Uponnothing.co.uk

Head of visitor tracking program wants global ID system (4/25/06)

The head of the Homeland Security Department’s visitor tracking program on Tuesday called for the creation of a “global ID management system” to make travel easier while enhancing security…

Williams said he wants to join forces with several DHS agencies to develop a global identification system that would cut wait times, reduce government fees for travelers, fight illegal immigration and, perhaps paramount, better defend nations from terrorists.

‘All options — including the military one — are on the table’

Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary

‘There is only one thing worse than military action, that is a nuclear armed Iran’

John McCain, Republican senator for Arizona

‘Obviously we don’t rule out any measures at all’

Tony Blair

The recipe of war is well proven, take a large dose of irrational fear, add to the international press to simmer for several months, sprinkle same press with half-truths, mis-truths, and outright lies, then allow public to stew on a low heat for several months. Once they have developed the correct taste for fear, add hysterical threats of weapons of mass destruction, mix with war on terror, and garnish with rotten diplomacy.

However, is this all really neccesary? How much does the public actually care what the government does?

There is no sign of intelligence or accurate reporting on Iran in the newspapers, on television or even over PBS radio. It is never made clear that Iran’s “defiance” is one orchestrated by the U.S. government, or that the “defiance” is limited to Iran’s development of nuclear energy, not a weapons program. When Americans hear “nuclear defiance” over and over, they conclude that Iran is making nuclear weapons. Instead of informing the people, the media drive them toward acceptance of another war.

This quotation may be about America, but it is equally apt to describe the standard of reporting here in the UK. The simple fact is that newspapers appeal to the base instincts of the UK populous, the public are not the passive receivers of any given news message, they are the active seekers of a message that matches their own outlook. The sad thing is people want drivel, they want trivia, they want a political outlook that is clearly defined in black and white, good and bad, with us or against us.

For the average person, admitting that black and white can mix to form numerous shades of grey, is to question their whole existence, and they’d rather just shove their fingers in their ears and watch another program on celebrities’ ice-skating/ballroom dancing/trapped in jungle/trapped on an island/trapped in a house. The majority of people in Britain don’t care, and they never will.

It is only the government and social elite who stand to profit from war, and therefore it is the role of the media to justify and glorify Britain’s involvement in foreign countries. Papers such as the Sun have become virtually a state controlled paper, whilst papers such as the Daily Mail may dislike the government, but they have a rabid distaste of anything foreign.

Americans are in many ways more in tune with the media message, more interested in war. Americans do care, but for all the wrong reasons. Patriotism in America fuels the ignorance of the masses that have to make all the sacrifices when Bush and friends decide to go to war. It is easy to get the American public excited and backing a war, and each speech Bush gives goes through all the basics:

mention that America is a ‘great nation’

praise the armed forces, and the sacrifices they make to ‘protect’ this ‘great nation’

pretend that America is under attack

say it will be just like the Second World War

and finally god bless America

Americans care about being Americans, and more often than not patriotism serves to deflect any criticism of the state that they might be pondering deep down.

However, these are of course sweeping generalisations, each country has its share of lights in these dark times, and some people are prepared to speak out, although this is usually in vain. The main problem is that war is so sanitised; the war on terror is fought in distant lands, and this foreign interventionism that is so rife today (but has always been a staple diet of power politics, and economic dominance) is seen as taking the war further away, protecting the homeland.

The only link that Blair and Bush will identify is that the war abroad ‘secures’ our ‘freedom’ at home: every sacrifice made, every innocent foreigner dead is justified as being necessary to secure the rights of the people living in the ‘free world’. The majority of us won’t have to fight this war; the majority of us won’t even know anybody who has to fight this war. As far as we are concerned the only sacrifice we have to make is accepting the loss of a few civil liberties.

It is this that is the real irony of the ‘war on terror’; the whole war is based on protecting the civil liberties that we all come to expect; yet the basis of the war on terror is the restriction of civil liberties. We have therefore been left with a war that is fighting civil liberties, in the name of protecting them – something so idiotic, so unbelievable, so very ‘Bush’, that of course the majority excepts that this is just the way things are.

