Would you like to be shot with a red gun or blue gun, sir? That is the limit of the choice being offered the UK electorate as New Labour announces it will keep the Coalition public spending plans and the Coalition benefit cuts. Given it will also throw away £100 billion on Trident, and New Labour initiated the rampant privatisation of the Health Service, PFI, Tuition Fees etc., my point could not have been more eloquently proven that the UK electorate is no longer offered any meaningful choice by the neo-con parties.
It also of course demolishes completely the Gordon Brown argument that Scots need to stay in the Union to put New Labour in to power. Who carries out Tory policies is not the question; and why a nation should surrender its freedom just to make sure Ed Balls has a ministerial car and salary while he implements Tory policies, is not a question which to me has an obvious answer.
The only meaningful political choice any part of the UK population will have in the foreseeable future is the Scottish Independence Referendum. If Scots do not take their chance, all they have ahead is economic decline and the collapse of public services. The choice could not be more stark.
Grownups! What’s with all that distracting bickering while our leaders hurry us towards distopia.
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Why are the grownups talking about Ireland and the PIGS being bailed out? I thought in my innocence that it was the banking elites that got bailed out by courtiers posing as politicians who gave their debts to us and our unborn kids. Bail-outs my bottom!
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“I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.” Edward Snowden.
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Now there’s a hero. I wish him all the best.
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Now we know for sure that, as regards our online lives, the foolish “conspiracists” have been right all along. Time to get up to speed with encryption, PGP and Tor.
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And I hope Uncle Craig’s foot is on the mend.
Forget it Sofia. They’re on a roll….and I don’t mean pastrami on a Kaiser.
I’m beginning to have a restoration of my optimism about the younger generation, Dreoilin.
Tor?
You intend to use the facilities offered by US Navy to remain anonymous? That may have worked for some of the Libyans/Egyptians/Tunisians et al, but all is not hidden from the service provider (US Navy) that is harvesting the passwords, queries, emails, patterns, etc.
@ Fred, at 17h59, said
“Except the Scottish government is at least as corrupt as the Westminster one.”
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I suspect there’s a lot of truth in that.
A smaller society is not necessarily a cleaner, less corrupt or less clannish one.
It is certain, though, that less is HEARD or KNOWN in England of Scottish corruption than is known and heard about corruption at Westminster. It is simply not much reported on in the English media because most English people are not very interested in Scotland or what goes on there.
BTW, I have another question about a post-independence Scotland to which someone might know the answer. It is this : voting rights in the forthcoming referendum will, I understand, be extended to 16 and 17 year olds. Where do the pro-independence front in general, and the Scottish National Party in particular, stand on granting 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote in municipal and general elections in Scotland thereafter?
Fedup; I disdain those ‘protections’ as they tend to draw undue attention. I prefer to hide in plain sight. Safety in numbers and all that rot.
Edward Snowden:
Brave brave brave guy.
But THEY will hunt and haunt him and his extended friends and family for decades.Torture,gang-stalking and advanced tech to harrass and destroy them.
Poor brave brave guy.i really don’t envy they treatment THEY are gonna mete out to him and his.
Deep respect for this principled gentleman.
Villager
9 Jun, 2013 – 8:57 pm
Says:
“And since when did you start representing ‘some posters’.”
Village Idiot; I don’t represent anyone but myself. You quote me out of context (it’s in the dictionary under c ).
Well, at least Habby gets the point re. bailouts. I agree with Sofie that the bailouts are of bankers rather than the state or its people. That’s always the way. IMF, World Bank, Washington consensus and all that.
I’ll deal with Habby’s points which explore the matter further.
“1/. perhaps not, but you know that experience shows that devaluations (I assume this is what you were hinting)may – if at all – work in the purely short term and are no substitute for improving competitiveness through structural reform, improved governance and more realistic economic expectations, etc. The Greek experience between the end of the 1970s and Greece’s adoption of the euro are a case in point;”
The Greeks and others were offered cheap money, by German savers primarily. And, they were offered a unit of currency which purchasing strength was way way beyond their productive capacity to support it.
That was always going to end in tears.
The bailouts are a very direct result of the single currency and the EU itself, which is my point.
“2/. one must avoid giving the impression that the PIGS were dragged kicking and screaming into the euro by the evil strong currency countries. On the contrary, there were doubts in the minds of the latter as to the advisability of including some of them in the so-called ‘first wave’ and there were even stronger doubts about Greece joining sunsequently. The fact is that these countries were mustard keen to join even though the necessary economic convergence existed only on paper but not in fact; for them it was a matter of national pride and the wish to be considered as ‘first division’ countries.”
Of course, but none of this counters the point that Greeks, Irish and the rest would have been better off with their own currencies.
That union and indeed this union are very much failed projects, I’m afraid, though to be fair the UK has lasted a lot longer than the European effort and that’s only because the UK was much more than someone’s dream in their bed sitting room.
At this point Scots would be well advised to make their own arrangements. Things really are going to get a lot worse, and they’d be very much better off having the levers closer to home.
It’s kinda obvious that Scotland won’t be as corrupt as Westminster, and it doesn’t take too much thought to work out why.
Nassim Taleb and Dmitry Orlov are quite good on this stuff, and arrive at similar conclusions even though they come at the issue from different angles.
“Of course, but none of this counters the point that Greeks, Irish and the rest would have been better off with their own currencies.”
Which you still haven’t provided any actual evidence for.
“It’s kinda obvious that Scotland won’t be as corrupt as Westminster,”
No it isn’t.
Anyone willing to speculate why Snowden chose Hong Kong? Odd, at the least. Iceland seemed the right choice, or Ecuador?
