Available now from Amazon...

The Playmobil Security Check Point

An old favourite but there have been some interesting new customer reviews since my last visit. This one's still the best though...

.

Nowhere to run to baby. Nowhere to hide... pt .47

I've already posted a link to the following story via a comment in a previous post. I think it's worth linking to because it illustrates a couple of things...

- The assault on personal freedoms being made in the name of the bullshit 'War on Terror' is truly global

- If there aren't any Muslims on hand to justify the establishment of a police state framework virtually anyone else will do. And if they're not scary enough they're encouraged to be a bit scarier


Anti-terror squad spies on protest groups
By NICKY HAGER and ANTHONY HUBBARD
Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 14 December 2008

Police teams set up to identify terrorism threats and risks to national security are spying on protest and community groups, including Greenpeace, animal rights and climate change campaigners, and Iraq war protesters.

Police officers from the Special Investigation Group (SIG) have carried out surveillance and used a paid informer to gather information not just about planned protests but the personal lives and sexual relationships of group members.

The police informer, Christchurch man Rob Gilchrist, whose activities are revealed in today's Sunday Star-Times, was a key member of various community groups during the past decade.

He helped arrange protests and was close friends with leading campaigners, and advocated radical and illegal activities by the groups.

Last week he said he was embarrassed and sorry for what he did. The people he spied on were not security threats. "I know they are good people trying to make a better world."

Wellington human rights lawyer Michael Bott said the surveillance of peaceful groups was repugnant and "has shades of Big Brother and Soviet Russia". Surveillance of the personal lives of members of peaceful groups meant the basic right to privacy was being eroded. "It just appears fundamentally abusive and wrong."

Gilchrist was unmasked recently when his animal rights and Labour Party activist girlfriend Rochelle Rees was helping him fix his computer. She stumbled across signs of him passing information about protest groups to an anonymous email address.

This address has since been traced to two SIG officers based at the Christchurch central police station, Detective Peter Gilroy and Detective Sergeant John Sjoberg. Gilchrist privately referred to them as "Uncle Pete" and "Uncle John".

Melbourne newspaper The Age reported a similar case three months ago, where an undercover police officer had infiltrated community groups. He worked in Animal Liberation Victoria, taking part in a midnight raid on a battery hen farm, and helped organise anti-Iraq war demonstrations.

He worked for Australia's similarly named Security Intelligence Group, which is also officially focused on terrorism...


There is, of course, just a little bit of irony about state operatives monitoring NZ Greenpeace for terrorist tendencies when you recall that Greenpeace itself was the victim of state sponsored terrorism when French government agents blew up the Rainbow Warrior twenty years ago




Not that states, especially western democracies, ever actually sponsor terrorism and even if they did we'd know all about every single terrorist act they ever sponsored because we'd read about it in the newspapers. Definitely

.

The Brown End of the Wedge

I went out with some friends for a few beers last night and, as luck would have it, I found myself sitting for most of the night with an unobstructed view of the MI6 HQ across the Thames




Not being the greatest fan of the building even when sober, the effects of a few drinks only enhanced the malevolence of the place

Later on in the evening, back at home, I flipped on my computer for a few minutes of relaxing, semi-inebriated surfing. I found myself reading through the comments underneath Guido Fawkes' post on the subject of a video of Tory MP Damian Green's office being searched by anti-terror police...





The mix of right wing libertarians, conservatives and Little Englanders who comment on the site were understandably outraged at the implications of Green's arrest for civil liberties in this country

and all I could think to myself was 'Where was your outrage when the government was doing this to Muslims? Did you really think it was going to stop with just one group of people? Are you really that fucking stupid, you hypocritical, self-interested, narrow-minded, bigoted fucks?'

I banged my head against the keyboard a couple of times then went to bed...

.

Giving up Liberties for Freedom pt315

I've just been booking tickets for my dear old Mum to fly to New Zealand next year

You can either fly via Asia or via the US. If you travel through the US you get twice the baggage allowance

Unfortunately, my Mum's passport isn't one of the new chipped jobbies required to travel through the US - which means she has to either get a new passport or apply for a C1 Transit Visa...


