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.
Liam Fox has resurfaced. It was he who addressed the presumably prearranged question about the Guardian to Cameron that Cameron then seized upon.
“I don’t think leaders or most other people analyse fears according to rationality – it might be nice if they did but they don’t.”
Well no, actually. As someone who has a couple of phobias, I wouldn’t want people to use rationality as a yardstick for all fears. Irrational fears can be terrifying.
Perhaps Israeli fears are phobias?
“However it is Israeli military chiefs and politicians who dictate policy.”
Irrational fear, paranoia & victimhood are deliberately & cynically cultivated by the Israeli State, as would be apparent to anybody who has seen the documentary “Defamation”; from a very young age, Israeli children are subjected to terrible mental & emotional abuse, so no wonder they grow up being unable to consider anything from a rational perspective, and into believing that the whole World hates & wants to kill them.
Same server, fair enough. This commenter’s criterion for participating in a forum is: to what extent does posting there make you more vulnerable as an officially-designated enemy of the NSA? The ideal is no mandatory authentication (authentication will be used against you); minimal javascript to avoid fingerprinting; SSL/TLS to complement Tor.
In the recent BBC series “The Story of the Jews”, Simon Schama says that Jews are paranoid but that history shows them right to be.
But if you are always expecting everyone to be against you then are you not always going to be tempted to get at “them” first by deception? See the Book of Judith for example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Judith
Paranoia is an unfairly maligned state of mind. I have found it invaluable because it makes you a chess-player looking several moves down the road. It has served me well.
“I say we nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure”
A node
I also said “trying to work out which are rational and which are not doesn’t necessarily solve anything” – which is the reason why I should pass on your question, but there is clearly some rationality given past history of attacks on Israel – you cannot pretend they never happened.
Today’s suspicious observers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXWWWUFUgTA&feature=c4-overview&list=UUTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ
“Well no, actually. As someone who has a couple of phobias, I wouldn’t want people to use rationality as a yardstick for all fears. Irrational fears can be terrifying.
Perhaps Israeli fears are phobias?”
I take your point, people need to be dealt with as people and by people. I am sure some Israeli fears are phobias – but I am not sure that most people would advocate dealing with phobias by telling them up front that they are being irrational and to stop worrying about them.
‘Defamation’ was a fascinating film. I don’t remember who posted it here, but it was illuminating. I sent on the link elsewhere.
Also, the documentary, The Ultra Zionists (‘Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers in the West Bank’) was, well, shocking, to say the least.
@ For the return of Habba and Free Speech 17 Oct, 2013 – 4:52 pm (in reference to his own question about the underlying motivation for the continual human rights abuses by the IDF and the State of Israel)
OK, but I didn’t ask you to solve anything. I asked you “Do you think that Israel has a rational need to fear Palestine?”
“GEAB N°78”
http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-78-is-available-The-de-Americanisation-of-the-world-has-begun-emergence-of-solutions-for-a-multipolar-world-by_a14827.html
“but there is clearly some rationality given past history of attacks on Israel – you cannot pretend they never happened”
So the answer in part is yes – though quantifying how much fear is rational and how much is irrational would be a pretty impossible and pointless exercise.
“I am not sure that most people would advocate dealing with phobias by telling them up front that they are being irrational and to stop worrying about them.”
No. But most people with phobias are well aware that they’re irrational (I certainly am) but knowing that doesn’t make them any easier to deal with.
Confronting them is the only way. Exposure. Bit by bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnophobia#Treatment
Richard Bandler (quick sidestep to express horror at the NLP industry understood) on treating a schizophrenic in a mental hospital:
So it is important for people to find a way so that they have an excuse to change their behavior. Because he was having psychotic episodes and he was oscillating between absolute catatonia and screaming psychotic episodes. And the episodes were all about there being snakes. So I brought rubber snakes, a whole barrel full of them in the hospital and filled the shower floor, so it seemed like Raiders From The Lost Arc. I even brought a couple of real snakes, a boa constrictor, nothing serious. And this guy was kind of
in his catatonic phase and we rolled him in and he screamed and screamed and screamed. And I came in and said “can I help you?” and he was going
“snakes, snakes, snakes”.
I said to him, “look, I’m gonna leave you in here all
night or you are gonna tell me which snakes are hallucinated and which
snakes are real” And the guy looked across the room and went “hallucinated snakes”, looked down and said “rubber snakes” looked up at the real snake and went “real snake”. And it was amazing, how quickly he sorted it all out.”
who had an overwhelming and permanent fear of imaginary snakes. Bandler, as I remember, smuggled some realistic plastic snakes into the man’s shower, and waited outside.
