The blogging business is a curious one, I have learned: I write scurrilously about my family and they applaud me when my stats rise - Four people today read the horrible things you wrote about us; hooray!  Well done, Mum.  I gossip about their and my doings and hope strangers from across the world will read and comment on it.  In effect, I am inviting Big Brother into my home.  Yes, me, who is the first to scorn that sad bunch of desperate freaks and wannabes appearing each year on our screens: 

They are themselves for public entertainment:

 as am I.

They hope to do something funny or interesting to endear them to the public:

 as do I.

They deliberately make fools of themselves:

I’m in the clear on this one: making a fool of myself comes so naturally, I don’t have to try.

They expose their innermost desires in the full glare of publicity:

well, you know I have pretensions of being a poet.  Oh, and I want my kids to love me; but I’m somewhat lacking in the publicity department at the mo’.

They hope to earn lots of dosh from their exposure:

 sadly for me, based on my current following, I think I owe WordPress money.

They don’t care what people think of them:

this one is most true of me < makes rude gestures to computer screen>   No, just kidding!  I wasn’t.  PLEASE come back, dear reader.  You’re my only friend.

I am afraid that, like Winston Smith, it will be said of me, She loved Big Brother. 

 There is no greater shame.

Well guys I have been working really hard on the game and I have managed to start a new game with the same characters and I am currently remaking the house to the best of my abilities.

However I have started this week’s storyline and HoH challenge and it is taking longer than I had thought.

I had planned for this week’s posts to be really special as we are half way through and I really wanted to celebrate the achievements of the characters in the final 5.

So I have decided to postpone this week’s posts and instead continue the competition next week so I can properly do these very special posts. I really hope that is okay with all of you.

I would suggest that you subscribe to my RSS feed if you are worried that you will forget as I do not want to lose any readers.

Thanks a lot,

Former Vice President Dick Cheney came out swinging again against an Administration that seems bent upon doing exactly what the American people do NOT want them to do. This time he aimed both barrels at the Obama Administration for it’s “dithering” on Afghanistan, and it’s reckless pursuit of trying the 9/11 Islamofascist Jihadist Terrorist plotters in New York in a “show trial,” this according to THIS article at FOXNEWS.com.

In an interview with radio talk host Scott Hennen on Monday, Cheney called it a “big mistake” for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 conspirators to be tried in a civilian court just blocks away from where the World Trade Center once stood, instead of a military tribunal.

“We had 3,000 dead Americans that day. That is not a law enforcement problem. That’s an act of war. And you need to treat it as an act of war,” Cheney said.

And what does Cheney think of the trial?

“I can’t for the life of me figure out what Holder’s intent [is] here, in terms of having Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tried in a civilian court, other than to, to have some kind of show trial here,” Cheney told his host.”They’ll (9/11 conspirators) simply use it as a platform to argue their case.”

Mr. Cheney also doesn’t like the fact that Obama is taking so long on figuring out what kind of strategy he wants for our troops to WIN in Afghanistan.

“The delay is not cost-free,” he said. “Every day that goes by raises doubts in the minds of our friends in the region about what you’re going to do. Raises doubts in the minds of the troops — I worry that the delay and that time that it’s taken to come to the decision will be very costly.”

Remember that it was Obama who picked Holder, who pushed hard for the pardon of the FALN terrorists under former President Clinton, to be his Attorney General. And it was Holder and other Leftists, according to THIS article, that threw up HUNDREDS OF ROADBLOCKS to make SURE these murderers didn’t get tried in a military court.

As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out, “The principal reason there were so few military trials is the tireless campaign conducted by leftist lawyers (including Holder) to derail military tribunals by challenging them in the courts.”

Holder said that “after eight years of delay those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11 will finally face justice.” He said it is “past time to finally act.”

But at last the Bush Administration had finally cleared away all the attempts by Holder’s Leftist delaying tactics, and the government initiated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s military trial in Guantanamo in September 2008. And in December, KSM pleaded guilty and asked to be executed.

But Holder STOPPED THAT PROCEEDING. And now the terrorists could be found NOT GUILTY – even though President Obama has PUBLICALLY already condemned them to die BEFORE the trial even has a chance to begin.  Holder said his action is “most likely to lead to a positive result.”

