Armchair Revolutionaries

Hi to everybody...had a think about things and came up with this solution for a better form of democracy...
1. The dissolution of all current political parties.
2. Every county in Britain and Ireland would have a choice between five representatives and one would be elected to represent each one in Parliament. The representative chosen must have 51 per cent of the vote. Their salary would be set by their Council members. Council members would be elected to assist the Representative in running the county.
3. Each county would be allocated funds with which to run their Council according to their needs. They could spend the money in any way in which they saw fit with no interference from Parliament.
4. Key utilities like energy supplies, transport and communication would be renationalized.
5. Defence of the country would be under the auspices of Parliament.
6. Each county would decide on the size of its police force and pay for it from its funds. All the individual forces would be linked to each other so that full cooperation could be achieved.
7. Education would be up to each county to decide on which method it preferred.
8. Counties with large groups of underprivileged persons and run down estates would be provided with extra funds to start a renewal process and the eventual repair or new builds for all areas where dire poverty exists.
9. Elections would take place every five years.
10. No wars could be entered into without all the elected representatives agreeing to it.
11. The House of Lords would have representatives chosen for their achievements and none would be allowed to sit in it through hereditary peerages. Each one would be elected by the Parliamentary representatives after consultation with their individual councils.
12. The National Health would be funded by the government, but each county could decide on the number of hospitals and staff it required to provide adequate health care for every person living in the county.
13. Each county would decide on its minimum wage for all workers with a minimum set by Parliament. This could be higher than the one set by Parliament but not lower. All company executives in each county would have a limit to the amount paid to them and all multi-million pound bonuses would be abolished. Through this, the profits made by each company could be filtered down to the work force so that fairer salaries could be gained by all and Pension funds could be maintained at an adequate level.
14. All pay demands would be dealt with by the individual counties' councils in yearly negotiations with Union representatives. The increase agreed would be binding on all companies with representatives.
15. The Civil Service would be reduced in number to those required by Parliament for the proficient running of its departments. Those who are made redundant would be employed by individual councils to assist in the running of their departments.
16. The Chief Representative would be elected by the entire Parliament, and key positions as well. Each Representative chosen would serve for a period of three years, with the possibility of serving until the end of the Parliament if all of Parliament is satisfied with how they are discharging their duties.

There we are...now it's time for lunch...HLOL...that's a can of worms for you to tear apart...

Hi to everybody...read this article in yesterday's Independent...thought it might be of interest here...stuff of nightmares!!

Victoria Clark: Here's a US pastor we should really worry about

By the time another banana skin of an evangelical pastor sent John McCain tumbling, fumbling for the right words to disown the association last week, many had abandoned all hope that another Republican presidency would mean change where it really counts for the rest of the world: Israel-Palestine.

Long before embarrassing footage was dug up of Pastor John Hagee preaching that Hitler did God's will by harrying Jews out of Europe to their promised land in Palestine, people of all religions and none were viewing his linking arms with Hagee as the surest sign that McCain would continue to favour Israel; to countenance the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza.

Pastor of a megachurch in San Antonio and CEO of Global Evangelism Television, Pastor Hagee happens to be the US's leading Christian Zionist, a powerful proponent, via his Christians United for Israel lobbying organisation, of an ideology that is much better understood by Arabs than by Westerners because of the immediate bearing it has on the Israel-Palestine issue.

Christian Zionists are a large subset – an estimated 30 million strong in the US – of evangelical Christians whose rigidly literal-minded reading of Bible prophecy has locked them into a passionate embrace with the most hawkish sections of Israeli society, namely, the far right of Likud and the settler movement.

For Christian Zionists there can be no Palestinian state, first, because the Bible doesn't mention any such thing, and second, because God promised all that land and, as Pastor Hagee has claimed, "10 times more" to Israel. For Christian Zionists the world is hurtling towards its end at Armageddon, a little to the north of Jerusalem. Two-thirds of the world's Jews, all those who have not accepted Jesus as their saviour, will perish in a war that will pit an "Anti-Christ" and the Muslim world (especially Iran), and probably Russia too, against all true, born-again Christians and a returning Jesus Christ.

As this last imperative and Hagee's offensive take on the Holocaust amply prove, Christian Zionism should not be confused with philo-Semitism. Many Jews, especially Israelis, know this. The Israeli writer Gershom Gorenberg has put the case very well in his book, The End of Days: Christian Zionists "don't love real Jewish people. They love us as characters in their story, in their play, and that's not who we are, and we never auditioned for that part, and the play is not one that ends up good for us."

