When can raising charity money for orphans land you in a ‘re-education camp’?

December 14, 2011 — xanthippa

When you live in a land ruled by Sharia!

Zilla of the Resistance has the story.

(Check it out and have a listen to the music:  I rather like the tune I suspect is the ‘swing classic’ ‘Clementine’ done in Indonesian punk – a definite improvement over the original!)

Via:  BCF

Quite apart from this story, it is important for us, Westerners, to understand that in lands ruled by Sharia, ‘charity’ does not work the same way it does in our part of the World.

This does not mean that Muslims are not charitable people:  not at all!

And it does not mean that in countries with Muslim populations, people do not perform charitable acts for the sake of helping their fellow human beings, regardless of race or creed.  They do – and we have many stories of Muslim women helping Westerners (men, women and children) who were in Japanese prison camps during WWII!

Rather, as Sharia rules every single aspect of life of those unfortunate to live under its oppression, so it has very specific and rigid rules for ‘charity’.

Let me illustrate this with an example:  following the Tsunami a few years ago, people in Bengal (I refuse to use the new colonial name for the country) were upset that many Western charities got volunteers on the ground and started providing aid.  The Bengali fear was that these aid groups were there trying to steal their children…

Many in the West were perplexed by this:  why would the people there refuse aid, willingly provided without any strings attached?

Because right now, Bengal is under Sharia.  And Sharia strictly differentiates between ‘Muslim charities’ and ‘non-Muslim charities’.

It is forbidden, under Sharia, for Muslim charities to help non-Muslims – and for non-Muslim charities to help Muslims (though, to be honest, non-Muslim charities do face a lot of regulatory interference under Sharia and are thus prevented from being as effective in providing aid as Muslim charities are).  Therefore, when non-Muslim charities attempted to aid Muslims in Bengal, the response among the population was confusion and fear – and, ultimately, rejection of much help.  The problem was finally resolved by the non-Muslim charities simply giving the money and aid materiel to Muslim charities, who then operated on the ground…

Another ‘perplexing’ example came even more recently, during the terrible flooding in Pakistan.  Even as money poured into the county through Red Cross, there were appalling stories of whole non-Muslim families starving – even in regions where food aid was plentiful.  Again, people in ‘The West’ could not make heads-or-tails of this and many wrote these stories off as propaganda.

Not so.

The primary channel for the aid funds was The International Red Cross.

In Sharia countries, the Red Cross partners with its affiliated Islamic charity, the Red Crescent, and channels all aid through it.

In Pakistan, which is for all practical purposes governed by Sharia, the Red Crescent operates as an Islamic charity under Sharia does.  That means that Mosques are used as the centres from which the aid (from food on down) is distributed.

To most of us, this does not seem particularly odd:  Mosques serve as community centres, so they are centrally located and accessible.  Plus, they have the room to store the supplies to be distributed, so this would be a logical place to distribute aid from, right?

Plus, under Sharia, the Red Crescent is only permitted to distribute aid through a Mosque.  So, it is not just the ‘logical’ course of action, it is the only permitted course of action.  And the Red Crescent did make various statements to the effect that everyone who came to them for aid, received aid!

So, what was the problem that caused the non-Muslims to starve?

Under Sharia, a non-Muslim may not enter a Mosque!

Not being permitted to enter the place from which the aid from Western countries was being distributed, non-Muslims could either starve or convert to Islam…

I suspect there is a lot more about ‘charity under Sharia’ we just don’t know…

Posted in freedoms, opression, religion. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

FOI request for FBI use of data secretly collected from smart phones: denied!

December 13, 2011 — xanthippa

A while back, I  posted about CarrierIQ and its ‘rootkit of all evil’.

