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To call Senator Biden pitiful is an understatement. For anyone to try to
win votes by lying about his wife & baby dying is a disgrace. Twice he
told the story how his family was killed by a drunken truck driver in New
Jersey in 1972. He is trying to get sympathy votes. The true stoty is his
wife failed to stop at a redlight/stoplight & got hit broadside by a
truck. The truck drivers family is infuriated by his statement. ( the
driver passed away in 1999 ) The district attorney in NJ has provided
court documents totally exonerating the truck driver, stating the truck
driver was in no way responsible for the crash & no alcohol was present.
To lie about the death of someone, for your own gain is lower than low.
Just an example of what politician will stoop to to get elected.
http://news.yahoo.com/joe-biden-reflects-grief-suicidal-thoughts-death-wife-205013551–abc-news-politics.html

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Passing this along...it has the feel of a talking points email, but there are some interesting things in here that we apparently are paying for, that we definitely should not be.
 

 

 
Subject: Proposed Budget Cuts by Republicans
Notice S.S. and the military are NOT on this list.
These are all the programs that the new Republican House has proposed cutting. Read to the end.

* Corporation for Public Broadcasting Subsidy -- $445 million annual savings.
* Save America 's Treasures Program -- $25 million annual savings.
* International Fund for Ireland -- $17 million annual savings.
* Legal Services Corporation -- $420 million annual savings.
* National Endowment for the Arts -- $167.5 million annual savings.
* National Endowment for the Humanities -- $167.5 million annual savings.
* Hope VI Program -- $250 million annual savings.
* Amtrak Subsidies -- $1.565 billion annual savings.
* Eliminate duplicative education programs -- H.R. 2274 (in last Congress), authored by Rep. McKeon, eliminates 68 at a savings of $1.3 billion annually.
* U.S. Trade Development Agency -- $55 million annual savings.
* Woodrow Wilson Center Subsidy -- $20 million annual savings.
* Cut in half funding for congressional printing and binding -- $47 million annual savings.
* John C. Stennis Center Subsidy -- $430,000 annual savings.
* Community Development Fund -- $4.5 billion annual savings.
* Heritage Area Grants and Statutory Aid -- $24 million annual savings.
* Cut Federal Travel Budget in Half -- $7.5 billion annual savings
* Trim Federal Vehicle Budget by 20% -- $600 million annual savings.
* Essential Air Service -- $150 million annual savings.
* Technology Innovation Program -- $70 million annual savings.
* Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Program -- $125 million annual savings.
* Department of Energy Grants to States for Weatherization -- $530 million annual savings.
* Beach Replenishment -- $95 million annual savings.
* New Starts Transit -- $2 billion annual savings.
* Exchange Programs for Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Their Historical Trading Partners in Massachusetts -- $9 million annual savings
* Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants -- $2.5 billion annual savings.
* Title X Family Planning -- $318 million annual savings.
* Appalachian Regional Commission -- $76 million annual savings.
* Economic Development Administration -- $293 million annual savings.
* Programs under the National and Community Services Act -- $1.15 billion annual savings.
* Applied Research at Department of Energy -- $1.27 billion annual savings.
* Freedom CAR and Fuel Partnership -- $200 million annual savings.
* Energy Star Program -- $52 million annual savings.
* Economic Assistance to Egypt -- $250 million annually.
* U.S. Agency for International Development -- $1.39 billion annual savings.
* Genera l Assistance to District of Columbia -- $210 million annual savings.
* Subsidy for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority -- $150 million annual savings.
* Presidential Campaign Fund -- $775 million savings over ten years.
* No funding for federal office space acquisition -- $864 million annual savings.
* End prohibitions on competitive sourcing of government services.
* Repeal the Davis-Bacon Act -- More than $1 billion annually.
* IRS Direct Deposit: Require the IRS to deposit fees for some services it offers (such as processing payment plans for taxpayers) to the Treasury, instead of allowing it to remain as part of its budget -- $1.8 billion savings over ten years.
* Require collection of unpaid taxes by federal employees -- $1 billion total savings. WHAT THE HECK IS THIS ABOUT?
* Prohibit taxpayer funded union activities by federal employees -- $1.2 billion savings over ten years.
* Sell excess federal properties the government does not make use of -- $15 billion total savings.
* Eliminate death gratuity for Members of Congress. WHAT???
* Eliminate Mohair Subsidies -- $1 million annual savings.
* Eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- $12.5 million annual savings WELL ISN'T THAT SPECIAL
* Eliminate Market Access Program -- $200 million annual savings.
* USDA Sugar Program -- $14 million annual savings.
* Subsidy to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) -- $93 million annual savings.
* Eliminate the National Organic Certification Cost-Share Program -- $56.2 million annual savings.
* Eliminate fund for Obamacare administrative costs -- $900 million savings.
* Ready to Learn TV Program -- $27 million savings.. WHY?????
* HUD Ph.D. Program.
* Deficit Reduction Check-Off Act.
* TOTAL SAVINGS: $2.5 Trillion over Ten Years

