The development and use of weapons and more specifically firearms runs parallel to the development of mankind and human society. In prehistoric times mankind had to forage & hunt for sustenance. When hunting small & big animals some sort of weapon greatly improved their chances of feeding themselves and their families hence improving the chance of survival. Weapons also aided in the defence of their territory and their food stores (if they had any). Weapons such as rocks, spears, axes etc. served as a force multiplier and one can argue that these weapons were one of the attributes which gave early humans an edge over other species and put them on an early path to the top of the food-chain. As mankind developed and evolved growing from hunter/gatherer groups to farming and eventually industrial society weapons developed at an ever increasing rate.  We went from rocks and spears to arrows and the first firearm, the fire-lance, making its appearance in the mid 10th century. Since development has taken us all the way to ICBM’s and beyond. However all these weapons were in essence only a tool, or a means, of delivering a projectile. Said projectile was launched either to defend ones territory or to kill prey for hunting/feeding purposes. A firearm has never been, was never designed to and has never been able to autonomously kill people. There was always human thought behind the use, aiming and firing of said weapon.

Throughout the centuries as we developed into more cohesive and civilised society certain duties were abdicated from the individual to the collective (community or state). Instead of every person or family gathering or hunting their own food we had butchers, bakers and greengrocers. To defend our communities we had volunteer watchmen, militias and eventually a state run police force and military. With this the actual “need” for every person to own a firearm decreased to the stage where, at least in Western society, the number of firearms owners on a whole is a minority. However what has evolved out of this is that governments now do not want individuals to own firearms for the simple reason that a armed citizenry potentially has more power to rise up against a corrupt government than a society which has been effectively disarmed. History is full of examples where despots made it their priority to disarm the citizens they oppressed. This disarmament has been achieved not only by very strict laws on private firearms ownership but also by using the media to portray people who do own or want to own firearms as deranged and crazy individuals. It has come to the point where in certain company you would be scorned less for defecating on the dining table than admitting that you own a firearm.

The discussion about a persons “right to bear arms” has been an extremely hot topic in the USA recently with Obama constantly throwing petrol on the flames by ignoring the US constitution and issuing unconstitutional (and undemocratic) executive orders. But let’s not just focus on the US as the 2nd amendment of their constitution (which makes the right to bear arm a constitutional one) puts them in an unique position. However over on this side of the Atlantic the debate has now flared up in Ireland where the Irish politician Michael Healy-Rea last week made a statement that people living in rural areas should be allowed to own a firearms for self defence purposes. This following the recent drastic rise in crime especially in rural areas. This rise is following severe cuts in the Irish police force’s budget. This raises the question that if the government fails in its commitment to protect its citizens should those citizens then be allowed to reclaim their natural right to self-protection? Because that is the real crux; the government does not have the right to decide whether it’s citizens have the right to own firearms. That right is naturally the citizens right and has only been temporarily been given up in exchange for protection by the state. However as with any contract if one party defaults then the whole of the agreement becomes void. The right to bear arms is one that the government has no right to bestow. As with all natural rights its something that the government might manage but the only “right” a government has is to ensure that firearms are not owned or carried by people who are not fit to do so. So rather than police who is allowed to own firearms the reverse should be true, the state only has the right to police who *is unfit* to own firearms. The practicalities of this need to be clearly defined but I don’t think it would be unreasonable to expect that someone who wants to own a firearm posseses a certain proficiency with said firearm especially when it comes to the safe handling and storage of firearms. I know that a lot of my US based friends will disagree with me on this as it would require the registration of firearm owners but I would consider making a bi-annual firearms proficiency test mandatory a good idea. Passing such a test would allow one to own any type of firearms under a certain caliber (I think that a separate licensing for anything over 20mm is not unreasonable).

The above all centers around the logical reasoning that a firearm is only a tool and that without human utilisation a tool is an inanimate object incapable of doing any harm. Restricting responsible adults who have proven to be compos mentis to own a firearm infringes on their natural rights and hence is an undemocratic and in-tolerable act. It’s a governments duty to protects its citizens not to restrict or nanny them.

So how did I regain access to my blogs and how have a secured my WordPress installs since? Well seeing that my security has withstood numerous attacks daily since then I thought it might be helpful to share this.

