Imagine: life as a wrongly accused pedophile

February 17, 2011 — xanthippa

Can 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.”

No kidding!

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…

 

Posted in corruption, freedoms, opression, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Corporatism at work in your neighbourhood

February 16, 2011 — xanthippa
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Sultan Knish: “The Perfect Government”

February 11, 2011 — xanthippa

A well thought out, well written article – definitely worth reading the full piece.

…

The problem with setting out to create the perfect government is that it demands perfect people, among both government and the governed. You can turn government into a machine, but you can’t turn the people who run it or the people who live under it into machines. Most governments, even the bad ones, recognize this. A tyrant knows his limits, a progressive does not. His goal passes beyond the relative power of a tyrant, to the absolute power of a god. The tyrant seeks to dominate men. The progressive wants to recreate them.

…

The basic structure of government is a set of rules governing the behavior of those under its purview. For governments, the predictable is also the ideal. If you can convince most people to behave the same way, then the task of governing them is made much easier. With this shift in attitude, the predictable becomes the lawful, and the unpredictable becomes criminal. Laws no longer exist to prevent harm to others, but as sheep fences to keep everyone moving in the same direction. This marks the shift from the representative to the bureaucratic– from self-government to comprehensive government.

…

It is easier to oppress in the name of an idea, than in the name of a man, because there is no accompanying recognition of cruelty. Once the idea has been defined as the absolute good of mankind, then no act however cruel and merciless will appear so. Thus a private insurance company denying insurance coverage to a dying patient is perceived as behaving monstrously, while a government health insurance system doing the same thing is acting for the good of all. This is collectivist morality, the belief that the morality or immorality of an act is defined by whether its placement on the sliding scale of the collective good or the selfish individual. And collectivist morality is the moral principle of progressive government. To compromise the rights of individuals, for the needs of the many.

…

Relevant.

The only thing I would add is that everything he says about ‘progressives’ and ‘progressive governments’ is also true of ‘theocrats’ and ‘theocratic governments’.

Sure, the progressive uses social ideology for a dogma while the theocrat’s dogma is religious.  Still, both strive for their ideals with equal zeal, both try to perfect man to fit these ideals, both are collectivistic and oppressive in nature.

And both feel righteous while committing attrocities!

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

Two Englishmen arrested – for posting videos on the internet

February 10, 2011 — xanthippa

Read it and weep!

A 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.’‘

 

H/T:  The Religion of Peace

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!

 

 

Posted in corruption, freedoms, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Catherine Austin Fitts: listen and judge for yourself

February 4, 2011 — xanthippa

Do 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

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Government-free internet

January 31, 2011 — xanthippa

For 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

 

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

One Law for All events in London, UK

January 12, 2011 — xanthippa

Just 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 Namazie
Spokesperson
One Law for All
BM Box 2387
London WC1N 3XX
Posted in freedoms, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Pat Condell: ‘American Islamophobia’

January 11, 2011 — xanthippa

In case you don’t know what Pat Condell means when he says that our fear of Islamists in NOT irrational, please, listen to the following video:

 

If only the guy in the second video were the only lunatic who advocates violence in the name of Islam, if only he were not the only one advocating to replace secular law and order with Sharia, then, perhaps, fearing his message could potentially be called a phobia.

Unfortunately, he is not!

And there are Muslims who fear lunatics like this – with good reason.  Religious extremists always attack the moderates within their own movement first, to better cow the rest and assure their own control over their co-religionists.

And, since the Islamists think that the only consequences of their actions will be rewards in heaven, they are not easy to dismiss.

So, exactly how many ‘hate-crimes’ against Muslims are occurring in the US, to require CAIR to fight this wave of Islamophobia?

Well, in the State of New York, in 2008 there were 8.  In 2009, there were 11.

Which makes for about 1.6 % of the incidents.

Now, don’t get me wrong – there is no excuse for violent crime, whatever its motivation may be.

But those 11 incidents of attacks on Muslims for their Muslimness seems fewer than the number of attacks by Muslims on others for their non-Muslimness…

About

H/T: Gates of Vienna

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

Debbie Schlussel – 1, CAIR – 0

January 11, 2011 — xanthippa

The ‘Ham-asses’ at CAIR Action Network – that would be the Council on American-Islamic Relations – have taken up the hobby of SLAPP suits to silence their critics.

They probably did not realize the mistake they made when they picked on Debbie Schussel.

Following the first round in court, the score stands at Debbie Schlussel – 1, CAIR – 0.

Read the story in her own words.

Sounds like she was pumped full of adrenaline when she wrote it – a pleasant read.

H/T: BCF

Posted in freedoms, politics, religion. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Is the Human Rights Tribunal oppressing its own employees?

January 5, 2011 — xanthippa

I sound like a broken record when I start writing about the Human Rights racket in Canada: from tribunals to commissions, from the federal mama-bureaucracy to the provincial daughter-bureaucracies.

As far as I can see, they have completely and uterly failed to achieve the purpose for which they were created – and instead of making the situation better and working towards an equal treatment of all the citizens of our wonderful country, they have worked to striate the society and declare which ‘groups’ were ‘more equal’ than the rest of us. And even though the mainstream media (msm) has begun to wake up to what is going on, most of its members are still too cowardly to actually say so (much less do some serious investigative journalism on the topic).

Perhaps I should not be judging them so harshly: the political indoctrination most acredited journalists got at our ‘places of higher learning’ is hard to break through….and then there is the fear that if they say what they see, they will be out of a job. But, I’m a bit of an idealist who thinks that if one has to lie to keep one’s job, and one does not quit that job but chooses to lie, they are, well, the sort of stuff you scrape off the bottom of your shoe with a stick…

So, I did a double take when I went to the local corner store for some milk (my kids will not drink the ‘supermarket’ milk) and I caught a sight of this headline in the Ottawa Citizen:

Human Rights Tribunal in turmoil: union

Employees describe work environment that has deteriorated ‘to point of toxicity’

Front page, above the fold!

I was impressed!

Coming home, I googled the article and eagerly read on.

More than half of the 25-member staff, including middle and senior level managers, have left, taken sick leave or retired over the past year. At least three have filed formal harassment complaints.

Unions representing workers confirmed they received numerous complaints of abuse of authority, intimidation and personal harassment. They say employees describe a work environment that has deteriorated “to the point of toxicity.”

Well, well, well!
Three out of twenty five – that is a full 12%!!!
There aren’t many work places where fully 12% of the employees have filed FORMAL complaints!!!
So the haughty attitude that we, the citizens, perceive as emanating from this place is not just our imagination:  sounds like the poor slobs who have to work for these arrogant elitists perceive them that way, too!  And, it also sounds like they (the arrogant elitists, not the poor suckers who have to work for them) don’t understand that one should not pee in one’s own swimingpool….or that they are honestly unaware of their own incontinence.
But, let’s get back to the worker-bees.
If they are persecuted in their workplace on one of the ‘protected grounds’, and their workplace also is the Human Rights Tribunal, whom can they get to adjudicate their human rights complaint?

Enquiring minds want to know!
UPDATE: ‘ The Lynch Mob’ re-published this post here.
Posted in corruption, freedoms, opression, politics. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »
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