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.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/15-8
“At our dinner with Ed Snowden, Coleen Rowley reminded him that his willingness to expose injustice fit in with a patriotic tradition modeled by Founders like Benjamin Franklin even before the American Revolution.
Coleen recounted how Benjamin Franklin got himself in deep trouble in 1773, when he acquired and released confidential letters from the British governor of Massachusetts to the Crown showing that the colonial authorities did not think the American colonists should enjoy the same rights as British citizens in England. Franklin was fired from his post as Postmaster General and called a traitor and every other name in the book – many of them the same epithets hurled at Snowden.”
So Jon’s been driven off. First Clark, them Jon. Next Craig?
Entirely as a test and not in any way authorised by Craig Murray, I’ve setup a test forum on an Amazon cloud server running in the free tier on a free .tk domain just to show what can be done easily. Squonk was just a handy short and available tk domain I grabbed.
Guest posts are currently enabled so you don’t need to register (although you can if you want). I don’t plan on keeping this running for any length of time and perhaps nobody will visit it at all, but an official authorised forum in addition to the main blog could be setup in minutes on craigmurray.org.uk if it was thought to be useful.
Forum at http://squonk.tk/phBB3/viewforum.php?f=3
Note: Your IP addresses will appear in the server logs which I can obviously see so if you are worried about that then please don’t visit. I can also see email addresses if you register with a real one but that is currently not required.
I really don’t know whether an attached forum would ultimately improve things or not. Can’t see how it could make it worse though! Any more thoughts?
Unauthorised Chat forum at http://squonk.tk/phBB3/viewforum.php?f=3
“keep the Foreign-Service pederasts on their twinkle-toes”
First comment after Jon’s parting speech – and not from one of the “Hasbara tag team” please note
Today’s suspicious observers….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQRAVKorJ9A&feature=c4-overview&list=UUTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ
Interesting planetary alignment with ISON.
AA; What’s up?
“Jon seems very balanced and earth-bound.”
I concur with Ben’s remark, Jon. I cannot imagine anyone doing a better job.
@Ben,
No, never heard of Green Dragon; sounds interesting. When in Spain, though, I do enjoy the Green Fairy.
A Node, arbitration has always been the last recourse before the teeth and fur fly. However, to tar the aggressor and the grieved with the same brush is rather unfair.
Change is difficult, change can only come form confronting the old order, and fighting the status quo, and upsetting the apple-cart. To expect silence and tacit acceptance of aggression in the name of civility, only perpetuates the status quo. As reflected and stated;
This kind of threats with menaces, ought not be taken lightly. If the notion is a free for all, then the same aggression can be meted out towards the aggressors, and as in the game theory, sooner than later the opponents will be calling it a day and disappear into the crevices they had emerged from.
However to hamstring the opponents by extending an easy get of the jail card to the aggressors only perpetuates the rampant aggression further. Jon himself is on record; “in ordinary life, end quickly with a bloody nose and a call to the police”. Fact is most of ziofuckwits in residence probably would run a mile on the sight of some of the people they have been so viciously attacking. I speak from experience, having seen the jeering and sneering ziofuckwits heckling from the audience, only to quickly disappear, soon as a member of the audience approaches these to clarify the boundaries of good conduct.
To expect the inane and one-sided tolerance to be the normative behaviour, is perhaps not a desirable or suitable outcome. Further, to start setting up guidelines and procedures highlights the failure of the body which has to resort to such measures to promote harmony, and good conduct.
One of the reasons I enjoy coming here, is the simple fact that other places have become the stumping grounds of the mediocrity that are paying fealty to the status quo. Simply put ziofuckwits have coerced, cajoled, and bribed their way into suppressing the opponents, and dissidents.
Why do you think the insistence to reinstate a banned individual, has become a topic in itself? This is to tame the Moderator/blog into submission, and distort it into the phony reality/unreality so prevalent across the other media. As it has been reflected by BrianFujisan.