My question is, what is all this doing in the budget in the first place?
Send to everyone you know.
 
 

 
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Bulletin of the Oppression of Women

March 29 - May 26, 2012

March 29, 2012
UK (h/t to IslaminEurope)
A five-year-old girl is thought to have become the UK's youngest victim of forced marriage. She was one of 400 children to receive assistance from the government's Forced Marriage Unit in the last year.

The figures have emerged as the public consultation into criminalising forced marriage in England, Wales and Northern Ireland comes to an end. Amy Cumming, joint head of the Forced Marriage Unit, said 29% of the cases it dealt with last year involved minors.

Turkey
A judge ruled to release two suspects arrested on suspicion of raping a 15-year-old girl and allegedly scolded the girl's mother for not watching her closely enough.

The Izmir 2nd High Criminal Court last week ruled for the release of two suspects who were arrested two years ago on charges of raping H.S., who was 15 at the time. Prosecutors had demanded 18 years in prison for the two suspects.

March 30,2 012
Italy (h/t JihadWatch)
The Italian Supreme Court on Friday upheld a sentence for abuse and aggravated assault by a Moroccan father against his 12-year-old daughter. Defense lawyers maintained that the father, who allegedly beat his daughter with a broom handle for "corrective" purposes after she could not properly recite the Koran, did so because of "cultural" reasons and should be given a lighter sentence accordingly.

Turkey (h/t to thereligionofpeace )
Realising a decades-old objective amid protest from the secular opposition, Turkey's moderate Islamic premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pushed through a reform today that favours the Koranic institutions, introduces an hour of Muslim religious instruction and exposes girls to danger of being kept at home away from school.

March 31, 2012
Afghanistan (h/t thereligionofpeace)
A 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy have been killed in an acid attack in Afghanistan, an official said Saturday, with witnesses claiming it was because of their friendship in what is an ultra-conservative country.

UK (h/t to thereligionofpeace)
38 girls may have been involved in a child prostitution ring, it emerged yesterday. Detectives had originally identified 24 girls, but Simon Heptonstall, prosecuting, told Amersham Court Court yesterday that police investigations were now focussing on 38 girls, aged between 11 and 16. Eleven have so far been interviewed by detectives.

Six men - Zeshan Ahmed, Akhtar Dogar, Anjun Dogar, Kamar Jamil, Bassan Karrar and Mohammed Karrar - were appearing for a preliminary crown court hearing.

April 19, 2012
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh, has approved marriage for girls as young as 10 years-old and criticized the notion of raising the age to 25 years-old according to various news reports. According to The World Observer, he went on to say a girl becomes ready for marriage at 10 or 12 according to Islam and stressed that Islamic law is not by any means oppressive to women, the London-based al-Hayat reported Wednesday.

April 21, 2012
Pakistan (h/t thereligionofpeace)
Police foiled a plan to marry a 5 year old girl to a 18 year old.

The families were informed that marriage of underage girls is illegal and they were shocked," a policeman, who was part of the raid, told The Express Tribune. "They said we're illiterate and do not know about the law." The girl's parents have been arrested.

UK
As many as 100,000 women in Britain have undergone female genital mutilations (FGM) with medics in the UK offering to carry out the illegal procedure on girls as young as 10, it has been reported.