C-1 Visa - Transit

In general, travelers in transit through the United States require valid C-1 visas. That is unless they are eligible to transit the United States visa free under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), or they are a national of a country which has an agreement with the United States allowing their citizens to travel to the United States without visas.

If you are not eligible to transit the United States under the VWP, or are not a national of a country where visa requirements are waived, you will be required to apply for a transit (C-1) visa before traveling.

All C-1 visa applicants, even children and babies listed in parents' passports are required to:

* Complete the visa application form DS-156.

* Pay a visa application fee;

* Present a passport or other travel document valid for at least six months beyond the holder's period of stay in the United States with at least one blank page - the six-month requirement does not apply to United Kingdom passports;

* Provide one photograph which meet State Department regulations;

and present evidence of

* sufficient funds to cover all expenses while in the United States; and

* evidence to show that the applicant has a residence abroad to which he/she intends to return at the end of the stay in the United States. This is generally established by evidence of family, professional, property, employment or other ties and commitments to some country other than the United States sufficient to cause the applicant to return there at the conclusion of his/her stay.


plus, of course, there's the compulsory fingerprinting of all arrivals to the US, even if they're transiting on the way to somewhere else

We've opted to give the Land of the Free a miss and fly through Commie controlled Hong Kong instead

.

Just how f***ing stupid do They think We are?!!

Ages ago, I tried to formulate the ultimate Daily Mail news story of the future. A story which encapsulated all the establishment-promoted fears which are being used to herd people towards the security state.

And, at the centre of that story, I imagined the ultimate threat to our sacred way of life and freedoms being something along the lines of a crazed immigrant paedophile jihadist; with a nail bomb under one arm and a small blue-eyed boy under the other




There's a post about it somewhere at the arse end of this blog a few years back

In all honesty, I never imagined that the establishment's War on Terror bollocks factory would ever believe that it was in a position to actually seriously promote something so OTT

-

I just got this email from a non Loon chum


have a look at this article, written by two people:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4959002.ece

"Link between child porn and Muslim terrorists discovered in police raids"

First two paragraphs say one thing; the following paragraphs, particularly the sixth, say ooh, actually it might not be true after all, they are looking into it.

Comments are interesting.


yes, they are

.

A fascinating new passtime

I've spent most of my spare time over the last few weeks hoofing around London trying to walk off a few pounds - ten or more miles at a time

This can get a little boring at times and I've been casting around for something to spice up my walks.

Photography is always a good stand-by but the weather, and the lighting, has been pretty rubbish of late

And then, the little GPS unit I use to mark out my routes and record my walks inspired me to think about participating in the vibrant geocaching community




Geocaching involves hiding waterproof containers containing a logbook and treasure (i.e. some plastic crap), the location of which you post on the web, for other people who are into that sort of thing to find with the aid of GPS




When you find a cache you leave an entry in the logbook, maybe take a picture, and swap some crap you brought with you for some of the crap in the box




For obvious reasons, geocachers have to be careful when searching for caches and ensure that members of the general public don't see the caches and trash them

For equally obvious reasons, a moment's thought will suggest that geocaching has the potential to get you into all sorts of interesting situations and zany adventures; involving as it does -

• lurking around and behaving furtively in parks and other public places

• hiding tupperware boxes in those parks and public places

• walking around town with a backpack, a camera and a handheld GPS

• having the lamest of excuses for what you are doing when challenged by members of the public or the security forces

The emphasis on the tupperware boxes is, in particular, a stroke of genius




An interesting side-effect of of geocaching is that maps of cache locations offer an interesting insight as to where cachers feel comfortable enough to hide sealed tupperware boxes without running the risk of being shot. The maps are, in effect, a rough indicator of 'security' hot and cold spots

Central London's extensive network of caches thins out considerably near places like Buckingham Palace, Parliament Square, Waterloo Station and Canary Wharf but I can't help noticing that there's a heap of caches in and around The City proper

Someone should be told

.

