The Security State Crushes Ever Tighter 496

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The disgraceful judges of Britain’s High Court – who have gone along with torture, extraordinary rendition, every single argument for mass surveillance and hiding information from the public, and even secret courts – have ruled that it was lawful for the Home Office to detain David Miranda, a journalist as information he was carrying might in some undefined way, and if communicated to them, aid “terrorists”.

Despite the entire industry, both private and governmental, devoted to whipping up fear, it is plain to pretty well everyone by now that terrorism is about the most unlikely way for you to die.  A car accident is many hundreds of times more likely.  Even drowning in your own bath is more likely.  Where is the massive industry of suppression against baths?

I had dinner inside the Ecuadorian Embassy on Sunday with Julian Assange, who I am happy to say is as fit and well as possible in circumstances of confinement.  Amongst those present was Jesselyn Radack, attorney for, among others, Edward Snowden.  Last week on entering the UK she was pulled over by immigration and interrogated about her clients.  The supposed “immigration officer” already knew who are Jesselyn Radack’s clients.  He insisted aggressively on referring repeatedly to Chelsea Manning as a criminal, to which Jesselyn quietly replied that he was a political prisoner.  But even were we to accept the “immigration officer’s” assertion, the fact that an attorney defends those facing criminal charges is neither new nor until now considered reprehensible and illegitimate.

As various states slide towards totalitarianism, a defining factor is that their populations really don’t notice.  Well, I have noticed.  Have you?

 

 

 

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496 thoughts on “The Security State Crushes Ever Tighter”

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  • mike

    If we’re not supporting al Qaida in Syria, we’re fans of neofascists in Ukraine:

    http://rt.com/news/kiev-clashes-rioters-police-571/

    This is on the same subject:

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/29/ukraine-fascists-oligarchs-eu-nato-expansion

    Obviously the liberal Western media aren’t bothered by either affiliation.

    The BBC had a very interesting live feed on Wednesday: 235 protesters admitted to hospital with gunshot wounds, and 342 police officers with the same. Who are the aggressors here?

    We ignore massacres in Egypt, and of course in Andijan, but the bloodshed in Kiev gets Hague and Fabius et al hot under the collar.

    Eastern Ukraine might form closer ties with Russia, which will be able to secure the Crimea (Black Sea access) forever. Silly Western “democrats”!

  • John Goss

    Yes, Mike I agree with that analysis regarding Silly Western “democrats” and that closer ties not only might be formed with Russia, but will be formed. Hague has to stick to the script he’s given. There was an occasion when Israel massacred nearly a thousand Lebanese in retaliation for the killing of I think six Israeli soldiers and Hague called it “disproportionate”. As Peter Oborne noted on Despatches the Israeli lobby withdrew funding to the Conservative Party. That’s how it works.

  • Clark

    Nextus, if you’re reading, you might like to come and trash some wild speculation of mine, here:

    https://squonk.tk/blog/2014/01/20/the-general-discussion-thread/comment-page-4/#comment-3720

    Mary, 21 Feb, 6:12 pm: yes, there are security holes in routers, or the manufacturer may have deliberately included a ‘back door’. The answer is, of course, Free (GPL) Software – the freedom is our protection. Re-flashing new software into a router is a fairly technical task, but at least routers are cheap/throw-away; you can find plenty down the dump. The software is called LibreWRT; available here:

    http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

    http://librewrt.org/

    Habbabkuk, sorry, I’m out of time; I’ll have to get back to you later.

  • BrianFujisan

    As Craig mentions… some states are sliding towards totalitarianism…. yep…and some of it scary stuff, like this from last summer –

    The United States government claims 100% ownership over all your DNA and reproductive rights. This astonishing revelation has emerged from the fact that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office claims the power to assign ownership of your DNA to private companies and universities who apply for patents on your genes.

    http://www.naturalnews.com/040400_gene_patents_genetic_slavery_human_DNA.html#ixzz2u0e7ZPPc

    And Police abuse of power is never ending in the u.s on Thursday
    four cops arrest an innocent student as she was out jogging with her headphones on…apparently for jay walking… big n brave aint they….some guy caught it on video… nothing much to see really… but the story is a shocking abuse of power

  • Mary

    An excellent infographic with startling details.

    The only addition I would have made is to the media section, where there is no mention of the state broadcasters like the British Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, etc.

    Which Corporations Control the World?
    By Global Research News

    February 21, 2014
    Hannah Williams

    A surprisingly small number of corporations control massive global market shares.

    Banks and Finance, Media, Big Oil, The Global Food Conglomerates,

    The World’s largest banks hold a total of $25.1 trillion in assets

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/which-corporations-control-the-world/5369928

  • CheebaCow

    Mark:

    No need to worry about Cloudflare, essentially they create multiple mirrors of a website in different regions, and then is a user from the EU visits the website, the user will be served a copy of the site from the EU mirror. It’s just a way to increase performance and reduce demands on the main web server. As for the people running the company, no idea, but I would be more worried about Google Analytics on every site if I were you.

  • Kempe

    “This astonishing revelation has emerged from the fact that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office claims the power to assign ownership of your DNA to private companies and universities who apply for patents on your genes.”

    Perhaps unsurprisingly the Supreme Court ruled against the concept later in the year.

    http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/13/politics/scotus-genes/

    Jaywalking is an offence in most parts of the US and the cops can be as heavy handed as the thugs in London.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Re the repressive security state:

    Interesting video footage just available (from RT!) showing how rasPutin’s state deals with protest in Russia (Sochi) – check it out (just google “Pussy Riot”

    To quote from the RT footage:

    “The footage shows Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, who both served prison sentences for their Moscow church performance, being attacked along with other band members.

    A Cossack appears to spray a substance in the face of one of the band members, who were wearing ski-masks.