(sorry, last para left over from summary; don’t have the book with me; but found Bandler interview instead)
Dreoilin,
I’m a fan of Louis Theroux documentaries but I’d missed “The Ultra Zionists”
Found the full documentary at http://vimeo.com/42568730
“Defamation” is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm8-yTBs964
Life in the open air prison camp.
Israeli troops enter Gaza every three days – Oxfam
Ali Abunimah
Israel’s military incursions into the besieged, occupied Gaza Strip increased sharply in September.
Israeli ground forces entered the occupied territory nine times in September, up from twice in August, according to UK-based development agency Oxfam in its October report on the situation in Gaza.
That’s about once every three days.
Shooting at farmers
There was also a 30 percent increase in fire by Israeli occupation forces toward Palestinians in farmland along the Gaza boundary since July and August.
The “Israeli army has fired warning shots at farmers, forcing them to leave, and conducted land leveling operations,” Oxfam said.
“On 30 September, Israeli military shot and killed a Palestinian man approximately 400 meters from the fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel,” Oxfam reported.
/..
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-troops-enter-gaza-every-three-days-oxfam
and so on, as before.
“I am sure some Israeli fears are phobias – but I am not sure that most people would advocate dealing with phobias by telling them up front that they are being irrational and to stop worrying about them”
In normal societies, people with irrational fears, paranoia, phobias, etc., are encouraged to seek treatment; those prone to violence because of their irrationality are normally locked-up, both for their own sake & to protect everybody else. That a State as a matter of policy deliberately fosters these irrational fears, is one that is actually de-legitimising itself.
The fruits of these phobias are rampart Islamophobia, hatred of Arabs, and leads to family picnics on vantage points to watch death rain down of a trapped population, and to that Cast Lead massacre having over 90% support.
I wonder how this “little bit fascist” lady would feel if she was told that groups of Germans had family picnics to watch & celebrate the smoke coming out of the concentration camps;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjw8U0AcH4Q
I believe that the World Bank report, referred to here by Jonathan Cook, has been posted earlier.
The Disappearance of Palestine
JONATHAN COOK
[.]
‘Two recent images encapsulate the message behind the dry statistics of last week’s report by the World Bank on the state of the Palestinian economy.
The first is a poster from the campaigning group Visualising Palestine that shows a photoshopped image of Central Park, eerily naked. Amid New York’s skyscrapers, the park has been sheared of its trees by bulldozers. A caption reveals that since the occupation began in 1967, Israel has uprooted 800,000 olive trees belonging to Palestinians, enough to fill 33 Central Parks.
The second, a photograph widely published last month in Israel, is of a French diplomat lying on her back in the dirt, staring up at Israeli soldiers surrounding her, their guns pointing down towards her. Marion Castaing had been mistreated when she and a small group of fellow diplomats tried to deliver emergency aid, including tents, to Palestinian farmers whose homes had just been razed.
The demolitions were part of long-running efforts by Israel to clear Palestinians out of the Jordan Valley, the agricultural heartland of a future Palestinian state. Ms Castaing’s defiance resulted in her being quietly packed off back to Europe, as French officials sought to avoid a confrontation with Israel.’
[..]
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/17/the-disappearance-of-palestine-2/
For the return of Habba and Free Speech 17 Oct, 2013 – 6:03 pm (in reference to his own question about the underlying motivation for the continual human rights abuses by the IDF and the State of Israel)
Thanks. So …. Israel has a ‘partly’ rational need to fear Palestine.
Do you think that is enough to justify the IDF and the State of Israel inflicting continual human rights abuses on Palestine?
Remember, I’m not asking you to quantify anything, just whether, in your opinion, the ‘fear’ you have described is sufficient justification for those continual human rights abuses by the IDF and the State of Israel.
Thanks for the links, AlcAnon. I’d be interested to watch them again myself. And I’ll pass them on – again.
Guilty! but still so innocent, how pathetic can you get after being put in front of the facts for five weeks. I hope he gets what he has been asking for.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/crime/video_former_bbc_radio_norfolk_presenter_michael_souter_maintains_his_innocence_despite_being_found_guilty_of_child_sex_offences_1_2887222
The same arguments and excuses as Saville uttered. Good to see so many of you still posting great stuff, thanks for the links Mary and Someone.
