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.
” potable water is a luxury in most parts of Africa, south America, and parts of Asia. Just think the amounts of money that can be made out of supplying fresh water to these parts, ”
Actually, none at all; simply because the end users don’t have any money. I’ve worked for two charities concerned with providing potable water to the third world and it was a constant struggle to get funds. If there was money to be made european and American utility companies would be falling over each other to invest. As it was we were totally reliant on charity and grants from western governments and the UN.
Now if it were oil or gas things would be different.
Jack Straw offends Jewish Lobby
http://rehmat1.com/2013/10/31/jack-straw-offends-jewish-lobby/
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-09-26-malala-yousafzai
Malala with Desmond Tutu https://secure.flickr.com/photos/globaleducationfirst/9957770956/
Desmond Tutu Foundation Malala video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U06iQfceq8g (just found it – haven’t watched it yet and neither has virtually anyone else as it has only 53 views on Youtube right now)
I AM MOSSAD
http://spaceweather.com/
I’ve heard it all now.
Robert Webb rebukes Russell Brand for urging people not to vote
Peep Show actor says fellow comedian’s essay led him to rejoin Labour party and accuses Brand of political ‘timidity’
Wednesday 30 October 2013 20.14 GMT
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/30/robert-webb-russell-brand-vote
PS Switched off his Ambassadors effort last night. When I heard the actress playing ‘the ambassador’s wife’ telling someone beforehand who the royal visitor was, it sounded like a reading from a list of characters in a theatre programme. Dire stuff.
And to the person on the OK Now You Sue Me thread who said that Mitchell resembled Craig, no way. Craig is not dark haired and swarthy. The whole thing is silly and trivial.
AlcAnon May I enquire what is the squonk.tk website that you link to?
This maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squonk
or this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1562916/Pacific-island-cashes-in-on-website-domain.html
There was this advertorial on the World Service this morning.
The online version.
31 October 2013
Drones: A rare glimpse at sophisticated US spy plane
By Jonathan Beale Defence correspondent, (stenographer-and-broadcaster-to-power) BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24729998
‘The Global Hawk is one of the US military’s most sophisticated spy planes and the BBC was able to get a rare view of one at Grand Forks Airbase in North Dakota.
It can travel half-way round the world on a single tank of fuel and can can track a man on the ground, even when the earth is covered by cloud, from a height of about 18,000m – that’s close to 60,000ft.’
Wowee! Isn’t technology amazing!
The most moronic of the contributors was the man from Northrop Grumman who had a handy little list of the drone’s usefulness to mankind, eg overflying Fukushima to observe the damage. Very useful. Perhaps he could arrange to fix Fukushima too.
~~
I see there’s a Wes Bush at the helm whose 2011 salary was $26.2m.
http://www.forbes.com/profile/wesley-bush/
The usual gangsters-in-charge.
http://www.northropgrumman.com/AboutUs/CompanyLeadership/Pages/default.aspx#Board of Directors
Revenue US$ 25.218 billion (2012)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman
Habkooky has feelings. It doesn’t like being ignored, or insulted. Long breaks in his posting follow even mellow attacks on it.
Feelings that go one-way, to itself. No feelings towards victims of current Ziofascist wars in Syria, Pakistan, Palestine.
David Miliband ziofraud charity boss has got the mike on Radio 4 as I write. New Labour Zio-Trash squirting crocodile tears.
Herbie good to see you back.
@Guano habby is currently busy making a sandwich with villager and resdiss.
Kempe yeah always a negative with you about a shoot of hope isn’t it? Do you have anything to contribute that isn’t MSM approved garbage?
Syria’s Chemical Weapons Equipment ‘Destroyed’
All of Syria’s chemical weapons production and filling facilities have been destroyed ahead of Friday’s deadline.
http://news.sky.com/story/1161953/syrias-chemical-weapons-equipment-destroyed
Well that’s a relief. Who’s next in line for OPCW’s attention? Israel? US? UK?
Miliband D (aka ‘Parker from International Rescue and Lady Penelope’s butler) was giving it large on Radio 4 Today this morning on the situation in Syria but offered no solution when asked what he would do if he was still Foreign Secretary! Useless.
0810 The United Nations has confirmed the first outbreak of polio in Syria for 14 years, claiming babies and toddlers as its main victims. David Miliband, President of the International Rescue Committee, explains the response to the outbreak. .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ffkfb/live
Another complaint to the BBC on the Panorama of 30th September Saving Syria’s Children/Ian Pannell etc.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1383170693.html
plus this:
Lyce Doucet’s version of Syrian reality….
Posted by David macilwain on October 30, 2013, 12:17 pm
Once more is at odds, and working hard for the BBC and its favoured ‘activist sources’…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24739208
Unless you watch the video report of this, which I had the misfortune to see on the ABC news, you will not realise that the ‘freeing of the starving prisoners of Moadamiyah’ was achieved once again with the remarkable negotiating powers of Mother Agnes Mariam. Doucet reluctantly acknowledges her part in negotiating the release, while introducing her as ‘the nun who says Assad’s troops were not responsible for the CW attacks’, and then asking her a loaded question on whether she supported ‘the government’s siege on civilians’. MAM says she conducted a long interview, and was told it would be a feature – but presumably what she said didn’t quite suit Ms Doucet’s agenda.
