GCHQ and the NSA between them employ tens of thousands of people. I am bemused by the shock at the “revelation” they have been spying. What on Earth did journalists think that spies do all day? That includes electronics spies.
Since Katherine Gun revealed that we spy on other delegations – and the secretariat – within the UN building, it is hardly a shock that we spy on other governments at summits in the UK. For once, the government cannot pretend that the object is to save us all from terrorism, which is the usual catch all excuse. Nor in the real world is any of the G20 nations a military threat to the UK. The real truth of the matter is that our spies – GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – are themselves a large and highly influential interest block within the state. Lots of people make a great deal of money out of the security state, and this kind of activity is actually simply an excuse for taking money from taxpayers – which is from everyone who has ever bought anything – and giving that money to the “security industry”.
I do not view spying on other governments as quite as despicable as spying on ordinary citizens, which is an unspeakable betrayal of the purpose of government. Spying on other governments is a game they all play to extort money each to their own security elites. But I will say that spying on the South African government seems pretty low. Why?
Interception of diplomatic communications is plainly a gross breach of the Vienna Conventions, even if the forms of communication have changed since they were drafted. I have never studied the particulars of international law as they relate to spying, but it seems to me an area that in the modern world needs regulation. There must be room here for the UN to be involved in preparing a Convention to outlaw the interception of international communications, with recourse to the International Court of Justice for those victim of it.
There is more work for the UN on Syria. We should all be grateful that Russia is holding out against the very dubious western claims that the Syrian government has deployed chemical weapons. But while Obama can declare all the red lines he wishes, they do not give any country a right to take action on Syrian soil without UN authority. That needs to be restated, strongly. There is no basis at all for the continued and massive Israeli attacks on Syria – they are absolutely illegal. Israeli strikes have definitely killed more people than the alleged deaths from chemical weapons. Can someone explain to me why that is not a red line?
The UN Secretary General should be speaking out, and the UN Security Council should be meeting, to discuss the Israeli attacks on Syria. The system of international law has broken down irretrievably.
Racism and Institutionalised Discrimination in zionistan:
Fighting Al Qaeda by Supporting Al Qaeda in Syria:
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You bet the “craft” (masonic) has many facets, and it too is mostly concerned with keeping the nuts of certain tribe away from any roasting rods. The Irish catholic tommy Leader often dresses up as a bearded rabbi to give the slip to the fuzz/rosa/pigs/cops/bobbies (how would a Catholic know, how to dress up as a rabbi if it were not for his ziofuckwit mentors?) Also this bunch of useful idiots masquerading as the defenders of all things Engerland often go on counter demonstration to the boycott and divest campaigns demonstrations against the ziofuckwit business outfits (ahava etc.), along side the ziofuckwit branch of the Engerland defending warrior master race.
This geller character runs a blog (atlas shrugs, which incidentally is not taken off and or shut-down), that makes KKK look a reasonable centre left bunch of “liberals”, yet she is not considered a hate monger by the St Theresa of May, although Louis Farrakhan is, and denied an entry visa to UK.
“Lambert was deployed by the special demonstration squad (SDS) – a top-secret Metropolitan police unit that targeted political activists between 1968 until 2008, when it was disbanded. He co-wrote the defamatory six-page leaflet in 1986 – and his role in its production has been the subject of an internal Scotland Yard investigation for several months.
At no stage during the civil legal proceedings brought by McDonald’s in the 1990s was it disclosed that a police infiltrator helped author the leaflet.”
If you eat Big Macs, you need to read this. I’m tired of purveyors of salt, fat and sugar exploiting the weakness of the public. (I have to admit, I eat this food, but I must stop)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/mclibel-leaflet-police-bob-lambert-mcdonalds
Fred @ 8.55 p.m. “Guilty as hell”. Of what? I would be interested to see the research you did on al Megrahi. Did you for example question why the FBI handled an inquiry of an event on Scottish soil? Did you find out anything in your research about who was on board that might have been a target? Have you heard of Bernt Carlsson? Have you even seen the film “Blood Diamond” with Leonardo Di Capprio starring? Why has no investigation of South Africa and the United States taken place? Obviously United States leads are not going to be investigated by the FBI. However, there are 270 families, some of whom might have put their grief behind them, but others who want to know the truth. Is it not in their collective interest to have a thorough non-partisan investigation into the real people guilty of this heinous crime? By the way Fred, you haven’t by any chance inserted a letter ‘r’ into your name have you?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-charges-snowden-with-espionage/2013/06/21/507497d8-dab1-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html
“The complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction where Snowden’s former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered, and a district with a long track record in prosecuting cases with national security implications.”