But according to THIS article, Geraldine Davie has already seen one 9/11 co-conspirator tried in the United States, and that is enough for her. “I went to the Moussaoui trial every day,” said Davie, who went to see the “20th hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui, in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. “That was a travesty.”

“This fellow [Moussaoui], you know what he would do? He would wait until the judge left the courtroom, and the jury left, and then he would spew this terrible anger,” she said. “Hateful, hateful stuff. .  .  . We’re gonna have that in New York? For years?”

Her daughter, Amy O’Doherty, was killed on 9/11 at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center

Davie joined 12 other 9/11 family members at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Obama administration’s decision to try (KSM) and the four other 9/11 planners in federal court in New York City. They brought with them more than 100,000 signatures gathered by three websites – TheBravest.com, 911Familesfor-America.org, and Keep-AmericaSafe.com

“To give these animals due process and to afford them constitutional rights is obscene,” said John Owens, whose brother died in the towers on 9/11. ”It angers me to no end that this guy is gonna get a platform, paid for by us, in the shadow of Ground Zero where my brother died.”

In other news, Lawyer: 9/11 suspect to plead not guilty, argue attacks justified

Cloward-Piven Government: Obama’s way of destroying our economy and our system of government

Al-Qaeda Imprints All Over the Fort Hood Shooting Massacre

Democrat Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists’ Man on Capitol Hill

Opinion: The Global Warming Scare is All Over but the Shouting Continues

Lou Dobbs Considers Possible Presidential Run

ACORN Dumped Sensitive Documents as Probe Began, Private Investigator Says

WeIrD nEwS: Man ‘Trapped in Coma’ for 23 Years Was Awake Whole Time

Quote of the Day: “We are going to paint the nation PURPLE with SEIU!” – candidate Barack Hussein Obama at SEIU event

Please consider bookmarking this blog to keep informed about the Socialism, Marxism, Radicalism, insane debt spending and corruption emanating from Washington District of Corruption.

Thanks,

777denny

Algumas semanas atrás anunciei aqui a estreia iminente da minisérie inglesa Dead Set, que foi exibida pelo canal Multishow. Recapitulando brevemente, na noite do paredão do Big Brother inglês, uma epidêmia transforma a população em zumbis. Os participantes do programa, isolados, não sabem que o mundo ao seu redor está acabando. Na semana passada foi exibido o último dos cinco episódios, e agora é a hora de fazer o balanço final. O texto a seguir contém spoilers que contam quase tudo, portanto se você não viu e não quer estragar as surpresas, melhor parar por aqui.

A personagem principal não é nenhum dos “brothers“, mas sim uma das assistentes do programa, que vê através das câmeras que a casa continua segura, e consegue chegar até lá e contar aos participantes o que se passou. É claro que eles não acreditam, até que um zumbi entra na casa, e tudo muda de figura. Alias, dentre as obras recentes, creio ser esta a que melhor explora a reação à notícia de que zumbis invadiram o mundo, provavelmente porque os personagens (não todos, mas a maioria) não têm nenhum brilhantismo intelectual. São seres humanos médios, e reajem com incredulidade e incapacidade de lidar com o novo staus quo.

Um outro fator positivo em Dead Set é a construção da tensão. Isso se deve, em parte, ao fato de que não há muitas concessões ao lugar comum. Um dos personagens que é apontado como preferido do público do Big Brother é morto logo no segundo episódio. A mocinha confessa no início do primeiro episódio que traiu o namorado. Isso sem contar a crueza dos eventos que acontecem na salinha onde o produtor do programa e a última eliminada se refugiam. Com tudo isso, o espectador não recebe salvo conduto para aliviar a tensão nos momentos chave. Qualquer um pode morrer, simples assim. E todos morrem.

O que me leva ao episódio final. Uma crítica que poderia ser feita ao encerramento do programa é que ele é frenético demais. Tudo acontece em um ritmo tal que perder um pequeno trecho significa encontrar uma situação bem diferente daquela em que se tinha parado. Mas isso é o de menos, porque mesmo o ritmo desenfreado não estraga a tensão sufocante. O destaque, entretanto, é a jogada que o programa faz com a própria televisão: nos momentos derradeiros, os personagens se comportam como os animais enjaulados que inspiraram o conceito do programa Big Brother. Dividem-se em grupos, tramam a eliminação alheia, abdicam de seus escrúpulos. E a informação é usada para manipular, bem ao estilo do conceito imortalizado por George Orwell. Impagáveis são as cenas em que o produtor e a assistente, cada um com seus motivos, fazem uso das coisas que viram pelas câmeras do programa. A mensagem é clara: quando poderia se beneficiar ao máximo da união, o ser humano destrói a si mesmo. Nada mais natural, sendo assim, que todos os personagens, sem exceção, acabem mortos, como eu havia mencionado anteriormente.

