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.
Interesting etymology, thanks: will go and see when the UK last switched sides. Preferable if it acted as a peaceful broker, obviously, but there would have to be seriousness and a feeling of security (or bloody mindedness) for that to happen.
I mean, obviously it armed Iraq and then exploded Iraq, and cosied up to Gadaffi and then devastated Libya, and – but apart from that.
Saddam was a US ally, until he threatened oil flow in the Gulf and dissed the Petrodollar.
“BECAUSE OF Washington’s intervention, the Iran-Iraq War went in Iraq’s favor, and Iran was forced to concede defeat in 1988. For the next two years, the U.S. openly built up Saddam Hussein as its new strongman in the region. Weapons, high-tech equipment, technical assistance and economic aid flowed into the country.
U.S. leaders went to bat for the Iraqi regime against critics of its human rights abuses. In April 1990, four months before Iraq invaded Kuwait, a delegation of U.S. senators visited Baghdad and assured Saddam that Washington supported him. Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) promised that George Bush Sr. would veto threatened sanctions, and Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) attacked the “haughty and pampered” media that criticized Saddam’s regime.
When Saddam summoned U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie to threaten military action against Kuwait for poaching Iraqi oil, Glasbie told Saddam, “we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” In the end, it wasn’t Saddam’s brutal repression or his war crimes in the Iran-Iraq War that turned the U.S. government against him.
Only after Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which threatened the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, did Washington discover that its ally was “the butcher of Baghdad.” Over the next six months, Bush Sr. organized a massive buildup of U.S. troops and weapons for one of the most destructive wars in modern history.”
http://socialistworker.org/2004-1/480/480_05_SaddamHussein.shtml
Well, shucks, we are just your second lieutenant and all…
This looks potentially positive/interesting/uplifting/upsetting – haven’t checked it out (it’s late):
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/GMO+corn+banned+in+Mexico
But France have definitely just upheld their fracking ban:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-2448998
@ Ben,
Blood is red wherever it flows. To see a dead Israeli/Palestinian/Iraqi/Afghan/etc., child breaks one’s heart. If not, one’s considered to be a monster.
Can you believe it I was even rooting for Ron to run the country back in the day?
And here’s Rummy shaking hands.
A World Order I do believe in.
Very gratifying, the way the international community just flows around US obstruction and opens another path forward for rule of law.
– The US and its satellites try to shred CCPR Article 17, UDHR Article 12, American Declaration Articles V, IX, and X, American Convention Article 11, and ECHR Article 8…
Then this fellow Snowden pops up to expose US government crimes and makes a hair-raising break for it, against all odds, through SCO members Russia and China. ICANN, IANA and the BRICS concur on the need to internationalize internet governance.
– The US fights tooth and nail to maintain impunity for its criminals (nuclear arms merchants like Marc Grossman; torturers like Petraeus, Black, Addington, Steel, Bush, and Comey; perpetrators of grave domestic breaches of Common Article 3 like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Meyers, Bowman, Brennan and Blee)…
Then the international community revives disarmament. The US finds itself a useless bystander to disarmament initiatives, kicked to the curb for the OPCW in Syria, and collectively thumbed in the eye for the preferment of its nemesis Iran. Scrutiny of commercial armaments procurement, which got lost when the League of Nations gave way to the UN, comes back. The SIPRI Arms Transfer Database and the UN Register of Conventional Arms will look under the rocks and expose the death merchants who run the US security sector.
The US population can’t get its government under control, so the world is doing it.
Awesome music vid. I too, am a little late to awareness. Innocence is hard to give up, but imagine if you visit a family with a 10 month old child, then after an absence of a decade you return for a visit and find a family with a 10 month-old child, undeveloped. It would no longer be an adorable miracle, but a living tragedy.
I supported HHH in ’68 because I thought McCarthy couldn’t win. I like to think I have progressed since those days, because my pragmatic early years makes me a bit twisted, as now I am much more radical as opposed to the traditional path of liberal to conservative over the course of time. It’s always been a fantasy of mine to live backwards, like Merlin. Hey! I am living in a fantasy. 🙂
Pentagon faked arrival ceremonies honoring fallen soldiers
Hollywood gone wild.
Muslims Are Now To U.S. What Jews Were To Hitler
Of course this is all a Muslim propaganda, there is no such victimisation. Muslims are asking for it, by being Muslims, they should all change their religion, and denounce their extremism, and become atheists, believing; god never grows limbs for the amputees and does not give out free beer, so there is no god.
Blimey,
Craig Murray is Mentioned in Dispatches – AGAIN
Even Joe Quinn of SOTT – is Copying Him
I always found it the sincerest form of flattery.
Tony
The allotment of the shares has been carefully designed to fulfil the long term plan of give control of Royal Mail to T.N.T without being obvious.