April 23, 2012
India
Women's anger against FGM grows in India.

UK
Two Pakistani students rape a woman who fell asleep on a bus and missed her stop. The students persuaded her to get off with them, saying they would call a taxi for her.

April 27, 2012
USA (h/t JihadWatch)
Dr. al-Haj, a medical doctor and fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics, ignores FGM's detrimental effects on women's health, and instead argues that it is 'an honor' for women. He justifies this position by referring repeatedly to the words of classical Islamic scholars from the four schools of mainstream Sunni Islamic thought, all of which attest to FGM's legitimacy under Islam. He also refers to the words of the Prophet Muhammad himself, who reportedly counselled people in his day on how to perform FGM in a way that would be "more beautiful to behold and better for [the woman's] husband."

Dr. al-Haj lost his position at the Mayo Clinic. UPDATE from AtlasShrugs.

April 29, 2012
Chechnya (h/t JihadWatch)
Chechnya's government is openly approving of families that kill female relatives who violate their sense of honor, as this Russian republic embraces a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam after decades of religious suppression under Soviet rule.

May 2, 2012
Kuwait (h/t JihadWatch)
Dianne Wilton, the wife of a former British ambassador has been left with third-degree burns after a pot of boiling water was hurled at her in an suspected Islamist attack. She was dining with friends and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family in a restaurant when a woman attacked her table.

May 3, 2012
Morocco (h/t to AtlasShrugs)
The widespread practice of marrying minors continues to be one of the most incendiary legal and political issues in Morocco today, causing open confrontations between hard-line Islamists and moderates throughout the country.

May 6, 2012
Pakistan
A former lawmaker and cleric from Kohistan district, Maulana Abdul Haleem, termed formal education for women un-Islamic and asked parents to pluck their daughters from school, or else they would be 'doomed'

May 8, 2012
Tunsia (h/t JihadWatch)
The French finance ministry froze the assets of a radical imam from Tunisia who is under the threat of expulsion for anti-Semitism, an official announcement said. Mohammed Hammami, 76, has lived in France for decades and was accused in January by Interior Minister Claude Geant of making "violently anti-Semitic remarks" as well as calling for women to be "whipped to death" for adultery.

May 9, 2012
Australia (h/t AtlasShrugs)
Ismail Belghar, 36, yesterday pleaded guilty to detaining and assaulting his sister-in-law after she "dared" to take his wife to the beach without his permission. The court heard, because of his religious beliefs and because he thought he had absolute authority over her, Belghar felt it "abhorrent" that his wife, Hanife Kokden, had been to the beach where she "displayed her body".

The Moroccan immigrant had originally been charged with the attempted murder of his wife's younger sister, Canan Kokden, 25.

UK (h/t AtlasShrugs)
Nine Muslim men were found guilty of running a sex-ring for years, grooming and forcing young at-risk British girls to participate. More HERE.

UK (h/t therelilgionofpeace)
One of the guilty Muslim men in the British child-sex ring, Adbul Rauf, was an Islamic preacher.

May 10, 2012
India (h/t thereligionofpeace)
A senior Indian police officer has been recorded suggesting that the father of a missing girl should murder her in an honour killing.

May 11, 2012
Indonesia
No fewer than six major Islamic organisations have formally objected to the equality bill on the ground that some of its articles go against Islamic values in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation where 80 percent of its 238 million people are followers of the faith.

May 12, 2012
India
A 24-year-old woman hailing from Charthawal village created quite a sensation at the office of SP City, Muzaffarnagar, on last Thursday, when she accused her father-in-law, Mohammad Jabir, of repeatedly raping her. An obviously pregnant Sabina (name changed) was covered in a 'burkha' and appeared nervous, as she sought police intervention in the presence of local mediapersons.

Sabina claimed that her husband, Wasul, a small-time cloth merchant was mostly out of town, which had only emboldened the old man. However, hardly 24 hours after the drama, Sabina has gone missing and no one, including the police, has any clue on her whereabouts.

