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.
“and didst sit on his hands while King Bibi of Greater Judea coveted his neighbour’s ass and water supply.”
Be fair to Lord Blair. He feels your pain. He listens from His place at the right hand of G-d and dispenses His mercy when you make the required sacrifice. Look-
http://www.voanews.com/content/kerry-business-leaders-to-raise-4-bn-for-palestinian-economy/1668831.html
It’s just a shame for him that there isn’t going to be a Palestinian economy. And a something of a mystery whether he’s raised the geld yet. But I am sure Israel will be the richer for his help.
@ Fred. She was at the BBC ffs.
AlcAnon. My point about the hype surrounding weather warnings to scare the pants off an already fearful populace facing high gas and electricity prices, squeezed wages, the cost of food rising by at least a third and even living off food banks, has been subverted by Fred.
Mary,
The Met Office loves its amber and red warnings. Except in Scotland where it takes the apocalypse before they go red north of the border 🙂
Guessed. Don’t know whether to thank you or not for that link to B.Liar’s latest offering.
I have heard read and seen it all now. He is a true psychopath and is laughing in the faces of those he has bereaved, made widow, orphan and refugee.
Here it is in full.,
Tony Blair: ‘I am good at absorbing others’ pain’
In foreword to new Alastair Campbell book, former PM ascribes his success as conflict mediator to empathy skills
Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour
The Guardian, Thursday 24 October 2013 20.01
Tony Blair attributes his success as a conflict mediator to his ability to absorb the “sense of pain” felt by participants and his skill in transmitting raw emotions from one side to the other.
The former prime minister says mediators can only bring opponents together if they can understand their suffering on an “empathetic level”.
Blair was appointed in 2007 as envoy for the Middle East Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia – which aims to mediate a peace process in the Israel-Palestine conflict – after his success in brokering a political settlement in Northern Ireland.
In a new foreword to the latest volume of diaries by Alastair Campbell, which focus entirely on the Northern Ireland peace process, Blair writes that the main participants in the negotiations became his friends because “I had inside me something of the passions they felt inside them”.
Campbell, whose diaries are published this weekend, likens Blair to a marriage guidance counsellor. In an interview for Saturday’s Guardian, the former Downing Street communications director says: “Tony’s genius was to be like a Relate counsellor. It was like he was absorbing all this angst and anger and bitterness and hatred and the rest of it. He was somehow able to make both sides feel that he kind of got it – he really did understand it.”
In his foreword to Campbell’s diaries, published in today’s Guardian, Blair explains his approach. He writes: “In a conflict, there is suffering of a nature and on a scale that we, from the outside, can scarcely appreciate, because it is not within our experience. Each side has a sense of pain and of cruel consequence from the other side’s actions. They need to know that those mediating get this feeling, not at a rational but at an empathetic level. In getting it, the mediator is then able to pass something of the pain of each side to the other.”
The diaries focus mainly on the build-up to – and the aftermath of – the 1998 Good Friday agreement negotiations, which paved the way for the eventual political settlement between Sinn Féin and the DUP, agreed shortly before Blair stood down as prime minister in 2007.
In his foreword Blair says that his empathy with the main participants – Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, David Trimble and Ian Paisley – was vital to his success.
Blair writes: “Many of the hundreds of hours I spent in discussion with the parties were not simply about specific blockages or details of the negotiation, but rather about absorbing and trying to comprehend why they felt as they did, and communicating that feeling to the other side. In this way, they became my friends, because I then had inside me something of the passions they felt inside them. In addition, as the process winded its way, the parties got to know each other, and started to look upon each other as human beings with a different perspective, not as enemies mired in evil and incapable of good.
“For those of us who in our youth flirted with the somewhat determinist branch of Marxist-oriented leftwing politics, the Northern Ireland peace process is a classic example of how individual people, in a certain place at a certain moment in time, can make the difference. There is little doubt in my mind that with a different cast of individuals, the outcome may well have been different and adverse.”
He pays warm tribute to the former Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern and to the Unionist, nationalist and republican leaders for rising “above the burden of history”.
He writes: “We were immensely fortunate to have an Irish leadership – in the form of Bertie Ahern and his key ministers – that was prepared to lay aside the grievances and attitudes of the past in the interests of the future. This is emphatically not to say that they didn’t feel those grievances or the pressure to deliver justice for the Irish people. But they rose above the burden of history, consigning it to its proper place – a spur to action, not a chain to anger.
