Category: Bob Small

It’s Not Paranoia If It’s REAL ID

By Bob Small

For those of us who have read 1984 by George Orwell and wonder when it turns from a speculative work of fiction to a documentary, that time may be arriving.

Certain Federal Agencies will no longer be able to accept driver licenses or state ID cards come May 7.

The ACLU says REAL IDs will“facilitate the tracking of data on individuals “and bring government into the very center of every citizen’s life.”

Some of the advantages of real ID are “standardized verification across states”, “prevention of identity theft, and “improved public safety”.

Negatives include” privacy concerns”, “cost of compliance”, “potential for discrimination”, and “impact on state autonomy.”

Twila Brase, co-founder and president of the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, says REAL ID and digital ID may allow the federal government to “usurp state’s rights and assert unprecedented control over people’s lives.”

Another critic “James F. Holderman III, director of investigative research with Stand for Health Freedom, says “The widespread adoption of Digital IDs and digital wallets lays the foundation of a surveillance-based technocracy.”

Some Afro-Americans suspect a racist movtivation.

Scholars Simone Brown, Vanessa Holden, and Elizabeth Stordeur point out that the beginnings of state id’s and registries “can be traced to efforts to spy on the lives and movements of Black people living in colonial and antebellum America”.

This was also covered in Simone Browme’s 2015 book Dark Matters.

To read about the nightmare of trying to get a REAL ID see Getting my REAL ID was an real ordeal

See also:

Pennsylvania lawmakers propose fee exemptions for seniors under REAL ID Act

How to get a Real ID in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania has a really low Real ID adoption rate – Axios

Real ID Exposed: It Is Worse than You Think

You may not need a Real I.D. in Pennsylvania after all.

Since we can use our passports for plane and train travel, the only downside to being real ID is our inability to participate in Federal trials. I can live with that.

It’s Not Paranoia If It’s REAL ID

Is the BBC Anti-semitic?

By Bob Small

Most weekday mornings at 10 we find ourselves listening to BBC Newshour on WHYY FM. In the car, we may go to Sirius Radio BBC. Many moons ago, we stopped following any American legacy media as we no longer believed in them.

Ahmed Alagha, a Gazan journalist who has appeared intermittently on BBC Arabic has said ‘Israelis are not human beings’ and ‘Jews are devils’ .

He is not a BBC employee but is one of the journalists BBC uses when their employees cannot report from a site. After October 7, he said “No spilled blood of theirs is honorable”.

We doubt this quote is from the Koran, as he maintains.

In March, Tory opposition leader Kami Badenoch called for ‘wholesale reform’ of BBC Arabic after a report by Camera UK accused the corporation of ‘appalling anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias’. 

Last August, over 200 British members of radio, TV, and film signed a letter saying “Jews don’t count” when it comes to racism at BBC.

The BBC Documentary in question Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone was pulled from I Player in February after it emerged that the child narrator is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who has worked as Hamas’s deputy minister of Agriculture.

Bringing Karl Marx into the discussion, commentator Hind al-David referred people to On The Jewish Question by Karl Marx, first published in 1844. We maintain that Karl Marx is always worth reading, though not as funny as Groucho.

Lord Mann, the UK’s independent Advisor on anti-semitism said that the BBC “refused anti-semitism training on more than one occasion”. He added “heads should roll…Let’s get rid of some at the top”

Though we had to use Perplexity a.i. to find this Outgoing Muslim Council leader criticises lack of both the BBC and the Tories have been accused of Islamaphobia.

See also Paul Vallely: BBC is not downplaying anti-Semitism

Why did the BBC say ‘Muslim reverts’?

Full disclaimer; I am of Jewish Heritage and occasionally attend Synagogue, along with other Houses of Worship.

Is the BBC Anti-semitic?

Will the US join the Commonwealth?

By Bob Small

Recently, there have been articles about the United States, a former colony of Great Britain, possibly joining the British Commonwealth, where the majority of members are also former British colonies

“In 1949, the London Declaration formally established the postcolonial Commonwealth on terms where republics were eligible to join without any allegiance to the British Crown. “ Charles III is the current head of the organization, though Baroness Patricia Scotland runs the day-to-day operations.

There are 56 nations in the Commonwealth many of whom will be represented at the next Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland in 2026.

If Donald Trump is invited again to a visit, he would be the first US president to be invited twice to visit.

Part of the values of the Commonwealth are member nations who are committed to “democracy and democratic processes, including free and fair elections and representative legislatures; the rule of law and independence of the judiciary; “along with protection of human rights and freedom of speech. We should qualify on all accounts.

If the US became a Commonwealth member, we would no longer send ambassadors to the UK and Canada. Rather we would appoint “high commissioners” to represent out interests.

By the way, the first US Ambassador to the UK was John Adams, circa 1785.

There’s some wishful thinking that joining the Commonwealth might help to smooth over relations with Canada, the UK, and the US..

Not everything has been “tea and crumpets” for the UK and the Commonwealth.

This article suggests four items the UK could do.

If you search through your favorite AI, there is loads of information on the Commonwealth of Nations going back to it’s birth during the formation of the infamous Balfour Declaration.

This was seen by many as a continuation of the British Empire.

See also two Guardian articles:

What is the Commonwealth if not the British Empire 2.0?

Sunak was brutally honest, so let me return the favour

DVD Rot Is One More Worry

By Bob Small

Until a few days ago, we had never worried about “DVD rot”.

Now we are hearing about it .

Though DVDs ”should last 30 to 100 years” Warner Brother DVD’s made between 2006-8 which requires DVD owners to “check inner ring codes for the suspect plant”.