Não menos impagável que os momentos já citados é o diálogo final, em que um participante está na sala de controle do programa – já mordido por um zumbi – e a assistente está presa no confessionário – cercado por zumbis. Os papéis se invertem, a última representante da mídia está sob escrutínio do “público”. Eles são os últimos sobreviventes, e ambos sabem que é o fim. Ela diz: “isso significa que você é o vencedor do Big Brother deste ano”. E não é por isso, no fim das contas, que tantas pessoas abdicam de qualquer pudor ou senso de ridículo?

Veredito: se você não se incomoda com violência gráfica, Dead Set é uma das melhores opções disponíveis.

FOX News

The Tonka Report Editor’s Note: Is anyone paying attention out there? – SJH

I wrote recently about GCHQ and the Intercept Modernisation Programme. Part of this will require by law all telecoms companies and internet service providers to keep a record of every customer’s phone call, text message, email and website visit showing who they have contacted, when and where. When I have this conversation with friends, I’m sure most of them think I’m just being paranoid. I’m sure most of them, despite receiving itemised telephone bills, or bank statements saying which ATM they used, don’t think that it is technically possible to monitor every individuals communications in this way. It is possible. It is happening. The telecoms operators already have the first stage in place, being required by law since October 2007 to keep records of all phone calls and text messages for 12 months.  A Conservative win in 2010 isn’t going to cast a magical spell which will instantly undo all of the sinister new practices instituted under the neo-Stalinists. We will still need to fight these erosions of our rights and liberties.

This isn’t about targeting a suspect and then monitoring their activity: this is the vacuum cleaner approach,  assembling the activities of all UK internet users into massive databases, which can be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords (including “Shami Chakrabarti” no doubt). Everyone becomes a suspect; we’re all labelled as guilty of crime-think and future-crime, and after trawling through the database they will then select their targets. Dylan Sharpe over at Big Brother Watch has also had some interesting things to say about IMP (they obviously gave some thought to that one) which are worth repeating here:

Snooper’s charter breathes again

11/19/2009
Two stories today on the dreadful ‘Intercept Modernisation Programme’ otherwise known as the Home Office plan to monitor all of our emails, phone calls and other forms of private communications. The first, courtesy of Kable, is that Phil Woolas MP has said that the £2bn Programme is due for completion in 2016; despite the bill being dropped from the Queen’s Speech earlier this week.

As they report:

the information from Woolas shows the Home Office does not anticipate that this will delay the IMP, with 2016 as both the original and the current planned date for completion.

To make matters worse Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions – a role that ought to be entirely separate from politics – has come out today and said that monitoring all of our calls and emails is ‘vital’ in the fight against crime.

As reported by the Daily Telegraph:

Keir Starmer said the controversial plan, which would see the communications activity of every citizen stored for a year, was essential for establishing links with suspects.

His support is in contrast to his predecessor, Sir Ken Macdonald, who last year warned against the expansion of technology by the state into everyday life which could create a world future generations “can’t bear”.

Sir Ken is right and it simply isn’t the government’s job to monitor our private communications. We hear of too many cases of private and personal data being lost, sold or misused by the state to trust that our phone calls and emails won’t end up in the wrong hands.

In addition, the DPP should not be going around doing the government’s dirty work – plugging a policy that the majority of British people find deeply worrying. And remember, Keir Starmer has previous in this field.

This is a level of domestic surveillance that Erich Honecker would have given his left nut for. As Henry Porter has often reminded us, we cannot ignore Churchill’s warning any longer: “If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only precarious chance for survival.”

I’m reading the autobiography by Carolina Gynning called Ego Girl.
The first time I heard about her was when she won the swedish Big Brother 2004.  I believe that my first impression of her was “stupid bimbo”. But somehow she made me curious to read her book, and so far it’s really good and I have to say that it has made me change my thoughts about her. She seems crazy, but in a good way. “Go Girl!”
The book is about Carolinas life, where she tell us about her childhood and how she at the age of 17 started her career as a model and then got lost in a world of sex & drogs before she sort her life out.
If you get a chance read it! When I finish this one I would like to read her 2nd book called Ego Woman.