The Jewish component of what is collectively known as the US's Israel Lobby knows it too, but AIPAC, for example, has been less inclined to dwell on the theology; more interested in accepting and building on a source of moneyed, committed and unconditional support for Israel; more than happy to capitalise on a favourite Christian Zionist Bible tag, Genesis 12:3 in which God says to Abraham: "I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse." The news that Pastor Hagee, who was a much-feted keynote speaker at their 2007 conference, believes that the Holocaust was God's plan for his Chosen People, has embarrassed but not surprised them.

In October 2006 I attended a three-day festival to honour Israel at Hagee's Cornerstone Church. It featured a choir singing in Hebrew, a dramatic re-enactment of Israel's history, hawkish speeches by neo-cons and a donation of half-a-million dollars to an illegal Israeli settlement. Its keynote speaker was one of the most powerful members of the Jewish Israel Lobby, Malcolm Hoenlein, of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations.

Pastor Hagee rounded off the grand occasion with a blood-curdling address to Iran's President Ahmadinejad, a reprise of his suggestion in his book of Bible prophecy interpretation, Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World (2006), that the US hurry to Israel's defence by dropping a pre-emptive nuclear bomb on Iran.

"Listen up, Mr President of Iran! Don't threaten America! We're not afraid of you! We Christian Zionists are going to be your worst nightmare. If you remember, Pharaoh threatened Israel, and he ended up fish-food in the Red Sea!" His last words were for Jews: "Stop giving the land away! The land belongs to you! Keep it!"

Pastor Hagee is a far more influential figure than Barack Obama's Pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Although McCain is now giving grounds for hope with a pledge to scrap the development of the bunker buster – a nuclear weapon capable of demolishing Iran's underground nuclear facilities – his failure to firmly distance himself from a movement that resists any attempt by the US to act as a just broker in Israel-Palestine and talks up the case for war with Iran, remains a cause for concern.

Now, that's worrying!!

Hi to everybody...here's something that might be of interest to some if not all of you...
I've just sent a message to government leaders urging a strong ban on cluster bombs. I hope you'll join me. Here's the link:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/ban_cluster_munitions/99.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

It's a message to Gordon Brown to ban cluster bombs which do so much long term damage with unexploded ones going off up to years later and blowing off limbs or killing innocent victims.

A couple of weeks ago there was a post here about the difference between crackers and hackers, which prompted a little debate. I found it interesting because of the way in which the term "hacker" has been distorted over the years. Richard Stallman (2002), a self-confessed hacker described the practise as

It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".
Copyright (C) 2002 Richard Stallman

So for Stallman, hacking is not limited to software and is not regarded as an activity with any kind of illegal or immoral intent. As in inherently, some might say inflexibly moral man, he would find the idea of being associated with crackers abhorrent. Which brings me to my point. I am a Gnu/Linux user. There are lots of variants of the Gnu/Linux distribution (I will come to that later) but they all have one thing in common - that there were created with the hacker ethic, the love of being playful with a medium. Thanks to these hackers, Stallman and Linus Torvalds in particular - I have an Operating system that I need never pay for and can pass on to friends and family for as much or as little as I wish to charge.

In other words, the software actually feels like its mine. Once I downloaded it I can do what I want with it, providing that I respect the rights of others to do the same. That's a pretty good feeling. I don't have to worry about violating EULAs, I don't have to worry about being so-called "pirate". Best of all I don't have to stick my hand in my pocket every time I want a new piece of software.

So am I some sort of super nerd whiz-kid? Nope. I rarely go near the command line. I don't know or care anything about programming. I'm just an average computer user. I've found that in the last couple of years that while there are still a lot of things that only windows can do (for now) for the most part, the GNOME desktop is a lot nicer to work with and a damn sight easier than the Windows desktop. Yep, it's easier. I kid ye not. I find that downloading software is also easier. There's a few ways to do it but (most of them graphical) but I just open a command line and type sudo aptitude install (name of software) and that's it. It does not ask me where I want it installed, it does not ask me if I want a shortcut, there's no wizard to faff about with, it just installs it and I'm done in one line of text. And that's a really simple command. Type it a few times and you'll never forget it. Getting rid of software is just the same, only its "remove" and not "install". It's great!

Now does that mean that "Linux" is better than windows? See that's subjective. It is for me but there are luxuries that I miss out on. Office is still the best Office suite out there. Photoshop is better than anything on the Gnu/Linux side. But Gnu/Linux will catch up and in the meantime, you don't have to pay out of the arse to get the alternatives. And you can pass them on to your friends without breaking the law! ...well the EULA, anyway.

What do I use? Ubuntu! http://www.ubuntu.com/

There are others, but to my mind, it's the best out there at the moment. Your mileage may vary of course.

But I am getting off the point. The point is that without hackers, I would not have an OS. I would be running windows, I would have paid for windows, but it would hardly be mine. So if for nothing else, I feel hackers and their culture are worth defending.

