Iran

The US, Great Britain, and France have shown that Iran haven’t a shit show in closing the Straits of Hormuz:

Britain, America and France delivered a pointed signal to Iran, sending six warships led by a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier through the highly sensitive waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

This deployment defied explicit Iranian threats to close the waterway. It coincided with an escalation in the West’s confrontation with Iran over the country’s nuclear ambitions.

European Union foreign ministers are today expected to announce an embargo on Iranian oil exports, amounting to the most significant package of sanctions yet agreed. They are also likely to impose a partial freeze on assets held by the Iranian Central Bank in the EU.

Tehran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Tankers carrying 17 million barrels of oil pass through this waterway every day, accounting for 35 per cent of the world’s seaborne crude shipments. At its narrowest point, located between Iran and Oman, the Strait is only 21 miles wide.

Last month, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the Iranian navy, claimed that closing the Strait would be “easy,” adding: “As Iranians say, it will be easier than drinking a glass of water.”

But USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered carrier capable of embarking 90 aircraft, passed through this channel and entered the Gulf without incident yesterday. HMS Argyll, a Type 23 frigate from the Royal Navy, was one of the escort vessels making up the carrier battle-group. A guided missile cruiser and two destroyers from the US Navy completed the flotilla, along with one warship from the French navy.

Iran is getting stroppy:

 Iran says it has successfully test fired a long-range missile during its naval exercise in the Gulf, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“We have test fired a long-range shore-to-sea missile called Qader (capable), which managed to successfully destroy predetermined targets in the Gulf,” the agency quoted deputy navy Commander Mahmoud Mousavi as saying.

The move follows Iran’s threat to halt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

“Today we will test-fire Qader and Nour long range missiles during the drill,” Mousavi told state TV earlier today.

Iran has been holding the 10-day naval exercise at a time of increased tension with Western powers over its nuclear programme, and Mousavi said on Sunday it had successfully test-fired a medium range surface-to-air missile.

Tehran threatened last week to stop the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz if it became the target of an oil embargo over its nuclear ambitions. The European Union has said it is considering a ban – already in place in the United States – on imports of Iranian crude.

The US Fifth Fleet said it will not allow any disruption of traffic in the vital oil shipping route.

They must be blessed with a whole heap of stupid. The US has wound down its Iraq deployment, Afghanistan is winding down too…they have plenty of battle hardened veterans, heaps of munitions and a stroppy anti-West country that wants nukes flexing it’s muscles.

Iran says they will close the Straits of Hormuz, I say a flight of B-52s, some B2s, a couple of carrier groups and the US Marines will make sure that won’t be happening.

I read this post at Federalist Paupers and thought about the parallels here in new Zealand after the tragic killing of Rosemary Ives. There were a great many calls from gun-grabbing liberals for tighter controls on firearms, without them thinking that the controls were quite tight enough and that Andrew Mears broke every single one of them with his stupid action. The point was missed utterly about how few people actually get killed or injured during hunting, and the fact that it is actually more dangerous driving to recreational areas than being in them.

The post at Federalist Paupers nicely provides some numbers and some facts that counteracts the gun-grabbers. The post also nicely shows why no one will ever successfully cow the United States, either politically or externally.

The state of Wisconsin has gone an entire deer hunting season without someone getting killed. That’s great. There were over 600,000 hunters.

Allow me to restate that number. Over the last two months, the eighth largest army in the world – more men under arms than Iran; more than France and Germany combined – deployed to the woods of a single American state to help keep the deer menace at bay.

But that pales in comparison to the 750,000 who are in the woods of Pennsylvania this week. Michigan’s 700,000 hunters have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia, and it is literally the case that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.

These numbers are part of why those of us who grew up in rural parts of the country simply don’t comprehend the gun-grabbing impulses of some. Every single year, millions of Americans carry high power rifles into the woods and more or less do as they please – some shoot at deer, some just drink a lot – and it is a complete non-story. The number of people injured and killed by these guns will pale in comparison to those injured and killed in driving accidents during the same time period.

But however well or badly we handle our guns, woe will befall he who thinks he can conquer America. 500 years ago, Machiavelli compared ancient Persia with then-modern France. Persia was highly centralized, so the emperor was firmly in control of all parts of his realm, and could muster enormous numbers of men to any part of the country. But if you could defeat that army and the central authority that raised it, then you would almost immediately control the whole nation, as Alexander showed. Medieval France, on the other hand, was very decentralized, with petty dukes controlling small centers of power throughout the country. Because of this, the king of France had only marginal control over vast swaths of his country , but no invader could stand a chance at conquering France because of all the small bands of local opposition.