The main thing is that the people who supported the war in Iraq - and those that still do - believe that we have some higher moral purpose, that death and destruction can be justified if it is in the cause of freedom and hope. But have they considered what freedom and hope actually is, and whose freedom and hope it is that we are actually fighting for?

The war in Iraq started in order to protect freedom and hope in the West – as Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction and was just 45 minutes away from killing us all. So we went to war to protect ourselves. Then of course we realised that the reasons for going to war were entirely false, so a change of tack was needed – and provided. We now realised that we weren’t going to war to protect ourselves, but rather to give freedom and hope to the oppressed Iraqis – never mind that it was Western politics that had enslaved them to Saddam Hussain in the first place (or that it was Britain that originally drew up the very borders of Iraq as we know it).

So in the end we had to fall back on the belief that the greater purpose was a war to export democracy, freedom, and perhaps even a little bit of Western modernity to those poor desert dwellers. This gave the enormous benefit of being a justification for further wars, if you export democracy once, then you can export democracy again and again and again.

But the truth is we only export violence, and we will only get back violence in return. Most rational people realise this, but rational people are firmly in the minority, and definitely are not involved in running the world. 9/11 cost the lives of over 3000 people; its response has cost the lives of over 100,000 people.

This is the tragic demonstration of the real value of human life in this world, we value our own lives immeasurably, a mixture of racial arrogance, and blind ignorance. Whilst we view the ‘unpeople’ – that is anyone not Western, not one of us, them – with contempt, if we even consider them as part of the equation. We view them largely as the enemy, millions of people that need to be placated in order that we may live our lives, rich, greedy, increasingly obese, and evermore paranoid.

The war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, still ongoing with fierce fighting, and many deaths and casualties, has led to Tony Blair and George Bush’s constant downplaying of the economic cost of the war. An estimation as to the economic cost of war has been made in a study by Linda Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, who estimate that the conservative figure (including direct costs and macroeconomic costs) of just over $1 trillion, with a moderate estimate of over $2.2 trillion. Taking the conservative figure that means that if 3000 people died as a result of 9/11 each one of those lives is now valued at $342,000,000.

Or put another way if 100,000 innocent people have died as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then we have spent $10,260,000 to kill each one.

Perhaps life is not so cheap after all. It will be even more expensive, yet paradoxically more worthless, once Iran is attacked; and most of us will be too busy watching shit TV to even care.

General Sir Michael Rose:

…three years ago this country was somehow led by the prime minister into war in Iraq where few, if any, of these requirements were met.Most importantly a clear justification for the war in Iraq was never sufficiently made by Tony Blair - for the intelligence he presented was always embarrassingly patchy and inconsistent.

What is more, his unequivocal statement to the House of Commons that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be used within 45 minutes was made without being properly validated - for it was decided in Washington and London to launch the invasion of Iraq early, on the basis of the flimsy evidence available. This was done without asking the UN weapons inspectors, who were actually on the ground in Iraq, to investigate this allegation. Ultimately, as the inspectors suspected and as we now all know, it turned out that there were no such weapons. Britain had been led into war on false pretences.

It was a war that was to unleash untold suffering on the Iraqi people and cause grave damage to the west’s prospects in the wider war against global terror.

Melanie ‘Hitler in a dress’ Phillips:

Sir Michael’s comments may strike rational folk as idiotic beyond belief; they may marvel that such a senior military type should be mouthing the same poisonous inanities as the far left, which in a time of war might be thought to be distinctly treacherous. The terrible thing is that he is far from alone. A large swathe of the British establishment now think just like this. The scale of such a suspension of rationality, logic and truth throughout the British political, intellectual, religious, military and intelligence world in Britain is simply terrifying at a time of such desperate global peril. They just don’t get it.

Remember people, dissent against the eternal war is idiotic, and anyone who dares to question the magnificent state will be treated as a traitor. Of all the mindless drivel I have ever read Melanie Phillips is in a league of her own. You can imagine the haggard old bag frothing at the mouth as she hammers her ‘war is peace’ and ‘white is black’ articles into her computer - covering the monitor in a rabid foam as she screams about an ‘anti-Jewish conspiracy’.

