt and I think his words will come back to haunt us all – most of all, the Egyptians themselves!
Hamas is recognized by Canada and the USA as a terrorist organization, right?
And, unless I am mistaken, both USA and Canada have laws on the books that make it a criminal offense to support terrorist organizations, as well as it being illegal to fund terrorist organizations or those organizations that directly support terrorist organizations, yes?
While in the UK, he is accused (not convicted) of breaking US laws in the UK – and is being extradited to the US for it!
Since when does the US have the right to enforce its laws on people outside its borders, who aren’t even themselves Americans?
OK, Kim Dotcom might have ideas of what this feels like – but he has a legal team to help him while this kid just created a website in his free time where people shared links.
His site itself did not host any copyrighted material – just links.
He complied with each and every takedown notice that he was linking to copyrighted material.
Yet, he is still being extradited to the US where he faces over a decade in jail?!?!?
‘Richard O’Dwyer is the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public. Earlier this year, in the fight against the anti-copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, the public won its first big victory. This could be our second.’
We should all pay attention.
Copyright infringement has always been – and ought to remain – a civil matter.
That we have permitted the resources of the state to be subverted for the use of Big Media, that we consider copyright infringement to be the same as theft – even though not a single person or corporation had been deprived of the use of their property – that is just unbelievably misguided.
But that people living in distant lands should be extradited and tried for their activities which, at best (if the prosecutors win their case), did not commit copyright infringement directly, but simply facilitated it…
Of course I disagree with her closing remark: we need to pick the left hemisphere, or we will cease to exist as our selves…
I do understand the ‘lala’ land she describes and the brains states…they are not dissimilar from the ones I experienced myself when I went through a near-death experience.
I, too, have had the brain-state of connectedness to all, expansive, one with the universe and all that other stuff the meditation guru’s tout as a desirable state. What is more – having experienced it once, I can induce it at will with only minor meditation effort. (I don’t know if this is an aspect of my Aspieness or not, but it often takes me much longer to achieve something than others – but once I have reached a physical state, I can re-create it with much less effort.)
And while I had that sense of ‘this is profound’ – and, you could see the physiological changes in the speaker in the video just as she re-counted her tale prove just how profound the experience was for her – and while I understood perfectly well that this is the ‘Nirvana’ , I did not like it. Yes, it was ‘blissful’, I’ll admit that.
It’s just that the cost was too high.
I was just 10 years or so old when I experienced this, so I could not properly verbalize the aspects of the experience had on forming my world view. Perhaps I will still have trouble explaining it…but, let me try to simplify:
What kind of person, when forced to choose one or the other, would pick bliss over being true to one’s identity?
Certainly not I!!!
And while she may not realize that that is what she was doing, it is infinitely comforting to have a professional acknowledge that this desire for collectivism is the product of a diseased brain!
This video is interesting for several different reasons.
Yes, I do agree with most of what AronRa says in this one.
The only exception I take is to his claim that circumcision gives some protection against the transmission of AIDS. Yes, there are studies that ‘conclusively’ show this. But, there are just as many studies that just as ‘conclusively’ show that this is not so. All studies, however, show that wearing a condom does work…
…and I think that it is better to err on the side of caution when it comes to incurable deadly diseases. Still, if people wish the protection of circumcision as well as a condom, when they are old enough to give informed consent to it and they pay themselves for it, I have no problem with any cosmetic procedure.
After all, self-ownership is the cornerstone of our civilization!
The reason this video is important is not just because of the reasonable things AronRa says (and that he looks rather good saying them), and not because of how he says them (he is a much better speaker when he does not deliver a prepared speech but rather when he speaks unscripted), but because of the attitude the theists in the audience display as well as the demonstration of theist sentiment in the video that AronRa shows.
It is difficult to describe just how visceral the hatred many theists feel toward atheists – and feel completely righteous in expressing – is.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to shut them up.
Let them spew.
But really – saying that if my beliefs don’t match theirs, I should be raped?
Suggesting all atheists should be hunted down and killed?
We are not talking about some uneducated Islamists – these sentiments were expressed by American Christians…
OK.
An orthodox Jew, a moderate Muslim and an archetypal polytheists (someone who believes all gods exist – as fairy-tales) walk into a bar.
What happens next?
The Jew and the Muslim unite against the atheist in a ‘theological’ debate.
This is not a joke – it happened to me. The moderate Muslim was Salim Mansur. We were all celebrating the launch of Salim’s most excellent book, ‘The Delectable Lie’.
Sure, everything was very friendly and good humoured – but, it still did not take long for the two monotheists to set their differences aside and unite against the atheist. (To be perfectly honest, I am nowhere near as good at verbal arguing as either one of these two intelligent, educated men… Mind you, since then, I have thought of really, really awesome things I should have said! AHA!)
OK, these guys had their fun, but they were very, very nice to me.
They were not like the typical theists one meets.
Somehow, I suspect I have had more than my ‘fair’ share of ‘scary’ experiences.
I have ‘bunny-hopped’ a tank once – because my Aspieness got me manipulated into trying to drive one when I was 12-years-old. Really, I just mouthed-off to the ‘wrong’ ‘many’-star general (because I did not ‘get’ it) it a totalitarian country – all my friends later admitted they thought I was going to be either sent to re-education camp or expelled from the exclusive language school as a result.
I have been stopped in the street and interrogated by the police – in a totalitarian police state – for not having my ‘documents’ …when I was too young to have been issued ‘documents’.
I have escaped from a totalitarian police state across a closed border.
I was less than 15 meters from a live shoot-out battle between two criminal elements within the UN refugee camp where I was staying. There were fatalities.
I was stalked – twice, by very different men in very different circumstances.
I was physically attacked by attempted rapists, three times (twice by someone whom I knew, once by a group of strangers). I had to fight my way out, each time. (Twice I did so unharmed, once I got off easily with just a torn-up shoulder – it still pops out of its socket at the slightest provocation! Well worth it!)
But, never in my life have I felt as unsafe, as physically threatened, as when a neighbour manipulated me to go to her Pentecostal Church and the ‘congregation’ saw me – singled out – refuse to ‘accept Jesus into my heart’!!!
Truly, this was the most frightening thing I have ever experienced.
At the risk of sounding pretentious, I suspect I understand how Hypatia felt in the last moments of her life. (This NOT, in any way, a comparison of me to Hypatia: it is the comparison of the fear we both felt as we faced a crowd of homicidal theists on her part and almost-homicidal ones on my part!)
I kid you not.
I could face a bullet.
I could beat up a bunch of thugs.
I could face down stalkers.
I can defend my honour against attempted rapists.
But faced with such a large crowd, whipped into a mob mentality by their preacher, so sure in their ‘righteousness’ and so pitiless towards ‘unbelievers’ – I knew that if something tipped them just a tiny bit further, I was dead.
It was palpable!
It was then that I knew what being hated not for ‘who I was’, but for ‘what I was’ was like.
So, yes – I do believe the theists – Christian, Muslim or whatever other religion – when they say that they will kill me, if they get a chance.
Not every theist is this way, of course not.
But way too many are.
The religion itself is much less important than the sense of self-righteousness it conveys onto its adherents!
It is my profound conviction that without the religious teaching that it is righteous and God-pleasing to exterminate ‘the unbelievers’, these men and women would never have abandoned morality in favour of threatened or actual mob violence – and felt good about doing it!!!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 