Ray McGovern and the Sam Adams party have presented the Sam Adams award to Edward Snowden. I am delighted. This from Ray’s account of the event:
In brief remarks from his visitors, Snowden was reassured — first and foremost — that he need no longer be worried that nothing significant would happen as a result of his decision to risk his future by revealing documentary proof that the U.S. government was playing fast and loose with the Constitutional rights of Americans.
Even amid the government shutdown, Establishment Washington and the normally docile “mainstream media” have not been able to deflect attention from the intrusive eavesdropping that makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment. Even Congress is showing signs of awaking from its torpor.
In the somnolent Senate, a few hardy souls have gone so far as to express displeasure at having been lied to by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander — Clapper having formally apologized for telling the Senate Intelligence Committee eavesdropping-related things that were, in his words, “clearly erroneous” and Alexander having told now-discredited whoppers about the effectiveness of NSA’s intrusive and unconstitutional methods in combating terrorism.
Coleen Rowley, the first winner of the Sam Adams Award (2002), cited some little-known history to remind Snowden that he is in good company as a whistleblower — and not only because of previous Sam Adams honorees. She noted that in 1773, Benjamin Franklin leaked confidential information by releasing letters written by then-Lt. Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson to Thomas Whatley, an assistant to the British Prime Minister.
The letters suggested that it was impossible for the colonists to enjoy the same rights as subjects living in England and that “an abridgement of what are called English liberties” might be necessary. The content of the letters was so damaging to the British government that Benjamin Franklin was dismissed as colonial Postmaster General and had to endure an hour-long censure from British Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn.
There has been a determined attempt by government to justify the need to intercept everybody’s communications, all the time. We have, yet again, had MI5 claim there are many thousand violent Islamic terrorists running around the UK, (yet somehow not managing to kill anybody). The cry of “paedophiles” is raised, as always. I can imagine them suggesting the entire population be shot dead, and justifying it as making sure they get the paedophiles. The tabloids would go with that.
There still had not been a single credible claim by the mainstream media that any named individual has died, despite that contingency being trotted out all the time as the reason Snowden and Manning should not have revealed state crimes and abuse of power. I am hopeful that, with the internet still largely free to the dissemination of information, out next massive whistleblower is only weeks away.
If 80,000 children will be in B & B , what about the ones in disgusting privately rented accommodation? My fellow Muslims rent out a filthy 3 bedroom house to Eastern Europeans for about £550.00 p.m. The cost of the houses is about £75,000.00. I visited a house recently where both parents were abroad and 9 sweet children of different sizes all being looked after by a pregnant teenage aunt.
But the system demands that the men remain incognito so that the benefits get tied to the mothers. I asked one of these ladies if I could talk to her husband, to which she replied.
” Too many babies, too many babies. No husband No husband. ”
Well, bless them for bringing children back to this country after Thatcher and her paedophile friend Savile tried to destroy the concept of family with their evil cock-ups/plans.
Cameron isn’t happy with plans to make reporting of sexual abuse mandatory. Psychopath-war-criminal-paedophile.
Brian.
Thanks.
“…if You Think You know everything..”
A good point, but the phrase has already been taken in the Wathafek old saying lore ,
“If You Think You know everything, then you Don’t Have Any Friends.”
Sofia
I was there recently as part of team re-doing your council office’s server rooms. You can scratch my car as much as you like with your trike.
I gave up hope when the owner of a yellow fiat left her handbrake off in a service station and came back to find it embedded in my side door. Don’t let your dad forget to put anti-freeze in his car/wine tonight.
Things to do places to go but one last jibe.
Can Craig please remember not to vote Liberal at the next general election. I would burn a stuffed Clegg on every Guy Fawkwes bonfire to remind us that he was the man who brought back these fucked-up Tory shite.
Guano 4 Nov, 2013 – 9:17 am
This would suggest that politicians create policy. From your other posts, I doubt you believe that.
Policy is created by shady internationalists who preserve the illusion of democracy by varying the label of those they appoint to deliver that ‘fucked-up Tory shite’.
Thinking of Abu Qatada this morning in all the news storm on the escapee from Mrs May’s TPIM wearing a burka. It sounded fishy and more prop against the ‘veil’.
Anyone have any news on Abu Qatada in Jordan? Hopefully free of the practices of this grim sounding outfit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Intelligence_Directorate_(Jordan)
Guano:-“BTW are you any relation of Turkish coach company Cizre Nuh which operates between Istanbul and Cisre at the location of the landing place of Noah’s Ark in Eastern Turkey?”
http://www.kamilkoc.com.tr/
Much classier. Even if it does mean: ‘cannabis ram ‘ and doesn’t go near the Far( enough) East.
