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Caledonia: No More Nightmares!
February 26, 2011 — xanthippa
VictimlessCriminal: “Religion is the Great Hijacker Part 16 – Females”
February 24, 2011 — xanthippaImagine: life as a wrongly accused pedophile
February 17, 2011 — xanthippaCan you imagine how your life would change if you were accused of pedophilia – or of distributing child pornography?
If this accusation were in a public forum, where your kids, spouse, parents, extended family, friends, colleagues and/or customers, potential employers, community activists and anti-pedophilia organizations would be sure to see it?
If this accusation came from the government, which cited a legal warrant to confiscate your property because a judge has been satisfied that your property was used for the creation and propagation of pedophilia?
AND IF THIS ACCUSATION WERE 100% UNFOUNDED?!?!?
84,000 Americans do not have to imagine this – they are living it!
No kidding, it’s true.
That is EIGHTY FOUR THOUSAND!!!
And, please, ask yourself – why was this not front line news? Why do you have to read about this in a blog?
As per TorrentFreak (via HackerNews):
“The US Government has yet again shuttered several domain names this week. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE office proudly announced that they had seized domains related to counterfeit goods and child pornography. What they failed to mention, however, is that one of the targeted domains belongs to a free DNS provider, and that 84,000 websites were wrongfully accused of links to child pornography crimes.
…
As with previous seizures, ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized.
…
Most of the subdomains in question are personal sites and sites of small businesses. A search on Bing still shows how innocent sites were claimed to promote child pornography. A rather damaging accusation, which scared and upset many of the site’s owners.”
Imagine being involved in a child-custody battle, when your ex’s lawyer gets a hold of this….
Or a million other situations: child abuse, especially sexual child abuse, is a serious issue. Many people react to it instinctively…without thinking…considering this to be one of those areas where vigilante justice is not only OK, but necessary (as the courts have systematically failed to protect the kids).
So, what was the reaction of the government?
After all, they were after 10-12 specific sites: these 84,000 innocent sites were siezed accidentally…
Did they make a huge announcement, explaining their mistake so that the 84,000 would not be stigmatized?
So that they would be believed when they defended themselves?
So they would even be listened to when they tried to explain?
Explain that the official banner everyone who came to their website and saw the official notice “that the website had been siezed because it distributed pedophilia” was one of those 84,000 that were accused by a mistake?
No, not really.
Actually, not at all!
“Although it is not clear where this massive error was made, and who’s responsible for it, the Department of Homeland security is conveniently sweeping it under the rug. In a press release that went out a few hours ago the authorities were clearly proud of themselves for taking down 10 domain names.
However, DHS conveniently failed to mention that 84,000 websites were wrongfully taken down in the process, shaming thousands of people in the process.
“Each year, far too many children fall prey to sexual predators and all too often, these heinous acts are recorded in photos and on video and released on the Internet,” Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano commented.
“DHS is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to shut down websites that promote child pornography to protect these children from further victimization,” she added.”
This is troubling on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin.
Sure, there are conspiracy theories out there – and I, for one, don’t buy into them.
However, once learned, institutions hardly ever forget lessons: and the lesson learned here was that yes, it was possible for the US government to ‘make dissappear’ a whole block of thousands of websites. The first one may have been a mistake, but will the second one be?
We know that in Australia, the leaked, ultra secret ‘black list’ of sites banned due to pedophilia/child pornography included more ‘political’ websites and innocent victims (including a dentist’s site) than actual pedophilia/child pornography sites. And there was no appeal – since the ‘black list’ was uber secret, even knowing the name of a site on it was a criminal offense… How do you defend against abuse in a situation like that? Admitting you know the site was shut down is equivalent to pleading guilty to a child sex crime….even if the site was erroneously listed!
Of course, this is just one facet…
If your site is siezed in this manner, even after it is released, there will be echoes on the internet linking it to pedophilia for ever.
And….
If this is a business website you had built up, slowly but surely building up your livelihood by slowly climbing the way up the search-engine ratings – having had your site siezed in this manner will have pretty much wiped out your rating. Even if you get your site back, even if you are again up and running – business will not be as before! You will likely have to re-build your ratings – the ‘method’ your customers find your site – and this may take years!
It would be comparable to having the government falsely shut down a prominent store on ‘Main St.’, put ‘the person who runs this store is a pedophile’ sign in the front window, and then permit them to re-open the store, perhaps after they re-located it several blocks away from the busy area….
The walk-by traffic will just not be the same!