I wish N.M. was around today, if only to hear the praise he would have for a nation that every year assembles and then disbands the world’s largest army purely for the purpose of managing its deer population. For millenia, philosophers have pondered how one can maintain a well-armed population that can fend off all attackers, while simultaneously maintaining ordered governance.  In America, we’ve fulfilled this dream, and we’ve done it so well and so effortlessly that no one seems to have noticed.

That kind of puts things into perspective and shows up the nonsense of the gun-grabbing liberal elite who have never had the pleasure of  tracking, and matching guile and stealth with deer or any other animal. Ironically the same greenie gun-grabbers that want to stop hunters are also the ones wanting to rid the country of deer and other pests, they seem quite happy to dump literally thousands of tonnes of toxic poison on our forests but don’t want people to enjoy the outdoors and dispatch a few pests along the way.

In the US deer hunting, for example, is largely limited to defined seasons. Here in New Zealand we would be better to manage our deer populations by changing the laws to remove them from the noxious pest list and to instead create a new tourism industry encouraging people to come to Ne Zealand seeking trophy animals. The only thing stopping this is the dogmatic instance of DoC and the green lobby for the total eradication of deer from New Zealand, something that is unachievable and un-needed.

It is high time that the facts were shown to politicians in a meaningful way and that isn’t through Peter Dunne. He pretends to support hunters and fisherman and yet he hasn’t done a single thing for them. Far better would be the establishment of list of hunting and fishing friendly MPs, so that people who enjoy the outdoors can see for themselves whether or not their local MP is on their side or not.

Here are some random impertinent questions to be asked about South Canterbury Finance.

Does SCF own Show Girls?
Does SCF own a café in Tehran?
Does SCF own a site in the Chatham Islands that is marked down for a high rise development?

The answer, unbelievably, to all of those questions is Yes.

No doubt the Hubbard cult members will all point to the huge amount of benefit to Timaru that CF brought in by owning that cafe in Tehran.

Remind me again why these pricks got bailed out by the government? Any decent securities lawyer could have held up the guarantee for months while all this nonsense was revealed, but not our treasury officials who just couldn’t wait to write the big fat bail-out cheque.

Every time Simon Pedobear Power opens his gob it is usually to say something stupid. He really should have stuck to second-rate conveyancing in a small town.

So Pedobear is moving to tighten rules based on one case of a New Zealand company that was allegedly dealing arms with North Korea.

“This year Auckland-registered SP Trading Ltd was used to charter a Georgian plane to fly 35 tonnes of North Korean explosives and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. The arms were seized in Bangkok airport”

Problem for Pedobear is that the director in this case was a New Zealand resident and she worked for a company with a New Zealand address.  Cactus Kate posted on this at the time. Clearly Pedobear needs to read more widely than his own staff manufactured press releases.

Lu Zhang, we know Pedobear, she has a Chinese name, but she (like May Wang) IS a New Zealand resident.

Lu Zhang, 28, is accused of 75 offences of making false statements in company registration forms after she declared her office address was her residence in 75 companies she registered.

Zhang, like thousands of New Zealanders has incorrect address details at the Companies Office.  That was ALL she was charged with. An offence that plenty of New Zealanders are guilty of as they don’t wish to pay their greedy lawyer or accountant to make the change at the Companies Office every time they move home. In fact this is almost what former Attorney General David Parker fell foul of, incorrect documentation.

Pedobear wants to change the law that actually would not have prevented the case he is using as a poster child for the necessity to change the law.  Zhang is Chinese, chances are she slept under her desk at work anyhow and thus her office address is her home.

Zhang used to work at Burger King according to media reports.  Perhaps Pedobear should change the law so people with Chinese sounding names who used to work at Burger King cannot qualify as company directors in New Zealand.  That ought to fix things.

Instead of grandstanding and pretending he is the great leader that National should have, he should stop proposing changes that won’t do anything just so he looks like he is doing something…instead of…..oh I don’t know protecting victims by enacting Megan’s law.

I’ll stop calling Simon Power Pedobear when he takes real action on protecting victims instead of mouthing platitudes and helping pedophiles stay anonymous.

Pedobear Power on Q+A

The Boston Globe attempts to explain why we loathe the mullet.

At this point, it’s fair to say that the mullet is as reviled as a hairstyle can possibly be. Any doubt was erased last week, when Iran’s move to ban the ’do earned the member of the axis of evil not its usual international condemnation but a PR boost.

As New York comedian Ophira Eisenberg observed: “I am not a fan of any government giving guidelines on how people can look, but when I read that Iran banned the mullet I thought, finally, they are doing something right.’’