Buona Notte!
Baci /Sofie

Boys WILL be boys, you know. No matter what you tell them or how much trouble they may get into….

Sunday after church while the Hunter was fixing lunch, Big Brother and Mini-me were playing their version of soccer in the hallway. Something that has happened many times in the past with no ill effects… but somehow, Mini-Me tripped, fell, rolled, smashed or whatever and his forehead came into contact with the stair railing support post…the hard, sharp-edged, corner no less.

You know how head wounds bleed? Well, poor little Mini-me was bleeding like a stuck pig. The Hunter got it cleaned up enough to look at it, and sure enough, it was going to need stitches. It was about 3/4 of an inch long and clear to the bone. Little Mini-me did great and didn’t even cry.

Like Judi at Green Fairy Quilts who had a similar incident this last week and posted about it here,  Mini-me and I ended up at urgent care for stitches. That is AFTER we all ate lunch (I have been in enough doctor’s offices and ERs to know we were in for quite a wait…). Once we finished, I packed up four slices of homemade pumpkin bread, which Mini-me swears makes EVERYTHING better and heal quicker, and off we went to the local urgent care. We sat for a while, Mini-me ate his punkin bread, and we both sewed some hexagons, and finally got in to see the doctor.

The cut sure didn’t slow Mini-me up, as he had all the staff in stitches with his comments and his humor. They put lidocaine on a cotton, taped it to his head, and let us marinate in that for a while. By the time they got back in to the room to work on him, “burrito-ed” him up in a blanket so he couldn’t squirm as bad, and started to work, the wound was pretty well numb. The only time it hurt a little was when they were injecting more lidocaine into the interior of the wound (think dentist and numbing your tooth/jaw to work on a tooth…YUCK!) and Mini-me winced and said it hurt. His little eyes got red and big with tears, but he NEVER cried and later was very proud of the fact that he didn’t). Mini-me got a little worried, though, when he saw the curved needle they used for the actual stitching, but fortunately, it didn’t hurt at all, and he was great.  The doc said most adults aren’t even that good!

He had three stitches total, so not as bad as it could have been. They even put a really cool band-aid with spider webs and spiders on it. Mini-me was thrilled!

Unlike Judi at Green Fairy Quilts, I didn’t carry my camera with me to the doctors’, but did get pics of Mini-me and his stitches today before and after we took the band-aid off.

Here is a pic with the band-aid on – notice also the stair rail in the background…see those sharp, squared off edges? One of those, except down at the bottom, is what he ran into. Thankfully he takes after me and has a hard head.

The next picture is more of a close-up. As you can see, the scar, if any, will be up high enough that it won’t show much at all.

I told Mini-me and Munchie that it was just like sewing a quilt…thread and a needle…and better than using a hair from a mule’s tail like Ma did in Ol’ Yeller!

Kurt Nimmo / Infowars – November 23, 2009

Globalist minion Al Gore and the United Nations climate change shysters led by Phil Jones are in trouble. Last week hackers uncovered a pile of email and documents revealing what many of us already knew — the climate change agenda is based not only on easily debunked junk science, but outright lies and deception.

In the wake of the damning revelations exposed by these anonymous hackers, the climate change snake oil salesmen Gore and his complaisant entourage of now discredited scientists are in full retreat. Even the corporate media — guilty of peddling the fabrication of man-made climate change for years with the best propaganda money can buy — are desperately scrambling to put the best spin possible on the emerging travesty.

In the above video, Alex Jones examines the startling revelations of the CRU files and spells out what it means for the global elite who have planned to use the ruse to impose crippling carbon taxes and put the finishing touches on their global totalitarian super-state and its accompanying control and slave grid.

Infowars and Prison Planet are now feverishly going through the documents and will post the result in the hours and days ahead. In the meantime, here are a few quotes from the perpetrators:

Link to entire article below…

http://www.infowars.com/alex-runs-down-man-made-climate-change-hoax-exposed-in-cru-emails/

Marjorie Mazel Hecht / Infowars – November 22, 2009

“Global Warming” is, and always was, a policy for genocidal reduction of the world’s population. The preposterous claim that human-produced carbon dioxide will broil the Earth, melt the ice caps, and destroy human life, came out of a 1975 conference in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, organized by the influential anthropologist Margaret Mead, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in 1974.