Please Melanie, at least try to form some convincing arguments once in a while.

At least I am not the only one that hates her.

Possibly the best blonde joke ever?

It’s been a while since I have had enough energy to write anything, and I’m not really going to now, but I will add a few links to the best bloggers around who somehow manage to write consistantly - and brilliantly - about the fetid, rotten, sceptic, world in which we live.

Starting off I am staggered that I missed this until today:

Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.

If I hear one more person qualify this invasion of privacy with the old ‘you have nothing to fear unless you are doing something wrong’, then I think I’ll beat them to death with a video camera. Still, at least it will reduce the terrorist masses to walking, perhaps they will get tired carrying all those explosives and detonate themselves harmlessly in fields.

Sticking with Allan Scullion, what is the biggest round off drinks you bought in last year? Chances are it won’t be as big as your slice of tax-money that has been consumed by our hard-working politicians:

the Commons recently consumed almost 800 pints of alcoholic drink for every day it sat.

However, this does not effect the average make-up of a politician, they are still largely full of shit.

One last link to the same blog, and a favourite topic for Allan is taxes, or is it just that there are so many taxes he cannot avoid the occasional accidental post on them:

Pocket Money Tax: Youngsters need to be indoctrinated into the tax system at the earliest opportunity to truly understand the value of redistribution. Children aged 5 and above will have to fill out an annual Tax Return form which needs to be certified by an independent accountant (supplied by the child’s parents or guardians.) There will be severe penalties for late returns. Tax rates will be set on a sliding scale determined by the child’s school grades. Money received from persons other than the parent or guardian will be classed as a “benefit in kind”. This should be submitted on a separate form P11D and will be taxed at 80%.

Moving on to a different blogger, and one of my favourite sites - essential daily reading - is Tim Ireland. Everyone should know who he is, and everyone should have already read or watched the below:

97% of Sun readers do not support Blair’s 90-day detention plan:

Let’s start with the numbers they do give…

A whopping 100,000 of you phoned our hotline to DEMAND 90 days’ detention for terror suspects.

Recent figures show the Sun’s circulation at 3,361,396.

(100000/3361396) x 100 = 2.97%

Hm. So we’d best correct that:

Less than 3% of you phoned our hotline to DEMAND 90 days’ detention for terror suspects.

Sergeant Tim Nunn cares about your safety:

BBC - Safety fears at ‘illegal’ protest: A police sergeant feared for his colleagues’ safety at a demonstration over new laws banning protests near Parliament, a court has heard… Mr Nunn told the court Mr Shaer used a loud hailer to call the police fascists and accused them of trying to gag demonstrators..

You’ll pardon me for saying so, but what a load of unmitigated bullshit.

The World according to Leo Blair - you’ll just have to watch this one.

Now just read every post Tim Ireland has ever written, really it is that good.

And finally I just couldn’t stop laughing reading this from Justin Mckeating, and I am glad he has maintained his sanity after looking at the New Labour ‘Respect’ campaign (also a big new topic for Tim Ireland…).

Well this is just a small slice of the stuff I have read recently, and who knows, maybe someday i’ll find the motivation to write something new…

Diplomacy. What does this word actually mean? Is it the process of sorting out national and international problems through rational, peaceful, inclusive, arguments? Or is it the gunboat, or nuclear threat curtailing any arguments against largely Western nuclear hegemony?

Whatever it is in recent times it has been paid largely lip service by Western governments who have already decided on policy, but want to appear that they tried ‘everything they can to avoid using force… blah blah blah’, before sending in the Airforce and destroying yet another Nations sovereignty.

Still, when it comes to ‘other’ nations, i.e. anyone not ‘conducive’ to the continuation of ’stability’ in the Westo-centric vision of American dominance - with the larger EU countries acting as groupies - then they should use diplomcay to resolve all problems, and be grateful if we even give them a chance to talk round a table.