As Jives has gone on record; Today the blogs,tomorrow our front doors at 4am probably. The sinister forces stalking this blog are all too real, and are all too ready to do whatever it takes to keep their privileged perks, and position. Jon has failed to see this as he goes on to state; we have much in the way of paid disruption here.
Fact is the body of lies and the piles of dead Palestinians cannot be hidden without the full integration of the forces of reaction and tyranny. Jives is correct and to think those calling at our doors at 4am are just doing it for kicks is one step too far into Fantasia.
Finally it is worth remembering what Lucky8 says; “keep the Foreign-Service pederasts on their twinkle-toes.” this is why the shameless mercenary gang of the ziofuckwits have been targeting this blog.
“I speak from experience, having seen the jeering and sneering ziofuckwits heckling from the audience, only to quickly disappear, soon as a member of the audience approaches these to clarify the boundaries of good conduct.”
This is a euphemism for threatening them with physical violence I presume.
“Today the blogs, tomorrow our front doors at 4am probably.”
But that is the norm in the States you favour.
“Jon has failed to see this as he goes on to state; we have much in the way of paid disruption here.”
You missed out the bit beforehand “But I do not subscribe, in the main, to the idea”
– though of course inversion of meaning is ok for those who believe the ends justify the means isn’t it.
Also worth noting that we are now in effect accused of being pederasts – which is of course very similar to the accusation for which Habbakkuk was banned and which you and your friends were all too keen to support. Put then again I suppose hypocrisy can be justified within your warped value system.
Ben,
I often watch the daily suspiciosobserver videos and they are very informative. I do think he has his own pet theories though which he mixes in with accepted scientific knowledge. But don’t we all 🙂
He certainly seems absolutely convinced NASA/TPTB are editing some downlinks especially from SOHO. He might be right or it might be just due to a long-term antenna pointing problem with SOHO. Only the very largest earth based dishes can receive high rate telemetry from SOHO’s functional low-gain antenna and since the NASA partial shutdown the data has got even spottier with huge gaps in coverage. In fact an entire CME was missed last week. I don’t know enough about how the downlinks/tracking are currently configured to know if the missing data is really suspicious or not. I do know that SOHO data has always had gaps because of the antenna problem.
AA; That CME was X-class non-Earth directed immediately following fireworks from a comet fragment colliding with surface of Sun.
“Don’t worry I (and others) shall be back when there are some arguments to engage with – in the meantime the lovers of censorship and worse can just indulge in their usual games.”
And how can engaging with someones arguments be construed as a “threat with menaces” – why do you feel that someone engaging with your arguments is threatening? Isn’t this exactly the type of argument the KGB used to silence dissidents?
Anon
16 Oct, 2013 – 5:17 pm
“Also worth noting that we are now in effect accused of being pederasts”
Lucky8, 16 Oct, 2013 – 3:09 pm:
“In return, when next I get some nice SCI I’ll put it up here (come on, when did Snowden ever say he acted alone?), keep the Foreign-Service pederasts on their twinkle-toes.”
I think you’re a little oversensitive there. I’m sure Lucky8 can speak for himself, but my translation of his comment is as follows:
SCI = Sensitive compartmented information: a type of United States classified information concerning or derived from sensitive intelligence sources.
Foreign-Service pederasts = people working for the State Department engaged in an erotic relationship with an adolescent boy.
Where are you being accused of pederasty in that?
Ben,
There was actually an earth directed CME that hit last week that appeared out of nowhere. It wasn’t in any imagery and it wasn’t in the NASA/NOAA space weather forecast. It wasn’t a huge CME but the SOHO data presumably covering the period it was launched off the Sun was and still is missing.
Btw, the official NASA/science position is that non Sun impacting comets do not cause CMEs full-stop (they have statistical analysis somewhere to back that up) and that the electric universe stuff is a load of nonsense. Most of the electric universe stuff is nonsense as far as I am concerned but that doesn’t mean there may not be some additional mechanisms here we are unaware of.
