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.
yeah, shame. Because ‘self-control’ only exists as its opposite – ‘no control over self’ – would be interesting to find the pure opposite, loved the ‘this is why i hate the left’ diatribe from Anon a few pages ago; honesty always finds a resonance.
(goes and reads PJ O’R for antidote)
(last was to Ben @ 9.49)
@ Ben (and others)
Or the second example : Mrs Janet Yellen (aka Mrs George Akerlof) is Jewish and is widely known to be Jewish. Is it rhetoric to ask the person who took the trouble to post this fact for our attention whether he attached any particular significance to this fact?
After all, if he thought that the fact was unimportance and irrelevant to anything wider, why did he bother? Just to let us know something that anyone who follows the news would probably know already?
“(goes and reads PJ O’R for antidote)”
I can’t handle that kind of pain, but flagellation…..ok.
@ Ben
““that 3 of the 8 Associate Justices of the Supreme Court are Jewish,”
That is a fact that can’t be disputed. I also have heard the current POTUS is black. I will now go flagellate myself for recognizing these facts.”
That’s my point, isn’t it. Nobody would post on here to tell us that Obama is black. So why should someone bother to post to tell us that 3 of the 8 AJs are Jewish? Where is the value-added?
Seems George Osborne will be soon learning Cantonese as he gets well and truly into bed with the Chinese. Let’s pray that their nuclear reactors are safer than the railways they throw up. Weren’t we pioneers in nuclear power? So what happened ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision
” So why should someone bother to post to tell us that 3 of the 8 AJs are Jewish? Where is the value-added?”
Does the expression “possible conflict of interest” mean anything to you Einstein ?
Why do you think that it was normal policy for Governments not be appoint Jews as Ambassadors to Israel, a policy only very recently broken.
It all gets weirder and weirder here. The name changes are rapid. What next?
‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God (German: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes), known in the UK as Aguirre, Wrath of God, is a 1972 West German New Wave adventure art film written and directed by Werner Herzog. Klaus Kinski stars in the title role.’ Wikipedia
Werner Herzog passed me by thankfully. I was working hard for a living in 1972.
I can remember some of these events. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_in_the_United_Kingdom
The king is dead, long live the king. Uncle Sam is broke and moribund in debt, the story of a kind of aristocratic uncle full of pomp and no dinner at the table. Those Chinese have to practice somewhere, and are busy lending us the money, of course if only they can build it too.
Those that do irony must have appreciated how Mary changed the subject away from Palestine to oil leaks when asked to give her views on how we get from where we are to her preferred one State solution. Surely even her own supporters might be interested in her thoughts on the matter – or perhaps it is all some big secret to be kept from the trolls and their associates?
I’m thinking of changing my nym to Zardoz. Any questions?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz
Macky: “I still cant’t believe you try to equate Israeli Public support FOR Cast Lead with British Public OPPOSITION to the Iraq War !!”
Think about it a bit. Where do you get those concepts/ideas/examples from?
“A week ago in Gordon Gecko Moved To London, I wrote about the UK government’s various blindingly bright ideas for its economy, like for instance “a new fiscal mandate that will require further welfare cuts to build an overall budget surplus by the end of the next parliament”, with the 2013-14 budget deficit of £120 billion to fall to £43 billion in 2017-18. The money saved through the £77 billion in welfare cuts to the poor will be used to hand money to the corporate world to achieve the myopic pipedream of “100,000 more companies exporting and a doubling of our exports to £1 trillion by 2020″, the latter being an exact copy of Obama’s earlier goal for US exports, an equally unrealistic piece of cheap political yada yada.”
http://theautomaticearth.com/Finance/nobel-winner-robert-shiller-demolishes-uks-help-to-buy-scheme.html
Macky
I suppose on that basis you would argue against the appointment of Moslem judges or ambassadors to Islamic republics – but that would be racist wouldn’t it?
“Think about it a bit. Where do you get those concepts/ideas/examples from?”
Sorry, I know this is very blunt & therefore will come across as very rude, but you do not come across as the sharpest mind on this Blog, so I rather not engage deeply with you on anything as I think I will be wasting my time.
Ben
Unless you are happy to be compared to the picture of Sean Connery in that link I would advise against the change of name – but thanks nevertheless for providing another argument against Scottish Nationalism.
RD; Sean Connery is Zed. I have higher aspirations.
“I suppose on that basis you would argue against the appointment of Moslem judges or ambassadors to Islamic republics – but that would be racist wouldn’t it?”
It doesn’t happen does it ? And it didn’t use to for Jews as Ambassadors to Israel, but in these recent openly Pro-Israel supporting Western Governments it has now, in fact it seems to be in fashion ! Can certainly be argued as being a racist policy, but a plausible defence could & was made on the grounds of safeguarding National Security.
Re Judges, etc, when the Prime Ministers of Israel themselves, brag about the power of the “Jewish Lobby”, why are you surprised if people think it’s a relevant factor to mention that a person of influence or power, may have a possible conflict of interest ?
“Those that do irony must have appreciated how Mary changed the subject away from Palestine to oil leaks when asked to give her views on how we get from where we are to her preferred one State solution.”
I don’t see why, and I also don’t see why someone who points out a problem should have a solution – tho it would be interesting to hear from them abut it
UK launches parliamentary inquiry into Guardian’s NSA leaks:
Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said that a “a man from Whitehall” confirmed to him that if the materials were not handed over or destroyed “the government would move to close down the Guardian’s reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material” on which the Guardian was working.