So there you go, 685 words of self indulgent toss. Not bad!

Some Basic Problems with Capitalism

Capitalism encourages greed, exploitation and corporate wrongdoing of the Enron variety. Too much power is in the hands of massive trans-national corporations that are not accountable to the public as governments are [Note 1], and which have a single motive: profit.

The basis is exploitation - the means of wealth production are controlled by a tiny minority of the population. The rest of us have to sell our skills to them for a wage which, because of profit, is necessarily beneath the value of what we produce.

The result is that a tiny percentage of people enjoy huge wealth, while millions of people live in abject poverty. There are sufficient resources to feed, clothe and educate all of humanity but that doesn’t happen: millions of people die every year because of poor food, housing and medicine, while the rich get richer. This is a direct result of capitalism.

The competitive struggle for profits leads to stress, environmental damage and lack of job security. It also leads to war and the tremendous cost to the public purse that arms spending represents. Cost to the USA of the Iraq war so far: $750 billion. Arms companies do very well out of wars [Note 2].

Politics and Profit

Capitalism is a profit-making system that puts profits before everything else and cannot work in any other way. This is why changing governments changes nothing: they are bound by the economic laws of capitalism. Hence, governments elected on a manifesto to reform capitalism normally end up squeezing wages, benefits and public services to keep costs down (e.g. Tony Blair‘s New Labour). The profit system constrains what government actions are possible.

Most governments are in league with Big Business, so any political party with a genuine chance of power acts in the interests of the big corporations and the privileged few at the top.

Motivations

It is expected under capitalism that people will accumulate as much property as possible, with the intention that that people in general will benefit. Unfortunately, this accumulative motivation does not have the desired effect because most people do not benefit.

There are other motivations besides salary: travel, education, interesting work, holidays, more free time, helping people, a feeling of importance, the happiness that comes from doing a good job, and so on. Management theory has it that the single thing most likely to motivate employees was the feeling that what they were doing was important. [Note 3]. Whether you agree with this or not, the important point is that pay is not the only factor.

The primary support for the wage incentive principle is the falsehood that luxuries brings happiness and this falsehood is ruthlessly perpetuated by employers and advertizers alike - they are in collusion with each other, of course. So, selfishness and greed are encouraged. Greed is sometimes even taught in schools;  in the words Albert Einstein: “An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career”. [Note 4]

Fairness

Fairness and business are antithetical.  Business condones profiteering, pollution and exploitation as long as they remain within the letter of the law (or sometimes even outside the law if they think it‘s worth the risk). Fortunes are spent by businesses every year, lobbying against laws to prevent their worst excesses. Anti-pollution regulations are almost always vigorously opposed by businesses because they impact on profit.

The mass media tends to reinforce the system because it is not free of financial constraints. Advertizers gain influence over content because their money is required to keep the TV stations and newspapers in business, so inevitably the reliability of what is broadcast is suspect. This, of course, reinforces the luxuries falsehood mentioned above.

The media onslaught is so intensive and consistent that many people no longer question it and lead their lives untroubled by self-examination. Why don’t schools teach the whole picture rather than merely one facet, and show people how to think critically about economics, politics, ethics and how they live their lives?

Starving

Under capitalism, insensitivity to human needs is rampant.  Many Western countries actually pay for crops to be ploughed back into the fields, while people starve throughout the world (The EEC does this and so do both Canada and the USA). 

Production should be determined by human need, by necessity.

Antisocial Behaviour

Strong Capitalists are typically against nationalized healthcare, environmental regulations, and other socially and environmentally beneficial programs. These attitudes are not only anti-socialist, they are antisocial. The opposition is because these programs  reduce profit.

The profit requirement prevents capitalism from resolving the injustices that it causes.

A More Socialized World

A more socialized world is possible in which people come before profit. Societal control would be more democratic and less influenced by the rich and by Big Business. The world’s resources could be put to meeting human needs, rather than using them solely to make the rich even richer. It should be a matter of shame for all of us if anyone in the world is starving to death.

People would still work to make a living and they would still buy and sell - there is no excuse for laziness. Some jobs would, of course, pay more than others. The minimum wage would be sufficient to live adequately and healthily.

Excessive bureaucracy has been an issue in some socialist/capitalist hybrid economies, so we must learn from them and maintain the rights of the individual whilst avoiding too much government and bureaucracy. The tax laws should be able to be printed in large print on one side of one sheet of paper, for example.

Schools should teach critical thinking and the responsibilities of living in a society and should present all sides of issues rather than just one side.

These ideas may sound outlandish to many, and that is a result of the propaganda machine that relentlessly reinforces the current system and dismisses alternatives.  If you only take away one thing from reading this short piece, let it be this:

Those with wealth and power want things to stay exactly as they are. Why do you think that is?