Habby
“re. 19h48 – it is indeed incorrect. I asked him to back up his claim that undermining Guano was my “mission in life”.”
Yes, and you asked him to back it up by reference to a singular post.
As I said, that’s not possible. It’s a mission, after all.
To achieve the aim you suggested for him he’d have had to do an analysis of your whole body of posting.
I expect had he come back with one post of yours claiming to outline your mission you’d have said the same as I’m saying now.
Fred
Do you need evidence of birth, growth, maturity, decline, decay and death, as well?
Channels have been going awol about PRISM.
Now this…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video
Ah! I was reading the wrong page – hes already up of course.
“Ah! I was reading the wrong page”
What freakin’ page where you reading, crab?
@Fedup 10 31pm
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“Tor?
…. the service provider (US Navy) that is harvesting the passwords, queries, emails, patterns, etc.”
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Point taken.
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@Ben 10 35pm
“I prefer to hide in plain sight.” I can see what you mean but for myself I don’t want to make it easy for them.
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I just listened to a clip of Edward Snowden on RT. What courage! That guy is an inspiration.
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And since it’s getting late here’s some music to unwind after wading through all those cross grownup posts.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_EbkUy-IN4
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Goodnight all.
The first page here Ben – not reading really just searched for Snowdon. Im stupid busy right now, noo time. But Snowdon’s interview is proper AWESOME.
..very dodgy to read Google deny the existence of prism earlier too. Time to adopt something new. Comet Ison is still looking epoch changing..
Closer to China, and a good jump off point as and when the necessity arises.
https://blog.torproject.org/
If you type in anything that identifies you on a plain text connection over Tor (such as Fedup suggests) then you are nuts.
Otherwise. Pretty secure unless you’re doing something that will attract some serious attention.
Zero-sum-game.
A game in which for example a participant believes that undermining truth increases the importance and validity of deception. But we do not live in a zero-sum-game world. The ability to wreck Iraq or Libya or Syria does not automatically bring power to UKUSIS. In fact every time the West tries to undermine Islam, by enslaving Africans, droning, falsehood and duplicity, Allah increases its depth of ignorance.
We haven’t moved from having privacy and freedom of speech and moral principles , to not having these things by nothing. When you refuse to apply your priveledges and freedoms to others as equals in humanity, and you deny the right of others to be treated the same as yourself, eventually these priveledges and freedoms are removed so that you can feel regret for their absence.
There were countless times when I told my passengers in the chauffeur car that God would not leave the crimes of the West against the Muslims unpunished. The West believes itself to have not been punished. How is it then that politicians like Tim Yeo are now completely unconscious of the moral implications of having vested interests? How is it then that Bellyheave, the troglodyke transvestite Thatcherite whore of Babylon, Habbabkuk, actually boasts about his puny attempts to undermine moral truth?
I can see how bent politicians can cross their fingers that they will not be caught out on dissident blogs, but I find it simply odd that there exists a need for some people to spend long hours dedicated to cherishing and cultivating ignorance of commonly accepted moral boundaries. Is Mary an ‘old’ biddy because you shave your grey beard and dress yourself as a leggy, blonde lipsticked 20 year old tart? Metaphorically speaking. You actually conceive that your fantasy is truth, and Mary’s touchstone to reality is illusion?
No wonder you think honest people can be undermined, when underneath your troll persona is a normal guy who wants to get back to the privacy of his flat, inside his silly frilly undies and scratch his metaphysical itching balls.
“We haven’t moved from having privacy and freedom of speech and moral principles , to not having these things by nothing. When
you refuse to apply your priveledges and freedoms to others as equals in humanity, and you deny the right of others to be treated
the same as yourself, eventually these priveledges and freedoms are removed so that you can feel regret for their absence.”
What comes around is Deja Vu all over again.
OK. I know I get it. What now? It’s easy to point out someone else’s warts, just as it’s easy to decorate our own warts to a fault.
We get it. Now what?
The architecture of repression, refined from the planned attacks on America in 2001 has arrived at a point where most of us have capitulated and consider this control over our lives as a plausible response to unspecified threats, despite alarming incursions into individuals rights and democratic accountability.
We are synonymous with herd of cattle grazing on lands owned by the powerful elite who nail down, control and determine our fate. These masters of nothing and their peers have created a semantic fog that obscures these exceptional powers.
In this paradigm we are content to watch our shows, check the bank balance, dicker and bicker in one altercation after another while we climb over each other in a struggle to endure the egocentric complications of the human pack.
Can we evolve and enrich our lives in such a quagmire?
The answer must lie in the unselfish act of a brave man, a young American who has given his life and spirit to all of us, the public; a deed accepted and known to us.
Of course the majority of us will acknowledge that deed, fact, that naked truth and move on – just like a herd of senseless feeble cattle eating their way to a changeless sleep.
Do we really know knowing or are we just naked apes preparing our requiem?
Speaking of requiems… This nugget of Tim DeChristopher’s experience just leaves you desolate. We tend to cling to the hope that maybe one branch of this purulent state is not completely rotten to the core. Well, forget it. We’re going to have to destroy this state and replace it. It’s too far gone.
I am very admiring of Edward Snowden for his lucidity, his ability to express himself and most of all for his bravery in standing up and speaking out. He will now be hunted down and persecuted.
Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations
The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
Iain Banks. No self pity, positive and great humour too.
I liked this story this morning. He cut up his passport and sent to B.Liar, as he was so outraged about Iraq, and forgot he was going on a book tour in Australia a few weeks later.
On self pity. We have all been through bad patches in our lives, whether physical or emotional, but whingeing and feeling sorry for one’s self never helps.
And I believe the troll said recently that he was a troll. I have no intention of going back through his garbage to find the link. His animus towards me has been and is very evident.