The same was true of the Unionist leadership – at the beginning in the hands of David Trimble – and of course of the SDLP and Sinn Féin. It is easy to forget how simple and superficially alluring wallowing in the feeling of injustice or retribution for past hurt can be. There is a ready audience for it amongst large parts of any party’s activist base. The applause lines are familiar and well received. The alternative requires the development of a wholly new narrative, the challenging of old assumptions, the admission from time to time that the other side might have a point. So leaders have to replace a rhetorical formula that involves the statement of grievance and a denouncement of opponents with one that turns that on its head, and starts to speak of the possibility of reconciliation with those with whom the whole of the history up to that point has been about the utter unacceptability of such a reconciliation. This is real political leadership; and it takes real character to do it.”
“AlcAnon. My point about the hype surrounding weather warnings to scare the pants off an already fearful populace facing high gas and electricity prices, squeezed wages, the cost of food rising by at least a third and even living off food banks, has been subverted by Fred.”
That Michael Fish was a right old scare monger now wasn’t he?
Yes Phil they do call it “humanitarian intervention” and a whole host of other forms of euphemism like “aiding the Iraqi people’.
Conflict Fred could be misinterpreted, as in opinion, and also ameliorates the action, which, when all said and done, and even the mainstream media do not shy from calling it what it is: it is war.
“The Met Office loves its amber and red warnings. Except in Scotland where it takes the apocalypse before they go red north of the border.”
90mph? That’s a gentle breeze in these parts.
http://www.caithness.org/atoz/thurso/windsock.htm
It’s bloody cold in Scotland, Fred, even in summer sometimes. I pity the poor sods in kilts when that gale hits the tartan.
http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=1688
Fred: “I don’t need to spend hours searching google or looking back through old threads either”
Yes, it’s very much easier to hurl vulgar & offensive abuse; taking apart Troll’s pseudo-arguments & exposing their deceits is at least as not as off-putting for others as compared to witnessing your foul mouth exchanges.
Fred: “So long as this blog focuses outwards at the events in the world it is safe. When the focus of attention turns inwards at the blog and the contributors themselves it is lost”
Er, poster’s opinions about “events in the world” cannot be separated from the posters themselves; if a poster’s point of view or interpretation iro of any topic is irrational & you post something to highlight it out, that is automatically focusing attention “inwards” to that poster. They normally will try to justify their original post, so the focus of attention turns inwards even further, that’s an unavoidable normal part of debating.
@Macky
You never did explain how a post with the User Name “Mary” on it came to be posted by you.
Macky and Fedup: perhaps you could come up with an answer. This is Craig’s board. Why have you persistently attacked – not questioned, or engaged with, but attacked – Craig’s moderator, and persistently attacked – not questioned or engaged with – one of the longest term posters on Craig’s board, as well as other longest term posters on Craig’s board?
Fred: “You never did explain how a post with the User Name “Mary” on it came to be posted by you”
As I stated one than once, it’s still very much a mystery to me;
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/10/edward-snowden-gets-sam-adams-award/comment-page-9/#comment-434849
If you really want to appear to believe, just like the agenda driven trolls, that I’ve ever impersonated Mary, or anybody else, then your petty smearing attempt is getting the better of, and betraying your own commonsense.
@Technicolour, life is too short to explain so that you would understand, but there nothing to stop people responding to anything that I post.
Macky. 11 04am
Ok. I got it wrong.
But those eyes! No wonder Dad is afraid to go to sleep these nights!
As for this sending photos stuff. I have to warn you, you are wasting your time. I gave my heart to that Foul-breathed, Argumentative, One-Trick Lizard who stomped off a while back and is presently occupied at some roundabout near Watford, much to the cost of passing cyclists.
But now, with you boasting about your good looks, I reckon we might see him back. You’ll have the smile the other side of your face once he’s shown you what reptillian jealously looks like. A bit like one of those Picasso’s I saw the other day.
“If you really want to appear to believe, just like the agenda driven trolls, that I’ve ever impersonated Mary, or anybody else, then your petty smearing attempt is getting the better of, and betraying your own commonsense.”
I have to believe the facts, the evidence, real evidence not your pretend evidence.
Yes, I do believe that at some time in the past you have posted using the Username “Mary”. Probably hoping someone else would be blamed for it. Of the few possibilities that seems to me the most likely. It also seems to me highly likely that you are still posting using more than one name. Hence the need for you to re-enter your name and clicking on the wrong entry in the drop down box.
That is what the evidence suggests and unless you can come up with an alternative explanation that is the option I will opt for.
Dear Sofia, I’m glad to clarify that I only have paternal affection for you, & if I may I’ll like to put myself forward as a prospective God-Father, both to help make-up for your bad luck in having a Troll father & an imbecile sibling. It will also help ensure that a certain Lizard continues to treat you with respect, because although it knows that I respect it, it also knows that I have no fear of it, as some of its scars will attest to.
“life is too short to explain so that you would understand”
But not so short that you can’t find time to continue your attacks on Craig’s moderator and on the longest term posters on his board. You are very hot on people you call trolls refusing to give an answer, aren’t you? So, answer.