Virginia farmboys, aside…
Ben, agreed. And come back, Dreoilin! But Mary, if you ignored the person you call troll altogether, everyone would understand. And yet if you engaged with the few things you do find interesting, everyone would be fine with that too. I think, Habbakuk, since we’re talking about you, that you’ve rather exhausted your ‘picking up on Mary’ line with everyone, did some time ago. Never thought I’d say this, but unless you can post – say – ten posts which don’t mention Mary, in a row, I’m up for a ban too. Not because I agree with Mary necessarily, but because I’m very bored. It’s not fair on this otherwise rather interesting board.
@ Technicolour:
Ok, so ask yourself if you’re perfectly happy with Mary’s posts at 16h10 (assault in Argenteuil) and 18h42 (EDL and the BBC) – and with her ‘response’ to my comments on those posts.
Are you satisfied that they add to the sum of knowledge on anything in particular? Does their tone strike you as appropriate?
_________
Rather than asking me to post ten times in a row without mentioning Mary, you might do better to ask Mary to stay on topic for ten posts in a row or to engage in a discussion for ten posts in a row or even to answer ten questions in a row.
And if you’re “bored” why don’t you just do as others have advised and scroll straight past me? Surely it would only need a little bit of will-power and bingo, no more boredom! 🙂
___________
Of course, the reasons you and others don’t is that you are all well aware that all of my comments and questions are perfectly valid and that you are unable to refute me. Which of course is what annoys you so much.
bored, not annoyed. try ten in a row without mentioning mary. what harm will it do? (rhetorical question)
Start from now.
@John Goss
He as undoubtedly working for the Libyan intelligence services who were no more saints than any of the other intelligence services. I don’t believe they picked his name out of a hat.
The bombing had nothing to do with targeting anyone. The bomb was planted by a Palestinian group in exchange for money. Iran paid them to bring down an American plane as revenge for America shooting down an Iranian airliner.
Fred,
it is funny what you say as after an extensive research I have become convinced now that you must have planted the bomb as you seem to be quite familiar with the whereabouts. Are you a palestinian by any chance??
“Stop the War coalition protesting outside US embassy against arming Syrian rebs. No mention yet of STW demo at Russian embassy. Wonder why?”
Oh for fuck sake. If the journalist doesn’t know the answer he’s a fucking idiot. Here’s the answer: the US sets UK foreign policy, and the Russians do not. Hence the demo outside the US Embassy, not the Russian one. Michael White is a tool, but pretending to be an idiot really isn’t a good look.
And I am officially gobsmacked at today’s revelations in The Guardian. Yes yes I sort of knew this was going on, but to have it confirmed is quite something. And, worse, to have all sorts of politicians defend this spying is almost unbelievable. They really do have no shame, do they? And I note there was a clause inserted into RIPA that allowed this. It was inserted in 2000 – Tony Blair again.
Libya under Gadaffi was probably the closest any country had ever come to a practical realisation of the theory of democracy, even to the extent that any Libyan unannounced could come and address the parliament and the equal participation of both sexes in determining policy, long before anywhere else. I would say that its intelligence services had the job of protecting to the best their abilities something worthwhile there and could do so with admirable principles uppermost and clear consciences. The ‘evidence’ that Libya was behind nightclub bombings, which the US (with British help, thanks Mrs T) used as justification for bombing Libya in the mid-80s was based on manufactured evidence -intercepts of a group of Israeli run radio transmitters, ostensibly operated by Libyan agents in Europe, as the story goes, communicating back and forth to Libya, which the US knew to be completely bogus and knew just who was really behind and operating them. It follows that the bombings themselves were false flag events, to justify the US bombing of Libya, as the Israeli run transmitters, in their amateurish nature were so transparently faked as Libyan as could not and did not fool anyone.
Edward Snowden is now being pursued for ‘espionage and theft of government property’ and his extradition from Hong Kong is sought. It’s such a shame that the evil PTB are unsure if he is still in Hong Kong.
NSA leaks: US charges Edward Snowden with spying
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23012317#
Meanwhile GCHQ’s ‘Temopora’ is stealing 600 million of our communications daily. Should we charge HMG with ‘espionage and theft’. Irony is dead.
GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world’s communications
Exclusive: British spy agency collects and stores vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shares them with NSA, latest documents from Edward Snowden reveal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa
That s/be Tempora.
Mastering the internet: how GCHQ set out to spy on the world wide web
Project Tempora – the evolution of a secret programme to capture vast amounts of web and phone data
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-mastering-the-internet
Was some joke intended in the choice of the name?
‘Oh What times! Oh What customs!
This sentence is now used as an exclamation to criticize present-day attitudes and trends, often jokingly or ironically.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_tempora_o_mores!
Three cheers for Clare Daly. Must listen. On the Obama visit to Ireland. She calls him a war criminal. Can you see Bercow allowing similar in our ‘House of Commons’?
http://xrepublic.tv/node/3893
Here is the smooth Enda Kenny with the aforementioned war criminal.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barack_Obama_and_Enda_Kenny_at_Farmleigh.jpg
Acronyms by the dozen here. TIPS, TALON, TIAP, TTIC….
The Mad Men are truly with us.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Totalitarian State
by Walter Brasch / June 21st, 2013
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/06/your-friendly-neighborhood-totalitarian-state/
“Libya under Gadaffi was probably the closest any country had ever come to a practical realisation of the theory of democracy, even to the extent that any Libyan unannounced could come and address the parliament”
____________
Is one permitted to doubt the validity (perhaps even the sanity) of this assertion?
It ranks alongside the assertion of the time that the Soviet Union was a workers’ paradise and that the 1936 Soviet constitution was the most perfect constitution ever.
I wonder, en passant, what were the (real, as opposed to on paper) powers of that Libyan parliament which any Libyan citizen was so free to address directly? How was it elected/appointed?
Faugh!
I’ve heard it all now. Some asinine talking head on the radio just now, defending the latest GCHQ snooping revelation by saying most people would be pleased to learn that GCHQ has this capability and that they are, in this respect, a world leader.
FFS!
@ Technicolour:
You haven’t really addressed my point(s) and answered my question(s), have you. That’s your right, of course, but it does suggest, once again, that you have no answers.
PS – it is now 09h00 BST and Mary has already posted four times (including one link to the BBC and two to the Guardian). If she carries on at this rate she’ll be a wreck before the day’s out (and so will we).
Fred, I am still waiting for your extensive research. This is Gareth Peirce, described by John Pilger as England’s greatest human rights’ lawyer. She is certainly one of the greatest but I put Clive Stafford Smith in the same category. This is what Gareth Peirce had to say in 2010 two years before al Megrahi died and David Cameron refused to hold an inquiry into the real perpetrators (backed by Ed Miliband).
“Equivocation and uncertainty are not enough. Even if the science that convicted al-Megrahi had not offended against every minimum standard, then the second pillar of the prosecution case, his identification by Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper, would remain spectacular in its noncompliance with any safeguard. He described al-Megrahi as ‘6’0’’’ (he was 5’8’’), ‘50 years old’ (he was 37), and ‘hefty’; said that he ‘had been to the shop before and after’, ‘had been there only once’; that he ‘saw him in a bar months later’; that he ‘will sign statement even though I don’t speak English’; that al-Megrahi ‘was similar but not identical’, ‘perhaps like him but not fully like him’, and, fatally for any identification of al-Megrahi in the first place, that he was ‘like the man in the Sunday Times’ (in other words, like Abu Talb, whose picture Gauci had initially identified). But Gauci’s evidence was needed and, reports suggest, handsomely rewarded. He apparently now lives in Australia, supported by millions of US dollars.”
If you read the whole article it should add something to your knowledge because John Ashton has written a biography about the innocence of al Megrahi, but I should like to know what evidence you have that he was guilty of some crime(s) or other.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/gareth-peirce/the-framing-of-al-megrahi
Billy fourteen pints, plays Casandra and warns Scotland:
Then Billy fourteen pints tries to awaken the passion of the Unionist freds, green freds, even catholic freds, and freds all around:
Looks like if Scotland goes independent, their hens won’t lay eggs, cows won’t give milk, their sporrans will run empty, and their butt naked bollocks will freeze in the cold winds of independence blowing from the arctic and Iceland leaving Scots staring at their tadgers on the cold cobbles of an independent Scotland!
Alas poor Billy! et too Bitter*?