May 13, 2012
Morocco
A young woman, whose name and age remains undisclosed, was said to have been beaten and stoned for wearing a "short dress" at a market place in the city of Rabat, reported North African news website Magharebia. It was not known when the incident had happened.

The assault was reportedly carried out by Salafists, an extremist group who in recent years are believed to have a link with Al-Qaeda. The attack reportedly came on the heels of an announcement made by Quran reciter Abu Zeid, who called for a particular day to be consigned to "chastity and modesty", the report said.

May 17, 2012
Pakistan (h/t thereligionofpeace)
A twelve year old Christian girl who was raped over a year ago receives threats, not justice.

May 21, 2012
Sudan
Intisar Sharif Abdalla, believed to be between 15 and 17 years of age (although prison authorities claim she is 20) was sentenced to death in accordance with Article 146 of the Sudanese criminal law albeit without legal representation.

The judgment was made on May 13, 2012 after just one hearing and came after an "admission of guilt" plea following torture and brutal beatings by Sharif's brother who instigated the case. Her co-accused however remains un-convicted and walks freely.

May 23, 2012
Afghanistan (ht/ thereligionofpeace)
Afghan officials say more than 120 schoolgirls and three teachers have been poisoned at a school in the northern Takhar Province. The attack was blamed on fundamentalist radicals who used an unidentified toxic powder to contaminate the air at the school.

Many victims reportedly lost consciousness and were hospitalized. One of the children, Samera, told Reuters they originally thought the school's water had been poisoned. More HERE.

May 26, 2012
Afghanistan (h/t to Jaye)
A brain drain of bright young women is already taking place in Afghanistan before the 2014 handover that many fear will mean a reversal of advances in women's rights.

The lack of commitment by the Afghan government to equality and to tackling the high rates of ill-treatment of women in the home and in the workplace is raising real fears they will be at the bottom of the political agenda in the push for power after Nato forces leave the country.


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Our truly amazing language.

Did you know "listen" and "silent" use the same letters? Do you know that the words "race car" spelled backwards still spells "race car"? And that "eat" is the only word that if you take the first letter and move it to the last, it spells its past tense "ate"? And have you noticed that if you rearrange the letters in "illegal immigrants", and add just a few more letters, it spells: "Go home you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, baby-making, non-English-speaking jackasses, and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-loving, raggedy-ass people with you." Now how weird is that?

 

 





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Subject: Amazing
Where do the cards come from????

Click on:  Cards
 


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Be ice in a 410 size too. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RP4FjODPDFA

 Dragon's Breath is a zirconium-based pyrotechnic shotgun round. When
the round is fired, sparks and flames shoot out to about 48 feet away
from the gun, as demonstrated by FPS Russian and his two unlucky
mannequins.  While its tactical uses are very limited, the visual
effect it produces is impressive, similar to that of a short-ranged
flamethrower. They can also be used as means of intimidation to the
opposing forces. The pyrotechnic shell is expensive compared to other
types of shotgun ammunition, costing around 5 US dollars per shell.
There is little to no record of its use in actual combat and Dragon's
breath rounds are banned in many locations including Florida (sigh),
due to their inherent fire hazard.

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Antiwarcom1 has made a comment on Norma Jean Almodovar at Libertarian National Convention pt 2:

Bruce, great job at capturing the convention.

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this is rather awesome http://www.news15lu.net/biz/?page=1963458

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New post on Fellowship of the Minds

"Yes We Can-nabis"

by Terry

He would smoke it here and there. He would smoke it anywhere

.

A soon-to-be published biography by David Maraniss entitled "Barack Obama: The Story" gives more detail on Obama's pot-smoking days, complete with testimonials from young Barry Obama's high school buddies, a group that went by the name "the Choom Gang." Choom was slang for smoking marijuana.

Up In Smoke

Obama and His Pot-Smoking 'Choom Gang'
by Jonathon Karl
ABC News
May 25, 2012

Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama never tried to say he didn't inhale.

In his 1995 memoir "Dreams of My Father," Obama writes about smoking pot almost like Dr. Seuss wrote about eating green eggs and ham. As a high school kid, Obama wrote, he would smoke "in a white classmate's sparkling new van," he would smoke "in the dorm room of some brother" and he would smoke "on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids."

