A professor at a US university is harassed for using TOR and teaching students how onion routing can be useful. Because obviously, you can’t have people making it near impossible for the government to keep tabs on your online activity. Privacy is unconstitutional, war is peace and up is down.
Meanwhile, neuroscientists warn that new high resolution brain scans coupled with new techniques for analysis and interpretation might be used as evidence sooner than anyone anticipated. Regardless of whether the interpreted intentions have any bearing on real life or if the interpretation is even plausible. After all, the fact that “lie detectors” in various forms or torture for that matter don’t work hasn’t stopped said methods from flourishing throughout the centuries, from witch hunters to the current practices of the US empire. And so it can be surmised that brain scans will be admissible as evidence as soon as humanly possible. In the end, as people are convinced of the accuracy of the method, the powers that be will have, at their disposal, the easiest method yet to indict dissenters. Because picking people up at random and sending them off to torture chambers obviously wasn’t arbitrary enough.
Filed under Misanthropy by Björn Hallberg1 year, 9 months ago | 1,846 views
There are two things we can learn from the new New Orleans phone book. First of all, the number of residents, at least those that have a phone, is down considerably. Furthermore, the new residents that are replacing the cleansed are apparently more posh as they can afford Lasik surgery. And so the vultures move in.
Filed under Americas by Björn Hallberg1 year, 9 months ago | 2,009 views
I do not have high hopes when it comes to the American system fixing itself and so I do not pay that much attention. Plus it’s hard to care when the hoopla starts nearly two years before the actual election. But last week’s massive disinformation campaign involving presidential hopeful Barack Obama does nevertheless merit a closer look.
It started for many people when they turned on the Fox News morning program “Fox & Friends” and heard a breathless report that Sen. Barack Obama “spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father - as a Muslim and was educated in a madrassa.” It turns out that that one sentence contained no fewer than five falsehoods: Obama was not raised by his father, his father left the family when he was two, his father was not a practicing Muslim, Obama was not raised a Muslim, and he was not educated in a madrassa.
Years after George Bush himself admitted that there is no link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, I continue to meet people who believe just the opposite — that the original implications furthered by the White House and the talk-radio preachers were true, and that the no-link concession was something somehow forced on Bush and the likes of Fox by hyper-cautious media lawyers and lefty journalists who, it is assumed, harbor some secret allegiance to Saddam Hussein and/or the cause of Islamic terrorism in general.
And the new tone that has been set will skew the perception not only of said candidate but also radicalize the election process a little further, sidetracking any serious issues or ideas if there ever were any to begin with. The media pundits who run the circus are of course allowed to do so with impunity. No libel suits will be forthcoming, mainly because these pundits are in a state of semi-journalism, where we are expected to know they can’t be trusted.
The Obama incident was a perfect example. After Fox outlets, Insight magazine and the Roger Ailes morning vehicle Fox and Friends erroneously reported that a source in “Hillary Clinton’s camp” had uncovered that Barack Obama had been schooled in a “madrassa” in his youth in Indonesia, CNN dispatched a reporter to the school in question and found that the tale was totally false, that there were religion classes only once a week at the school and that the school had not even a hint of Wahabbite influence. Moreover, Hillary Clinton’s camp denied having anything to do with the story. “They made it up,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said.
If one were to return to the big picture for a moment then the moral of the story must be that Obama is particularly dangerous to the US establishment. Perhaps he does indeed have the strength of character to make a difference. But even if he had that character, overcame the opponents, not to mention his own party, turned out to be the second coming of Christ, and wasn’t changed in the process, he’d still be in charge of the most hated nation in the world. A nation with abysmal finances and a bad case of imperial overstretch not to mention the disconnect between faux democracy at home and imperialism abroad.
Filed under Americas by Björn Hallberg1 year, 9 months ago | 1,763 views
Get a First Life: A One Page Satire of Second Life. Linden Labs are amused. Probably since their take on life is as pathetic as the original.
