Decrypt Or Die

A UK man has been jailed for not decrypting his computer:

The first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime has been identified by The Register as a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record.

His crime was a persistent refusal to give counter-terrorism police the keys to decrypt his computer files.

The 33-year-old man, originally from London, is currently held at a secure mental health unit after being sectioned while serving his sentence at Winchester Prison.

Australia has similar laws in s3LA of the Crimes Act 1914 and s201A of the Customs Act 1901. Failure to comply can result in a penalty of up to 6 months imprisonment.

The New Denialists

The reaction to the Climategate scandal from the die-hard AGW fanatics has been a thing to behold. They are in complete denial about the emails. The alleged news organisation, the New York Times, is focussing its coverage on the actions of the whistleblower, and running interference for those implicated in this scandal. Funnily enough they do not have the same attitude to other leaked information. In this, as in so many things, they are acting as partisan hacks rather than as journalists.

Worse than even the NYT is the BBC which had the new information for a month before the scandal broke, but did not publish it. They are just another discredited 'news' outlet.

Leftist intellectual George Monbiot is a strong supporter of the AGW thesis. The new information, while not causing him to change his mind on AGW, has given him pause for thought. He apologised to his readers, and acknowledged the seriousness of the now public CRU emails.

The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people's denial. Pretending that this isn't a real crisis isn't going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We'll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again.

This ability to engage and deal with new facts as they emerge is the difference between true intellectuals and mere ideologues.

UPDATE:

Andrew Revkin at NYT (who you can see being duchessed in the Climategate emails) is showing signs of critical thinking.

Islam Hates Free Speech

The push for blasphemy laws to restrict criticism of Islam is being continued at the UN, the lead this time is being taken by Pakistan and Algeria. Islamic countries have no business depriving people of their right to free speech.

Because their are a significant number of muslims prepared to resort to violence, it is no surprise that the makers of the movie 2012 have decided to give Islam special treatment:

'I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie'.

Sadly, most western leaders are too gutless to denounce this sorry state of affairs. The Dutch are subjecting one of their own politicians to criminal prosecution for offending muslims in a 10 minute film.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Schoolies Off Their Facebook

Unbelievable!

Police try to shut down a Facebook page. They say it might cause even more stupid behaviour.

Words fail me.

Hoodwinked

Censorship imposed on oneself for the purposes of political correctness is an insidious thing. it is a form of free speech suicide.

It is quite clear that for Obama and the Obama Slobbering Media, speculation about the motivation of the Foot Hood killer is fine so long as it doesn't include speculation about any possible religious motivation, despite the fact that there are many clues pointing in that direction. Some of these are canvassed in this Time piece.

Obama said:

It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know - no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice - in this world, and the next.

Sounds like wishful thinking.

The hapless president implored people not to rush to judgment. This is typical. Every time a muslim perpetrates and atrocity on the basis of their religious beliefs, a cry goes out eliciting sympathy for muslims who might be subject to a backlash. Just like when a christian shoots an abortionist the cry goes out for fear of an anti-chrisitian backlash, or not. A little more concern for identifying the cause of the atrocity and the steps necessary to prevent it happening again would be in order, even if it means considering an (in this case) obvious, but unmentionable cause.

The U.S. Army Chief of Staff, George Casey, likewise seemed primarily concerned about the safety of Muslims, not about the safety of the potential victims of the next jihad attack: "I'm concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that." Not "I'm concerned that there could be another jihadist among our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that."

Some of the excuses include stress (I assume it was some form of pre-traumatic stress disorder as he hadn't deployed yet), peeling a bumper sticker off his car, that he snapped or that he was "nuts".

In fact Major Hasan explained what the motivations of a muslim might be in a powerpoint presentation (we love death more than you love life).

The Dead Hand Of Capitalism

Now the US is the driving force behind ever more draconian intellectual property laws. It wasn't always so.

Now the push is on to extend intellectual property even further, including in relation to to the internet. It seems that counterfeiting now includes releasing material without DRM.

Intellectual property laws are granted by society for its own benefit. Unfortunately the laws have created monsters, companies who profit obscenely from exploiting their statutory monopoly. Part of the their ill-gotten wealth is directed at political lobbying, ensuring that politicians screw their constituents as they continually extend the reach of intellectual property laws.