It's Jigaboo Time pt 15,123

Would you like to know more?

.

La Conspiration Mondial

A little something from Montreal on the subject of every conspiraloon's favourite private surveillance contractor...

Liberté! Egalité! Conspiraloonaté!

Verint Systems was reportedly put in charge of London Underground's CCTV cameras in 2004

Those would be the CCTV cameras that apparently didn't work on 7/7 and also on 22/7 when JCdM was shot in the face by persons unknown, lots

The people behind the short clip above have put together a much (much) longer sequence of videos dedicated to Verint but as they make repeated reference to the Mossad (the flame to the Loon moth) I won't be posting a link to them here. Not when a perfectly good Conspiraloon Alliance blog has been set up for that sort of thing

I don't pretend to know if anyone at Verint has any special knowledge about what happened on 7/7

Verint is, however...


- spooky as fuck and associated with more than its fair share of ex(?)-NSA types

- owned by Comverse, a company set up by a crook which was delisted from NASDAQ because of fraud

- operating in London Underground on a contract awarded to it whilst ex(?)-CIA man Bob Kiley was in charge of London Transport


None of which is very cool


-


I was chatting with a few fellow loons a few days ago on the subject of 'who watches the watchers?' and the apparent over-representation of Israeli companies in the high-tech security business came up in conversation

You could very easily argue that circumstances dictate that the Israelis and the ex(?) NSA types who set these kinds of businesses up have experience which gives them a perfectly explicable head start with this sort of thing

But it still makes me twitchy

And, unlike London Transport and the Montreal Transit System, I personally try to avoid turning over the keys to all my confidential data to possible/ probable spook bastards (of any nationality) wherever possible

A couple of recent, relatively trivial, examples...

ZoneAlarm Firewall software - owned by Checkpoint Software and busted for sending encrypted data about users back to Mummy without asking their permission beforehand (though this unfortunate incident is no longer recorded in Wikipedia and therefore, arguably, never actually happened)

Fring - a package which enables users to talk and chat using Skype, ICQ, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, AIM and Yahoo Messenger on their smartphones. To my knowledge, Fring hasn't actually been caught out doing anything wrong but about two seconds after I loaded it onto my phone I asked myself was I really happy plugging in all my user IDs and passwords into a single piece of software which some apparently very altruistic people in a far off land were making available to me for free?

Fring is no longer installed on my phone

Open source would, wherever possible, definitely appear to be the way to go

.

There are children here somewhere. I can smell them

Cheers to anon for sharing a most entertaining link to a new government web site, 'the site where where 16-25's can have their say about identity issues in the UK'

Oh, dear - is there anything quite so cringeworthy as half-arsed, vaguely sinister attempts at grown-ups trying to be 'with it' through encouraging the production of material 'by young people, for young people', whilst the grown ups continue to lurk in the background brandishing a big fuck off stick, just in case

In the word's of anon...


"It's obviously a serious attempt to really listen to what our young people have to say about this vital issue. So when Jacqui reads the messageboard she'll get the message loud and clear won't she? -

- Proving my age is a very different thing to proving my identity
- This is blatant government propaganda
- This site is government propanda
- Shop Assistants using the need to show ID to bully people
- The Nation ID Register is not secure - here's just one powerful reason
- SAY NO TO I.D. CARDS
- How can you stop civil servants peeking
- I'd rather emmigrate or go to prison
- Don't want one either
- Why centralised?
- Disagree with ID Cards and hav your post removed
- Don't want, Won't have
- Creepy
- Stopping the ID card scheme
- I don't trust you.
- Civil Disobedience

Warms the cockles of the heart it does."


Yes, yes it does. As did the first reply (and avatar) to this thread asking ' Tell us a little bit more about yourself'

anon goes on to say...