    An officer with a whip then proceeds to attack the band members along with a man with a camera.

    Other Cossacks then jump in, punching the band members and throwing them to the floor. ”

    I bet Pussy Riot and the guy with the camera wish they’d had to deal with the evil, fascist, racist British police rather than rasPutin’s nice Cossack police!

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Kempe (10h04)

    Thank you for debunking another bit of tendentious nonsense.

  • Clark

    Habbabkuk, and Kempe, I advise against complacency in the ongoing struggle about “intellectual property” – which itself is a misleading term. It is remarkable and very worrying that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ever made that original decision. I strongly suspect that the Supreme Court only decided in the people’s favour due to intense campaigning.

    Habbabkuk, please read this short story. It’s fictional, but check the notes at the end; it is based upon very real contemporary developments.

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

  • Clark

    Habbabkuk, 21 Feb, 6:06 pm: I haven’t read up on the incident (pressure of time) but it doesn’t really matter whether files were “removed”, and it doesn’t work like that with files anyway. Files may be copied, and they may be deleted; “removal” would be copying followed by deletion of the original.

    The authorities will assume that back-up copies probably already exist in a different location, so deletion would be an attempt with some small hope of disadvantaging the target. Copying of files would be an attempt to gain information, for instance, to discover a journalist’s sources, or a lawyer’s defence material.

  • doug scorgie

    Ben
    21 Feb, 2014 – 8:58 pm

    “…Maduro seems to be acting like another tinpot dictator, but is Lopez another CIA recruit?”

    I’m surprised at you Ben. Maduro a tin-pot dictator?

    Only in the western media.

    His predecessor Chaves was treated the same:

    “Such is the state of misrepresentation of Venezuela – it is probably the most lied-about country in the world – that a journalist can say almost anything about Chávez or his government and it is unlikely to be challenged, so long as it is negative.

    Even worse, Rather referred to Chávez as “the dictator” – a term that few, if any, political scientists familiar with the country would countenance.”

    “Here is what Jimmy Carter said about Venezuela’s “dictatorship” a few weeks ago:

    “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

    Read more:

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/03/why-us-dcemonises-venezuelas-democracy

    As for Lopez, is he a CIA recruit?

    Well he went to a private school in Princeton New Jersey USA, then Kenyon College, Ohio, USA and then Harvard University. He is an economist of the neo-liberal type so will be loved by the regime in Washington.

    What do you think?

  • Arbed

    Habbabkuk, 6.06pm

    Sorry, I forgot to ask : is anyone claiming that the files were removed from the device before Mr Miranda got it back, or was he allowed to leave with both device and files?

    I believe all items seized from Miranda are still being ‘worked on’ by GCHQ so therefore, no, they’ve not been returned. The difficulty was that they are unable to crack the encryption and seem to have only been able to some sort of outer layer (perhaps some top-level file tree) enabling them to estimate there were 58,000 files on Miranda’s drive, and partially decrypt 75 of those. Go here if you want to read the full set of legal documents in which the UK police explain to the High Court what GCHQ is doing:

    http://freesnowden.is/category/legal-documents/index.html

  • Arbed

    Be warned, Fred – there is a whole world of contextual detail missing from that “inside” account by Assange’s ghostwriter, such as the existence of the banking blockade against Wikileaks, ditto the existence of the US Whole-of-Government task force against the organisation, the recently revealed “Manhunting Timeline” of the NSA’s, the proven misconduct by the Swedish prosecutor, etc etc. As an insider, Andrew O’Hagan would be very aware of all this and how much of Assange’s statements and behaviour could be explained in light of it. The fact that O’Hagan has nevertheless omitted it all allows the reader to see his ‘lecture’ for what it is.

    I read it all carefully last night and spotted quite a few outright lies (by O’Hagan, I mean) so I can only assume that this lecture was intended as a ‘sales pitch’ for a book deal. The point about having “all the tapes, which are really shocking” is a bit too laboured.

    His career as a ghostwriter commissioned to deal with anything vaguely confidential is over – who’d touch him now? So, the only question that remains is Bought And Paid For, but by whom? The angry and superior tone of the whole thing implies that he more or less hated Assange from the get-go, and yet it’s clear that until about a month ago Assange saw him as a ‘friend’. I can’t help feeling, therefore, that O’Hagan was basically so pissed off he didn’t get what he wanted out of the imploded autobiography that he’s subsequently used the access afforded to him as a (pretend-)friend to gather more material for his own purposes.

  • Mary

    Any chance of Craig commenting on the situation in Ukraine?

    This thread on Medialens raises some questions on who or what fills the power vacuum.

    ‘Ukranian President is awol; palace abandoned; Nuland feted in Whitehouse presumably
    Kiev handed over to an armed, neo-nazi mob: well done Catherine Ashton
    Ukraine could split in two.
    etc etc’

    http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1393067848.html

    The largest country in Europe. Population 46 million.

    The BBC appear to very satisfied with the current situation.

  • fred

    “The last thing you have to read about Assange. What a f*cking nutter.”

    I just read it and that wasn’t the impression I got.

    He struck me as someone who the younger generations would probably identify themselves with and let’s face it, they are the future. We got this world into one hell of a mess, we let the wrong people get too much power and our only hope is that future generations are not like us.

  • fred

    @Arbed

    I don’t know what your problem is with the piece unless maybe it didn’t build Assange into something you want him to be.

    For me it removed much of the mystery, which I’m sure was the intent rather than to be a comprehensive timeline of Wikileaks events.

  • guano

    Nadhim Zahawi took the opportunity of being on Any Questions to insult Islam gratuitously by saying that he enjoyed Red wine. How to climb the slippery poles of power in UK 2014.

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