He would smoke it here and there. He would smoke it anywhere.

Now a soon-to-be published biography by David Maraniss entitled "Barack Obama: The Story" gives more detail on Obama's pot-smoking days, complete with testimonials from young Barry Obama's high school buddies, a group that went by the name "the Choom Gang." Choom was slang for smoking marijuana.

Maraniss portrays the teenage Obama as not just a pot smoker, but a pot-smoking innovator.

"As a member of the Choom Gang," Maraniss writes, "Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends."

Ya Mon

The first Obama-inspired trend: "Total Absorption" or "TA".

"TA was the opposite of Bill Clinton's claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled," explains Maraniss. Here's how it worked: If you exhaled prematurely when you were with the Choom Gang, "you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around."

As one of Obama's old high school buddies tells Maraniss: "Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated."

Another Obama innovation: "Roof Hits."

"When they were chooming in a car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling."

Maraniss also says Obama was known for his "Interceptions": "When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted 'Intercepted!,' and took an extra hit."

Although Obama himself wrote that he and his pot smoking buddies were a "club of disaffection," Maraniss says that's not really true.

"In fact, most members of the Choom Gang were decent students and athletes who went on to successful and productive lawyers, writers and businessmen," Maraniss writes. One notable exception was Ray, the group's pot dealer who, known for his ability "to score quality bud," would years later be killed by a scorned gay lover armed with a ball-peen hammer.

Obama himself managed to be a pretty good student despite all the pot smoking and unconventional study habits.

"He told his Choom Gang mates that the trick was if you put the textbook under your pillow the night before you would perform better on an exam," Maraniss writes. No way, dude!

Back to the pot smoking.

Hawaii of the early 1970s was something of a pot-smoking Mecca.

"It was sold and smoked right there in front of your nose; Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud, Kona Gold, and other local variations of pakalolo were readily available," writes Maraniss.

Obama's pal Mark Bendix had a Volkswagen microbus known as "the Choomwagon." They would often drive up Honolulu's Mount Tantalus where they parked "turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult and Stevie Wonder, lit up some 'sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds' and washed it down with 'green bottled beer' (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl). No shouting, no violence, no fights; they even cleaned up their beer bottles."

Of course, smoking, drinking and driving on mountain roads could also be a little dangerous. Especially the night they tried drag racing.

The race to the top of Mount Tantalus pitted the "Choomwagon" against another friend's Toyota. Obama was in the Toyota. The Choomwagon made it to the top first. When the other car didn't show up, those in the Choomwagon drove back down to find them. Here's how Maraniss describes what happened next:

"On the way down, they saw a figure who appeared to be staggering up the road. It was Barry Obama. What was going on? As they drew closer, they noticed that he was laughing so hard he could barely stand up."

His friend had rolled the car. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. And, amazingly, they avoided trouble by leaving the driver alone to deal with the police by claiming it was just an unfortunate "mishap."

Maraniss concludes his chapter on Obama's high school years by looking at a note Obama had written in his high school yearbook in a section reserved for students to give a line or two giving thanks to those who helped along the way.

Obama had written this: "Thanks Tut [his grandmother], Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times."

Maraniss notes: "Ray was the older guy who hung around the Choom Gang, selling them pot. A hippie drug dealer made his acknowledgements; his mother did not."

The White House told ABC News that it has no comment.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-and-his-pot-smoking-choom-gang/

Seems Skippy hasn't changed much over the years. He is still 'totally absorbed' (see TA), still 'bogarts' the good stuff, is still associated with gay guys who die under questionable circumstances, still letting others take the blame for his 'mishaps, still acknowledging those who 'helped him along the way' and still blowing smoke. But now he's not blowing it out of the 'choomwagon' windows. He's blowing it up OUR BUTTS!

