A bit of not so local news, which really isn’t terribly surprising but that’s worth highlighting anyway. News reaches me that due to police objections Strawbery fair is to be cancelled this year. The organizers say:

Cambridgeshire Police have made it absolutely clear they do not want the event to go ahead and have put an incredible amount of time and resource into preventing it. We feel the police action shows just how far out of step they are with the people of Cambridge, who have shown overwhelming support for the event; and had the same enthusiasm been spent on working with us rather than fighting us, many of the key concerns would have been dealt with.

Which seems an increasingly common approach from the police towards “small” independent festivals and events that don’t have big corporate sponsorship. Given that this fair has been happening since 1974 at around the same time it’s not as though the police didn’t have ample time if they hadn’t want to stop it happening. So whilst I suspect that this is probably just due to local jobsworths and kill joys on the police force (I imagine them sucking their teeth and going “ooh it’ll cost you, can’t get the parts you see”). I also can’t help but see it as part of the wider picture of the destruction of places and events were people can meet up and socialise outside of state and corporate control, as discussed previously here and at length and in much better detail by LegIron

For quite a while now Leg Iron has been talking a great deal of sense about how the powers that be like to ban things and use the same methods every time.

The most successful they’ve been recently and the blue print for it seems banning everything else was the smoking ban where we now have to worry about third hand smoke, and they’re looking at stopping you smoking in your own house or car if children are present, and of course publicans will be fine and imprisoned for not stopping people smoking when they’re not there. The moves against alcohol are very obviously under way with yet further tax increases planned and repeated talk about minimum pricing and “voluntary” labelling schemes. Caffiene is in the firing line as are elctronic cigarettes and now it seems so is salt. To the extent that New York politician is proposing to fine fine restaurateurs if they “add salt to food”, I can only assume that this imbecile has never actually tried cooking without salt. However there is as always the alternative soft push so that we’re relieved that a more reasonable approach has been taken:
However, the mayor has stopped well short of proposing an outright ban on restaurants adding salt, instead campaigning for a voluntary cut of a quarter over five years.
The voluntary cut, will do doubt become less voluntary and then limits will be set and the limits lowered but still better than an outright ban, and much easier for people to make mistakes for which they can be fined.

When combined with the recent proposed changes to music licensing for church halls one really does have to suspect the aim is to stop people socialising. The smoking ban is killing off the pubs, but not quite quickly enough and people still meet for drinks, so they’re attacking drinking. Coffee shops are becoming popular meeting places once more so they go for caffeine, but people might meet in restaurrats but regulations on salt (and surely other ingredients not long after) will help stop that , as will the caffeine and booze limits. Then kill off local social centers by pricing them out of the way and there are no community controlled places left for people to meet.

Of course it is more likely this is just disconnected attempts to control every aspect of our lives for our health and the sake of the children, but the affect will be the same no social cohesion and socialising only in state sanctioned large corporate venues. Which won’t be serving tea, coffee or anything much to drink.

Soylant greens all round?

Update I forgot to link to this excellent article by LegIron when writing this so here’s the link he Saltfinders are coming.

As I mentioned a little while ago a rather dubious organization is planning a “procession” to call for the over throw of the government, monarchy and democracy in this country. The views of this group are rather unsurprisingly not widely supported being as they are just a few noisy extreme Muslims, however the march is significant so again unsurprisingly there is now a counter demonstration being organized by Muslims4UK, and British Muslims for Secular Democracy. Hopefully this will be a much larger demonstration, especially if those of us who are also rather against the ideas behind the initial “procession” turn up to be counted as well, as we have been invited to do.

Date: Saturday Oct 31 2009
Time: 13,00 to 16.00
Venue: Piccadilly Circus

(I sadly won’t be there due to being a few hundred miles away but I will be back for the 5th).

One thing though that may make this counter demonstration somewhat fraught or at least interesting is that the EDL seem to have changed their minds and despite initially saying that they were not counter demonstrating against Islam4UK they now are. Which may lead to some tension as the Muslims4UK group are against the EDL as much as they’re against the Islam4UK group saying:

“to the EDL: You do not represent English people. You are clearly looking to incite trouble.”

So with them both in the same place protesting against the same other group of protesters it may as I say become interesting. With luck it may become interesting in a positive way, with reconciliation of differences and increased understanding brought about by a shared opponent.

just to round things off the EDL have a promo video for their demo which as some very stirring music but really isn’t nearly as nice as the promo video made by
British Muslims for Secular Democracy under the moniker of SecularDemocracy.org

So if I could make it I’d be with the group with the amusing signs.

Update Facebook event here

Lots of people have written many articles on how to use the internet in more or less anonymous fashions. So I suspect that this isn’t going to add anything new but will perhaps add a new slant or at least group things in a different fashion that may make more sense for some people than other articles have.

The obvious first step as many people have said is to make sure that whatever operating system you’re running is kept up to date and that you have a firewall and it’s locked down as much as possible. All of which is well and good and stops people getting directly onto your machine, but if they’ve got that level of interest in you you’ve probably got bigger problems to worry about (or you’re reading this a few years after I wrote it). At the moment the powers that be are mainly concentrating on traffic analysis. That’s what monitoring what web sites you visit and who you email actually is, they’re looking for patterns in the traffic people generate to see who’s talking to who and if there’s more traffic just after or before specific events. So at this stage in the game disguising your traffic is a good thing to do, and that’s where it pays to be generous.

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