Diplomacy, such as Iran for example, a country that wants nuclear power, something that we will not allow, something about the creation of WMD (this time we are threatening a country when we know they haven’t even made any WMD’s!), yet we don’t really have any evidence of a nuclear missile program. I guess we have to just trust in the governments of the US and UK to provide us with valid, reliable intelligence, surely they wouldn’t lie to us… again… would they?

Well we are about to find out, ‘IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for electricity only, had told his agency it wants to restart centrifuges at Natanz to enrich uranium on a “small scale.”‘ and of course the Western world is up in arms, I mean its not as if we have a nuclear weapons program, or vast stockpiles of them, or that the US is intending to use them (again…) this time in Iran… oh.

The stench of extreme hypocrisy is hard to stomach whenever you read soundbites from the neo-conservative scum that fester in the Whitehouse, and of course this issue is no different:

“They shouldn’t do it because it would really be a sign that they are not prepared to actually make diplomacy work,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week.

“By cutting the seals, the Iranian leadership shows its disdain for international concern and its rejection of international diplomacy,” Schulte [the US ambassador to the IAEA] said.

Perhaps similiar to the disdain for international concern and diplomacy when you invaded Iraq? Or like the disdain for international concern and diplomacy when you go ahead and nuke Iranian nuclear sites.

Diplomacy. It’s just the stuff that happens whilst you plan the next war.

Bush’s Tookie - Remembering Bush’s worst public moment. By Timothy Noah

The Sunday Times run this story, and to be honest I don’t think anyone expected them to face charges. However, there must be some people wondering just how accountable the officers involved actually are, and whether if the defence is poor intelligence anyone higher up the food chain will face action. What seems to me to suggest that the officers acted incorrectly is the false statements issued by the Metropolitan police to justify the attack.

The statements - suggesting that ‘his [de Menezes] clothing and his behaviour at the station added to [the officers’] suspicions’ - seemed to acknowledge that even with intelligence fed through to the officers by radio, before lethal force was used the officers’ had to have some further justification. However, the statements were false, and the scene now revolves around a exceedingly normal person sitting on a train being jumped on, forced to the ground and repeatedly shot. The officers have no personal justification in shooting de Menezes, instead they have to admit that although they had been given ‘intelligence’ during the pursuit, they still had to make a judgement call based on their own professional experience, and that they got it badly wrong. A man has died and someone must take responsibility for this, if the officers involved are not charged, then someone else must face charges for false intelligence, or perhaps a failed order handed down without enough evidence that lethal force was neccesary. Conversely, if no-one senior to the officers is charged in this way, and that any orders or intelligence handed down to the officers was given based on interpretation by the officers when confronted by de Menezes, then the officers’ must face charges.

The justification of ‘just following orders’ was not good enough for Nurembourg, and it shouldn’t be good enough here either.

Tony Blair, complete and utter nonsensical twat (abbreviated to CUNT), continues to push the boundaries of unbelievable hypocrisy, and continues to smugly grin in ignorance. The subject is becoming a favourite for the international messiah: Iran. Blair’s comments basically assert that Iran is responsible for preventing progress in the Middle East because:

the regime is doing things that are completely unacceptable in the international community — like supporting terrorism, like meddling in Iraq, like trying to have a nuclear weapons program…

Sorry? ‘meddling in Iraq’, ’supporting terrorism’, having a ‘nuclear weapons program’? Is it me or is this exactly the same thing that America and Britain are guilty of? What is the difference Tony? Is it that Iran are trying to get nuclear weapons, whilst we are simply in the progress of upgrading them, is it that Iran may be sending small arms into Iraq, whilst we send in the heavy bombers, is it that they support the wrong kind of terrorism?

Surely there must be some kind of distinction between Iran and the UK for you to make that statement. But there is not, you made the statement because you are a joke, you live in a fantasy world, a world that simply does not exist.

That in this world you somehow run a country is an even bigger joke.

Whilst the storm troopers prefer the Sun for it’s brash xenophobia, racism in short easy to understand words - and tits - the higher echelons of the modern National Socialism phenomenon prefer something a little more highbrow; but nonetheless obvious.