~Terry

Terry | May 27, 2012 at 6:05 pm | Tags: Barack Obama, marijuana | Categories: Humor, Liberals/Democrats, Media, Uncategorized, US Presidents | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-eEP

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New post on Creeping Sharia

Obama names counter-terror chief Brennan drone assassination czar

by creeping

The MSM is not reporting this. We could only find one report on Russia's English-language propaganda network RT.com and this via Who will drones target? Who in the US will decide? - Boston.com. WASHINGTON—White House counterterror chief John Brennan has seized the lead in choosing which terrorists will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, [...]

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The new pirates are all about building a safer Internet


william_wolfe_wylie_op
By ,QMI Agency

First posted: Monday, May 28, 2012 02:00 AM EDT


Welcome to Undernet


3

The new pirates are all about building a safer Internet


william_wolfe_wylie_op
By ,QMI Agency

First posted: Monday, May 28, 2012 02:00 AM EDT

online (File Photo)

Report an error

The Internet will always evolve faster than government laws to control it. But that's not stopping governments all over the world from trying. Meanwhile, a sub-group of well-meaning technology experts is building a new Internet, immune from government hands.

The pirates are winning. 
Earlier this year, the U.S. government attempted to pass legislation that would "ban" websites that host illegal content like copyrighted videos and songs. While that bill failed to pass, technology experts like New York University's Clay Shirky believe others like it are not far away.

Travis McRea, chief administrative officer of the Pirate Parties International and a Vancouver resident, is helping to build one of the solutions.

"When people try to legislate against the Internet, all they hurt are people who are trying to use the Internet for legitimate reasons," he said.

"The people doing bad things are on a whole different plane than this," he added, noting that the evil-doers of the Web world are using an entirely different level of infrastructure and knowledge to carry out their malfeasance.

Shutting down a website, essentially means removing it from the Internet by ensuring that when you type in www.facebook.com, all you see is "404 - Not found."

It all centres around DNS servers, which are essentially the card catalog of the Internet. When you type facebook.com into your Web browser, your computer speaks to a DNS server, which translates www.facebook.com into the IP address of Facebook's server that will send you the page and let you play FarmVille.

If you knock the entry out of the DNS server, your computer doesn't think Facebook exists anymore. And that's what governments are threatening to do to websites that don't play by their rules.

Host an illegal file? Nobody on the Internet will ever find you again. 
But McRea and his ilk have figured out a way around that, and it's called OpenNIC. 
OpenNIC is an open-source DNS server that is immune from government influence and exists for the express purpose of listing everything possible on the Internet, even the stuff that makes governments uncomfortable.

And that kind of benevolent hacktivism is increasingly important. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — the body responsible for managing the DNS servers that most of us use everyday — recently published a help guide for government "seizures of domain names, DNS name server reconfiguration and transfers of domain name registrations" on their website.

But people using OpenNIC? "They will be able to circumvent that," McRea says. 
OpenNIC isn't in any one country, and isn't responsible to any one body other than the developers who work on it. It's enormously difficult to legislate. So long as their DNS servers remain intact, the sites governments have ordered taken down — and that ICANN has obligingly removed — will live on.

Telling your computer to use OpenNIC is remarkably easy, too. Step-by-step directions are available at useopennic.org and it takes the average non-technical person about two minutes to complete the three steps.

"Use alternate solutions to access the Internet and remind governments that the more they tighten their grip on the Internet, the more people are going to start slipping through their hands," McRea said.

That's what modern digital piracy looks like. It's not about stealing a Rihanna single, or a copy of The Avengers. It's about bypassing those institutions which seek to limit freedom, before threats to those freedoms are even tangible, solely for the purpose of ensuring those freedoms remain intact.

In two minutes you prove that the idea of deleting something from the web is as ludicrous a concept as you always thought it was. Welcome to the Undernet.

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Abolish Memorial Day
When memory goes, what is there to memorialize?
by Justin Raimondo, May 28, 2012

We might as well get rid of Memorial Day, for all the good it does us. Originally "Decoration Day," the last Monday in May has been the designated time for us to remember the war dead and honor their sacrifice – while, perhaps, taking in the lessons of the many conflicts that have marked our history as a free nation. In line with the modern trend of universal trivialization, however, the holiday has been paganized to mark the beginning of summer, when we get out the barbecue grill and have the neighbors over for hamburgers and beer. As for contemplating the meaning of the day in the context of our current and recent wars, that is left to those few pundits who pay attention to foreign policy issues, or else to writers of paeans to the " Greatest Generation" – World War II being the only modern war our panegyrists deign to recall, since it is relatively untouched by the ravages of historical revisionism.