Macky without the mass psychosis afflicting the ziofuckwits, they cannot exist. The circular debate that A Node has been patiently engaged in has yielded nothing new. The sole notion of “eternal victims” has been invoked to explain away the most vicious, murderous, venal, and corrupt society organised around the supremacists and genocidal imperatives which has been the backbone of the inception of the zionistan and its raison d’être to date.
Fact that is lost in the melee is that psychotics are medicated, or isolated in hospitals and not given fucking fighter jets, helicopter gunships, tanks, howitzers, submarines nuclear bombs, hydrogen bombs, which is also out of the question (tropes the lot of it). Because the same fucking psychotics running around in fear of their own fucking shadows are also involved in writing out the statement of requirements/prescriptions. Hence no pills, but bullets and rockets and bombs to kill shoot, blow, maim Palestinians, and attack every fucking neighbouring country.
The pathetic attempts of explaining away the vicious actions of the psychotic zifuckwits are the same excuses that a serial murdering bastard would be tabling in the way of justifying their horrific conduct. It is fucking pitiful.
I am not communicating with Anon, posting as ‘for the return of Habba…… junk, as I consider him to be a troll. No food for him at all. Let him try one of the growing number of food banks which have arisen in these times of ConDem austerity.
We heard today that getting a job is no guarantee to escape poverty. These words came from the revolting Alan Milburn who Cameron employed to report on child poverty as the ‘social mobility tsar’. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24553611
He’s good on his own ‘mobility’ as you can see in the Wikipedia link. No irony.
He was one of the many Health Secretaries in Blair and Brown’s NuLabour’s health construct which saw the introduction of private specialist treatment centres, enlarged the PFI construct leaving us with massive debts, established foundation trusts and polyclinics. They generally shafted the NHS. Then he jacked it in to spend more time with his family ie actually to join the private health sector, with a Bridgepoint directorship. He returned and then left again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Milburn
@ Ben Franklin
“Allow me to ask; what would you do if the commentator requires a response with ceaseless nagging, in spite of one’s stated disinterest? I know the answer, but wish to hear it.”
What I would do is suggest that the original poster should take responsibility for what he or she posted by answering the questions that post attracts.
By doing that there would be no need to “nag” (if that could be called nagging)and other readers might actually be able to evaluate better the validity and/or strength of the original poster’s post.
Good enough for you?
“Good enough for you?”
Nope. The linchpin in that context is freedom of speech. There is no freedom to require someone else to speak.
Alzo, the strength and validity of the original poster’s remarks can be debunked using whatever facts you can summon, without any need for the original poster’s inpiut. Now, that might get a response, but there is no guarantee.
Mary don’t you remember what Clark said?
“Jobs are easy to get, it is the income that is hard to find!”
This was in response to the condescending wanker (anon) who was parroting the fuckwits in charge: “lazy people don’t want to work and want to draw dole”.
The current slavery passed as “freedom to choose” is a horrific situation that is going ignored. the fucking funny news story was; the average wage is £470! These fuckwits are so out of it, that have no idea there are families living on £400.00 a month.
Technicolour
Interesting post about that poor schizophrenic and the snakes.
I didn’t have a phobia about snakes, but I was afraid of them. In a private zoo in Scotland (2002?) I held a few, let them curl around my arm. I still have the photos of a young boa constrictor draped around my neck, and a 14ft python lying across my lap. But when the ‘keeper’ wanted me to let a tarantula sit on my hand I couldn’t do it.
If it hadn’t been so near closing time and if we hadn’t been moving on the next day, I felt I would have succeeded. Just a little more time. I really regret now that I didn’t do it. Not for a ‘trophy photo’, but for my arachnophobia.
I should be gone. BFN
Der zornige Jakob
Im Zorn warf Jakob einen Stein
Dem Bruder nach, und traf sein Bein;
Der mußte gleich zu Boden sinken,
Und kann jetzt nicht mehr geh’n, nur hinken.
Das ist dem Jakob herzlich leid,
Und bitterlich er’s nun bereu’t
Daß er so bös und zornig war.
O, Kind, bedenke die Gefahr,
In die der Zorn dich bringen kann!
Sieht Jakob seinen Bruder an,
So will ihm keine Freud’ mehr scheinen,
So kann er anders nicht, als weinen.
August Corrodi, 1876