The sports section is surely pretty innocuous in any newspaper? Or is it… this little gem courtesy of Football365’s ‘Mediawatch’:

United’s Right-Wing (Get It?)

The various rags perused by Mediawatch this morning offer a variety of reasons for Manchester United’s ongoing crapness, ranging from a lack of confidence/team spirit to the simple observation that a midfield trio of Fletcher, Richardson and Smith is, by definition, utter toss. Only in one place was one man willing to actually confront the problem:

‘No more pussyfooting around. No more Europhile posturing…there is absolutely no evidence that Carlos Queiroz has the slightest idea which ingredients go into a traditionally rip-roaring United team. To hell with the thinking man’s game, and if that means unseating the Continental professor at Old Trafford, then so be it.

‘United have been marching to the beat of a different drummer. The thunder of Ferguson’s sound and fury have given way to the slower, less insistent lilt of his assistant’s native fado. Here is Scottish rage diluted by Portuguese melancholy.

‘Queiroz seems unable to recognise, let alone stimulate, that quintessential way of playing which has been the basis of United’s half century of glory.

‘Not for nothing is Ferguson known as the Godfather of Premiership managers. He had called for a revival of the cavalier spirit. Still the dead hand of Queiroz was on the sterile tactics and tempo.

‘Unless Ferguson takes action without pity, Queiroz will drag him down with him’.

The man? Jeff Powell. The newspaper? The Daily Mail. The problem? The foreigner.

The Iranian President has said that Iran wanted Israel ‘wiped off the map’ (cue psychotic rant from Melanie Philips about poor, pick-upon, innocent Israel: ‘It’s all an anti-Jewish conspiracy, everyone in the world is a secret Nazi wanting to finish the final solution’ and on and on and on, when in reality she does a pretty good impression of Hitler – but even more paranoid and delusional.), and such comments have naturally caused condemnation from world leaders. Blair and Bush were quick to point out that the polite way to suggest that a nation should be wiped off the map is by suggesting that a nation needs a ‘regime change’ to ‘Spread freedom’ or ‘Democracy’, and such crassness (or honesty) is symptomatic of such an uncivilised nation. Bush was further upset that a leader dared to contemplate wiping out another nation without the consent or express desire of God - something that Bush got way ahead of his invasions.

Blair had plenty to say, so I have provided a handy translation of what he actually meant; speech courtesy of the BBC.

Blair Speaks: “Their attitude towards Israel, their attitude towards terrorism, their attitude on the nuclear weapons issue - it isn’t acceptable.”

Blair Means: “Their attitude towards Israel’s state terrorism is unacceptable, and their desire to seek their legal right to nuclear energy is unacceptable – they should have folded by now and allowed US and UK troops to enter the country.”

Blair Speaks: “If they continue down this path, then people are going to believe that they are a real threat to our world security and stability.”

Blair Means: “A few more choice phrases from Iranian leaders, and excellent, they’ll save us the trouble of convincing people we need to go to war, again. I love it.”

Blair Speaks: “They may believe… the eyes of the world will be elsewhere, but I felt a real sense of revulsion at those remarks.”

Blair Means: “They won’t ever be allowed to forget these words, we’ll ensure all the worlds eyes are pointed at Iran, preferably staring down the barrel of a gun, I feel a real opportunity has arisen from those remarks.”

Blair Speaks: “Can you imagine a state like that with an attitude like that having a nuclear weapon?”

Blair Means: “Can you imagine a state like that with an attitude like that having a nuclear weapon? (Ignoring of Course, Russia – who feel the same about Chechnya, Britain – who feel the same about most of the world, North Korea – who feel the same about South Korea, and America – who want to wipe out everyone. They don’t count, we’re all kind of friends.)”

[Hon. Members: “Give way!”] I have made it clear that I will not give way—[Hon. Members: “Why not?”] It is because we have only a short time for this Third Reading and I intend to set out the argument.—[Interruption.]