With all the hoopla about Second Life, virtual news agencies on virtual matters, taxation and virtual embassies it is starting to get more than a little creepy. It is starting to smell like a fad. I’m simply not as amused as I perhaps ought to be, but then again I do not tolerate this sort of social bunk in “first life” either. So on a side note, it is rather typical that not even in our “second life” can we avoid the basic principles of everyday life, like interaction, capitalism or other forms of nonsense.
In fact, Second Life does little other than emulate capitalism. Its brazen love for its Linden dollars and its virtual capitalism is more than I can stomach. After all the hoopla surrounding the game I decided to take a look, but aside from the nauseating business model the game also suffered from massive network latency plus a clumsy and confusing interface. What are you supposed to do in the world? Just fly around? Pay for a premium account so that you can pay for land, build a house a show off? Sounds exactly like the unjust “first life” to me. Nor was I able to frag anyone with the celtic sword I found in the inventory. I mean come on. What do you have to do to start a virtual revolution, land reform or lop off some heads?
Filed under Games by Björn Hallberg1 year, 9 months ago | 1,852 views
From the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Skip ahead to around 01.20 for a legendary summary of private health insurance and its use as a rationale for tax breaks. The same concept holds true for much of the promises made by the new political right, and not just in the US. It’s more than a little Orwellian when you come to realize the deceitfulness of such proposals.
Take his proposal to fix that whole health care mess with the only proven cure-all: tax breaks. It’s simple: Most people who can’t afford health insurance are also too poor to owe taxes. But if you give them a deduction from the taxes they don’t owe, they can use the money they’re not getting back from what they haven’t given to buy the health care they can’t afford.
Filed under Ideology by Björn Hallberg1 year, 9 months ago | 2,081 views
Executive Executive Summary
The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history
And not just for Microsoft but for the entire industry as Microsoft’s privileged position is bound to change not only the software side and competition but the hardware business as well. No one can avoid Vista in the long run and the long arm of Microsoft, and incidentally the MPAA et al, will get to you no matter if have a Mac or run Linux. And the worst part about it is that you can’t escape. Unlike when XP came out you cannot linger on like you did in Windows 98SE or Windows 2000. Not if you want to keep up with new games in particular. DX10 may not matter to some developers, but those developers are often the same that champion OpenGL anyway. For the end user, Vista is simply unavoidable in the long run.
The rest of us are just going to have to wait and see. Between us and Vista is a whole array of problems, ranging from slow or incompatible hardware, programs to the fact that Vista currently needs at least half a service pack and a proper activation crack.
Filed under Software by Björn Hallberg1 year, 9 months ago | 1,598 views
January 27th. Around the globe, world leaders were eagerly falling into line, towing the Zionist line. We are urged to remember past atrocities. Well, just the one actually. One that happened to take place in the west and did befall white people. How original indeed.
So here we are with a Holocaust remembrance day out of all the moments and tragedies in history. Bottom line is that the remembrance day is frighteningly selective, with a western bias even, and worse still, has an ulterior motive to it. It may seem heartless to deny people their right to commemorate but those that hijacked this event for their own political purposes should have thought of that. It’s simply not my problem. Now the Holocaust is truly a piece of power politics and it must be treated as such, and so the gloves come off.
And on the eve of this disgrace, the UN General Assembly was manhandled into voting for a condemnation of Holocaust denial. After all, who could go against that and live to tell the tale. Most nations were so afraid of the consequences that they had to get in on the sponsoring of the resolution already. Fortunately, the resolution carries as little weight as the tons of resolutions that Israel and its salivating supporter, the United States, have chosen to disregard. But make no mistake, some parties will make the most of this event. They will not let us forget, ever. And this will be the only resolution they’ll applaud, ever. At the end of the day, only Iran had the bravery to both criticise the resolution and consequently reject it. Everyone else remained dumbfounded or under the heel of Zionists or the United States. Plus the news article above managed to once again belie the statements of Iran’s president. Then you know something is terribly wrong. Because according to the mainstream media, we can say with certainty that so and so many million people died over 60 years ago, but we cannot accurately translate and relay what this one guy said a few months back.