Macky,
It is becoming increasingly clear that you are the most likely suspect for the SF comment.
You hate Habbabkuk so much that you contrived a comment to encourage anti-Jewish nutters to lend their thuggish support to SS Mary. You inserted into the comment a misspelled word that you naively believed would be accepted as convincing evidence that someone else who you hate here (me) was responsible for the sinister comment.
It was obvious that Mary would be immediately exonerated but you grew impatient when the support from SF did not arrive and others couldn’t discover the real (intended) author. Unable to bear the declining interest in the matter, you suddenly claimed to have solved the mystery by presenting all the dots and connecting them for all to see what had actually happened, just as you had hoped they would do by themselves.
I can’t prove it, of course. But it’s worth considering as a more viable alternative to your malicious effort at framing me. You really are a disgrace, Macky.
It’s clear more damage is done when pseudoNYMs are socked. I like to know who I’m talking to and don’t like being treated like a chump. As to driving trollish behavior wrt response, I prefer closed-ended questions leaving little or no elbow-room.
Fred: “Yes, I do believe that at some time in the past you have posted using the Username “Mary””
Oh dear Fred, I fear that you have just shredded any credibility that anybody apart from trolls may have had for you. You have always come over sane, despite your erratic ways, but this has put paid to that !
A shame really, and hardly worth pointing out the contradiction of your claim for only believing in real evidence, with your believe in your own crackpot conspiracy theory.
Alas poor Fred, I knew him well.
“Oh dear Fred, I fear that you have just shredded any credibility that anybody apart from trolls may have had for you. You have always come over sane, despite your erratic ways, but this has put paid to that ! ”
I ask everyone here. Have you ever needed to type your Username in more than once or is it already there when you post? Have you ever known your Username to suddenly change?
So, I ask again for your explanation of how a post from you had the Username “Mary” on it.
On page 4, this thread –
Clark
16 Oct, 11:35pm
P.S., despite his sometimes terse comments here, Fred is an absolute gem; really friendly, helpful and generous.
. . . .
Good enough for me. For contrast, look at how a tiny minority of others address Fred.
It’s amazing actually to see how easily my hasbara friends can turn people with a lot in common against each other, isn’t it? You might almost think it’s accidental.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-santiago/did-aipac-punt-for-obamas_b_3884526.html
“שראל בכל מקום”
It’s as easy as striking a match. Pyros have the easiest job.
@Technicolour, I repeat very s l o w l y that it takes two to have a debate, my comments are here for all to see and respond to if they want, so you will be better off asking those that you think should be responding, why they are not.
@Jemand, of course you have no choice but to play the role of a deluded conspiracy fruitcake, actually fits in quite well with your known other psychotic traits.
Fred, I have only needed to occasionally amend my postfix, never had to reinsert my name let alone find someone else’s name in its place. Macky’s explanation is incredible – especially from someone who mounted a malicious accusation against me on the basis of probability and “reasonable doubt”. He is altogether bereft of common decency and I have much less respect for his buddies here.
Fred; “So, I ask again for your explanation of how a post from you had the Username “Mary” on it”
Ok Fred, you are now a fully fledged troll, congratulations !
“never had to reinsert my name let alone find someone else’s name in its place.” — Jemand to Fred
Same here
Makes you wonder if there are other fake comments ‘out there’ in Mary’s name that we haven’t discovered yet.
As to the trolling behavior, it’s typical ruthless both sides against the middle. On The Huffington Post, they take the persona of left wing nuts and make havoc. Apparently on the Atlantic, I’m told the same trolls hit people as being “Anti-American” from the right. Equal opportunity jerks. But, they are all reading from the same “turn Americans emotionally against each other” talking points master script.
These do not seem like coincidences. I know what the baseband noise level is on the sites I frequent and can spot statistically significant shifts. So can a lot of other people. Best this kind of manipulation is exposed for the garbage it is. We don’t need it in this country. We can use the power of the hyper-connected net to turn Beltway Lions into Paper Tigers, no longer to be feared but to be detected and exposed within hours of initiating activity.
I am rather thankful for the duality of regular media and social media that we have today. It’s empowering for the people. It makes shadow attack methods far more transparent than they used to be. AIPAC may be one of those feared organizations offline, but online this old school caricature gaming is just comical when you see it plain as day on the Internet. Make that bumbling comical. These divisive methods only work if Americans are truly isolated from each other. My argument is we don’t have to be and we have the tech not to be. Look what we’ve already done just around this topic of Syria. We’ve united a nation.
So back to the wars, if this is the kind of political ally gravitating to the President camp, that’s just pathetic. Mr. President, it’s time to stop hanging around with trolls and rejoin your fellow Americans. There is a way to resolve Syria in the interest of the human race sir but you are never going to find the solution in that isolated corner you are in now.
Link above.