Regaining access: I host all my sites & blogs on a server using CPanel. This has a very easy to use visual interface which include good & easy database management. Part if this interface is the PHPMyadmin tool. This is a visual tool for managing the nuts & bolts of your database. It lets you view & edit every cell in a database. Seeing that WordPress stores all it’s information in a database you can look up the cells containing the admin username, password and email. Once you select the correct database you’re presented with a list of tables. Find the right one (it will have “user” in the name) and select the right cell. Then change the username, password and if needed the email and save. Open a tab in your browser and try to login to your blog. Sometimes the change doesn’t “take” the first time and you might have to do it again. Another trick is to only change the email address, then go to the blog login screen and use the password reminder option to have a password modification link email sent to you.

Once you have regained access to your blog and have undone all the changes it’s time to secure your blog. The first step is to choose a better username & password combination. However if you’re like me and don’t want to have to memorize a whole new bunch of logins you can secure it using the following methods also.

1. Firewall: Matthew Pavkov has built an excellent & free WordPress firewall plugin (see above image). You can find it here. The firewall will stop all sorts of malicious attempts to gain access to your blogs admin interface be it through URL-modification of injecting script etc. Install it and play around with the settings. Don’t just switch everything on as it might block some of your other plugins. One of the excellent features is also that you can set it to email you an alert every time it blocks an attack. You will be surprised at the number of times this happens.
2. Limit Login Attempts: The above doesn’t protect you against brute force attacks. However “jonahee” has produced a WordPress plugin which allows you to limit the number of concurrent login attempts per IP address. This extremely handy plugin lets you set the maximum number of consecutive login attempts allowed from a single IP address before this IP address is blocked (locked out) from trying to login to your WordPress admin account. It also allows you to set how long they will be locked out. Additionally it keeps a log-file of all lockouts. Mine is at 2244 lock-outs since I installed it with multiple lock-outs per IP address. Lastly it will email you a notification every time it locks-out an IP address.

In my experience these two plugins alone will protect your WordPress install from the most (but not all) hacking attempts. There is no such thing as 100% “hack-proofing” something but I host 14 blogs protected by the above mentioned plugins and there have been no more successful hacking attempts since i installed them. Considering the number of attacks I think that says a lot.

I received an interesting email this afternoon. It was from Mark Tighe a journalist with the Sunday Times. It read: “

Did you see the ads in the papers today from the HSE? They are finally going to destroy the heelprick samples older than 10 years.”

This brought me back to a blogpost I typed up just over 10 years ago. At the time it had been discovered that Temple Street hospital had been retaining the bloodsamples it had gathered through the “heelprick” tests. This had resulted ina n *illegal* database of genetic material of  everyone born in Ireland since 1984. It goes without saying that this is not only highly un-ethical but also illegal. You can read my blogpost on the topic here.

While I am pleased with today’s announcement it still raises a few questions. Apparently the screening programme was revised in 2011 and for anyone born after that date the parents have to give explicit permission for the sample to be retained. Additionally all samples will be destroyed after 10 years. The announcement also says that all samples taken between 1984 and 20o2 will be destroyed this year as they are over 10 years old. That still raises the question of the samples which were taken between 2002 and 2011 (when the programme was revised). These samples will apparently be illegally retained for another 1 to 8 years….

Another issue is that when I researched the matter three years ago evidence emerged that the retention of blood (and DNA) samples past the necessary period is allegedly commonplace in other hospitals and labs across the country. I have yet to see a follow up investigation to locate other hospitals where this practice is or has taken place.

Either way, it’s good to see that after three years some steps in the right direction are taken….