Now they are likely going even further, proclaiming that the freedom from anti-Semitism should be a human right. Meanwhile more and more schools are instituting mandatory Holocaust education. Without resorting to conspiracy theories I can see how this wouldn’t seem controversial to those that are ignorant of both history and the contemporary world. If you don’t get power politics and have no grasp of the dealings of Zionists organizations and don’t care about Israel’s crimes then obviously playing up the Holocaust wouldn’t seem a bit controversial. So lets be fair and acknowledge that we are not dealing with a ZOG, rather the all too familiar ship of fools. I can’t say which implication is worse though.
Holocaust remembrance and Holocaust studies remains a fiercely western-dominated art. One that is used to marginalize not only the suffering of non-westeners in general, but also directly prevent justice anywhere else in the world. There simply isn’t enough room between all the Holocaust remembrances and resolutions. Plus, according to doctrine, the Holocaust is unique so there is really no point arguing about it. And besides, what old or new imperial power would stand up and volunteer that they committed crimes that by far supersede the death toll of the Holocaust? Not many I’d reckon. Or speaking of domestic atrocities, would Russia or China step forward? Unlikely, it’s not a winning slogan, and most people would rather forget. Well, not everyone as is evident from the remembrance day and some people do have something to gain from capitalizing on their victimhood.
As for the motives behind the remembrance day or indeed the specifics of the Holocaust itself, consider this. Is it likely that the very same people who have been exposed as lying to the us on the topic of Israel and how it came to be would be kind enough to tell the whole truth on the Holocaust or its application as an intellectual bludgeon. It doesn’t seem likely as the two topics are intimately linked and as weakening one weakens the other. Zionists may give you the correct time of day but beyond that I’d be highly suspicious and check the sources.
So what could be more appropriate on this day than to refer to Mark Weber, the director of the much besmirched Institute for Historical Review, and the presentation (”Holocaust Remembrance: Behind the Campaign”) he recorded for the Holocaust conference in Teheran:
See also Holocaust Remembrance: Behind the Campaign, Part 2
It’s easy to see why Jewish-Zionist interests have done their very best to demonize Weber’s work. Because unlike them, he manages to come off calm and controlled and without referring to God (which is bizarre in more ways than one given the normally secular position of Zionists) or other peculiar source material.
On a related matter: The Swedish historian, Jan Bernhoff, who attended the Holocaust conference in Teheran, was relieved of his job just the other day. Now that sets an example for anyone who would dare question doctrine again. You can’t question anything if you’re starving after all. Free speech in Sweden … well … not so much as it turns out. In what other area besides the Holocaust could something like that happen? Informal influence, it seems, serves the same function as Holocaust denial laws and that, indeed, is real power. In that respect, the Holocaust is indeed unique.
Filed under Ideology by Björn Hallberg1 year, 9 months ago | 1,972 views
It would seem that Sweden is going the way of the United States by employing a military spy agency to surveil the general public. At least we should be glad we were informed about it beforehand. But at the same time it is deeply troubling to see basically the same discredited and disgraced methods end being approved through parliamentary channels. At least in the US, very few knew about the abuse. Here we are willingly voting away our privacy, rights and freedoms. One could say that those are indeed also securities. So from that perspective, we are not trading freedom for security, but merely trading one form of security for another and less civil one. It’s quite amazing how easily people sell out to fear-mongering, eager to discard legal protection that we have enjoyed for centuries and that has held through the worst of times.
Not to mention how this proposal, which aims to place the task of surveillance on the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment / Försvarets Radioanstalt, is at the same time a blatant attempt to justify the existence of long-since obsolete military institutions. Institutions that incidentally have never been working for the interests of the general public, but rather as an extension of US imperial power, passing on interesting tidbits to its sordid masters in corresponding US institutions. The continued militarization of civil society is most disconcerting.