Mead—whose 1928 book on the sex life of South Pacific Islanders was later found to be a fraud—recruited like-minded anti-population hoaxsters to the cause: Sow enough fear of mancaused climate change to force global cutbacks in industrial activity and halt Third World development. Mead’s leading recruits at the 1975 conference were climate scare artist Stephen Schneider, population-freak biologist George Woodwell, and the current AAAS president John Holdren—all three of them disciples of Malthusian fanatic Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb.

Read entire article (PDF)

Link to original article below…

http://www.infowars.com/where-the-global-warming-hoax-was-born/

It has been made clear to all of us that actress Shilpa Shetty’s wedding is not going to be a star studded affair, but here’s a surprise as the media people have come to know her two very special guests.

As per the earlier reports her list of invitees for the wedding was restricted only to close family members. She has planned to invite her friends from the industry only on 24 November i.e. two days after the wedding but now we reveal here two special guests.

The guest no. 1 is Jermaine Jackson who has been invited for the wedding on November 22. Jermaine and she had become friends during the ‘Big Brother’ show.

The guest no. 2 is celebrity cricketer Shane Warne. He is former Australian cricket star and also captain of Shilpa’s IPL team. He too is expected on 22 November.

We can expect more surprises in the list of Shilpa’s guest list. Know more about horoscope of Shilpa Shetty.

Sometimes you have to take a step down to step up. That’s what Google should’ve done with its open source PC operating system Chrome OS, which the corporation demonstrated Thursday.

Instead, Google is positioning Chrome OS against Microsoft with a lightweight OS shipping with netbooks next year. Chrome OS will function as a modified browser, enabling netbooks to handle everyday computing with web-based applications. That’s right: No native software, just the web.

The philosophy behind Chrome OS is extreme: Go the web way, all the way. It’s a “paradigm shift to make the web synonymous with the computer,” as Mashable’s Ben Parr puts it. But it’s an idealistic vision that could take several years to actualize, given the currently limited state of wireless connectivity and web-based applications. Google is aware of that, and the company is merely massaging us with this radical idea of a web-only computing experience by suggesting we try it on netbooks first.

Looking ahead, the company said it plans to share Chrome OS with more-powerful devices, including notebooks and desktops. But we doubt consumers will show much interest in a Chrome OS netbook the way Google is currently packaging it.

With Chrome OS, the search giant is pushing an OS that enables us to do less — even less than already low-powered netbooks can do. Web apps can’t let us process Microsoft Word documents, sync our iTunes libraries, or edit photos with Photoshop, for example. Thanks to their crampy keyboards and small screens, netbooks aren’t ideal for productivity apps such as Photoshop or Microsoft Word — but you’d be surprised at the different uses for netbooks that made them last year’s hit product category. Watch what happens when Google offers an OS that doesn’t at least provide the option of using the aforementioned apps.

Of course, as Google’s pitch goes, there are web alternatives to everything. Cloud storage for backups, internet-streaming music and video services, and the Google Docs web suite for all your spreadsheet or word-processing needs. The list goes on.

The idea is such: Give up the computing experience you’ve grown accustomed to for over a decade. Come live in Google’s browser.

Why would anyone wish to do that today, tomorrow or even next year when the OS ships?

Michael Gartenberg, a tech analyst at Interpret, sums up the state of computer use today better than anyone else: “What we’ve seen is most users are looking for a combination of the two: rich applications on my desktop, and the apps where I want to be connected.”

“This idea that I’m somehow going to do away with rich app architectures and do everything through the browser is an old argument, and it’s never taken root,” he added.

The benefits of Chrome OS don’t seem to outweigh everything Google’s modified browser will do away with. The pluses: Tight security, thanks to Google’s careful monitoring for malware in Chrome OS apps; saving the money you’d spend on an external hard-disk drive thanks to cloud storage; ultimately, being able to “stop worrying about your computer,” as Google said in a promotional video shown at its Thursday event.