One of these
http://www.wallsave.com/wallpaper/1920×1080/vandetta-for-vendetta-mask-88003.html
should outwit these greedy types, Lord Sugar and son and the inheritors of Lady Porter whose father Jack Cohen founded Tesco.
Tesco to scan queuing shoppers’ features for advertisers
Tesco to install hundreds of hi-tech screens that scan the faces of shoppers as they queue
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/supermarkets/10423811/Tesco-to-scan-queuing-shoppers-features-for-advertisers.html
Alternatively avoid Tesco.
PS When she slid off to Israel Lady Porter was still owing Westminster Council £27m.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-89909/Law-Lords-order-Dame-Shirley-pay-27-million.html
I for one do not care in the slightest about the condition of Abu Qatada. He is an evil man who sought to endanger young lives through corrupt religious ideology. No doubt he will find sympathisers on this blog but I am not one of them.
@ Mary (re Grant Shapps)
“I am NOT an MP
I am NOT a government minister
I am NOT the co-chairman of a political party
I was/am NOT trading under a false name
He IS all of those.”
______________________
I know.
Point?
I suppose you know that under UK law you can call yourself what you like provided
that it is not for criminal purposes.
Are you suggesting criminal wrong doing on the part of Mr Shapps?
Furthermore, are you claiming that Mr Shapps is trading under a false name?
*************************
Always look on the bright side of life!
@ Guano
“YesYes NoNoor(no-Light) Maliki was with Obama yesterday. I didn’t know donkey foals were born with so much black hair”
__________________
Your reference to another animal – donkeys this time – reminds me that you still haven’t answered my question about precisely why Muslims apparently abhor dogs. What is the ‘scriptural’ authority for this abhorrence, and does it extend to other creatures in the animal world (if so, which)?
Could it possibly be that you don’t know? Perhaps you aren’t Muslim at all?
************************
Always look on the bright side of life!
Habbabkuk:
Pls tell us wether this guy is right?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/story-of-jesus-christ-was-fabricated-to-pacify-the-poor-claims-controversial-biblical-scholar-8870879.html
And if not WTF not?
Mary, thanks for your post at 11.49.
Five years ago, this would have had people marching in the streets. Today, it barely merits a resigned shrug and I would probably have missed it if you hadn’t flagged it up.
Your posts are much appreciated.
Ride London-Surrey ballot shut as 80,000 cyclists register
The annual cycling event is set to return on the weekend of August 9/10 next year, but a petition protesting at road closures is gaining support
10 Sep 2013
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/ridelondon-surrey-ballot-closes-80000-cyclists-5875407
So much for democracy and ‘localism’ as demonstrated below. More like fascism.
Ride London-Surrey row after council and mayor’s ‘agreement’
The Prudential Ride London event will be hosted by Surrey for five years but campaigners have branded the lack of consultation over its return as “an undemocratic disgrace”
4 Nov 2013
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/ridelondon-surrey-row-after-council-mayors-6260731
A Node. Appreciate your comment.
‘MC’ is presumably writing from the depths of the Home Office.
Mrs May is on the stump and rallies the Telford Tories.
Rallying cry to faithful from Theresa May in Telford visit
Home Secretary Theresa May told an audience in Shropshire that seats like Telford would be the ones that made the difference at the next general election
http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/politics/2013/10/26/rallying-cry-to-faithful-from-theresa-may-in-telford-visit/
‘She was applauded at the dinner in Hadley for her persistence in pursuing the deportation of Abu Qatada who was first arrested in the UK over alleged terror connections in 2001 and fought deportation since 2005 until this summer.
Mrs May said: “We should be able to deport first and hear appeals later.”’
Sam Adams award? No-one who I asked has ever heard of it.
Snowden? A wretch who is going to jail sometime soon.
You sign up to keep a secret then you keep it. Otherwise don’t get into the business.
Enoch Powell. 1 21pm
“You sign up to keep a secret then you keep it.”
Do NSA employees swear an oath to protect and uphold the US Constitution?
Whether he signed the oath or not, surely Snowden performed his duty as a citizen when he exposed the unconstitutional U.S. intelligence operations against the American people.
When the Federal Government violates the Supreme Law of the Land and treats the people it is supposed to represent like a foreign enemies, exposing that crime is the right thing to do.
When that government is run by the very criminals who give the orders to treat Americans like a foreign enemy, the “normal” channels for whistle-blowers are closed.