A deafening silence from the ziotrolls (for truth and justice, no less, bah!) here regarding the monstrous gas murder of 426 children in Ghouta, to serve as an excuse for war against Assad, monster satanyahu’s “live intercept” complicity and Lithuanian Rifkind’s virtuoso performance on the floor of the Commons shilling for war based on Bandars YouTube gassing videos and satanyahu’s “live” 8200 intercepts.
BTW – it will be interesting to see the transcripts of the faked 8200 intercepts, if they come up to Comical Shlomo propaganda standards of the famed “auschwitz” Mavi Marmara audio tapes!! Comical Ali lived up to his reputation by forgetting to digitally fuzz the faces of the Alawite children from Latakia, used as “props” in the Ghouta YouTube videos. Pure EVIL.
At this rate the Gharqad tree may change its mind !!
zionist lackeys? how about the entire MSM.
only the Jewish Forward finds this coincidence worth commenting on:
9 October – Forward – Janet Yellen Brings Jewish Side to Fed — Again
Yellen, whose nomination to head America’s central bank was reported Tuesday, will follow her immediate predecessor Ben Bernanke who was Jewish, and Bernanke’s immediate predecessor, Alan Greenspan, who was Jewish, too. There have been two other Jewish fed chairs in the past century. In fact, the other frontrunner for the position, Lawrence Summers, was Jewish too…
http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/185284/janet-yellen-brings-jewish-side-to-fed-again/
funny how MSM all reported only on the first “woman” part!
9 October – Forward – Janet Yellen, First Jewish Woman Fed Chair, Brings Compassion to Tough Job
http://forward.com/articles/185369/janet-yellen-first-jewish-woman-fed-chair-brings-c/
re MSM silence on Yellen’s faith.
would they have been silent if an individual of any other minority faith was so over-represented in such a position of power, including for an unbroken period from 1987 (appt of Alan Greenspan) to the present?
the same unexamined, unexplained over-representation occurs at the Supreme Court, where 3 out of nine current Justices are of the Jewish faith:
List of Jewish United States Supreme Court justices
Louis Brandeis became the first Jewish justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1916, following nomination by President Woodrow Wilson, and a contentious confirmation. Towards the end of his tenure on the Supreme Court, Brandeis was joined by the nation’s second Jewish justice, Benjamin Cardozo in 1932, who was succeeded by Felix Frankfurter, Arthur Goldberg and Abe Fortas. Eight Jewish justices have served on the Court, including the three currently serving, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_United_States_Supreme_Court_justices
might as well consider Sotomayor a fourth!
2009 – Haaretz – Sonia Sotomayor – a poster child for Jewish-Hispanic relations
U.S. Jews rally around Obama’s nominee for U.S. Supreme Court Justice, a Puerto Rican with strong ties to Israel
Jewish groups don’t endorse U.S. Supreme Court nominees, at least in writing.
The tears and choked sobs when Sonia Sotomayor accepted President Obama’s nomination on Tuesday told another story…
In 1986, when she was in private legal practice, she joined one of the first young leadership tours of Israel sponsored by Project Interchange, which is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.
Sotomayor so enjoyed the country—its immigrant culture, its popular music influenced heavily by Jewish immigrants from Argentina and Brazil—that she made a return visit in 1996 when she was a federal judge, and recently joined a Project Interchange U.S.-Israel forum on immigration. In the process, she formed a lifelong friendship with Project Interchange founder Debbie Berger and her husband, Paul, who attended her swearing-in as a Manhattan appeals court judge in 1998…
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/2.209/sonia-sotomayor-a-poster-child-for-jewish-hispanic-relations-1.277229
From Terror Through Time, Fergal Keene’s series on Radio 4, to be broadcast tomorrow at 13.45.
The Murderous Mandate
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03cdzlz – not available on iplayer yet.
In April 1947 a young French woman talked her way past the guard of Dover House in Whitehall. She told him she was desperate to use the toilet. In fact Betty Knut was there to plant a bomb at the very heart of the Empire. It proved just how far some militants were willing to go in their campaign to remove the British from Palestine.
In part six of Fergal Keane’s exploration of the changing nature of terrorism, he’s joined by historian David Cesarani and former member of the Jewish underground, Hanna Armoni, to tell the story of the dedicated groups that turned their bombs and bullets against the British occupation.
Producer: Alasdair Cross.
Friday’s episode (“Stirring the Middle East”), in case you missed it, is still available on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03c47gk
Stirring the Middle East
Duration: 15 minutes
First broadcast:Friday 11 October 2013
Fergal Keane on the British promises in WW1 that provoked conflict in the Middle East.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War created a tangle of real and potential conflicts for world leaders to unpick.
The toughest nut to crack would be the future of Palestine. In the course of the war Britain, in its desperate quest for allies, made three apparently contradictory promises. A secret deal with France divided future control of the Middle East between the two allies, the Sharif of Mecca was offered a new Arab kingdom and support for a Jewish homeland had been given to the Zionists.
Fergal Keane explores how Britain tried and failed to untangle the knots, setting the scene for so much of the violence to come in the Middle East.
A Node Spot on ref the ‘Royal Mail’.