Stop worrying about our computers? We’re worried about you, Google. T-Mobile Sidekick customers should especially be disenchanted with the cloud. Microsoft, T-Mobile and Danger hosted the data of all of T-Mobile’s Sidekick users in the cloud, and recently the server crashed, losing everything.

Nobody’s perfect, so it’s conceivable that the same thing could happen with Chrome OS. After all, Google’s Gmail service crashed in February and again in September this year. While no data was lost, it did cause hours of angst for people who had grown dependent on the mail service.

And then there’s money. Aside from losing access to the native apps we’ve paid for on our PC, it’s certainly imaginable that using Chrome OS could get expensive in general. If we wished to put an always-connected, web-app-only computer to good use, we’d need to purchase a data plan from a carrier. This could come in the form of an EVDO card or a smartphone tethering plan — in other words, a monthly bill. Google said Chrome OS will have caching features, so you won’t need internet access to do everything, but caching won’t provide the same offline experience as a full native application.

(Of course, our wireless problems could be solved if we could find an open Wi-Fi connection just anywhere we go. But unless you live in Mountain View, California, where Google provides free Wi-Fi, ubiquitous, free hotspots are not part of your reality.)

With all that said, there’s a ton of potential here for Chrome OS to be vastly appealing, and I’m keeping an open mind. To succeed with Chrome OS, Google should take a step down. To start, Google should modify Chrome OS into a “mini OS” of sorts that can live alongside another OS, such as Windows, on a netbook.

For comparison, Phoenix Technologies offers a mini OS called HyperSpace, which some netbooks are already shipping with. HyperSpace runs parallel to Windows as an instant-on environment, allowing netbooks to perform internet-centric functions without actually booting into Windows. Functions include multimedia players, browsers, internet telephony, e-mail and IM.

Sounds a lot like what Chrome OS is going to be, doesn’t it? That’s because it’s almost the same idea, only Phoenix Technologies is a lesser-known company (which developed the BIOS that boots many Windows computers today, by the way) and is taking a humbler approach — offering HyperSpace as an optional, complementary (but not complimentary) OS rather than a full-blown substitute for Windows. It’s an approach that could lead to greater results if embraced by an incredibly powerful brand like Google.

By offering Chrome OS as a free, downloadable mini OS that runs parallel to a full one, Google can still continue to expand its presence onto hardware — without having to sell the OS with netbooks. Consumers could still try out the benefits of Chrome OS and cloud computing when it’s convenient for them. Then, if users wished to boot into their primary OS to back up their data or do document processing with Microsoft Word, for example, they could — a hybrid, more feature-rich experience.

Unfortunately, not everything we want is on the web just yet. That’s not going to radically change in one year, and not even Google can change that.

By Brian X. Chen

found @ www.wired.com

With Obama healthcare it’s going to feel like every doctor is a proctologist because if it passes every time you go to the doctor you’ll feel like someone is poking you in the ass.

More…..

via Some Thoughts On Obama Healthcare.

Recently, I read a highly recommended Cecelia Ahern chick lit – Where Rainbows End. The idea of using letters to tell the story sure was a successful novel idea (no pun intended). She used notes passed in class, invites, letters, emails, chats, texts (sms) and continued to enthrall me.

The antics of the characters are thoroughly entertaining. Big Brother gets mentioned – not the show in UK, but the all-seeing eyes in office

This book restored my love for Ms Ahern after the tragedy in P.S. I Love You. Before Where Rainbows End, I’d lost my admiration for this young author after I painfully worked my way through A Place Called Here. Honestly, a month on that book when I’d breeze through the rest!

At the end of John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis turns to Donald Pleasence and says, “It was the boogeyman.” Pleasence, realising that the monster has survived and escaped yet again, responds: “As a matter of fact, it was…”

You see, there’s something about Mandelson, The High Lord Too-Many-Titles, that just isn’t right. Normally, the public loves an underdog, admires the tenacity of the guy who gets knocked down but dusts himself off and tries, tries, and tries again. But the plucky, come-back kid, Mandelson aint. He’s more like Michael Myers: everytime you think he’s finally – bang! this time – dead, he shuffles to his feet and zombie lurches right back at you. Mandelson has been an unstoppable force in British politics for the last twelve years, without a doubt. But not in a good way. Perhaps most terrifying of all, each time he returns to Government, he does so even more powerful than before.

So is he really as bad as some would have us think? Is he, in fact, the digital boogeyman?