"Arrg the way the moderator on that id site is trying to massage the debate is asbolutly blatant and creepy:


Hi British Nick,

I understand what you say about a card not being able to stop a person from making an actual bomb. This can still happen!

I wish that the new system would stop terrorists altogether. It might be more difficult to gain access to the country from the EU if passports have chips with an individuals face and eye scans and fingerprints on. This might stop unwanted people (terrorists) coming into the country???

It will be annoying that we have to have our fingerprints taken as well.

Do you think that holding information on a central database is better than lots of different paperwork? Is this not safer and easier?

Let us know

Cheers mate.

The faux open minded chumminess particularly."


Once more, I can only agree. I haven't felt quite so creeped out since the last time I sat with my little niece playing in Club Penguin

but that's another story

which I will doubtlessly end up sharing with my new 'mates' over at mylifemyid.org...

.

Funny F*ckers

Seen in Stockwell Underground Station today...




The station is festooned with the things - including one placed tastefully on the platform directly opposite where JCdM was executed


edit: coincidentally, my North of England correspondent sent me this picture taken in Rochdale station today whilst I was typing this post up...

hmmm, mucho synchronisticomente

and remember, it's only subliminal if you're deaf, dumb and f**king blind

.

Vote for UK plc - because every little helps

Almost two years ago now I wrote a couple of posts advocating that Tescos either became a political party eligible for national government or that the entire UK, including its population, was incorporated as a public limited company and sold onto Tescos

"Despite being the middle class of Oceanian society, the Outer Party's standard of living is very poor. Foodstuffs are low quality or synthetic; the main alcoholic beverage — Victory Gin — is industrial-grade; Outer Party Victory Cigarettes aren't manufactured properly"

As well as paving the way for exciting new developments in the delivery of essential public services – such as ’Be Good to Yourself’, ‘Standard’ and ‘Value Range’ choices in the provision of health care, education, policing and illegal warfare, a Tesco run administration would also be able to make the wretched national identity card scheme work.

Based on their existing loyalty card scheme, a Tesco National ID card could incorporate a points based reward system which would enable good citizens to earn valuable credits through worthwhile acts which they could subsequently redeem to gain admission into hospitals which won’t kill them or enable them to use their rubbish bins or taps without fear of being tasered. Well, maybe just a little bit

So, naturally enough, I am gratified to read this article in the Daily Telegraph which confirms, yet again, that Conspiraloons such as your truly, are well ahead of the curve when it comes to truly radical and progressive thinking…

We'll be able to sign up for ID cards at Tesco

Thanks to anon for pointing me towards this article and especially the truly inspirational torrent of foamy-mouthed Conspiraloonatic abuse directed at the political and economic elites in the comments section underneath

Maybe we aren’t the only people who can see after all

If I've said it once I've said it four or five times, once you've tasted Loon there's no going back and our numbers are growing every day

muwhahaha!!

.

It's all in the database

edit: a few pieces of LoonTrivia™ arising from comments made underneath this post:

- Even though State-endorsed TV licence fee bounty hunters cannot enter your property, unless you invite them in, there is no conclusive evidence to establish if garlic, clear running water, wooden stakes or the Sun's rays are an effective deterrent

- but there's no harm in trying

- The State Propaganda Tax is not collected by the BBC or the State but by Capita Group; on the understanding that replacement or merger of large, bloated, inefficient publicly-owned monopolies with large, bloated, inefficient private monopolies is a Good Thing, and definitely not fascism

- Capita Group's turnover and profit have increased tenfold under the current Labour government

- The ex chairman of Capita is a heavy Labour party donour

- Capita is also responsible for the BBC's outsourced HR and Recruitment services

- Intriguingly, the voice artist used in the ad above, if not the very same person, is a dead ringer for the narrator used by the BBC's Conspiracy Files series. Her CV presumably lists 'creeping people out and leaving them with a vague sense of unease' as one of her major professional attributes. Presumably, she's also got more work than she handle

That's enough trivia for now. I have to write a cheque and pop my next month's council tax installment in the post to, well fuck me, Capita Group...