Notes

1. If Wal-Mart were a country, its 2002 sales of $245 billion would make it No. 31 on the list of the world's largest economies richest nations, ahead of Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Austria.

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-fi-walmart24nov2403,1,7288517.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

2. “In 1 year, Halliburton's stock doubles as troop deaths double”
“Halliburton Makes a Killing on Iraq War”

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/earnings072205.html
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/stock_troop2.html
http://www.alternet.org/story/15445/

The “10 Most Brazen War Profiteers“:

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41083/

3. This is basically Maslow level 4: “The supervisor can help fulfil esteem needs by showing workers that their work is appreciated”.
http://telecollege.dcccd.edu/mgmt1374/book_contents/4directing/motivatg/motivate.htm

“Certain things like money, a nice office and job security can help people from becoming less motivated, but they usually don't help people to become more motivated. A key goal is to understand the motivations of each of your employees”
http://www.managementhelp.org/guiding/motivate/basics.htm

4. http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Einstein.htm

Plant rights ... it was only a matter of time

http://www.ekah.admin.ch/uploads/media/e-Broschure-Wurde-Pflanze-2008.pdf

Hi to everybody...I've just watched a programme on BBC2 called The Birth of Israel. I hope some of you here managed to see it because it was a very in depth study of how Israel came into existence...after watching it, I still retain my feelings that the Palestinian people have been very wronged and have been left to their fate by the rest of the world, including the Arab countries. The disgrace is the fact that the surrounding Arab countries could not unify to defend the Palestinian people...in the Arab war against Israel, several Arab countries sent armies into Palestine to allegedly defend the Palestinians, but each of their leaders had their own personal agenda for going in with regard to the lands of Palestine, namely they sought control of it and to expand their own territories...and none trusted the other. The Israelis did not come out of this programme with clean hands, but defended what they did and only one regretted what had happened in one of the Palestinian villages they entered where one of many massacre by the Israelis took place. The rest of those interviewed included Shimon Peres, the current President of Israel, and fighters for the Hagganah and Irgun forces all of whom showed no remorse whatsoever for the driving out of the Palestinians from land rightfully belonging to them. It is 60 years now since the foundation of Israel and the wounds on both sides in this on going conflict are still raw and bleeding. Israel is still expanding its settlements into Palestinian land, and it looks to all intents and purposes that it will continue to do so now that it has established itself as a powerful state albeit under constant siege...I can see no way that peace will ever come unless the Palestinian people are completely and utterly crushed, which looks to be the aim of Israel now...it is an on going tragedy that contains within in it a fuse that is smouldering away and at the end of it is a time bomb of a catastrophe on a terrible scale...

What Is the Difference Between a Hacker and a Cracker?

There have been many articles written (particularly on the Internet) about the difference between hackers and crackers. In them, authors often attempt to correct public misconceptions. This chapter is my contribution in clarifying the issue.

For many years, the American media has erroneously applied the word hacker when it really means cracker. So the American public now believe that a hacker is someone who breaks into computer systems. This is untrue and does a disservice to some of our most talented hackers.

There are some traditional tests to determine the difference between hackers and crackers. I provide these in order of their acceptance. First, I want to offer the general definitions of each term. This will provide a basis for the remaining portion of this chapter. Those definitions are as follows:

A hacker is a person intensely interested in the arcane and recondite workings of any computer operating system. Most often, hackers are programmers. As such, hackers obtain advanced knowledge of operating systems and programming languages. They may know of holes within systems and the reasons for such holes. Hackers constantly seek further knowledge, freely share what they have discovered, and never, ever intentionally damage data.

A cracker is a person who breaks into or otherwise violates the system integrity of remote machines, with malicious intent. Crackers, having gained unauthorized access, destroy vital data, deny legitimate users service, or basically cause problems for their targets. Crackers can easily be identified because their actions are malicious.
These definitions are good and may be used in the general sense. However, there are other tests. One is the legal test. It is said that by applying legal reasoning to the equation, you can differentiate between hackers (or any other party) and crackers. This test requires no extensive legal training. It is applied simply by inquiring as to mens rea.

Mens ReaMens rea is a Latin term that refers to the guilty mind. It is used to describe that mental condition in which criminal intent exists. Applying mens rea to the hacker-cracker equation seems simple enough. If the suspect unwittingly penetrated a computer system--and did so by methods that any law-abiding citizen would have employed at the time--there is no mens rea and therefore no crime. However, if the suspect was well aware that a security breach was underway--and he knowingly employed sophisticated methods of implementing that breach--mens rea exists and a crime has been committed. By this measure, at least from a legal point of view, the former is an unwitting computer user (possibly a hacker) and the latter a cracker. In my opinion, however, this test is too rigid.