Glyn Moody over at Computerworld UK says yes. He’s pretty adamant  that Mandelson’s Bill and his request for changes to the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act “for the purposes of facilitating prevention or reduction of online copyright infringement” represents “the most far-reaching and dangerous changes to not just copyright law, but any UK law, giving a government minister unprecedented and unbridled powers to act as he or she (and their chums in the “creative industries”) might choose.” And the outcome? “If this proposal is enacted, it will turn the British online world into a wasteland, with business and end-users paying the price not just financially, but in terms of the loss of the ability to innovate and of fundamental freedoms.”

Rupert Goodwins, the Editor of ZDNet UK, might as well be Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis to Mandelson’s Myers. He’s got the case notes, he’s done the study, and he’s here in Haddonfield UK warning that the monster is on the loose:

Without debate, without public consultation, without any form of mandate, Lord Mandelson – an unelected politician – is preparing to place the rights of powerful industrial concerns above those of Parliament and above ours.

The powers that he wants to create – by means of a statutory instrument, which bypasses Parliamentary debate and decision – will criminalise downloading of content without permission. They will give him or anyone he chooses the power to enforce by law any action he or his successor thinks fit, in the service of protecting copyright.

And they will give industry bodies, such as the BPI, FAST and so on, powers of investigation tantamount to those of the police force. The risk of copyright infringment would be enough to force any company to patrol its actions and offerings, closing down anything that might land them in the dock. The freedom of the Internet would be gone. It is placing the future of the Net, with the force of law, in the hands of those who depend on artificial scarcity. It is antithetical to everything that matters in the digital world…

Should these moves succeed, the Internet in the UK will be thrust back thirty years, when a state monopoly with commercial interests was the gatekeeper to all online information – and where that information was only held by other large organisations.

But Internet users would be thrown into another dimension, one where every action must be monitored, every access cleared, every file transfer a potential criminal act. A dimension policed and enforced, moreover, by those with a direct financial interest in preventing new models of distribution, of enforcing the idea that they and they alone can set the rules for information-driven commerce.

Nothing would be untouched. Everything on the Internet is a transfer of information, and all information may be copyright. Thus, every action on the Internet would be a potential criminal act, and everyone connected would have a duty to make sure it wasn’t. Be sure that that duty will be imposed with eagerness.

It would be easy to use the metaphors of the police state, of corporate monopoly, of any society where the state turns on its own citizens. Easy, but wrong: what is being proposed is new, one where the very machinery that runs our lives is handed over to a special interest group with a history of saying and doing the maximum it can get away with for its own survival and prosperity…

Despite many pointing to a Conservative win at the 2010 general election, I can’t shake the feeling that the morning after the polls close, Mandelson is still going to be there, zombie-like, indestructable. Or at the very least, his legislative legacy will be.

As Nick Ross would say, “Don’t have nightmares, do sleep well…”

This weekend I signed up to be a “Big Brother” for the Big Brother Big Sister of America.    As I reflect being an older brother in my family, I am proud to say I have set a positive example for my younger brother.  When I was in high school, I was decent athlete playing football, wrestling, and track.  I remember the words my brother said before entering his Freshman year in high school, “I will do everything you do, but better!  He found his love for sports and receiving All County honors in Football and Wrestling awarding him several scholarships for football.  Aside from sports, he is on his way studying to become a nurse.

I signed up to be a “Big Brother” because if I can impact one child’s life, it will make a major difference in this world.  It’s not for the status, but it for the purpose helping those in need.  I look forward to Community Based Mentoring in the North NJ chapter and the NYC area.  I plan to volunteer at least an hour a week to make a huge difference. I haven’t been assigned a younger brother yet, but I look forward to the next group of future gentlemen’s I will have the opportunity to mentor and share many fun activities with.

Ryan Enriquez

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The secret behind secret societies isn’t so secret anymore. It’s published in books, articles, essays and on the Internet, you can even research it and read volumes about these secret societies.

It all boils down to the one most major secret, and this is what takes away our freedoms, upsets our justice system and makes puppets out of us all.

And this secret?

It’s the slave society coming of the one-world government, where private bankers control the finances of every country in the world. All the secret societies have a connection to this fantastic plot.