All that is left is to blow the whistle to the real bosses – the American people themselves.
“You sign up to keep a secret then you keep it. Otherwise don’t get into the business.”
It’s okay to act deceptively in order to expose evildoers, murderers and liars who are mad enough to think they should rule the world, and everyone in it.
Anyway, looks like their days are numbered.
I really feel for poor Abu and Hakimullah.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Qatada
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakimullah_Mehsud
Just terrible the way these poor souls are treated by the UKUSIS fascists.
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24776363
Utterly vile and disgusting.
I see the troll MC has stopped posting now.
Mary posted;
Splendid idea, just think how much can be saved through this principle, shoot first and then ask question, hang them first and then put them on trial, and even better still; how is about nuke them first so they don’t get to come here in the first place?!
Is May still having problems stabilising here diabetes, or is she inanely such an ass?
Yes Passerby. Liars and hypocrites all of them. I am writing to Mrs May to demand poor Abu be allowed to return home.
Is there any substantive difference between what Teresa May says and does and what Jacqui Smith said and did when Home Sec.
Nope.
They both say and do what they’re told, by spooks behind the scenes.
The only point in electing these people to such office is that they act as a human brake on the bureaucratic machine. If they can’t perform that simple role then there’s no point having them at all.
No point in voting, as Russell Brand says.
Let the spooks emerge from the shadows and at least we know who our dictators are, and let’s all stop pretending we live in anything other than the ghastly thieving dictatorship it is.
Have been out and have just come in.
These posts were NOT made by me.
|Mary
4 Nov, 2013 – 2:26 pm
Yes Passerby. Liars and hypocrites all of them. I am writing to Mrs May to demand poor Abu be allowed to return home.
|Mary
4 Nov, 2013 – 2:16 pm
I really feel for poor Abu and Hakimullah.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Qatada
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakimullah_Mehsud
Just terrible the way these poor souls are treated by the UKUSIS fascists.
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24776363
Utterly vile and disgusting.
I see the troll MC has stopped posting now.
~~~
These cowardly trolls perform their tricks knowing that Craig is absent and that there is no mod. How much lower can they go?
Ha! I have not got a smartphone either just an old pay as you go mobile. The last post contains mobile internet links and an English prefix. A foreign troll at work perhaps?
More on Brand and those “shoots of hope”:
“£15m Brand’s very unsocialist business empire”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2483929/Russell-Brands-unsocialist-15m-business-empire.html
He even uses a firm specializing in getting the rich off paying their fair share of tax.
Priceless.
A Node
I went to the same school as Clegg, viz Westminster. I can assure you that Clegg is not a typical product of that school. There is nothing to force the lucky recipients of a 1st class education into listening to spooks nor is it necessary any longer to go to those places in order to become a 1st class zio-arse.
Same as members of the armed forces or Al Qaida, anybody who signs off on personal responsibility for respecting the rights of others for the sake of personal ambition can no longer blame the spooks, the government or their own family for their own personal choices. They believe the shite they believe. They do not try to make excuses for themselves, so why bother making excuses up for them?
From a fully paid-up member of the MCAASS (Mutual congratulation, admiration and slavish support) Society, namely A Node :
“Mary, thanks for your post at 11.49.”
and
“Your posts are much appreciated.”
_______________________
To which the appropriate response is, I think : Yeah, sure!
***********************
Always look on the bright side of life!
The cost in human lives of fireworks manufacture.
China fireworks factory blast kills 11 in Guangxi
An explosion at a fireworks factory in the southern Chinese region of Guangxi has killed 11 people and injured 17, state media say.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-24784109
Deadly explosions at Vietnamese fireworks factory
Amateur footage purported to show an explosion at the complex
A series of explosions at a fireworks factory in northern Vietnam has killed at least 15 people and left many others injured.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24507158
Firework factory explosion death pair jailed
Fire brigade video of the blast shot by Brian Wembridge before he died
A father and son have been jailed for the manslaughter of two firemen killed in an explosion at a fireworks factory.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8415936.stm
Just three examples. I guess that there are many more plus the injuries caused to onlookers at displays.
Mary:
“‘MC’ is presumably writing from the depths of the Home Office.”
_______________
What makes you say that?
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Mrs May is on the stump and rallies the Telford Tories.”
_________________
Yes, that’s what politicians do. Problem?
********************
Always look on the bright side of life!
Shane MacGowan went to Westminster School and he turned out fine.
He was expelled in second year, so perhaps that helped.