Another point is that whyile Warner Bros says it will replace certain DVDs damaged some of the affected titles are no longer in print.

Thus your Humphrey Bogart DVD might be replaced by Scooby Doo.

Lastly, and we’ll just quote it here, there’s a tendency where DVD’s and other optical discs to oxidise underneath the reflective layer, causing the adhesive to de-bond and often resulting in a “milky” spot on the readable surface. “

Wait. There’s more! Over 600 Blu-ray Titles No Longer Work! Even Criterion, the “gold standard of DVD media, has had problems with some of it’s classics, including Citizen Kane. If you can’t trust Criterion for Citizen Kane,or Paris, Texas, well then you probably can’t trust anyone.

The next question to emerge is, “should we still buy DVD’s?”.

Why DVD Series Are Still Worth Buying in 2025 attempts to answer that question. Their reasons inclue

• No dependency on internet connections.
• Better picture and sound quality.
• Special features”
• Support for the physical media market”.

It seems that streaming is overtaking DVD’s, but there is a sizable, albeit older, minority still buying.

Unmentioned is a tendency among many of us to avoid monthly costs and sharing information online.

See also 5 Reasons Why DVDs & Blu-Ray Are Still Essential In The …

VCR’s also exist, even though they’re no longer making new players, many used players are on sale.

Places such as Good Will and Salvation Army, that sells DVDs also have VCR tapes, and for a fairly cheap price.

Snow Wrong

By Bob Small

One explanation for why the Disney Studio made the live action remake the way they did is that they believed Biden/Harris would win a second term. However that result turned out to also be a fairy tale.

(Rachel Zegler) is a pro-Palestinian spokeswoman whereas the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) served in the IDF, and is vocally Pro-Israel. One imagines discussions on the set might have been very lively.

By trying to “empower” Snow White it unempowers the Prince. If you’re waiting for “Someday My Prince will come, spoiler alert it doesn’t)

And there’s more. Or rather less.

Not only are the Dwarfs removed from the title “– Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was the title in 1937 — it has been “de-dwarfed”, taking away work from dwarf actors such as Peter Dinkage, among others.

One of the best comparisons of this “artistic malfeasance” is this review which calls it “about as sensible as remaking “Singing in the Rain” as a cartoon.

Trigger warnings have been issued in the UK, saying that “a woman is deliberately poisoned” and “a girl is surrounded by ominous trees”.

Oh, the horror!

In an essay on the 2019 live-action version of Alladin, Aisha Harris wrote in The New York Times that “shoe-horned progressive messages only brings more attention to the inherent crassness of Disney’s current exercise in money-grabbing nostalgia”

Discussing this film, the concept of “endless splitting hairs over the authenticity (italics mine) of a fairy tale”.

See also:

Snow White review – Disney’s exhaustingly awful reboot

Snow White (IMDB reviews)

Detrans Awareness Day 2025

By Bob Small

Scott has left Vermont to return to Philadelphia. Maybe we do need a Pennsylvania Border Patrol.

Scott informed me that March 12 was Detrans Awareness Day. If you missed this, as did most of us, you can see it here: Detrans Awareness Day – LIVE from Capitol Hill

This 4th Detrans Awareness Day is sponsored by Genspect. Relatively new to the culture wars, this group was founded in June of 2021 by “gender-critical” psychotherapist Stella O’Malley.

Genspect works with Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM)

Both have been designated as “anti-LGBTQ hate groups b the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Check their list to see which one you might be long too.

Their enemy group is primarily World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)

At the conference, “one Detransition activist, Soren Aldaro”

urged legislation that would mandate insurance providers to cover “detransition treatment”.

Much as transition treatment has some coverage.

There was much criticism of the New York Times coverage of the event which Times described as being “anti-trans” as in this article by Katie Baker

Suffice it to say, the above is a situation that should rarely happen, if at all.

One next-to-last opinion Genspect and the illusion of good intent – Arsha’s Substack where the Blogger speaks to his father “To have these difficult conversations coming from a source of love and concern”

Not, we should add, from a wellspring of hate and condemnation.

Full Disclosure; My opinions on Transition, if anyone cares, have evolved to the opinion that transition should only occur when the transitioner has achieved the age of 18 and after a full year of therapy.

Judicial Watch And Who They Watch

By Bob Small

Judicial Watch is a “conservative non-partisan educational foundation” whose motto is “Because no one is above the law”. This group, which we also learnt about at the annual Bill of Rights Banquet, is in the news.

It has over 60 major legal wins since 2001 albeit few against Republican administrations.

One crusade concerns the extraordinarily extreme roadblocks created by authorities against those with whom they disagree.

While few of their fights are in support of traditionally liberal causes a recent one focused on animal rights, namely the controversial killing of the pet squirrel Peanut by New York State.

And they also took on former Vice-President Dick Cheney, which they unfortunately lost.

Judicial Watch has been praised by The New York Times as being “the group has forced the release of government records that would otherwise have been kept from the public.” quote from NY Times as per Wikipedia

All sides recognize Judicial Watch as conservative.

Judicial Watch notes though that corruption is nonpartisan and does not occur in one specific ideology.

A group that watches Judicial Watch is Democracy Docket which takes issue with Judicial Watch  lawsuit to purge thousands of voters in Pennsylvania.

Democracy Docket, by the way, was founded in 2020 by Democratic Party lawyer Marc Elias. Democracy Docket They have the support of Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder

We’ll be curious to see the actions of Judicial Watch over Trump’s current term.