And that does not even address the ‘civil liberties’ aspect of confiscating someone’s property/livelihood in this manner….
Or the ‘eagerness’ with which some ‘child-sex-offender registries’ keep track not only of people who had been covicted, but also of people who had ever been accused of child sex crimes: after all, we can never be too careful in protecting our babies!
Oh, and this is not the first time this type of thing has happened. Perhaps not on this scale, but…
“Liberty seminar” liberated!
February 15, 2011 — xanthippaYeah, picking on a bunch of libertarians, denying them the right of assembly – very clever, indeed!
For links to background to the story, check out Moose and Squirrel.
I’m just happy for them!
Two Englishmen arrested – for posting videos on the internet
February 10, 2011 — xanthippaA police spokesman said: ‘‘We have investigated a number of incidents across the internet after they were brought to our attention last year. ‘We have yet to analyse what has been seized and will then be in a better to look at what, if any, offences have been committed.’‘
Correct me if I am wrong, but the way I read this is:
- Somebody complained about the videos these guys posted
- the cops arrested them and took their stuff
- only now will they try to look at the evidence to see IF a crime had been committed
Where to start…
Well, perhaps with my yesterday’s post – where, in his speech, John Robson explains the meaning of English common law and how it had been affirmed by the Magna Carta. It looks like the proud Englishmen have turned their back on their heritage…
How corrupt has the system of common law and the liberties it is supposed to guarantee become that something a person says causes him to be arbitrarily deprived of liberty and property?
But, this is even worse…
What about the police officers – how come they are obeying this obviously illegal order?
Because arresting a person and siezing their property first, and only then trying to figure out IF there has even been a crime commited, is contrary to everything the English common law stands for!
What to do?
I don’t know.
Sure, we can all work to post on other people’s behalf and mirror videos and all that, but that is just trying to stick a band-aid over a severed jugular.
But, I have been giving this a lot of thought.
What we need to do, in my never-humble-opinion, is to hold each and every individual police officer criminally and civilly responsible for carrying out orders which are obviously contrary to English common law. And not just in Joly old England, or even the whole Commonwealth: we must do this everywhere where the heritage of English Common Law exists.
Because it is only by making individuals within ‘the system’ accountable can we affect change of the system as a whole!
No, it is not easy.
But is just may be doable.
Let’s try!
Catherine Austin Fitts: listen and judge for yourself
February 4, 2011 — xanthippaDo you know the feeling you get when you hear somebody who is working from a completely different data set than you, yet who reaches the same conclusion as you have?
That is the feeling I got listening to the following interview. It is long, but well worth listening to.
Listen and come to your own conclusions about what she says…
Remember, what some people describe as a ‘conspiracy theory’ is simply ‘effective marketing’ to others.
H/T: Dvorak Uncensored
Government-free internet
January 31, 2011 — xanthippaFor years, on and off, I have brrm ranting about the need to create an internet-type thing which would be outside the grasp and control of the powers that be – be they governments or large corporate interests (though, the lines between them have been so blurred lately, it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins).
And, no, I am not a complete conspiracy nut.
I have just ben paying attention – with all the ‘bailouts’, so many governments now have a physical stake in various corporations, it would be foolish to deny that the separation between our law-makers and the largest corporate ‘players’ has been eroding quite a lot. To put it mildly…
That is never a good thing!
It is an especially bad thing when it comes to communications: that is why I keep going on about the importance of free speech. And, I also keep going on about the dual dangers to free speech: government censorship AND corporate censorship.
Because BOTH of these are extremely dangerous to freedom of speech – and to the ability of regular, non-privileged citizens like you and I, to communicate with each other, to exchange information, to compare thoughts….
Without the ability to find out what is truly happening in the world around us – and without being able to discuss it amongst ourselves – we will be divided and powerless.
Isolated.
Easy to control…
This is well understood by those who would like to be rulers, everywhere.
That is why governments try to control media.
In the West, where people believe they have freedom of speech and where we would protest direct censorship of the media, more devious tools, like ‘political corectness’, are used to filter, distort and, yes, censor information that reaches the populace. It is ‘censorsip by sneak’. so to speak.
It is also understood by the corporatists: hence the repression of all the freedoms we hold near and dear in, say, large areas around the spot where The Olympic Games are held, and so on. (I have long held that the fascism inherrent in corporatism – the collusion between government-corporations-labour unions necessary to make this system function – is an incarnation of evil much worse than most others, because it pretends that it looks after ‘everyone’ and, if some person does not like it, there must be something wrong with them. It thus oppresses both the body and the soul…)
But, I am rambling…..