Indeed, as far as our wars are concerned, the very concept of historical memory has vanished from the post-9/11 world. It seems the earth was born anew on September 11, 2001, and only ragged remnants of our mystified past – mostly from World War II and the Civil War – survived the purge. In the new version our victories are exaggerated and glorified, while our defeats – e.g. Vietnam, Korea, our nasty little covert wars in Central and South America – are not even mentioned, let alone considered in depth.

The abolition of historical memory is one of the worst aspects of modernity: it is certainly the most depressing. For the modern man, it's an effort to recall what happened last week, never mind the last century. The news cycle spins madly and ever-faster, and the result is that we are lost in the blur of Now: for all intents and purposes, we are a people without a history, who recall past events – if we remember them at all – as one would summon a vague and confusing dream.

The Vietnam war was the last major conflict that caused us to reconsider our foreign policy of global intervention for any length of time, and at this point it has been thoroughly buried in the public imagination. For a brief moment the so-called Vietnam Syndrome was bemoaned by the political class, who complained it prevented them from indulging their desire to intervene anywhere and everywhere at will. And the memory of that futile crusade did have a restraining effect for some years – until the passage of time, the collapse of Communism, and – finally – the 9/11 terrorist attacks wiped the slate clean.

Never mind remembering the lessons of Vietnam – we've repressed even the bitter lessons of our most recent "past" conflict, the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. No sooner had we fallen into that quicksand then we promptly forgot who pushed us in – which is why the authors of that disaster continue to function as foreign policy mavens and political seers whose reputations are considered sterling. The neocon clique, and any number of politicians of both parties who fulsomely supported that war, today act as if they have nothing to apologize for, and nothing to regret: far from being repentant, they are, if anything, proud of their advocacy, secure in the knowledge that " everyone" believed Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction," and smug in the certainty that no one of any consequence has anything to gain by raising the subject.

Who really remembers the Kosovo war – that is, the war as it unfolded? We were told as many as a hundred-thousand Kosovars were being exterminated, and yet at war's end we found a few thousand – Serbs and Kosovars in equal number – had been murdered. The trial of a man named Ratko has the War Party mythologizing that conflict, as is its wont: unfortunately for them, the kangaroo court known as the Hague Tribunal has been adjourned in that case, perhaps permanently, on account of the prosecution's withholding of evidence. That's par for the course: withholding evidence, suppressing truth, editing the historical record has been their modus operandi from the start, but apparently the judges had an attack of conscience in this case, and it looks like the NATO-crats won't get their show trial after all.

Who really remembers the Korean war? Not even writers whose major interest is foreign policy are capable of recalling it as it was actually fought. Rachel Maddow, MSNBC anchor and liberal voice, recently wrote an entire book based on the premise that Republicans are primarily responsible for "the unmooring of American military power" from either constitutional or political restraints – forgetting (if she ever knew) it was Harry Truman who set that precedent when he sent US troops to Korea without bothering to ask Congress first.

I don't blame Rachel: history is a forgotten discipline, practiced selectively when it is invoked at all. These days it is best not to contemplate the past too much, or too intently, because comparison with the present is bound to depress us. An ice-cream cone bought for a Memorial Day picnic used to cost a dime: today nothing costs a dime, not even alms to a beggar.

To recall past wars is to recall their folly, and no one wants to be reminded of their moral and cognitive shortcomings: so we resort to mythology that valorizes the victors and paints the defeated in various shades of black – and when that's not possible, amnesia is our last resort.

So I say: let's rid ourselves of Memorial Day, and at least be honest with ourselves in this one instance. Let's acknowledge we'd much rather forget our history of mass murder, and rename the last Monday in May in honor of some pagan holiday – because Memorial Day is an oxymoron in a nation of amnesiacs.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/05/27/abolish-memorial-day/