It must also be noted that although Doucet records speaking to people who had been forced to eat grass and leaves to survive, and ‘hadn’t seen bread for months’, most of the people look quite well. Also, rather than admit that they are going into the safety of a ‘government shelter’ while the army tries to get the terrorists out of their suburb, Doucet emphasises that – allegedly – people are still trapped in Moadamiya and too frightened to leave, and that the men, of all ages, were taken somewhere else for questioning…
On Dubai Arabic TV news today, I saw how these men coming from Moadamiya actually felt about what happened, as they went to embrace Mother Agnes ….
Exexpat: Russell Brand, a “shoot of hope”??
Almost the same day as his Newsnight interview, Brand, who describes profit as “filthy”, secured ownership of his luxury $2.5 million Beverly Hills home. The guy’s a comedian.
Habbabuk, to answer your question, drone strikes are cowardly but indoctrinating some poor, illiterate sod from a destitute family and getting him to detonate himself on a bus load of civilians will doubtless be seen by the likes of Miss Anne Thrope as a courageous act!
Jives writes:
Brand is a fake,a straw man,a nudged unit,a Tavistock product. He’s either been bought or blackmailed by the establishment to foster necessary illusions.
I can agree with the first four words, but after that Jives meanders off into his usual conspiranoid ramblings.
Sorry to belabour the point, but a picture speaks a thousand words. This is the stark REALITY./a> But we will have the usual Anons here trying to defend the indefensible, its known as dershowitzery. Wish they would disappear to HuffPo, there is a video playing there of the 5 dancing israelis arguing on israeli TV it was their duty to document the event for posterity. And for showing at exclusive Mossad reunions of all the “participants” who left on the ElAl 747 flight out of NY on that afternoon!
Agent Cameron’s brother Alexander is the QC for the appellant in the first televised broadcast from the Court of Appeal. The appellant was sentenced for possession of metal blanks capable of being converted into counterfeit coinage.
One of these – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2328665/Three-forgers-jailed-total-12-years-biggest-plot-flood-Britain-1-5million-fake-pound-coins.html
He has none of Agent Cameron’s bravado and is a much quieter type with a hesitant delivery.
http://3rblaw.com/barristers/alexander-cameron
Kedem Forever That link is for Disappearing Palestine maps.
Also off to Amerika for three months of the year is our old friend Jonathan. He should feel very much at home in NY.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/112780/lord-sacks-becomes-american-professor
He has set up a charidee, The Covenant & Conversation Trust
Mary,
Squonk is just a name I picked. I principally had in mind the Genesis song about the mythical creature. As for the TK domain, yes that’s the island belonging New Zealand.
Apparently 10% of the island’s GDP now comes from .tk domains. I’ve just renting it for free for now but I have the option of paying them money to have it transferred legally to my ownership should I want. That’s squonk.tk transferred to me – not the entire island 🙂
As it is as long as the website is online and receiving a certain amount of traffic I can keep the domain free. I’ve I’d picked a UK domain name it would have cost me real money immediately and I always prefer free.
The website itself is physically located in the Amazon cloud data centre in Ireland. Not the Pacific island.
If anyone tried to connect and got the “Not Found” message it wasn’t actually down. It was just only responding to certain connections due to me installing a bug fix which reset some of my config settings and I forgot to reset them back.
Anyone can run a free server with Amazon for a year for free https://aws.amazon.com/
And anyone can get a free .tk domain http://www.dot.tk/en/index.html
Thanks for that AlcAnon. Hope you don’t think me nosey! When I saw .tk I first thought of Tashkent for some reason!
Alexander Cameron lost that appeal. Hope it is not a bad omen for Dave, come 2015.
No words necessary.
BBC website today
Palestinian killed in W Bank clashes
A Palestinian has been shot dead in clashes after Israeli forces mounted an arrest raid in the northern West Bank, Palestinian sources say.
Israel approves new settlement homes
Israel approves plans to build hundreds of new homes in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, hours after freeing 26 Palestinian prisoners.
Epstein – Beatles
Goldstein – Jimi Hendrix
WTF am I still scraping for scraps?
Play me some blues, baby…
“Play me some blues, baby…”
No problem, this has a nice Yiddish feel to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDl0Gf_bE0I
On Topic. Oops!
https://glblgeopolitics.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/china-to-reap-harvest-of-nsa-scandals/
“All Syria’s chemical weapons production lines destroyed – OPCW”
http://rt.com/news/syria-chemical-production-destroyed-018/
Maybe while they are in the neighbourhood the UN inspectors can head south and do the job there.
Some details here re Israel’s history of chemical weapons use,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/israels-history-of-chemical-weapons-use/5352003
Thanks, Sofia and Exexpat
I think it’s fair to say that Chomsky, Corbett and Brand have their own ways of approaching the many challenges we face.
For the moment, I’m looking at them as complementary rather than antagonistic to one another.
Jives
I’d agree if it were Bono under discussion, but Brand seems much more genuine. Not difficult, I know.
Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson had six year affair
It’s worth pointing out that Corbett isn’t correct when he says that Chomsky doesn’t see the Fed Reserve as a problem.
All Chomsky is saying is that it isn’t an issue for now, but will be down the line as things change.
There’s always this timeliness about Chomsky’s progressive pragmatism, and I think it’s important not to underestimate his long experience in this very specific area.
Praxis is the key:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_%28process%29
The flame haired temptress has poor taste in her choice of male acquaintances. This is shaming for Coulson’s wife and family. All the walls are tumbling down. Think of the vile propaganda the NotW and the Sun engaged in, especially their war propaganda.