So said Charles Clarke as he worked his way through his 309 MP’s voting in favour of the government’s bill, 284 against.

Once again Charles Clarke’s arguments were simply statements, without evidence, against all reason, and soaked in the lies of the New Labour terror-regime, where any utterance becomes fact if repeated often enough by the sychophantic Blairites:

Let me reassert the benefits of the scheme. First, ID cards will help to tackle identity fraud, which now costs the UK economy and society more than £1.3 billion a year. Secondly, a secure identity system will help to prevent terrorist activity, more than a third of which makes use of false identities. Thirdly, identity cards will make it far easier to control immigration and illegal working, and British citizens will be able to use their identity cards instead of a passport to travel in Europe. Fourthly, ID cards will secure the more efficient and effective provision of public services.

This is the government’s four main ‘reasons’ for adopting ID cards, but in reality it is simply four meaningless statements, each of them easily destroyed by reasoned argument and honest intellect, each of them dripping with lies, half-truths, and exaggerations. However, government is ruled by the mob, not by the people, truth is determined by those in charge of the mob, and handed down to the masses whether they like it or not. This bill - if passed - as an enabling act will continue the determined attack on civil liberties waged by Blair since he took office. For Blair the state is all, the people are nothing, Blair convinces himself he is fighting for ideals, when all he is really doing is fighting for power, for complete control. Like any good state heading towards totalitarinism, the first battle the state must win is the battle against it’s people, and this is a battle that New Labour will now fight in the House of Lords.

People are against ID cards, and people will refuse to be issued with them, this is without doubt, and maybe with success. During the 45 minute ‘debate’ I was heartened by the eloquent speech of Edward Garnier, a Conservative MP, a speech I shall quote in full:

Where I depart from the Home Secretary is in the analysis of the Bill that he made during the 15 minutes that he occupied of this 45-minute debate. Indeed, is not there something rather obscene about a Home Secretary complaining about lack of time to debate his Bill because his Government have curtailed the time for debate? On Report, I pointed out that his Under-Secretary, with whom he is now conversing, was cut off in his prime in Committee. I believe that the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality was also cut off during Report this evening. All those things would be welcome in some circumstances, but if the Government say that their own motions prevent them from debating their legislation, who are we to complain?

We need to be clear about the fact that during this debate the Government’s majority was cut to 32 and 33, and I encourage all Members who are interested in democracy and civil liberties and who have read the Bill to vote with us this evening against the Third Reading. The Bill is economically illiterate and politically inept, and will prove socially divisive.

The Government began the whole sorry process by saying that the Bill would be valuable in the fight against terrorism; yet, to be fair to the Home Secretary—I am occasionally fair to him—on 8 July he said that identity cards would not have prevented the tube attacks on 7 July. We know that 9/11 would not have been prevented by identity cards. The people who committed those crimes had pilots’ licences and passports. Those who committed the crimes on 7 July were perfectly happy to be filmed by the railway station closed circuit television. The problem was not hiding their identity, but hiding their intention—[Interruption.] I am glad to see that Members on the Treasury Bench find the subject so tremendously funny.

When the Government lost their first argument they said, “Oh, perhaps we’ll try benefit fraud”. However, we know that benefit fraud will not be dealt with by the possession of identity cards or by the information in the national identity register. Then they said, “Well, let’s try immigration, that’s bound to help”. The Home Secretary is trying that again this evening, but the problem is that one does not have to register on the national identity register or hold an identity card if one is in the country for less than three months. When a person enters the country as a tourist, how are the Government to know that they have not remained beyond the permitted time?

There is the problem of the free travel area between the UK and the Irish Republic and the free travel area in the European Union. What will that do? Far from preventing immigration illegalities, it will exacerbate ethnic problems and cultural division in the UK. Do the Government want to give a free hand to the British National party? Anybody who thinks that is a good idea should vote for this sordid Government this evening.