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 27,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

I’m connected to Bart via Facebook and have always enjoyed reading his postings. However this one was of such quality that I had to ask him if I could use it on my blog as a sort of guest-blog by proxy. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

So … the election was close, but the Electoral College worked exactly as intended by the Founders and produced a clear winner. Herewith, a series of observations, of various sorts, some slightly partisa:

a) Obama received fewer votes than McCain did in ’08. I expected this. What I did *NOT* expect was that Republican turn-out would be even lower this time around than last. The low Republican and Independent turn-out rendered useless the party-affiliation polling and certainly messed up my projection (-:

b) Elections don’t produce change, they measure it. In this case it’s become quite clear that an emerging majority of Americans prefer free stuff to freedom. Or framed somewhat differently (since I have a toddler at home) is that they prefer the freedom of a dependent child (“no worries”) to that of a mature and generally self-reliant adult (freedom of agency). Apart from the fact that it is fiscally unsustainable it is discouraging socially: deTocqueville in the late 1830s expressed his concern that the fatal flaw of American democracy was the risk that someday people would vote themselves lots of free stuff. That someday has evidently arrived in the last generation or so.

c) America is now on a trajectory to fiscal ruin. There is not enough wealth around to fix the blatant spending problem. I believe Romney and Ryan would at least have begun to address it. How bad is it? If Obama’s deficits continue at the levels *he* has projected we will have arrived at a point where each of the two previous Presidents *DOUBLED* existing debt in 8 years. The word for that, folks, is exponential explosion of debt, and it **always** ends in abundant grief and tears.

d) The good news is that Obama inherits the mess Obama left. He now owns it, absolutely. Burgeoning energy development on PRIVATE lands (which he can’t stop) will help the economy, some. EPA, OSHA, and ObamaCare … will not. But he owns it. We’re already seeing America’s energy boom bring back manufacturers to this nation. That will continue.

e) The people of Michigan, even as they voted Obama, voted for sanity and resoundingly defeated two ballot propositions that would have entrenched union power through mandated dues for all workers, and would have required 25% of all electricity to come from “renewables”. These the special interests attempted to enshrine in the state constitution.

f) Republicans picked up three more governorships (now 32), gained the state senate in Wisconsin, and took both houses of the Arkansas legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.

g) Republicans not only held the US House of Representatives, they didn’t lose more than a seat or two, and might actually have picked up one. Recounts make it impossible to be precise, but the big picture is clear. The Tea Party gains of 2010 held. Some results are remarkable. Our KS-3 seat was won by a Democrat in 2008 by 18 points (his fifth term). A Tea Party Republican took the same seat in 2010 by 23 points, and in 2012 the Democrats never even put up a candidate. In eight or nine House elections nationwide the Libertarian came second to a Republican.

h) The Republicans have now thrown away *five* Senate seats in the last two elections by nominating idiot candidates, often with Democrat help. Three-way primaries will give the most extreme candidate a plurality, whilst the vote is split between two others with a better chance to win or hold the seat. Republicans would have the Senate today and the budgetary gridlock which has characterized the Senate for almost four years would no longer be a factor.

i) A big part of the reason idiot candidates on the Republican side are such a problem is that when they inevitably make their stupid statements it will be picked up and promulgated (repeatedly and loudly) nationwide by the old-line media, which are now clearly nothing more than Democrat political operatives with bylines. When the Donks nominate an idiot candidate … crickets. Pushing those old-line media even farther along their path of failure and irrelevancy should be a primary task of conservatives and libertarians.

Finally, we are in a period of great political instability. There is only one long-term sustainable political position in America, and it used to be shared by both parties –

1) Solid on defence and security issues.

2) Fiscally conservative and generally in favour of limited government.

3) Broadly libertarian on social issues.

Unfortunately it is for the most part currently shared by neither party and I suspect we shall all have to endure a great deal of trouble and grief before we get back to that point. As this election has made obvious, we won’t do it voluntarily. Consequently we’ll need to be forced by circumstances, and as Churchill said “Americans always seem to do the right thing, but only at the last possible moment.” I hope so.

Related articles

• Libertarian acted as spoiler in Senate race, GOP says
• US ELECTIONS 2012: Split Congress presents familiar challenge for Obama
• Democrats appear to take control of Legislature; recounts expected
• Why Americans Actually Voted For A Democratic House

I tweeted a few people in the US to see if they had any idea but nothing concrete came back. Some suggestions were made that the traffic drop might be due to lunchtime but that didn’t make sense to me. Especially as lunchtimes across the US are obviously spread out and also because lunchtimes would not cause excessive packet loss. So I decided to have a look at the stats for Europe. To my surprise the same thing was going on there:

Next were the global stats which showed the same story:

So there has been a substantial increase in response time and packet loss resulting in a big dip in internet traffic, across the globe AT THE SAME TIME…

That was a serious Whiskey Tango Foxtrot situation. So I had a look at the global stats for the last 30 days. These stats indeed confirmed what I described above but it also showed a few other interesting facts;

• An even bigger blip had occurred around October 8-9.
• There has been a steady increase in response times & packet loss since October 8th.