In it are links which demonstrate how CarrierIQ has embedded code into smart phones which runs in the background and is not easily accessible to the phone’s user (with no notification to the user that it is running, much less choices to ‘opt out’).  This code records everything the phone is used for and reports this information back to CarrierIQ – even if the user is not in any contract with the company, or has indeed ever heard of its existence.  This information contains:

  • GPS information
  • incoming and outgoing phone calls
  • details of internet access and use, including encrypted data (like passwords)
  • all keystroke information

In another post, I have written about INDECT:  the EU’s proposed regime of continuous surveillance of member states’ citizenry for the purpose of identifying ‘unusual behaviour’, which would then be brought to the attention of police for ‘follow up’.  ‘Unusual behaviour’ would include (but not be limited to):

  • lingering too long in public areas
  • abnormal transit system use
  • internet habits that include visiting potentially ‘antisocial websites’
  • associating with ‘antisocial elements’
  • abnormal shopping habits

(In that post, I also provide a link to an article about CarrierIQ’s attempt to silence the researcher who first published information about its surveillance practices.)

The potential for abuse is so strong, it is difficult to overstate it…it seems that, increasingly, legislation is being drafted and passed all around the world not to safeguard against it, but to take advantage of it.

Here is an analysis (by a lawyer) of SOPA, just one such proposed pieces of legislation (in the USA) and the ways in which it breaches the constitution.

But if you are still not convinced that police agencies are warrantlessly accessing vast amounts of private data collected about citizens without their permission or knowledge, here is another piece of information you should consider:

‘A recent FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ” was met with a telling denial. In it, the FBI stated it did have responsive documents – but they were exempt under a provision that covers materials that, if disclosed, might reasonably interfere with an ongoing investigation.’

Indeed.

Our constitutions were written with the specific purpose of protecting the civil rights of citizens from their governments.  Most of us have forgotten this:  and our governments are increasingly passing laws which circumvent (if not directly breech) our unalienable rights which all written constitutions (starting with the Magna Carta) are but imperfect expressions of.

We need to wake up and oppose this passive tolerance of the increasingly corrupt and oppressive surveillance society – before it is too late!

H/T:  Tyr

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When borders are fluid…

December 12, 2011 — xanthippa

I knew a guy who claimed that within his lifetime, held four ditinct citizenships.  At different times,  he was an Austrian, Czechoslovak, Slovak and Hungerian – he even held Hungarian citizenships at two separate times!

Yet, he never moved!

Simply, his house happened to be on a bit of land that was held by different countries at different times,  all while he lived in it…

This is the reality of human existence.

As nations come into and out of existence, as they jostle with each other for territory, this sort of thing is inevitable.

Now, imagine that all these countries which had a prior ownership claim went to, say, the EU and demanded that this land be returned to them, due to the fact they held it in the past and, even if another country usurped it, they had never really given up their claim to it:  it would be a mess!

In fact , it would be exactly the same sort of mess as the multiple land claims being made by various native groups over land in Ontario and Quebec – including over the bit of land know as the Parliament Hill.

Just like in Europe, the various nations in North America occupied different areas at different times – as their fortunes waxed and vaned, so did their territory.  Just like in Europe, at different times, the same land would be claimed by different groups.  And, just like in Europe, territorial wars took place…

This just goes to show that this is a function of the human condition!

However, in Canada, the various Native groups can each make a separate claim on the same piece of land – a claim which the courts consider in isolation from competing Native claims over the same land.  And, just as they each had a valid claim on the land at different times, each claim can be supported by some evidence.

Yet, since each claim is examined separately, the court cannot take the competing claims into accout.  In effect, this causes the Canadian taxpayers to buy the land (settle the claims) over and over and over…  No sooner is one claim settled than another one crops up.

To call this a highly flawed system is a serious understatement.

How to solve this in a way that is fair and equitable to the Native groups with land claims as well as to the Canadaians who hold legal title to the land and have invested their life savings into a home on this land?

How to solve this in a way that is fair to different Native groups making conflicting claims, when their claims would be considered at different times and under differing political conditions?

We do have the Assembly of First Nations – resolving land claims is one of their major ‘raison d’etres’:

The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is the national representative organization of the First Nations in Canada. There are over 630 First Nation’s communities in Canada. The AFN Secretariat, is designed to present the views of the various First Nations through their leaders in areas such as: Aboriginal and Treaty Rights, Economic Development, Education, Languages and Literacy, Health, Housing, Social Development, Justice, Taxation, Land Claims, Environment, and a whole array of issues that are of common concern which arise from time to time.