Time has come for us, the ‘unwashed masses’, us, the rabble, to start taking things into our own hands.
Taking to the streets with pitchforks – except, I suspect we will be uch more effective if we can figure out an electronic equivalent to a pitchfork and take to the electronic equivalents of the streets and village squares.
First, of course, we have to build these electronic equivalents.
There are some who have started.
Please, read the following two links – they say it better than I could and are well documented and chock full of links with good info.
Both of these have come about because of what has happened in Egypt – and what could easily happen here. (And, do not kid yourself – the groundwork has been laid for it….)
H/T: Tyr
One Law for All events in London, UK
January 12, 2011 — xanthippaJust got this info from the ‘One Law for All’ folks:
HOLD THESE DATES
‘Enemies not Allies’ Seminar, 26 January 2011, 18.30 – 20.00 (Registration begins at 18.00), Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL (Holborn Tube)
Bigots and neo-Nazis feigning to campaign for rights… ‘anti-racist’ groups promoting fascism… ‘anti-war’ rallies run by supporters of terrorism and dictatorship… Enough!The One Law for All campaign is holding a seminar to expose how important debates including on Sharia law have been hijacked by the far-Right to promote their racist agenda, and by anti-racist and anti-war groups to defend Islamism, both at the expense of people’s rights and lives. The seminar will focus on: The British National Party, the English Defence League, Stop Islamisation of Europe (also Stop Islamization of America), the Stop the War Coalition, the Respect Party, and Unite Against Fascism.Speakers at the seminar are Adam Barnett (One Law for All), Rahila Gupta (Women’s Rights Campaigner), Marieme Helie Lucas (Secularism is a Women’s Issue), Ghaffar Hussain (Quilliam Foundation), Douglas Murray (Centre for Social Cohesion), Maryam Namazie (One Law for All), and Shiraz Maher (International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation), with John Adams (Emeritus Professor at the University of Hertfordshire) to chair.Entry fee: £5 individuals; £10 voluntary and statutory organisations. For booking form and speaker bios visit http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/26-january-2010-seminar-london/.International Conference on Women’s Rights, Sharia Law and Secularism, 12 March 2011, 10.00-19.00 hours, University of London Union, The Venue, Malet Street, London WC1E (Russell Square)
The one day conference to mark International Women’s Day will discuss the adverse impact of religious laws on the status of women.Speakers include: Mina Ahadi (International Committee against Stoning), Karima Bennoune (Law Professor), Helle Merete Brix (Journalist), Nadia Geerts (Writer), Hammeda Hossain (South Asians for Human Rights), Monica Lanfranco (Journalist), Anne-marie Lizin (Honorary Speaker of Belgian Senate), Maryam Namazie (One Law for All and Iran Solidarity), Taslima Nasreen (Writer), Yasmin Rehman (Women’s Rights Activist), Nina Sankari (European Feminist Initiative Poland), Sohaila Sharifi (Equal Rights Now), Bahram Soroush (Civil Rights Activist), Daniel Salvatore Schiffer (Philosopher), Annie Sugier (la ligue du Droit International des Femmes), Anne Marie Waters (One Law for All), Linda Weil-Curiel (Lawyer), and Stasa Zajovic (Belgrade Women in Black).Entry fee: £10 individuals; £3 unwaged and students. For booking form and speaker bios visit http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/12-march-2010-international-conference-on-women%e2%80%99s-rights-sharia-law-and-secularism-london/. The event is sponsored by the International Committee against Stoning, Iran Solidarity, Equal Rights Now and One Law for All.Event against Stoning, 9 July 2011, 14.00-17.30 hours, University of London Union, The Venue, Malet Street, London WC1E (Russell Square)
The Event against Stoning marks International Day against Stoning and will include a film screening of The Stoning of Soraya M followed by a panel discussion including with film director Cyrus Nowrasteh and campaigners Mina Ahadi and Maryam Namazie. The event will be dedicated to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.Entry fee: £10 individuals; £3 unwaged and students. For more information visit: http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/9-july-2011-event-against-stoning-london/. The event is sponsored by the International Committee against Stoning, Iran Solidarity, Equal Rights Now and One Law for All.Save your place now
To register for the above events, send a completed booking form along with a cheque made payable to One Law for All to BM Box 2387, London WC1N 3XX, UK or pay via Paypal at: http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/donate/. Donations are also welcome.For more information, contact:Maryam NamazieSpokespersonOne Law for AllBM Box 2387London WC1N 3XX
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 