As fantastic as it seems, it isn’t fantasy and it isn’t fiction, because it’s happening right now as you read and daily as you live your life. It threatens us in legislature put through Congress while they are asleep or on vacation. It comes to us in the messages put out by the major media around the world.

The infamous group who stands out above all others in the campaign for a one-world government is the Council on Foreign Relations, with members of the wealthy elite helping to manipulate America as they see fit. Using their billions, they can virtually buy off anyone. They influence politicians, media and scholars.

THE PLAN THAT IS THE SECRET BEHIND SECRET SOCIETIES

The concept is simple to understand. The bankers sit on the CFR as well as run the Federal Reserve (which is in no sense a federal institution but in private hands). They have the right given to them (not by the Constitution however) to print money at their discretion. They dictate our economic policies.

If their interests are in danger in a foreign country, they can make the President do what they wish. This causes wars. They can insist the media only carry a certain line about a certain issue. They can work for a drugged and illiterate populace by manipulating the drug companies and the school systems.

With major corporations in their clutches via the Council on Foreign Relations, they can get society shaped and formed exactly how they want it to be. And with members such as Hilary Clinton, Bush and other administration members, all of our Presidents have been heavily affected, both Democrat and Republican.

You can see this one-world government being formed right before your eyes. First take a look at Europe, with no real borders anymore and the European Central Bank. The next push is for a North American Union with Canada, the US and Mexico, and eventually a North American Central Bank, privately owned.

Someone almost gave up the secret behind secret societies. Baron M.A. Rothschild once wrote the following; ‘Give me control over a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.’ This makes it clear how controlling the finances of a country leads to power over its citizens and government. It’s the game being played.

HEADING OFF A ONE-WORLD GOVERNMENT

If the secret behind secret societies isn’t secret, it makes it hard to continue to fool the public and get them to go along with their plans. The best way to fight them is to broadcast their plans and secret plotting. Show people how the story is unfolding. Then be extremely careful in voting only for someone not part of it.

Source

Google’s mantra is “Don’t be evil.” Let’s hope it the tech giant means it, because if Chrome OS succeeds in replacing Windows at the world’s dominant operating system, Google’s sway over the computing world could be exponentially higher than it is today.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Google’s Web-centric OS is a nefarious, 1984-esque plot to subjugate the human race — or at least the 1.7 billion (and rising rapidly) people who use the Internet. But Google already knows more about many of us than we may know. A few examples:

· Gmail: Google scans your not-so-private e-mail, and displays text ads based on keywords that appear in your messages.

· Street View: A feature of Google Maps that lets you explore city streets from a driver’s or pedestrian’s vantage point. Although Google blurs faces and license plates, Street View has raised privacy concerns in many countries, most recently in Switzerland. Some critics are concerned that car-mounted Street View cameras can peek into homes.

· Latitude: Google’s GPS mapping service will track where you’ve been, and alert you when friends are nearby. One optional feature: Your location and photo will appear on the maps of other Latitude users.

· Docs: Google’s browser-based productivity suite stores your files in The Cloud, which means on the company’s servers. Docs users can save all of their documents online, including files that may contain banking, credit, and Social Security numbers, as well as other sensitive personal information.

· Social Search: An experimental tool from Google Labs that displays your friends’ “public content,” such as tweets and blog comments, at the bottom of your search results. Be careful what you write; your pals may be watching.

· Dashboard: Ostensibly a tool that addresses privacy concerns by showing how much Google knows about you, Dashboard raises a new set of security issues. If your Google account is hacked, for instance, Dashboard provides the attacker with a cornucopia of personal data about you.

Which brings us to Chrome OS. Designed initially for portable computers such as netbooks and tablet devices, the operating system will no doubt steer more users toward Google’s growing stable of information services. This in turn will increase the company’s already sizable influence over the online ecosystem.

Google thus far has shown itself to be mostly a benign giant, but the potential for abuse is there. The company has been willing to compromise its ethics — such as by censoring search results in China — in order to do business with governments that have little interest in free speech. And while Google’s current management team may very well adhere to the “Don’t be evil” code, there’s no guarantee that future caretakers will be as responsible.

It’s good to see a third competitor challenging Microsoft and Apple in the consumer OS market. But the Big Brother possibilities of a Google-dominated world remain a concern.

By Jeff Bertolucci, PC World

Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci ) or at jbertolucci.blogspot.com.