* This is a non brand statement, therefore the generic term Bitter is used!
United States of Surveillance
http://vimeo.com/fiorecartoons/united-states-of-surveillance
PS We never had ‘on topic’ or ‘off topic’ police on this blog until recent times or persistent trolling.
In Dreolin’s absence, which i’m confident won’t be too long, its worth recapping a couple of her comments for context to the discussions that took place last midnight:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/06/work-for-the-un/comment-page-2/#comment-413731
and
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/06/work-for-the-un/#comment-413411
Please note the lack of cut n paste of the whole comments in order to economise on space and not fling this into people’s face who may understandably not be interested.
Cease and desist from character assassinations.
Set up you own blog and then start passing comments about others.
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There is no valet parking for zimmer frames around here, unless you wish to volunteer?
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At least we are good at something, and that is what matters, so far as these food wasters are concerned. As it stands there is sweet FA that we can claim to be good at, so we aer better than STASI,KGB, ABC, and the rest of the alphabet in spying the heck out of our citizens! Stop being so curmudgeonly and celebrate our new Best that we have achieved!!
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He is guilty, guilty, guilty! what more proof do you want than a feeling in his water?
Megrahi (innocent or not) was part of the penance Ghaddafi’s pay for his atonement, along with the two billion dollars to grease the palms of anyone that cared to lay a claim on the free money made available by the now departed colonel. Other than the LSE which was vilified for taking money from his son.
@John Goss
Please leave out the strawmen, I have not used the word “extensive”.
I think it has been established that the witness you refer to and his brother were paid for his testimony by America, I don’t think even the American government are denying it any more.
The appeal would also have had the testimony of a Scottish Assistant Chief Constable that he planted crucial evidence for the CIA and testimony from an employee of the Swiss firm who made the timing device that the remains of a printed circuit board shown in evidence had been supplied to the CIA by him.
There is no mystery about what happened, in July 1988 America shot down an Iranian airliner and in December 1988 Iran got their revenge. What needs to be established is the role of the British government and Scottish legal system in the stitch up.
There are no good guys, no white hats, not Libya not Iran not Palestine, not the USA not Britain and not Scotland. There are no bad countries, just bad people and there were bad people playing the same bad game in every country.
“Megrahi (innocent or not) was part of the penance Ghaddafi’s pay for his atonement, along with the two billion dollars to grease the palms of anyone that cared to lay a claim on the free money made available by the now departed colonel. Other than the LSE which was vilified for taking money from his son.”
Ghaddafi didn’t actually pay the compensation himself, he passed the bill on to the American oil companies operating in Libya and told them to cough up or lose their licenses.
Neat, aint it.
Hi all. Can I ask people to keep discussion as to whether a comment is on-topic or not to a minimum? The guidelines here for several years has been that comments at the start of the thread really ought to be directly related to the blog post, and then things drift to current affairs and occasional small asides as the thread lengthens.
I suggest that if a particular poster’s contribution annoys, then just simply do not engage with that person. It is everyone’s right to interact with whoever they wish.
ROFL!
An interesting concept, the oil companies turning out to be such a benevolent benefactors to aid Ghaddafi by paying his fines for him. this line of thought verily claims the oil for free, and the elegant consequence of it would be for the oil companies to get a payment for taking the oil out of the ground and getting it away! That filthy stuff is bad for the planet, bad for the people, and is a toxic waste that has to be manged by the efficient waste management techniques of the oil companies!
Now that is a novel way of dealing with the johnny foreigner, no beads, mirrors, and fire water, and instead expecting some kind of payment for taking away their wares/chattel/land/oil/organs.
I cannot write for laughing, thanks for the laughs, I really needed this laugh.
Nevermind 21 Jun, 2013 – 9:55 am
“… and I expect us to enter a period of anarchy in all its forms.”
We can dream. A beautiful future born from a proud tradition where, having recognised that power corrupts, we have dismantled the mechanisms that allow corruption and repression. A world where we each take responsibility for our lives and do not invite a mental minority to divide and rule us. No ceos nor ministers! No royalty nor rock stars! Just us in a world of respect and cooperation. Beautiful!
We can dream of such a future. As I get older I increasingly think it’s our only hope of survival as a species. Personally I wouldn’t want me ruling anything. Nor you. Yes we can dream. In the meantime we could collectivise workplaces and question all authority. Which is what I’m off to do after I’ve walked the dog.