.

Is April 1st over yet?

Thank G-d for that

I've learned from bitter experience that if you must post something on a blog on April1st be very, very careful what you link to

Mind you, this year's April Fools' gag, next year's government initiative
.

You cant picture this

Cheers to Ian for sending me a link to this video of someone being hassled in the West End for using a video camera to add to the expanding archive of people being hassled for using cameras in public places. I think it might be quite interesting but only made it through the first two minutes before getting so wound up I had to turn the damned thing off...

Current.tv on UK Photo Restrictions

.

A cautionary tale for anyone using Blogger...

"Banned by Google, It could be you next"

.

WikiWar™

A few days ago I wrote a post about bullshit terror pundits in response to the July 7th Truth Campaign publishing some information they have uncovered about a possible gap in the official biography one of the UK's leading terror pundits, Peter Power

An anonymous commentator under my post was thoughtful enough to update Power's entry on Wikipedia

which didn't go down too well with someone over in WikiLand...


"I and a few others, watch out for hostile groups trying to hijack Wikipedia features to promote themselves. It is known from other websites that you have a very hostile vendetta against Power. Your organisation should express its views in another article. I gather you believe that the 7 July 2005 London bombing tragedy was played by actors pretending to be injured, or missing the point that there have been 22 bombs on the London underground since 1885? The ‘Julyseventh’ group who inserted the previous last sentence in the article about Peter Power have been inaccurate and malicious in their intent, as opposed to just informative. Their addition has therefore been removed.You are adding nothing of value to this article, expect to suit your purposes that I and others consider malicious. You are part of the 'julyseventh'campaign has a very hostile vendetta against Power (see many other websites) and you clearly seek to use Wikipedia to further this by adding valueless/malicious additions. Please stop doing this--Martinfud (talk) 17:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)..."


There's been plenty more Power-related goings on behind the scenes at Wikipedia, including a fair old slab of probable sock puppetry

What is clear from reading the exchanges is that the burden of proof demanded from people who dissent against officially sanctioned viewpoints, theories and, um, biographies is a lot higher than that demanded of pundits who are given free-rein to push fascistic fear-mongering nonsense on national TV

I mention these goings-on just on the offchance that 'anon' doesn't realise that he's started a small WikiWar™ and would like to take the opportunity to put the record straight about J7T NOT being the originators of the original edit, as they have been accused of being by someone with their hand up a sock's arse

An actor depicting what Peter Power might look like if he or a friend of his were editing a Wikipedia entry

As for the accusation that vendettas are being waged...

I can't speak for J7T or anon but there are only two reasons why I am interested in Peter Power...

1. He's on TV a lot selling what I believe to be a bullshit War on Terror paradigm which is steadily diminishing those freedoms he and his kind claim to be protecting. The supposed credibility of what he is selling derives largely from his reported professional history. That professional history is therefore clearly a matter of public interest

2. He went on radio on the day of the London bombings and claimed that his firm was carrying out a terrorism response drill at exactly the same time and in exactly the same stations as the 7/7 bombs. This, I believe, means that either a hugely improbable fluke took place, Power's firm had some prior knowledge of the planned attacks on London, or he is a bullshitter who was plugging his firm whilst the bodies of the victims of 7/7 were still warm. I don't pretend to know what the answer is but anyone concerned with 7/7 and its repercussions would probably like see Power's claims investigated, by the police or the mainstream media. So far, they appear not to have been and matey continues to crop up on the State Broadcasting Company banging away about the 'New Normal' uncontested





This isn't the first time an anonymous commentator on this blog has posted something a little contentious on Wikipedia. A while back someone (I'm guessing the same someone who posted the Power edit) created a Wikipedia entry for that other bunch of creepy nutsacks Common Purpose. It's heartening to note that the folks over at Common Purpose have been offended by some of the things Internet Conspiraloons have been saying about them and they recently posted a rebuttal which makes some vague hints about legal action without going so far as to announcing they are going to take any. More on CP and other fun Nu-World 'opinion shaping' outfits such as Editorial Intelligence another time




In the meantime, nice one(s) 'anon' but please be aware that there are folks out there keen to rip into J7T whenever it puts a foot wrong or can be misrepresented as having put a foot wrong - if you read through the discussion over at Wiki I think you'll understand what I mean

.

