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.
Thanks Jon.
I probably should drop Craig an email as you say.
I remember downloading Orangemen ages ago but couldn’t find a local copy. Maybe I downloaded from Clark’s site though which is where I downloaded new copies. Assuming there’s no legal reason for me not to host them then there are copies for now also at http://www.squonk.tk/craigmurray/ which is hosted in Amazon Domain EU-West (Ireland data-centre). If people hosting them get legal letters then I should probably take them down as Amazon hosting has a history of pulling the plug on things they don’t like (Wikileaks for example) and that would shutdown my account.
AlcAnon, very much doubt you’d get a legal letter, to be honest; as far as I know Clark has never received one. I’m sure Craig would welcome you hosting another copy.
Actually I should be fine with Amazon as I see they advertise the physical book for sale starting at £56.99 for a new copy!!! and £5.99 secondhand – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Catholic-Orangemen-other-Conflicts-Known/dp/0956129900
Thanks for the added info Jon.
Very sorry to see you go as a mod as well. Glad to see you are still posting though.
Jon, thanks for all your work, and I’m sorry to see you resign. I’m still travelling around Scotland and thus not really available for e-mail discussions, but drop an e-mail to my GMX account and I’ll reply to it eventually.
The Catholic Orangemen of Togo can be found here:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/craig.html
Jon is correct that I have never received any kind of legal threat for hosting it. Jon, if Craig would like, you can put up a link to it from this blog.
——
How often does it have to be said before people see sense?
DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS
It doesn’t matter who you personally think the trolls are, engage with the issues, NOT the contributor. As stated by A Node (I think), tit-for-tat perpetuates the problem.
yeah, you anti-semites, get your minds out of the gutter! Howard Gutman, Skip Boyce, Chris Richard – they aren’t real cookie-pushers, they’re spooks! How do you expect them to protect America without pedophile blackmail?
“The GOP’s little rule change they hoped you wouldn’t notice”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jd-iaYLO1A
Jon
Sorry to see you go – you can see the degeneration already as the children see to explore the limits as to what they can get away with. Clearly I don’t think you were a very good censor – but I do think you were a very good moderator in the true meaning of that word . You understand the importance of seeing all sides of the argument and difficult though it may have been you dealt with everyone with good humour and always had the good grace to explain your actions. The only advice on the censorship would be to have graduation of punishment before resorting to the final sanction – sharp rebukes,ridicule,deletions of offensive posts in part or whole(and yes this isn’t just confined to one side of the argument), requests for apologies and temporary bans all have their place.
Clark,
Thanks for confirming you’ve had no issues hosting Craig’s book. Maybe we’ll meet sometime. I wish I could have made it to Doune the Rabbit Hole to be honest.
Good to see wee Sofia back, hope the head is ok after the Canoe incident.
Jon i knew it was coming… Sorry to hear the day has arrived. a hard task you had indeed. thank you for all you’re hard work on Craig’s Blog. Peace to you Dude
Komodo. Enjoy holls. But mind pop back in
Clark..Trolls – aye as was obvious all along, it’s just SOMETIMES Aggghhhh… Enjoy the Autumn Colors on you’re travels
AlcAnon
is there a button for english Lol… nice work though
Jon, it’s sad and I’m v sorry about it.
Brian,
Can’t take the credit for the design – it’s a free use template which I am just editing. If I created one from scratch it would probably look more like a website from 1995 🙂 It starts off filled with nonsense Latin as do many of these templatss. Apparently it is an old printers thing. All the non-Latin text and links are mine though.
Btw Brian, I approved your comment over there – thanks. Current version of WordPress requires that a first comment be approved by a mod by default. Then subsequent comments should go straight through. Was a bit surprised to get an email “Please Moderate”. It’s mainly just been me and the Google-bot on the site up to now. Google bot found it within hours of going online even though it wasn’t linked from anywhere else.
AlcAnon, I’m still kicking around Scotland for a bit, why leave it to chance? My e-mail address is on the page linked from my name, but be patient, I can’t get on the ‘net every day here.
Same goes for any others in Scotland. Let’s arrange a meet-up. A bit of direct, human conversation does a lot to dispel the suspicion that can build up during text-only discourse.
P.S., despite his sometimes terse comments here, Fred is an absolute gem; really friendly, helpful and generous.
So we had Syria and wag the dog (except the people we support killed civilians in the process) then Obama blinked and we had the shutdown, the reaching out to Iran, and now the UK is bending over backwards to please the Chinese (stop sniggering, you at the back)
There has been a shift. Something isn’t as it was in that little imperial imbroglio.