The ‘gate-keepers’ of the status quo, or the 1 or is it 2 maybe even 3 percent are increasingly symied, choked off by a pervasive collective, acute social conscience by those of us who have taken, made a run at, that small leap in sensibility; that natural process of evolving into a state of higher conscious. Some of us are thinking deeper in a meaningful synchronicity.
We know for instance ‘mother’ earth is living in the same way we are; thinking, breathing, sensitive to association, conscious.
We are certain those ‘truth vibrations’ are elucubrating, toiling away to magnify, amplify, disseminate and diffuse.
This cannot be madness or psychosis, this is real balance.
Consider this year, if you will, this sense of truth known to us, leaked, communicated and pushed to us. Think – Snowdon, Wikileaks, Princess Diana, Syria and sarin, the ‘Hellfire club’ MP’s child abuse Elm guest house, the BBC palace of the paedophiles, Jersey children’s home, 7/7, 9/11 and much more.
These are not coincidences. They come into the light through the medium of a shift in your consciousness.
That may seem subjective to some so I’ll be a bit more pragmatic.
We are made aware of our democracy. Yet freedom is restricted, justice is exhausting civil rights and biased towards the elite establishment (i.e. ‘established’ so advanced revision is unnecessary). Democracy is mute.
We are also aware the British ‘party system’ is padded, underhanded, treacherous and unprincipled. We have no choice. The ballot sheet should have a box, ‘none of the above’ – that would fix it. The system has become a handful of tight seats; the election decided on the marginals with strings pulled and controlled by Multi-nationals, Banks, Hedge-fund bosses, multi-billionaire financiers – billionaire! That is 1000 million, absurd and ludicrous (as is $17 trillion in debt – laughable).
The people who represent us are in it for themselves. They work together against us.
Another revealing was when the psychopath, bully and spin doctor, Alastair Campbell got involved in the Ed Milliband Marxist father debate. That bastard Campbell ‘sexed up’ a WMD dossier that helped murder thousands of innocent people in Iraq. Pregnant women lost their babies, feisty children lost their arms, their legs, their sight.
Alistair Campbell – the 2am telephone (Tony asked me to tell you this) fiend/troll/monster is responsible for that Milliband theatre, that drama, that ugly scrap of propaganda to gain public sympathy.
So why vote? You can only win by connecting, by evolving.
Soon the dinosaurs will be screaming behind you. Please turn just once and summon, a gesture, an invite.
Just once then leave to expire. Their souls will have been sold to self, and self is subjective – an illusion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H2wr0khnJA
Three thousand innocent people murdered by closed ears, deaf eyes and autonomous autocratic minds.
“Re Judges, etc, when the Prime Ministers of Israel themselves, brag about the power of the “Jewish Lobby”, why are you surprised if people think it’s a relevant factor to mention that a person of influence or power, may have a possible conflict of interest ?2
Because people are people. and your racism is risible, just as much as if the word ‘Jewish’ had been replaced by the word ‘Muslim’
holocau$t.
They,he,she, nobodylovelovesUS…,il…, us…“May you die garbage Arabs, amen!”
Please
disgust,discus the despicable and extremely flatulent, Laotian striped cow in a peer-reviewed comparison to the shitty, legless Amazon diamond frog, for a more balancedfew,phew… view on theUPS,NFL,USA,UPS… I/Pconscript,cock,condom… concept.Indeedy, Mark. GG recently announced he was leaving Guardian to establish an indy network, but they had reached the limits of their autonomy.
The raising of consciousness is a major fly in the ointment of control and command central. The scales removed from the eyes of the Public Apostle Paul is archetypal. Your optimism is worthy of global sharing.
Ben
I once lived in a town in North Wales called ‘Penmaenmawr’.
That translates to ‘big stone head’.
@ Technicolour,
Q:… tho it would be interesting to hear from them abut it…
R: Ahhhh, you couldn’t keep that Canadian accent under wraps, eh?
A Node,
Q: ‘Penmaenmawr’.
R: Sounds worse than a pants full of popping hemorrhoids or a testicular acupuncture treatment.
“That translates to ‘big stone head’.”
Coincidentally, that’s exactly what I was going for, A Node. I want to be the guy behind the curtain with the big stone head. Any questions?
PS sorry for being rude.
Land of the fucking free! Yehap I should cocoa too!
Now they are stumping on the poor for any which excuse they can. Ohio woman charged in theft of $2.87 from fountain
We are following the disastrous policies of “reducing welfare” (now it is the turn of the old age pensioners) to better our economic productivity (ie make good all the money that the fucking banksters stole and gambled away), fuck the economic progress that cannot afford to provide for the fucking countries own citizens.
“Because people are people. and your racism is risible, just as much as if the word ‘Jewish’ had been replaced by the word ‘Muslim’”
If it was anybody else (except of course your juvenile soul mate Villager), I would respond, unpick & show that your nonsense is nonsense, but I imagine that my reply, as most other things seemingly tend to do, will go over your head, and as I’ve already made clear I have very little time for fools or trolls who cannot even fabricate a half reasonable point to make; so feel free to carry on sticking to what you do best & so often here, namely hysterical smearing, and charging at the demons that only exist in your challenged little mind.