The Government then said, and the Home Secretary repeated this evening, that the measure would deal with identity fraud. When the Bill began its passage in the summer, identity fraud cost the economy £50 million, but during the summer months the cost rose to £1.5 billion. I do not know why, and the Government have produced no evidence to support that fact. Indeed, we are having a Third Reading by assertion with an absence of proof. We cannot have legislation that is created in this form or pushed through in such a way, and we cannot tolerate a Government who have absolutely no understanding of the constitution of this country.

The Government moved on to say that the scheme would prevent other forms of serious crime. As the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) pointed out on Second Reading, no serious criminal will be too bothered about whether he is required to register for, or have, an identity card. The money would be far better spent on police officers, gaining intelligence about the activities of criminals and producing a proper border control police.

The Government have blustered and demanded that we agree with all their assertions, despite the lack of evidence to prove them. Eventually, they have ended up saying that it would be more convenient for us all if we had identity cards and information was stored away on the national identity register. If the Government want to see the population of this country wandering around with a form of barcode across our foreheads, or with a mark to allow us to come out of our houses, they are not the sort of Government whom this country needs. We should certainly not be promoting such a society.

The Bill is obscene and absurd and it will do nothing but damage the country’s interests as a whole. It will do nothing to advance the causes that we all share: defeating terrorism; doing away with benefit fraud; and tightening up our immigration rules, which the Government have randomly let fall apart. Of course we want to deal with identity fraud and serious crime, but the Bill will not do that in its present form and would not have done that in its first form. It is a ridiculous and stupid Bill.

What will the scheme cost the citizen? All of us over the age of 16 will have to pay not only the £30 cost of buying the wretched card, but the travel costs of getting from the outer isles to the Glasgow centre at which one will be processed, as though one were in some gulag, or from rural parts of the country to other cities.

What will the scheme cost the country as a whole? We all know that the cost will be somewhere between £8 billion and £19 billion, but the Government say that the cost of a card will be only £30. The whole thing is utterly absurd, and the more one examines what the Secretary of State has to say, the more absurd it becomes and the more absurd the Government are.

Let us step aside from the practical arguments against the Bill and consider a matter of principle: the relationship between the citizen and state, about which the Government care little and know nothing. They have forgotten about constitutional history—if they knew anything about it—and the proper relationship between the Government, Parliament and the judiciary. All that is swept aside with great windy bluster from the Home Secretary and his junior Ministers. It is time for Parliament to stand up for what it is supposed to and to defend the liberties of the citizen, not to kowtow to this appalling Government and go down on bended knee and grovel as they pass more and more appalling legislation to destroy the rights of the citizen. It is no good for the Government to say that this is all exaggeration—just look at what they have done already and what they intend to do through this Bill and other legislation to eat into the liberties of the citizen.

This is a bad Bill from a sad Government. It is legislation by statutory instrument. The Government are providing 61 separate powers to enable the Home Secretary or his successor to produce secondary legislation. The Bill contains very little detail. It increases the penalty for misbehaviour. One could easily be fined up to £2,500 for what the Government politely call a “civil penalty”, and if one does not pay that, off one goes to prison.

The Bill amounts to little more than a denial of democracy. The House should be ashamed of it, and I trust that all people of honour in the House will increase the Government’s embarrassment by reducing their majority to way below 32—indeed, we should kill this Bill.

Not content with creating thousands of years of religious fueds, he has now inflicted on us a new Jesus: George Bush. Jesus was a son of a carpenter, George is a son of a bitch, but lets hope that the new Jesus meets a similiar fate, and is nailed to a cross within a week. But is it God that is to blame, or are the voices in his head thoseof the devil?

Either way, it is those that applauded Bush’s ridiculous speech are the real evil, may they all burn in hell.

