All Law is Gone: Naked Power Remains 329

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The forcing down of the Bolivian President’s jet was a clear breach of the Vienna Convention by Spain and Portugal, which closed their airspace to this Head of State while on a diplomatic mission.  It has never been thought necessary to write down in a Treaty that Heads of State enjoy diplomatic immunity while engaged in diplomacy, as their representatives only enjoy diplomatic immunity as cyphers for their Head of State.  But it is a hitherto unchallenged precept of customary international law, indeed arguably the oldest provision of international law.

To the US and its allies, international law is no longer of any consequence.  I can see no evidence that anyone in an official position has even noted the illegality of repeated Israeli air and missile strikes against Syria.  Snowden, Manning and Assange all exposed illegality on a massive scale, and no action whatsoever has been taken against any of the criminals they exposed.  Instead they are being hounded out of all meaningful life and ability to function in society.

I have repeatedly posted, and have been saying in public speeches for ten years, that under the UK/US intelligence sharing agreements the NSA spies on UK citizens and GCHQ spies on US citizens and they swap the information.  As they use a shared technological infrastructure, the division is simply a fiction to get round the law in each country restricting those agencies from spying on their own citizens.

I have also frequently remarked how extraordinary it is that the media keep this “secret”, which they have all known for years.

The Guardian published the truth on 29 June:

At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data, according to a former contractor to America’s National Security Agency, who said the public should not be “kept in the dark”. This article has been taken down pending an investigation.
Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US.
Madsen said the countries had “formal second and third party status” under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.
Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.

The strange script which appears there happens when I try to copy and paste from this site which preserved the article before the Guardian censored all the material about the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement from it.

As you can see from the newssniffer site linked above, for many hours there was just a notice stating that the article was “taken down pending investigation”, and then it was replaced on the same URL by the Guardian with a different story which does not mention the whistleblower Wayne Madsen or the intelligence sharing agreements!!

I can give, and I would give on oath, an eye witness guarantee that from my direct personal experience of twenty years as a British diplomat the deleted information from Wayne Madsen was true.

 

 

 

 

 

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329 thoughts on “All Law is Gone: Naked Power Remains”

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  • Flaming June

    I was picturing what’s left of the army in control of the ZBC newsroom and the ConDems under house arrest. 🙂

  • Flaming June

    When I said that I was surprised that ZBC were carrying those reports from Syria about the child being shot and the sharia court’s sentences, I meant that it did nothing to support the plans of Cameron and Hague plan to arm the rebels. In fact Paul Woods piece does the very opposite.

    You might remember my posts about John Baron MP speaking up about Cameron reserving the right to act without either consulting parliament (the two month + recess is approaching) or having a vote on the arming and other interventions.

    Mr Baron has now secured a debate to be held on July 11th.
    Should be interesting. The vote is predictable though. All those whips will be out.
    http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/#!/calendar/Commons/MainChamber/2013/7/11/events.html

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Unless the story has been changed again since Craig’s comments, the replacement story *did* and *does* mention the intelligence sharing agreements, in similar terms to the original – towards the end of the text. Looks to me as if it is just Mr Madsen’s contribution that has been dropped out.

    Kind regards, John

  • Fred

    Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
    Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
    Everybody knows that the war is over
    Everybody knows the good guys lost
    Everybody knows the fight was fixed
    The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
    That’s how it goes
    Everybody knows

    Leonard Cohen

  • craig Post author

    Will EVERYBODY please tackle the arguments commenters make, and not refer to their motives for making them – which you cannot know – or that people are paid, or their personality traits, or somebody else.

    What interests me is the arguments people put. I think most of the imputations made on all sides are probably inaccurate, but even if they were accurate they are irrelevant. A man or woman may be a one-eyed former contract killer with a cocaine habit in the pay of the state of Israel, but may still make an argument that is absolutely correct. Please address the argument, not the person. Posts which fail to do this will be deleted when seen.

  • Komodo

    Can anyone help me find something online? It appeared yesterday in the Guardian: an MI5 advert for intelligence analysts. It consisted of the purported intelligence record of an IA’s day, complete with its culmination, the arrest of some evil terrorists (obviously). Ironically, the information sources listed strongly confirmed the notion that nothing is sacred. I know this, but I would like it to reach a wider public.

  • Komodo

    That’s glorious, Kibo. But a big question there, would a Border collie actually be any worse at running the country? They’re MUCH brighter than Cameron et al.

  • Dreoilin

    “Dreolin; That’s important. WL needs financial support ASAP.”

    Yes, Ben, and look at this

    “The Supreme Court decision in Iceland was in favour of WikiLeaks and DataCell, but it did not include damages – deemed a separate issue under Icelandic law. A court claim for compensation is currently being prepared. Damages are estimated at 9 billion Icelandic Kronas (55.9m EUR or 72.7m USD).”

    Anything approaching that/those figures should make them a lot more secure.

  • NR

    “Russian femme fatale Anna Chapman proposes to Edward Snowden on Twitter”
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2355316/The-spy-tagged-Russian-femme-fatale-Anna-Chapman-proposes-Edward-Snowden-Twitter.html

    A diplomatic solution? If they married in the airport transit zone, would that get him into Russia legally and instantly? President Putin could say straightfacedly, “I have no choice, under Russian law, but to admit him.”

    They could be Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Make movies.