The mullet and a number of other styles got snipped for being “decadent,’’ but with all due respect to Iran’s culture ministry, that’s not the hairstyle’s only problem. Why does the mullet elicit such loathing? Perhaps it’s the haircut’s creepy, suggestive slogan: Business in front, party in the back. Heh, heh, heh. Or the in-your-face attitude of its devotees.

Monday Mullets - Former Red Sox pitcher Dennis Eckersley (left) and Full-House star John Stamos (right) were well known for their mullets.

Short on top, long in the back, the mullet has been worn by beloved pop culture figures from the Sphinx to Paul McCartney to Florence Henderson. A style staple throughout history, it exploded in popularity in the 1980s, sucking in everyone from Bono to Steve Perry of Journey to ninth grade boys across the US. The mullet is not without practical uses: It allows nice visibility under, say, a helmet, while shading the neck from the sun. Nevertheless, the mullet years ago turned into the red rubber nose of the coiffure world.

And not an appealing one, according to Tom Connolly, an English professor at Suffolk University and a pop culture commentator. “There is such an aggressive/humble arrogance that goes with it: ‘I’m just a country boy — do you want to go out with me?’ ’’

“It’s not a haircut,’’ Eisenberg quips, “it’s a lifestyle.’’

I am not sure what Iranian westies and assorted bogans will be asking for at the hair dresser, but it just goes to show how dangerous a theocracy is when it puts it mind to it.

In an attempt to rid the country of “decadent Western cuts”, Iran’s culture ministry has produced a catalogue of haircuts that meet government approval.

Several barber shops have reportedly been shut down and penalised in recent years for offering Western-style haircuts.

The list of banned styles includes ponytails, mullets and elaborate spikes. However,quiffs appear to be acceptable, as are fashioning one’s hair in the style of Simon Cowell or cultivating a 1980s-style floppy fringe.
Most of the models are clean-shaven although one picture features a man with a goatee beard, previously frowned upon by Iran’s conservative clerics. Using hair gel is also within the law, albeit in modest quantities.

The “journal of Iranian hairstyles approved by the ministry of [culture and Islamic] guidance” was previewed at a government-approved hairdressing show in Tehran.

The pictures were reminiscent of those gracing barber shop windows across Britain.

“The proposed styles are inspired by Iranians’ complexion, culture and religion, and Islamic law,” said Jaleh Khodayar, who is in charge of a Modesty and Veil Festival later this month at which the guide will be promoted.

“We are happy that the Islamic republic of Iran’s government has backed us in designing these hairstyles.”

I didn’t see Dpf’s cut anywhere there either

… first they blocked the child porn, but i did nothing for I am not a pedophile…
… then they blocked the small breasted women, but i did nothing for fear of being called a pedophile…
… then they blocked all adult sites, but I did nothing as they were “protecting the children”………
…. then they blocked all objectionable writing, but I did nothing as it was in the “general publics best interests”…
…. then they blocked all free music, but I did nothing as it might be copyright infringement….
…. then they blocked my writing, because i was not sanctioned by the government. and no one did anything because it was too late…

It has started, we now have un-elected officials deciding what we can and cannot see on the internet. Except we don’t know what they are filtering. They won’t tell us that. The Department of Internal Affairs calls it filtering, suck a nice unobtrusive name for C E N S O R S H I P.

But hang on a minute, in the Dirty Doctor of Palmerston North case a judge said that if the child porn is from overseas it is not really the same as if it was here in NZ so not that big on the scale of offending. Welcome to the end of freedom of expression and the start of Net Censorship. Welcome to the true avbent of the Nanny State. Now they are deciding for us, without reference to us what we can and cannot look at on the internet.

My tolerance for this government is fast expiring, ok it is nearly in need of resuscitation. Now, I’m no kiddie fiddler or child-porn advocate, anyone who knows me knows I despise them. In fact I personally dobbed a creepy Scout Leader and got him chucked out. He subsequently moved to Auckland and last I heard was trying to become a Teacher. Lovely. But having a big filtering filtering god knows what on the internet, because they won’t tell us needs to be knocked on the head.

To make matters worse, read this story of how the Iranian Government shut down dissent. For all those people who had a little green box on their Twitter accounts, read this and be afraid.

“Collecting interception data is a process which takes place in the ‘background’, assuring that the intercepted target (end user) is never aware of a possible interception,” the manual describes. “The maximum number of simultaneous active interception sessions is 50,000.”

This manual has been read by police officers in Tehran. It ended up in my hands through the back door.

“Nokia Lawful Interception Gateway”, reads the cover page. This has been rumoured for a long while. Nokia Siemens Networks has supplied Iran with telesurveillance equipment, the details of which I have tried to track down since last summer. Now, one of the products that NSN supplied to Iran has been leaked to Fifi. This system enables just the type of surveillance that NSN has denied participating in.