Now there might be perfectly harmless explanation for this but we are looking at a homogenous network across the global with components managed and owned by a mix of private and public sector organisations. To see a global trend in performance across the whole network for a prolonged time is something that raises questions. So I decided to run a quick search for other reports on this and stumbled across an article by ABC news. The article basically reported in a bit more detail what I outlined above. It reported that Youtube, Amazon, Google’s App Engine, Tumblr and other sites had been affected. However most interesting was that there was no explanation offered for what might have caused this degradation.

I will keep digging..

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• Entire North American internet suddenly slowed down today at 5:30am
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• Major sites and platforms experiencing outages today, including Dropbox and Google App Engine

You see the proposed constitutional amendment (to articles 42.A.4.1 & 42A.4.2) is being proposed as means to better protect the rights of the children in cases of neglect, abuse, or a combination of these. This is to be achieved by giving the state more power to (forcibly) remove children from their parents custody. Even if this is against the wishes of both the parents AND the child. The state will be able to come and take children out of their homes and forcibly put them up for adoption. If they deem that there is enough reason to do so.

Article 42A.2.1: In exceptional cases, where the parents, regardless of their marital status, fail in their duty towards their children to such extent that the safety or welfare of any of their children is likely to be prejudicially affected, the state as the guardian of the common good shall, by proportionate means as provided by law, endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with the due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child.

Now who can find something wrong with that? Surely its all to the betterment of the rights of the child right? Wrong!

Let’s take a closer look at the parts I’ve highlighted; First of all there is the reference to “the state as the guardian of the common good”. Call me a cynic but I have so far seen very few states where this “common good” was an unequivocal and unilaterally accepted principle. Au contraire, “common good” is an as ambiguous principle as possible. So if we enshrine in the constitution that the state is  the guardian of this ambivalent condition than we basically give carte blanche to future governments to interpret that at will. Secondly there is the suggestion that the state “supply the place of the parents”. That is not only wrong but also biologically impossible. The definition of parents (according to Dictionary.com) is “a father or a mother”. The state is not only genderless, it is also an abstract entity. While the state can assume guardianship over children they can never be “parents”. Including that term in the proposed amendment is equal measures wrong and insulting. It is impossible for the state with even the best intentions to provide the quality of care for a child that a parent will provide. Lastly there is “”proportionate means as provided by law”. This is a change from the “appropriate means” term in the current constitution. What it means is that the state will not stop at this change in the constitution, the use of the term “proportionate” means they will have to enshrine these constitutional powers in law. This gives them increased powers to enforce these amendments on you.

What also offends me that there is clear mention of the increased powers of the state, the amendment makes no mention of the right of parents. Instead it actually erodes the rights of parents to raise their children in a responsible manner as they see fit. Instead it puts parents in a position where they are accountable to the state for how they raise their children. This is only an intellectual hop and a skip from the state deciding how many children parents are allowed to have or what religions are “preferential”. Lets just note that the Irish state’s record in this area is far from examplary. The reprehensible levels of child abuse that took place in Irish institutions in the previous decades took place after the state put the children in these institutions. Even now the country’s health care system, the HSE, let nearly 200 children die while they were in its care. And the Irish people are now supposed to give this same state more CONSTITUTIONAL powers on a promise that the system will be changed?! Sounds like a cart before the horse approach to me.