Go Navy

A little bit of fun from the Royal Navy...

If you've got a short email or SMS to send to someone the MoD will send it for you from a Royal Navy domain via this site...

Get the Message

though, be warned, rumour has it that the obscenity filter on that service is not as robust or effective as it might be

You do of course have to register some personal information about yourself and the recipient of your message but the Senior Service does promise on the disclaimer page...

"The Royal Navy will not pass on your details on to any other organisation"

Well, that's reassuring

.

We're all potential terrorists now - redux

A new twist on an old favourite...

Just in case anyone missed this amusing little piece in last weekend's Scotland on Sunday...


Al-Qaeda's white army of terror

Two and a half years on from the 7/7 attack on London, MI5 has identified a worrying new trend in Al-Qaeda recruits

HUNDREDS of British non-Muslims have been recruited by al-Qaeda to wage war against the West, senior security sources warned last night.

As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source.

Lord Carlile, the Government's independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, said many of the converts had been targeted by radical Muslims while serving prison terms.

Security experts say the growing secret army of white terrorists poses a particularly serious threat as they are far less likely to be detected than members of the Asian community.

Since the 7/7 and 21/7 London bombings, police and intelligence services have had considerable success in identifying, disrupting and stopping extremist plots. As a result, groups such as al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen have been forced to change tack. Converting white non-Muslims has been one response.

The trend is well established in the United States. American-born Adam Gadahn is one of the FBI's top 10 most-wanted terrorists after converting to Islam and rising through al-Qaeda's ranks to become a prominent spokesman.

One British security source last night told Scotland on Sunday: "There could be anything up to 1,500 converts to the fundamentalist cause across Britain. They pose a real potential danger to our domestic security because, obviously, these people blend in and do not raise any flags.

"The exact figure of those who have converted to Islam and turned to terror is not precisely known. Not everyone who converts becomes radicalised and it may be that just two-fifths go down that path, but it remains a significant and dangerous problem."

Carlile said he was not aware of specific numbers, but confirmed to Scotland on Sunday that Whitehall was aware of the new threat and was actively tackling it. He said: "These people are an issue and are potentially very dangerous. There have been cases of non-Muslims converting before, and of these, Richard Reid, the so-called Shoebomber, is the most obvious example.

"They are more difficult to detect and the security services are right to place some focus on this issue."...


Well, We didn't see that one coming


And here, for as long as Youtube permits, is Fox News' sensitive and thoughtful treatment of this 'news' (hoho) story...

'...because they're not Muslims. They look just like regular British people'

.

A little something for your Amazon wish list...

for the phisherman in your life who hasn't quite got everything...

Link to the full page here (thx yet again Tony)




Looking on the bright side, at least the disks that have gone missing didn't contain biometric data (not this year anyway) - imagine all those people affected having to change their fingerprints and retinas rather than a few on-line passwords. Messy...

.

Useful Forms of the World #419 - Anti Terrorism Clearance Certificates

Google Image search can throw up the most interesting little snippets...

Thanks to a recent article on Lord Patel’s blog on the subject of HM Revenue loosing confidential data from 25 million people (whoopsies), I have just become aware of the existence of United Nations (issued by Nigeria) Anti-Terrorism certificates which, for a small fee, declare that the bearer has been cleared of any connection with terrorist funding or illegal banking transactions




Fantastic and IMHO well-worth having

and a snip at only 24,500 Euros

or for free if you do a Google image search. Here’s a blank one I just found…



What an excellent excuse to pick up that colour laser printer you've been promising yourself...

.