And Israel doesn’t like any of that one bit. Which is probably bad news for the rest of us.
I once asked the Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh if he thought Bibi and his gang of nutters would attack Iran.
“But that would be crazy, insane,” he protested to me.
Yup. You got that in one dude. Yet, oddly, that doesn’t reassure me…
Jon, I think that a blog admins meet-up is long overdue, too. Regarding contacting Craig, I think quite a lot of his incoming e-mail gets lost in his spam filter, which he has to keep on an over-active setting because he doesn’t know how to keep an account spam-free.
Resident Dissident, thanks for your thoughts, appreciated. I agree with graduated punishments, and have seen them work well elsewhere. Some of that probably requires the installation of written policies though, which I have been unwilling to do on someone else’s blog without active buy-in and agreement. There’s a couple of mod approaches I think I’d might have done slightly differently, with hindsight. It’s a learning process, definitely!
AlcAnon, by default WordPress submits posts to automated update services, which Google subscribes to. Nothing untoward there, but if you prefer not to be indexed, you can turn this off in Settings->Writing.
Technicolour, thanks, but actually I’m happy about all the good discussion that’s been had here. I think I did more good than harm, and new horizons await. Anyway, I’m off for a few days break!
Clark
Sounds good… is it ok to email you then for whereaboutary and whenaboutary….good wee spell of weather you/ we had there
The Israeli missile “test”” failed; dreams of the Litani are dying.
Question: How would America react if Israel attacked Iran? That’s the biggie now. If the US stands by and does nothing, Israel’s military invulnerability, seriously questioned by Hezbollah in 2006, will be confirmed. Why? Because there’s no way Israel can disable the Iranian military “threat” by itself. Worse, the Iranians will strike back, and not by lobbing Buicks, as Bill Hicks once said.
Or was it Les Dennis?
Musta been a lot of anger there, breaking up with Amanada…
Now I’ve got some pakora to eat. Goodnight the good guys, and sod everyone else.
Jon,
Yes I’d noticed that WordPress registers the blog. However Google found it before I installed WordPress. I guess Google either checks new domain registrations regularly and pokes about to see what it finds – or tk domain may submit new registrations to Google themselves. It’s not something that worried me 🙂
My two cents – if Jon was so naive as to think there are no DIY bloggers, that we have here innocent posters blogging away for the greater good of mankind (and Scottish Independence!) instead of world jewry,it was about time he familiarised himself with the real professionals from Herzliya at HuffPo !! Before coming back a bit more wiser, Villager babu’s yiddish has been too esoteric for him !
Senate passes bill to re-fund government by 81 – 18 votes. Now over to the House. Less than 4 hours until deadline remaining.
Now back to the real business at hand, about this creeping annexation and attempted genocide of the Palestinians. It started way back in 1946 with the newly invented tactic – the bombing of the King David Hotel. Check out the progress since,here.
@AA – its all the fault of the scoobydoo aliens of the Nevada Desert, they are all masquerading as Congressmen now. Ask Ben, if they fail ISON will be passing nearby they can jump on board and hitch a ride back to planet Zog, and leave us all here on earth at peace!
Brian,
Just for you, the Latin text is now actually useful! 🙂
Jon: Sorry that you’re going. You have done well at a very difficult and particularly thankless job, and have been rather left swinging in the wind in the meantime.
CM is a complex character, for sure, but he does seem to take a somewhat perverse delight in sticking a finger in the eye of those that want to support him (and his blog in your particular case here).
That miserable post on the environment was a definite case in point. It’s not a surprise that people concerned about human rights are often concerned about animal rights and environmental degradation – the causes, culprits and solutions often run parallel after all. That post championed willful ignorance about the environment in a manner than CM would have considered unconscionable, were it applied to the same level of willful ignorance on human rights. And Craig actually devoted a supposedly considered post to the subject, remember.
Being “provocative” like this might make one feel all mavericky, edgy, but at the end of the day is intellectually lazy and inconsistent. Liable to lose support and to disappoint. Likely to drive away, or at least disinterest those that thought they had a real champion.
If that was the aim, he’s got it. In me – and to a much more important extent now, in you, Jon.
Nominative
Vocative
Accusative
Genitive
Dative
Ablative
It really is the amazing crap that sticks for decades and decades. Not really any use.
Mitto Mittis Mittit…
Amabam Amabas Amabat…
Bonam Noctem!
Glenn,
Perhaps when Craig’s current book is finished he can pay more attention to the blog. Right now I can see it coming to an inglorious end. He really needs to give more thought and attention to it.