The Excellent Tim Ireland has this warning for the rest of us, time to take heed…

If the average person starts work aged 18, and retires at 65 (47 years), working the average UK working week of 40 hours, then minus 25 days a year for holidays/bank holidays they will spend around 91,080 hours at work. During the same time the average person will sleep 8 hours a night, 136,864 hours, and will spend 4 hours a day watching TV, a further 68,432 hours. So in those 47 years taking into account just 3 factors we have already accounted for 296,376 hours of that time – around 24% of the total hours (410,592) spent at work. So, during our 47 years of work we have just 114,216 hours to spend doing something other than working, sleeping or watching TV. So what else have we got to do? Well we have to eat, say breakfast is 20 minutes, lunch we’ll assume is taken during work, whilst evening meal - cooking, eating and subsequent cleaning - say 1 hour 40 minute to keep it simple. So at just 2 hours a day that takes care of another 34,216 hours. What about getting to and from work everyday? Some lucky sods work from home, but the rest of us must spend at least an hour a day commuting, that’s another 11,385 hours gone. If we are eating and working that means we must also be shopping: food, clothes, furniture, gadgets, tat, that’s another 6 hours a week or 14,664 hours gone. If we are buying stuff then we are also making mess, how many hours of our lives do we spend tidying up? I reckon at least 7 hours a week are spent just tidying stuff, 17,108 hours gone.

That means we have used a total of 359,085 hours of our 47-year working life, and have just 51,507hours left. So, what do we do with the rest of our time? It would be fair to say that the average person goes out twice, maybe three times a week, that’s probably 14 hours a week spent in pubs/clubs (as a conservative estimate), so that would get rid of another 34,216 hours, leaving just 17,291 hours remaining. Imagine all the things you have or want to do in that time: you have to wash, dress, shave, go to the toilet, travel, attend funerals, weddings, christenings, stag/hen nights, talk, read, go to the cinema, go to the beach, have hobbies, run, exercise. You may want to: have kids, relationships, write a book, paint, see the world, play sports, go to the gym etc…

You have just 17,291 hours or 720 days to do all this.

However, do we really need to go through all this hassle? Given that we choose to spend over 68,000 of those hours watching TV, and are forced to waste a further 136,864 at work, then why bother? In the UK only 37% of men and 25% of women take the recommended 30 minutes of moderate exercise at least five times a week, 88% of men and 83% of women consume too much saturated fat. And salt intake is excessive in 85% of men and 69% of women. The UK has the fastest growing rate of obesity in the developed world; we have the money and greed to eat ourselves to an early grave.

So, can we really be responsible enough to even live with the slightest degree of freedom? I don’t think so. Remember the Matrix, the fictional world where people lived life in a computer generated reality, they were simply plugged into a cocoon supplying energy to the robots running the world; in exchange the robots gave them a false reality. It was has since led to many people questioning the reality of our own lives, as if we really look at the way in which we live we have far more in common with the Matrix than we would want. Our freedom of thought is controlled by ‘education’, work and the media, who are all controlled and centralised bodies that together operate much as the Matrix does. In the US 99.5% of the population own a TV, whilst 95% of the population watches it everyday.

Ours is the first generation to have essentially moved its life inside television; to have replaced direct contact with people and nature with simulated edited recreated versions. Television is the original ‘virtual reality’.

The vast majority of global television imagery, as well as film, books, newspapers, entertainment imagery, and Internet outlets are owned by a tiny handful of corporations. Aol/Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and a couple of others, are controlling most of the world’s broadcast, publishing and entertainment industry. They are ‘directly assisted by the rules of the WTO and other global institutions that grease the pathways for their investments, takeovers and mergers.’ These are the people who control us; they don’t need to plug us into a computer system, we willingly obey their message and live in their world. Billions of people all across the globe in darkened rooms sit staring, blankly, passively, brainlessly at the TV, night after night, year after year. They are told what to wear, what to desire, what to buy and from whom.

Between school, work, and sleep most of our precious time on earth is accounted for, most of it by corrupt systems of repression, the rest we choose to waste sitting in front of a box. So why not save time, why waste money on weapons (over £546 billion worldwide last year), when we should be constructing a Matrix system. When the Matrix system is complete we can all just be plugged in, we can obey the same gods, live in the same repression, but at least they could control our diet.

Reality is a direct reflection of ourselves, so if we choose to live in the Matrix, lets at least do it properly.

The above article uses some quotations from Who Benefits Most? By Jerry Mander. I strongly recommend you read it.