Moya Greene was brought in to set the UK postal service up for privatisation, as she did in Canada.* They have not acted at the same speed as Gideon and Vince though.
She arrived at the end of May, 2010, three weeks after the election, to replace Crozier who went off with his £millions. Presumably she was appointed by Brown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moya_Greene
Crozier went off from the Royal Mail (paid £3m in his final year) to pick up even more at ITV. He also has a directorship with G4S. recently acquired. Knighthood or peerage to follow in due course!
New ITV boss Adam Crozier to pick up £2.9m ‘golden hello’ payment as part of an £18m five-year deal
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258986/New-ITV-boss-Adam-Crozier-pick-multi-million-pound-golden-hello-payment.html
*’Privatization
There have been calls for the privatization of Canada Post. Supporters of privatization contend that the public sector is more labour intensive and uses less capital than the private sector, resulting in state owned enterprises that are less productive.[36] Some argue that the economic crisis coupled with deficit spending makes Canada Post a prime candidate for privatization.[37] Supporters of privatization point to the United Kingdom, Finland, New Zealand and Sweden, which have given up on the government-enforced monopoly on mail delivery and have exposed their former monopoly mail providers to competition.[38] Additionally, 27 European Union member states have also agreed to end government monopolies on mail delivery.[38] Critics also point to the Netherlands, which fully privatized its postal service which had previously expanded into foreign markets and diversified business. The Netherlands Post had invested in TNT’s courier operations with Canada Post. Canada Post sold those interests prior to buying a majority stake in Purolator Courier.[38] In 2009, a study conducted at the University of Toronto by Professor Edward Iacobucci and other colleagues concluded that privatization of Canada Post would result in “efficiency gains and improvements in service quality”.[36]’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Post
Neo-liberalism and its servants rule.
More of those jolly trips to Israel by 21 members of LDFoI and LFoI led by Simon Hughes and Jim Murphy respectively.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/112280/labour-and-lib-dems-israel-visits
@Technicolour
“I think real pressure for change will come from the largely decent people inside Israel itself which is why I thoroughly object to a mindset which seeks to conflate ‘Jewish’ with ‘Israeli goverment’ and which would repel most Jewish people as a result.”
I agree – and I have no problem with saying that Cast Lead was “terror” – I used “bad behaviour” as it is a wider term which encompasses terror as well as many other things.
AS for conflation of Jewish and Israeli please note there are amny examples on this blog including one/two since my last posting.
This is yet another Briton who loves his country so much that he is quitting its shores to become a tax exile.
Sir Richard Branson quits Britain for Caribbean tax haven
13 Oct 2013
The Virgin boss, 63, has left Blighty for Necker, his private island in the British Virgin Islands
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sir-richard-branson-quits-britain-2366520
His Virgin Care outfit has been allowed to shaft OUR NHS big time but the patients don’t know. Friends of mine, who should be well informed but are not, are surprised to receive communications about NHS appointments and procedures on Virgin Care stationery,
How private firms already run frontline NHS services by stealth
29 May 2013
More than 100 services across the NHS are run by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin – the people who bring you planes, trains and telly
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-privatisation-how-private-firms-1918235
There is a tendency among some Murrayistas, most notably Mary, to post links about politicians’ trips to Israel as if these by themselves condemn those making them as fervent Zionists. It’s the sort of lazy assumption we are used to seeing from Mary as she makes her early morning sweep through the Jewish Chronicle.
Regarding Simon Hughes’ visit, I see he also visited the Palestinian territories and has made visits exclusively to Palestine in the past. Hughes is regarded by pro-Israel commenters in this country (see the JC, The Commentator, Melanie Philips) as dangerously pro-Palestinian. He defended Jenny Tonge, he criticized Israel over Cast Lead and the Mavi Marmara.
“I have always described myself as both a friend of Palestine and a friend of Israel. I have been actively supporting the case for a Palestinian state since I was a teenager and have always argued that Israel has a right to exist with secure boundaries. I have had the privilege of visiting the area on several occasions, and although I have yet to have the opportunity to go to Gaza, I have frequently visited the west bank.”
–Hansard 15 June 2010
Habbabkuk, I think Oddie would like prominent Jews to wear a little Jewish badge for easy identification. Welcome back by the way.
Perhpas Mary might wish to comment on Technicolour’s comment that “the real pressure for change will come from decent people within Israel” and consider how best to engage, encourage and support such people – does she really believe that cutting them off from the rest of the world will help? Or perhaps she sees some other mechanism as being the way forward – if so could she elucidate as to what it is?
Troll alert inc the banned one!
Numerous attempts to engage Mary in discussion and all we get is:
“Troll alert inc the banned one!”
The thread has gone to fuck, it is a ziofuckwit circle jerk, not worth reading.
If its Sunday, its Fedup. Weekdays its Passerby at ‘work’.
“Mary
13 Oct, 2013 – 9:15 am
Troll alert inc the banned one!”
Tut tut Mary, for all that you post, is that really all you have to say?