So,a tag team scam to disrupt the blog AND impending comet doom chat…so eschatological,so Armageddonish…
Is it Rapture yet?
Or just another golf sale?
Rouge
I was referring to the last sentence of Passerby’s post where he added to Lucky 8’s tasteless remark about the Foreign Service – I think it is safe to assume that he considers me within that category.
“but that doesn’t mean there may not be some additional mechanisms here we are unaware of.”
Or, mechanisms we are aware of, but don’t understand, like Dark Matter.
Jon/Craig
The Catholic Orangemen of Togo doesn’t seem have any active links from this blog to online copies. Is that expected (legal reasons) or has something gone missing? The link to “Online collection of supporting documents” for Murder in Samarkand is also broken as it points to craigmurray.co.uk not .org.uk
Rouge, this ziofuckwit wanker is picking around to get his fucking master bator back in, roflmao goes:
This coming from a tosser who is supporting a fucked up supremacist bunch of fuckwits that will shoot, bomb, incinerate their own reflection in the mirror, and have built their wanky system on terrorism (Orange Grove dead British paratroopers remains booby trapped and hanged in the baking sun), murder (Lord Moyne), genocide (on going Palestinians mass murder to date after seventy years) land land theft (settlements). These vermin tossers are used to playing the system and gaming the treaties and conventions. It is busy trying to find any hooks, to justify its wanky stance, fucking pitiful more and more sounds like a deranged fishwife.
Anyone seen the scrolls of lake titicaca yet? Is there a section of bible as the registry for the cybersapce somewhere yet?
“Jon has failed to see this as he goes on to state; we have much in the way of paid disruption here.”
What Jon actually said was,
“But I do not subscribe, in the main, to the idea that we have much in the way of paid disruption here”
Neither do I. Nor do I see committed Zionists or ‘trolls’. Nor “sinister forces stalking this blog”. What I see are people who disagree with the general tenor of the comments, as they were, and an over-emphasis on Israel. And a bad reaction from the other side, themselves paranoid about “hasbara trolls” around every corner and in every second comment.
It seems to me that as the blog became more popular, it was only to be expected that people of different political views would appear here eventually. And they did. So what? Are the supporters of Palestinians, or critics of the status quo in the West, so insecure that their only recourse is to demand censorship and banning? That’s just sad. Sad and inadequate.
I have also seen some entirely unnecessary abuse of Jon, who has done a sterling job with little recognition. I’m sorry to see him “resign” but I’m not surprised at all. He’s put up with a lot, not least being let down by Craig.
Thanks for everything, Jon, and I hope you’ll stay as an ‘ordinary Joe’. I also hope Craig thanks you for the time and patience you’ve expended here.
Fully agree, Dre.
“not least being let down by Craig.” It’s a voluntary role and Craig seems to treat mods like paid employees.
Looks like it is, reading the transactions is a funny as fuck affair, you hit the nail; “golf sale”!!!
Just read the shite;
That is after this;
Copy these pages and keep a local copy on your setup, the last line of the defence has just given way and all is not so well in the land of the ziofuckwits so used to kick up and get away with it.
Anon,
Yes, I see it now. Though I think he means rather that you (plural) seek to stifle criticism of said Foreign-Service types, not that you are them.
Fedup,
I understand your anger and frustration, especially with regard to Israel and Palestine, where every thinking human must clearly be able to see that Israel wants all the land and is using every trick in the book to get it, on the basis that in a century or so most will have forgotten how they did it.
But look what happened to this blog yesterday. All the rage goes nowhere. There must be another way.
Goodbye and best wishes, Jon. You did a great job in an impossible situation.
Stop pandering to the ziofuckwits, and for once start the process of turning the tide of genuflections and exceptionalism around. On one hand you are so aghast as to what happened? what did happen? Some fucking bullies were taken to task,and they let rip! So? On the other you are concerned about Palestinians. It is no longer a Palestinian issue, just how many “security” firms of these zioufckwits are operating in this country? How many of the so called “representatives” have been compromised by these vermin?