  • Dreoilin

    For anyone who is interested in the question of Shannon and how many US troops have passed through there, I have received a reply from Shannonwatch as follows

    “Hi XXXXX,

    “First of all thanks for your ongoing support.

    “The troop figures are made available by the Minister for Transport who is asked on an annual (sometimes more frequent) basis to provide them. This is normally done through parliamentary questions.

    “Here’s a link to one such question/answer in 2010 (you will see it was asked on our behalf by Joe Costello who is now a member of the government that we have to drag the information out of!). If you search kildarestreet.com you will find other answers with troops information.

    http://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2010-10-05.1347.0&s=number+troops+shannon#g1348.0.q

    Regards,
    XXXX”

  • Omti

    Why do they even bother to censor it? Everyone with half a brain could guess it anyway. Or do they fear the sheep might protest? Most people would probably think it is a good idea. “Terrorism” needs to be fought after all ^^

  • Jives

    “A man or woman may be a one-eyed former contract killer with a cocaine habit in the pay of the state of Israel,”

    Damn.

    That’s me rumbled.

    :.)

  • Jives

    Dragon,

    “Ironically, the information sources listed strongly confirmed the notion that nothing is sacred. I know this, but I would like it to reach a wider public.”

    Explain please,ta?

  • Dreoilin

    This story appeared via Twitter, and I thought it was brilliant:

    “In 1999, the state-of-the-art in video game warfare was Quake 3 Arena – a fast and brutal game set in tight, cramped levels, where the aim was simply to kill, get killed, and repeat.

    “And among its various innovations – of which, arguably, there weren’t that many – was some rather clever artificial intelligence.

    “The ‘bots’ in the game – essentially the computer controlled players – were equipped with a kind of ‘learning’ AI.

    “In the game, the bots would watch your gameplay style, and adapt themselves as the fighting continued. The bots would effectively “think” their way to new tactics, discarding ideas that didn’t work and honing in on those that did.

    “Naturally this got some people thinking. If you left the bots playing, on their own, surely they would get better and better… and then what? Would they turn into the ultimate AI killing machine – or create a nightmare world of pain and suffering?

    “Well now we know.

    “They evolved world peace.

    “According to a mysterious message board thread from 2011, in about 2007 one gamer set up a server of 16 bots playing each other in an endless, pointless war.

    “In 2011, four years later, he remembered the server, and returned to it.

    “According to the thread on 4Chan, the gamer found that the bots had evolved to do absolutely nothing. Instead of running, shooting and killing, they had learned that the only way to ensure their survival was to abandon violence, and simply stand facing each other, forever – as one gamer in the thread put it, “waiting for a purpose or salvation”.

    “Nobody could win – but nobody could die. A peaceful stalemate had emerged naturally, after four bloody years.”

    However, that’s not the whole story … HuffPo is now claiming that the whole thing was a joke/hoax

    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/01/quake-3-arena-world-peace_n_3529082.html

    🙁

  • Komodo

    Jives – Looking for a web image of this ad. Just that. After all the denials and obfuscations, this is what they do, and they advertise it. In the Guardian.

  • Komodo

    None of those, Dreoilin, I’m afraid. This was a 1/8 page ad in the print edition, consisting entirely of a spookspeak (for public consumption) running record of interceptions – of a number of sources – and surveillance, with some insertions into the text, in bold, of the job details. Think it was in the educational ads section, more bizarrely still. I don’t have the paper with me.

  • Jemand - Censorship Improves History

    Actually, I *am* a one-eyed former contract killer with a cocaine habit but I absolutely refute any ridiculous suggestion that I have ever been paid by the State of Israel. Mossad are so stingy all I got was a complimentary Barbra Streisand CD, one ticket to Fiddler on the Roof and a poster of Steve Guttenberg.

  • N_

    Let’s not rely on western news reports. Here is a poor English translation (sorry!) of an official press release by the Bolivian foreign ministry.

    Comments to follow in next post.

    ************************
    COMPLAINT BY THE PLURINATIONAL STATE OF BOLIVIA

    The Government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia denounces before the international community the act of aggression against itself, and specifically against President Evo Morales, constituted by the surprise withdrawal of overflight and landing permissions for the Falcon 900 presidential aircraft FAB 001, which on 2 July 2013 was on its return flight after the participation by the Head of State and his delegation at the Second Summit of the Forum of Gas Exporting Countries, held in the Russian Federation.

    The Government of Bolivia denounces before the international community the unfriendly and blatantly aggressive communication that the presidential aircraft was not authorised to cross the airspace of the Republics of France and Portugal.

    The Republic of Portugal announced the withdrawal of overflight and landing permissions and later amended its decision, authorising only overflights and thus preventing a landing for necessary refueling.

    For its part, the Republic of France announced the withdrawal of permission to fly, when the Bolivian Head of State was within a few minutes of entering French airspace.

    The attitude of the two countries is a violation of existing international agreements, undermining the life and safety of a Head of State, forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing in the Republic of Austria and to make a flight plan rearranging the return of President Morales, with consequent damage to the presidential inauguration.

    The Government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia believes that these actions are discriminatory and intimidatory, and that they have been generated from the unfounded and malicious suspicions that the presidential aircraft was carrying US citizen Edward Snowden.

    La Paz, 3 July 2013
    ************************

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