The solution I propose would not be easy, but it would be simple and fair:

  1. All First Nations land claims – currently pending, whether under negotiation or court action, or ones as yet undeclared – would be registered with the AFN.  (The AFN would need to make a call for land claim registration, with a firm ‘register-by-date’.)
  2. In cases of multiple claims over the same land by various Aboriginal groups, the AFN would engage all claimants in constructive negotiations, with full adherence to Native traditions and methods of dispute resolution.
  3. Once the AFN had resolved conflicting land claims with respect to each other, they would then present all the claims together (though only one claim per one tract of land – or with all the various claims to one tract of land by various parties grouped together for, perhaps, a ‘weighted’ ruling), with all the supporting documentation, to either the Supreme Court of Canada or some special land-claim-resolution judicial court that the AFN, Federal and Provincial/Territorial governments would agree on specifically for this purpose.  This Court can then rule on each land claim following a thorough an complete review all of the harmonized land claims and apply uniform criteria when it considers them, ensuring that equal standards are applied in all the cases.

I suspect that this is the only way we could even come close to resolving this issue fairly.

Short of this type of action, I do not see any way to avoid protracted legal quagmire – in perpetuity!

H/T:  BCF

Posted in human nature, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

US government abandons due process as it censors a polular blog for over a year

December 8, 2011 — xanthippa

This is truly astonishing – and why SOPA and similar such nonsense must be opposed by all pro-free-speech people!!!

‘Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine’s offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company’s printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine’s lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that’s a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.

But, in a story that’s been in the making for over a year, and which we’re exposing to the public for the first time now, this is exactly the scenario that has played out over the past year — with the only difference being that, rather than “a printing press” and a “magazine,” the story involved “a domain” and a “blog.”‘

Read the full story at TechDirt – and weep, because this is not the only such case.

Then get ready to fight against oppression of free speech under ALL its guises!

Posted in freedoms, opression, technology. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Video of the December 3rd 2011 Caledonia arrests

December 7, 2011 — xanthippa

Read the comentary at Voice Of Canada.

This video raises a number of things that I have been wondering about.

For example, the uniformed police officers do not display their badge numbers, making it impossible to identify them.  Is this legal?  If so, should it remain so?

Another question:  what recourse does a population have if a police force either refuses to enforce the laws of the land or enforces illegal orders?

In my never-humble-opinion, the only way an organizational corruption of this scale can be tackled is by holding the individuals within the organization personally responsible for their actions, including holding them personally responsible for following illegal orders to the maximum level the law permits.  Yes, this would mean legal action against individual police officers – if not criminal, then civil – even if these police officers are nice individuals.  Still, if they follow an illegal order, they must be accountable for this breech of law.

Of course, these are easy words to type and there is a world of difference between writing this and actually doing something about it.  Still, one ought to gather as much information first…

So, if you are knowledgable on this topic, please, comment and educate me on the laws, rules and procedures – and any other options legally available.  It would be much appreciated.

Because to my way of thinking, this is not a ‘native/non-native’ issue:  this is a policing issue and equality before the law issue!

 

UPDATE:  Here is a comment posted by Mark Vandermaas, which, in my neve-humble-opinion, is important enough to bump it into the ‘body’ of the post:

The scary part of Caledonia is that all the organizations, gov’t and NGO, that should have been pro-active in protecting the rights of the innocent were unwilling or unable to help: Human Rights Commission; Ombudsman (wanted to help, but not allowed to get involved in police issues); the Opposition (oh, how we tried); the Federal govt (not only wouldn’t they help Harper annointed Fantino as PC candidate!); the OCCPS (old agency for Police Services Act complaints); Haldimand’s Police Services Board; Haldimand Council (other than former Mayor Trainer); Cdn Civil Liberties Association (repeatedly begged them for help to no avail).

It would be hard to list here everything we tried, but some of the key things that worked well were:

1. Dr. King’s methods of peacefully confronting injustice and forcing them to violate your rights (techniques that he learned from Gandhi to influence the media and the conscience of the nation. When one protests with dignity and is willing to be verbally abused and assaulted without retaliating there is very little defence to this approach. Using it we actually caused the union radicals, anarchists, anti-Israel groups and native militants to curb their violence and aggression because – as one of them said at an anarchist’s conference, we were making THEM look like the racists by applying Dr. King’s methods. Just as King did not demonize whites, we did not demonize native people as a group (the thugs would disagree, of course). We tried our best to ensure people knew that the thugs didn’t speak for the good people of 6N.