It looks bad. The package gives users extensive power to monitor citizen mobile phone as well as mobile internet usage.

But it isn’t illegal. Similar systems monitor our own telecommunications. The question isn’t about Iran, but more broadly about what kind of surveillance is permitted – or mandated – in the networks we use. Who controls them?

So what? I hear you say. Well it just so happens our biggest Mobile player and also a rather large ISP has exactly the same gear as the Iranian mobile networks. I know this because I asked Paul Brislen.

Nokia Lawful Interception Gateway (LIG), Has the Government?

So, I sent the article to Paul Brislen and he confirms that they have the gear mentioned in the article, in fact their entire network is provided by Nokia. He thinks it is funny. Well read on;

Nokia Siemens Networks refused to reveal what they had sold to Iran. “Just this small add-on”, the company’s media relations office replied again and again when I questioned them about it. “I don’t recall its name right now”, said Communications Manager Riitta Mård. “It has nothing to do with internet surveillance.”

In fact, at least three separate systems were exported to Iran. Nokia built a GSM network; the GSM network was provided with the LIG system that I acquired; and the LIG has been upgraded with the “add-on” that Mård described. Mård remembers the name of the system now: Monitoring Centre (PDF). It’s a test platform that, according to Mård, only is only suitable for monitoring telephone calls.

The commotion caused by the NSN trading with Iran has been mostly about the Monitoring Centre. The actual problem now seems to be the more extensive LIG.

And this is where it gets interesting, even for the ordinary Western mobile phone user normally untouched by Iran’s political storms. LIG, with its extensive monitoring capabilities, or a comparable system by a different manufacturer, is monitoring all mobile voice and data networks around the world, including here in Finland.

And that dear friends is how a government can shut down dissent overnight. Now you know how the Iranian government managed to shut-up the freedom movement.

In fact, it is precisely because of us Europeans that these extensive monitoring systems first became legal and then mandatory worldwide. Europe has spearheaded the transition from more restricted surveillance methods to extensive systems like the LIG: systems that store all of the target’s communications data during surveillance for future investigation.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Who indeed? Now do you all see why we need a constitution like this. This sort of nonesense is why we need the protection of a constitution especially the First and second amendments. Now watch then implement a more draconian s92a that that which we think there should be. The hugley ironic thing for me is the penalties for breaching copyright is 12 times higher than a “serious breach of the foundation of our law”, that being name suppression. Name Suppression is just one affront to our rights as citizens. Little by little they are being eroded away.

I have been contacted by the PPTA in response to my Helen No-mates post. The PPTA wanted to clarify that they are no friend of Helen Clark or indeed Labour. This is astounding but nonetheless that is what they have done. Here is the email text (I edited the name and phone numbers).

Greetings from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association
While some teacher unions may support particular political parties, PPTA membership votes across the political spectrum and it is not in PPTA’s interests to be aligned to or affiliated with any political party, nor has it ever been. <> .

I have attached the PPTA president’s viewpoint from the latest PPTA News which may be of interest to you.
Regards
Xxxxxxx

Xxxxxx Xxxxxx
Research Analyst / Web co-ordinator
Tel: +XX X XXX-422X
Post Primary Teachers’ Association Te Wehengarua

I have included the Presidents newsletter (PDF 368k) so you can see exactly what I mean. They are trying very hard to appear to distance themselves from Labour, nevertheless they supported the provisions of the Electoral Finance Act and went further and suggested that the public fund political parties totally, exactly the position that Labour wants. Although it tries very hard they cannot but be seen to be toadies and lackeys to a union and teacher dominated Labour Party. They are only now finding out that the EFA has essentially prevented them from having a say because every party has a position on Education and inevitably whatever the PPTA says will be either for or against one or more of those parties stated positions. A word of warning to the PPTA, you think you don’t have to register, nor do you want to register as a third party, but your reasoning doesn’t assist you just becasue you don’t want to align with any party. You may only spend $12,000 and before you spend even one cent more than that you must register as a third party. Your image of a billboard would also be considered and Election advertisement under the Act and as such would require an authorisation statement and the name and home address of your appointed financial agent. If you are planning to run billboards again your $12,000 will get you about three of them….oh bugger….tell me now your freedom of speech hasn’t been affected.

Now don’t get me wrong Mr PPTA President, I want you to be able say whatever YOU want and spend YOUR members hard earned cash whatever whay YOU want, but unfortunately the government that you tacitly support doesn’t think anyone should be able to do exactly that. That makes it a bummer for you.

UPDATE: Fixed link to pdf.