So far this blog has been kept in check with the zioufcukwit cohort getting special treatment. They have insulted, sneered, stifled, derailed, and bullied their way through threads, and they are still allowed to hang around! Thier insults are left in place, read up there and you will see them waxing lyrical about it all.
This blog is not getting any advertising revenue, its owner kissed goodbye a marvellous job that most weaklings would pimp their wives for, or sell their mothers, grannies and daughters combined to get. The poor bastard was nearly murdered by getting poisoned, yet he stuck to his principles.
Yet somehow we have been shoved into the abyss of letting these ziofuckwtis rain shit all over the place, why?
Instead of kicking their butts into kingdom come (fuck their cries for freedom, freedom freedom shit), they have been given latitude to rain the shit they have. As someone has said already, change is to confront the arrangement set in place and that is standing up to the ziofuckwits, and confronting them, not acquiescing and letting them to coerce, cajole, and bully their way to fuckup yet another blog.
This is funny as fuck that the J. Edgar Hoover principles have been applied here; no organised crime exists = no ziofuckwit mercenaries are stalking this blog. Just read the thread and see how many posts of utter shite by the same ziofuckwits have been posted? Why should they be allowed to get away with it?
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
Thanks for everything, Jon.
Although I’ve had differences & major concerns, I also wish to thank Jon for his time & effort here.
So until further notice I guess it’s a bit of a free for all now; instead of retreating, I would have thought that this is the time for all those that really value this Blog, to step up to the mark & reclaim this bit of Cyberspace from those who wish to turn it into a Zionist friendly troll’s playground, a la Harry’s Place.
I have just found CheebaCow’s comment, giving instructions about the blocking script.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/04/the-official-tsarnaev-story-makes-no-sense/#comment-404193
But unfortunately, the place CheebCow told us to find the script no longer has it. It was here
http://freetexthost.com/u32z3v6lxg
I have no idea if you’re around, CheebaCow, but if you are, maybe you could post it again?
Thanks for your kind words, everyone.
AlcAnon, I am not sure there’s ever been links to online copies of Catholic Orangemen. I think they’re extremely widely available via the search engines though. Drop a line to Craig via the contact page? It’s a good idea.
As for Samarkand, I’ve fixed the link – thanks.
Hollowblock
If I could exclude the pointless posters here I might stay reading but its pretty difficult to find the good threads now, pity this blog was a very informative place once….
@ Villager
“Maybe Jon can help you with your flyers next time you plan to fail an election. You need help with your basic English. On second thoughts Fedup could help make them ever more endearing”
Could you explain yourself please, who do you actually mean and why do you think somebody needs help with their basic english?
BTW, you forgot a coma between thoughts and Fed up, but since you are perfect, that was obviously deliberate to catch me out.
I have stood in local and EU elections, have been active throughout my life, hoping that my principles are shared with others.
Never did I have the economic prowess of political party candidates and hence my campaigns have been undertaken on a shoe string. Loosing is normal for me and many others, it becomes a second skin, you deal with it.
Luckily this was balanced out with the successes, the love and understanding I have experienced in my private life, the interesting characters I have enjoyed meeting and talking to, the work I have done for others.
Maybe you are so much better than anyone here Villager, and have fought successful party political campaigns, for all we know you are a triple hatter, mayor, cllr. and county councillor? so full of vigour you must be the perfect man to deal with voters personal cases and chores.
Why don’t you tell us how many times you offered the public an alternative to the party political shite that is currently running this asylum and how you got on? Diod you ever syand in local elections?
Thanks for all you have done Jon, despite the constant disruption and personal attention seekers, you have managed to live your life aside a cauldron. There seems to be a concerted campaign by perfect people here, who will soon be left to carp at themselves.
Thanks for the kind words of Sofia, Daniel R and KOWN, I’m sure Jon will appreaciate it.