Not only is it deeply offensive, but the proposed measure is also frighteningly outdated. It may be the first time in our history that we have the technical ability to surveil an entire nation but common sense tells us that this draconian goal will never solve the problem. If we for a moment accept the assertion that there even is a problem to solve. Malicious minds will obviously find new ways to bond and so the only people caught in this digital net will be ordinary citizens. In fact, the oldest trick in the book, namely speaking to someone vis-Ã -vis, would easily avoid this type of surveillance. And then we are on a slippery slope where tidbits of private conversations open up a world of possibilities. It’s similar to when the police enters your home on an unrelated charge but in the process find that you have been, for instance, moonshining. In real life situations few of us care that this is happening because we know that unless we grossly trespass on the wrong side of the law we have nothing to fear. The likelihood that the police would obtain a search warrant is infinitesimally small and as such we don’t have to worry about having our homes searched in the middle of the night.
Now, a lot of people would parrot some version of the old “only a criminal would have reason to fear a police state” dogma, claiming that the intrusion into their privacy is acceptable. Given the perceived advances in security and their firm belief in the system, that is justice, few would object. It makes sense since most people after all trust the state. If a majority didn’t trust the state we’d have a revolution or some such after all. I would argue that this unconditional trust is misplaced but that is another matter. The dogma however is simply wrong for two major reasons. One being that the psychology of living in a “police state” situation is in itself damaging. The other being that once you’ve moved thus far on the slippery slope you are also bound to have loosened a few other legal or moral checks and balances. It is simply inconceivable that we could change just one part of society while keeping all other aspects static. In theory as well as in this practical example, the measure in question is part of broad program of securitization. The results of which must be considered as a whole. It is also a fact that as methods get blunter, the resulting patterns get broader. Mark my words, it will only be a matter of time before they start looking for “Holocaust deniers”, “antisocial behavior” or whatever.
But we obviously already know that the so called “war on terror” is a sham and as such this is even more troubling. There is simply is no problem to fix. Aside from an obsolete agency. We can only hope that this concoction, should it pass, is merely the work of bureaucrats trying to salvage their own field as well as a few stray believers in the “war on terror”. The alternative, that this is and always was intended for dissidents and preserving the state’s authority, is simply too frightening to consider.
Filed under Sweden by Björn Hallberg1 year, 9 months ago | 1,670 views
I found this peculiar article (”Liberal: stop arms deal with UAE”) this morning. Some liberal MP wanker is outraged that Sweden is selling weapons to the United Arab Emirates because the country, for starters, lacks universal suffrage, or indeed any form of suffrage. The real hypocrisy is evident when said MP declares that she is an avid supporter of arms exports in general, just as long as receiving states are “democracies”. That is just simply double standards since the implication is that non-democratic regimes are more prone to resort of aggression, thus consequently democratic regimes by definition are not. And this is quite frankly what you’d expect of liberals from Mill and onwards. They stand as champions of a great many freedoms and a high and mighty vocabulary on the one hand but on the other they would quickly limit those freedoms based on an arbitrary rule set. Freedom and equality is for everyone, but not everyone is created equal apparently and so “barbarians” need not apply. But it sure sounds fancy. At least until you realize that democracy and barbarism are just empty slogans that people have been hitting each other over the head with for millennia.
And besides, we’ve heard it all before. First and foremost in the justification of the ownership of the most egregious weapons known to humanity, namely nuclear weapons, where this “barbarian clause” is put to good use. Because according to doctrine, weapons don’t kill, people do. It’s incidentally the same basic argument that is used for hand gun ownership as well. And people of western liberal democracies, not to mention their sophisticated leaders, are obviously of much higher moral character. Ipso facto, these states can grudgingly be trusted with these terrifying weapons.
So here we go again, loudly deploring the sale of weapons to “barbarians” while happily selling weapons to “democracies”. “Democracies” that may or may not stand up to scrutiny and that regardless of their lofty titles are behaving worse than any dictatorship. “Democracies” that may one day crumble and fail even the nickelodeon definition of democracy employed by these liberals. So for crying out loud, make up your mind. Either we treat every customer the same or we stop exporting weapons altogether.
Filed under Sweden by Björn Hallberg1 year, 9 months ago | 1,478 views
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Get a First Life: A One Page Satire of Second Life. Linden Labs are 
But before everyone jumps on the bandwagon I’d recommend reading 
It would seem that Sweden is going the way of the United States by 
I found 