2. Civil Lawsuits to a degree. I say that because while there were some important court victories such as the $20M Caledonia Class Action, the Brown-Chatwell settlements and some victories achieved by us via the small claim and superior courts, the fact is that racial policing is still practiced and the gov’t, 6N and the OPP have never apologized or ammended their policies.

3. Private Prosecutions under the CCofC. You know, of course, that Gary M, despite not being a lawyer, convinced the courts to charge 5 individual police officers for offences such as Mischief, Influencing Municipal Official and Obstructing Justice, and even won a case at the Court of Appeal. This has reigned in their abuses quite effectively, but apparently, they still have more to learn.

We’ve tried just about everything during the last 5 years. in the end, it’s not one magic bullet. It’s ordinary people taking advantage of every opportunity when presented and, as Gary says, ‘withstanding the test of time’ (while you’re being vilified, assaulted, and arrested). And…don’t wait for anyone to come to help. But, that’s the wonderful thing! A small group of committed people with no money, no power and no connections really can make a huge difference.

Having said all this, there were some good people who did help and paid a price for doing so. At risk of leaving someone out and inadvertently insulting them, I won’t try to list them. But one guy who doesn’t get enough credit is lawyer John Findlay of the Class Action, a lawyer who represents us in several cases including one where he helped mediate a solution whereby the OPP union finally admitted in writing they had no evidence we were inciting hate and violence. Couldn’t have done it without him.

Sorry to go on so long. Thks for listening.

Readers who want to know more should visit the Caledonia: No More Nightmares page at http://www.HelplessByBlatchford.ca which has videos and notes from our 2011 presentation of the same name in Ottawa – where you and I met. Thanks for being there, and thks for the coverage.

Mark Vandermaas
Editor, VoiceofCanada
Founder, Caledonia Victimis Project

Posted in corruption, freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

John Robson interviews Gary McHale about the events at Caledonia

December 7, 2011 — xanthippa

FiveFeetOfFury has the video – a must-see!

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Have you heard about INDECT?

December 5, 2011 — xanthippa

If you haven’t heard about INDECT ( Intelligent Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment), you are not alone – especially if you are on this side of the pond.

Or you might have heard of it and dismissed it as some sort of a paranoid conspiracy theory…which is exactly what some, including Wikipedia, imply it to be.

On the other hand, WikiLeaks takes it deadly seriously.  As does European Digital Rights (EDRI).

If you happen to be unaware that items like phones send constant streams of information about you – including installing a hidden keylogger – back to corporations you may have no commercial relationship with, here is an article with a video that shows, step-by-step, how this is being done. (Yes, when this information was first published, CarrierIQ tried to shut the source up with threats of lawsuits.)

And just to help you relax when you bring home a new video-game console…consider their enhanced sensory abilities (lip-reading, facial expression analysis to measure emotional states, enhanced speech recognition) in conjunction with the ‘back doors’ being built in to so many of our digital devices.

But, I digress…

The EU is planning to gather information about its citizens from ‘open sources’ (social media, chat-rooms, blogs) as well as public surveillance systems (like CCTV cameras to the GPS devices that they wish to legislate to be mandatory in every vehicle in order to ‘monitor traffic patterns’), their surfing habits, their shopping habits (remember all those ‘loyalty cards’?), to all other policing methods.  Then they plan to run this mass of data through some algorithms which will analyze the language used by specific citizens with their public behaviours (say, like sitting in a public place for longer than ‘normal’) and online preferences, cross-reference it all and come up with ‘automated dossiers’ which will alert police officers to go check out specific citizens deemed to have ‘abnormal behaviour’.

All this is to be done by an arms-lenght (translation:  completely unaccountable) agency which is as transparent as tar, overseen by a police-agency dominated board.  As this agency is an EU creature, all the member states would be compelled to give it full access to citizen information, from financial to DNA databases.

