A Brit Abroad

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.(See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013150,00.html#ixzz0yCnJk9eJ

Does anyone else find this as offensive as I do. What makes it worse is that this is America it’s happening in. If I’d seen this in the UK I would’ve been saying “See - told you so” but California FFS?

The wreck and plundering of the SS Politician Five files in The National Archives, CUST 46/500-504, deal with the wreck of the SS Politician off the Hebridean island of Eriskay in 1941 and the looting of its cargo of scotch whisky, the inspiration for Compton Mackenzie’s ‘Whisky Galore’ (1947) and the subsequent Ealing comedy (1949). The story of the sinking of the SS Politician is one of two halves, one to do with the recovery of the whisky and the other the recovery of a large quantity of Jamaican 10 shilling notes. In a report from 1973, to be found in CAOG 11/194, the Crown Agents for Oversea Governments summarised their part of the case as follows: “On 27 Feb 1941 the owners, Thomas & James Harrison, advised the shippers, mostly the Crown Agents for Oversea Governments, that the SS politician bound for Kingston and New Orleans had run aground on rocks near the island of Benbecula, in the Outer Hebrides and become a total loss. Some of the Crown Agents cargo had been salved and was being sent to Glasgow. On 1 March the Salvage Association reported that 8 cases of Jamaica 10/- notes included in the cargo were covered with fuel oil and water and not likely to be taken out of the ship. Further items of cargo were salved but on 2 April the Salvage Association reported that despite a special search of the wreck the cases of notes were not found. Their view was that they had been washed into the lower hold by S.E gales.”

more….

american-apologies:

Via Newsweek:

“Chances are that by now you’ve heard about the August 19, 2010 Pew poll that found that nearly one fifth of Americans (mistakenly) believe that President Obama is a Muslim. Perhaps you think that a terrifying outlier; or perhaps you’re a believer, and then you are in good company. Either way, you’re wrong: in fact, a remarkably high numbers of Americans believe the most unusual things. Although the portion of poll respondents who believe Obama is a Muslim has risen recently, some of these oddball opinions contain more consistent numbers of believers. Here’s a sampling of the nuttiest.”

Check out this photo gallery and prepare to be disturbed.

Even though this is unimaginably far into the future I still read this and felt sad. The universe will slowly become a barren, frozen waste where nothing can exist. All of man’s dreams of expanding outwards into the galaxy and perhaps beyond will come to naught. Even if we built a cosmic empire and Earth was long forgotten it would still eventually die and no-one would exist to care. So sad.

I asked when he thought this revolution might happen. ‘We’re anticipating something happening prior to the November elections because the Democrats know they’re on the way out.’…….

……..Cochran tells me the militia has what are termed ‘standing orders’ in place, in the event they capture anyone attempting to impose martial law or take away their constitutional rights on the ‘battlefield’. American officers will be executed by bullet. Foreign fighters, mercenaries or civilians employed by the US government to carry out its work will be ‘hoisted and hung’.

Sarkozy and his thugs can dress this up in any language they like, it’s still nothing but a cynical attempt to bolster his flagging popularity ratings by attempting to endear himself to the extreme right wing of French politics.

France has a history of ignoring EU rules and legislation whenever it seems convenient for them but this seems to plumbing new depths. One of the crazy things about this is that each deportee is being given 300 Euros to leave which should be enough to allow them to return in a month or two.

They start with the Roma, a group who engender little public sympathy, then who do they turn on next? The homeless? The unemployed? The extreme left? Anybody who doesn’t conform to the French ‘norm’? How long before it’s the turn of the Muslims, and maybe after that the Jews? And so we go full circle.

Congratulations Mr Sarkozy, I’m sure you’ll find new, even murkier depths to burrow around in. Jean-Marie Le Pen must be laughing himself silly.