Several years ago I had a “experience” with the HSE’s department of child protection that did little to instill confidence in their abilities. At the time someone who lived locally and who I was pursuing for a substantial amount of money owed decided to get back to me by hurting it where it hurts most; my children. What happened is that they made an anonymous phone-call to the local childrens protection office accusing my wife and myself of neglecting our children. As it emerged later the extent of this “neglect” was laughable. Apparently our children sometimes attended school without the sufficient amount of pens, pencils, copybooks or not wearing a complete uniform. Hardly abuse but it was enough to put the HSE machine in motion. The first thing that we learned of it is when we received a letter making us aware of the anonymous complaint and notifying us that a child care worker would visit us for an inspection in two weeks time. Now if we had been abusive parent those two weeks would have given plenty of time to hide any and all signs of abuse and/or neglect. In our case we had done nothing wrong (anyone who knows us is aware that we ALWAYS put our children’s welfare first). and the letter caused so much upset that we were not willing to wait two weeks for any further clarification. What we did instead is contact the HSE and demand they send an inspector to our house ASAP! And preferably without any notice.

Next we contacted the primary school which our children attended to discuss this with the schools principal.Her relief when we spoke to her was immense. Apparently the HSE had contacted her when the complaint was initially made to verify the accusations. She had vehemently denied these and made clear to the HSE person that we actually took very good care of our children and that they were smart, and pleasant children. However this was not enough for the HSE, in spite of the fact that the allegations had now been refuted by a reputable 3rd party. She was instructed *not* to discuss the matter with us and that the HSE would investigate the matter further.

The inspectors visit was rather uneventful as it was obvious that the complaints was without both without any basis and made maliciously. However rather than dismiss the case we received a notifications several weeks later that the investigation was closed “due to lack of supporting evidence”.  As you can imagine this whole affair was a far from pleasant experience and we are far from happy with the way it was handled.

However considering all that I am of the opinion that if the HSE had, at the time, the powers that the proposed constitutional amendment would give them it would have gone far different. It would make it likely and legal for the HSE to remove children from parental custody while a case is investigated. And to do so without informing the parents of the exact details of the case. This is already common practice in the UK where even the family court cases are being held in “secret”.

There is also the case of “common good”. Take the example of recent large scale vaccination programs. Take the case of the H5N1 (avian flu) outbreak. In a panic measure a vaccine which had only had limited trials was pushed on the general public. Everyone was strongly “advised” to vaccinate not only themselves but more urgently their children. Based on our own research we decided that the risk of being injected with a largely untested vaccine was greater than the risk of contracting Avian flu. Looking back we were correct as several side effects have manifested while the number of actual infections with the virus have been minimal. Then there is the case of the mass vaccination of pre-teen girls with the human papillomavirus vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. Vaccination programs were organised through schools rather than voluntary through doctors practices and as nobody wants their children to develop cancer we allowed our two eldest daughters to receive the vaccine. As it now expires it not only can cause premature ovarian failure, it also only protects against 2 out of 5 possible strains of the cancer.

Anyway, my point is that increased power to the state would put them in a position to say that vaccinations are in the name of the common good (in fact they have already said so) and to force parents to either have their children vaccinated or to take the children into custody.  If you think that’s crazy thinking then I advise you to check Minister of Social Protection statement recently where she hinted that vaccinations could be tied to child benefit payments and or school admittance. Where I come from that’s called a “worrying development”…

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What made the iPaq special (apart from being one of the first real smart mobile devices) is the expandability. You could buy a range of so-called “sleeves” in which you could slide the iPaq. These sleeves offered all kinds of expandability ranging from extra battery to CF card slots, PCMCIA slots, Sat-nav and more. In addition to Compaq?HP there were a whole range of 3rd party sleeves available.

Anyway, as someone who got into mobile quite early on I have purchased numerous of these devices and accessoires and this bag only contained a few of them. I am torn between putting them in a display case or offering them for sale. So until I make up my mind, I am open to offers by any interested parties. Below is a listing of what I have, this also gives a bit of an indication of the versatility of the platform:

• iPaq 3630 circa 2001 vintage  with desk cradle/charger (working but needs new battery)
• iPaq 2210 circa 2004 vintage with desk cradle/charger (working)
• Navman 3400 GPS/SatNav sleeve with car mount
• Compaq PE2036F dual slot PCMCIA Expansion sleeve with battery (ideal for wifi cards).
• Compaq PE2026C single slot PCMCIA expansion sleeve with battery.
• Compaq PE2036B Expansion sleeve with CF-card slot
• Car chargers for both iPaq 3630 & 2210