Of course, we know this is the direction our society is moving in – but I suspect most of us have not been aware of the degree to which this has already been happening and just how lacking we are in any privacy rights.

Perhaps we ought to pay more attention…

H/T:  HackerNews

Posted in corruption, freedoms, opression, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Ontario Provincial Police racially profiles & arrests 8 people in Caledonia, Ontario

December 4, 2011 — xanthippa

It is difficult to believe that this is still going on…

Canada in general, Ontario in particular, have recently been absorbed in the Attawapiscat scandal:  millions of dollars have gone to support an aboriginal community of a few thousand people, yet the living conditions for ‘regular’ band members there are so deplorable and despicable, words fail me.  This is a very difficult situation to deal with:  the current rules/regulation/philosophy imprisons our native populations in far northern ghettos in the name of ‘protecting them’…yes, the language of ‘tyranny of the nice’ – oppressing people while all the time pretending that one is doing it in their name.

Here is some excellent commentary on this topic  (including an interview with the brilliant and Honourable Patrick Brazeau).  (Aside and completely unrelated:  senator Brazeau comes from the Kitigan Zibi community which twins Maniwaki.  This region is in one of the most beautiful corners of the world – one I have visited annually for about two decades and which has completely enchanted me, my spouse and our children.  It would be difficult to convince me that there could possibly be a more beautiful area in all the world!)

Yet, when I was in a fast-food restaurant in Maniwaki only 3-4 years ago,  I personally witnessed  the residents from Kitigan Zibi be refused service on the grounds that the person taking their order did not understand English and thus could not serve them.  Standing directly behind them in the line, I (being the nagging person that I am) decided to, on this occasion, use English only to order and I feigned inability to speak or comprehend French:  yet I was served without any difficulty!  Incensed – yet afraid to make a scene (it was not my neighbourhood to rock the proverbial boat in), after I was served, I went and caught up with the people who were refused service because they spoke English and were native – I offered to place the order for them, but, they declined.  I can understand their position…

So, yes – I can honestly say that I have experienced (as a witness) discrimination against Canadians, simply because they were Native Canadians.  And, yes – I was deeply disturbed by it.  And, yes – I DID all I thought was in my power to defeat it without adding animosity to the community in which it occurred.  This discrimination is not ‘theoretical’ – and it is something that I condemn, with every fibre of my being!!!

It is my deepest held principle that all humans must be treated as equals in the eyes of the law:  this focus on the individual is the only way we can prevent the erosion of innate civil liberties that ‘group-politics’ of the totalitarian/collectivist Cultural Marxism is fighting to defeat.

This is why I am just as upset that people were discriminated against for NOT being ‘natives’ as I am that people were discriminated FOR being ‘natives’!!!

Yet, this is exactly what has happened in Caledonia…

Read the latest shameful details here.

As long as people are discriminated against on the basis of race – whether ‘in’ or ‘out’ is irrelevant – we can never have equality of citizens before the law!

And that is shameful – however anyone may try to justify it!

Update:  more information with pictures and video about what had happened in Caledonia.

Posted in corruption, freedoms, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Pat Condell: The Gathering Storm

December 3, 2011 — xanthippa

Posted in atheism, freedoms, opression, politics. Tags: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

BC Supreme Court rules against polygamy

November 24, 2011 — xanthippa

The Supreme Court of British Columbia has upheld the law which forbids polygamy.  This is an important ruling – and one which is bound to end up before the Supreme Court of Canada.

It is also an issue I am deeply conflicted on:  just where does the line lie between individual choice and State interference lie?

This article by Lorne Gunther in the National Post captures much of my own thinking on the subject:

“On an intellectual level, polygamy amongst men and women who have reached the age of consent should be no one else’s business but the participants’.”

“The cold, hard fact is that in the real world, non child-abusing polygamists are pretty much non-existent. Non-wife-abusing polygamists are rare, too.”

While I might disagree with some minor points Mr. Gunther makes, these are tangential to the subject of his article, the body of which reflects my own opinions quite accurately.

Let’s hope that now that we have confirmation of the validity of anti-polygamy laws, these laws will be applied to all members of our society equally!

 

Posted in freedoms, society. Tags: , , , . 7 Comments »
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