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?
On Oliver Kamm and James Bloodworth smearing Edward Snowden
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1393336336.html
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!
24 Feb, 2014 – 10:27 am
“More generally, I’m perplexed by how a country as oil rich as Venezuela can be a country where annual inflation is running at around 60%, the crime rate is one of the highest in the world and there appear to be shortages of a wide variety of consumer goods.”
You need to know a bit about Venezuela’s political history Habbabkuk.
The current inflation rate of 56% is half what it was in 1996 which was 115.18
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/inflation-cpi
By the way it’s not like you to admit being “perplexed”
Apple users in security warning
The security flaw has been identified in OS X which runs on laptops and desktops
Users of Apple’s OS X operating system are being warned to take care when browsing online as they wait for a solution to a security flaw.
A software update was released last week to owners of iPhones, iPads and iPods to protect users from “an attacker” who may “capture or modify data”.
It was later discovered that the problem also existed on Apple laptops and desktop computers running OS X.
A security fix has not yet been issued.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26335701
[blah blah…] Vieta Uniyal:
“The BDS campaign targets and maligns Israel, the only functioning democracy and liberal-minded multi-ethnic society in the Middle East — a country that doesn’t discriminate negatively against its citizens on the basis of gender, sexual orientation or faith; and where every citizen has access to an impartial judiciary for redressing grievances regardless of faith or ethnicity.”
Vijeta Uniyal is an Indian entrepreneur based in Germany. He is founder of “Indian Friends of Israel”
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4753/the_punching_bag_bigots_of_anti_israel_boycotts
“In the meantime, the amount of companies that are financially connected to MPs and Lords who have gone on to gain contracts in the new NHS continues to increase and the question is, who do our parliamentarians serve?”
http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.de/2014/02/non-executive-director-nadhim-zahawis.html?showComment=1393364971806#c5385205606895083121
FYI
26 February 2014
‘Contagious’ wi-fi virus created by Liverpool researchers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26352439
“Not inconvenient at all. By definition, the Basic Law of 1992 applies to all citizens of Israel, whether Jews or Arabs, and contains a lengthy lists of rights and freedoms. May I suggest you read it?
4/. “(you can ask the thousands of Palestinians held without charge or access for years in Israeli jails about that)”
These are not Israeli Arabs, and he subject of this mini-thread was equality between Israeli citizens within Israel. You should stay on-topic and not seek to divert.”
Palestinians are intentionally excluded from Israeli citizenship in case the remaining dregs of humanitarian law should apply to them. They are refugees from….Israel, however.
What you otherwise assert makes no difference to my point that the Knesset can – has for the last forty years, and since 1997 has granted itself the right to – at any time override the original Declaration of Independence’s admittedly cosmetic assertion of equal rights for all Israeli citizens. See also the Bedouins’ rights (220,000 of them, all Israeli citizens) – here –
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-next-major-land-dispute-seethes-in-the-negev-desert/
‘In the 35 years that have ensued, Israel has resolved, via compensation, only 12 percent of the cases, representing 18 percent of the land. Crucially, of the 80 cases heard in the Beersheba District Court, Justice Goldberg wrote, “not one single verdict of all the verdicts handed down to this day, has accepted the Bedouin plaintiff’s claim of ownership over the land he has filed for.”
“It can be said,” Goldberg continued, “that in so far as the legal battle of ownership is concerned, the hands of the Bedouin, also in the future, will be on the bottom.”’
Btw, your claim to be supplying facts would be more credible if you supplied a few links. And facts, of course.
“FBI had source with direct contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993: report”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/fbi-source-direct-contact-osama-bin-laden-1993-report-article-1.1702238#commentpostform
“Brazil champions undersea cable to bypass US”
http://euobserver.com/justice/123260
“Obama Asks Court To Make NSA Database Even Bigger”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-26/obama-asks-court-make-nsa-database-even-bigger
I have noticed and continue to do so but am falling into a dispriting resignation that most people like the slow boiled frog, just dont give a damn.
GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo …
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo
Annie Machon praises the whistleblowers, of which she herself is one. A note for people’s diaries.
“A number of international whistleblowers were in the UK for the week for other events, and The Whistler was able to host them and hear their stories. Gavin MacFadyen of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, and the indefatigable campaigner Eileen Chubb hosted the event, and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, NSA whistleblower Tom Drake, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability project (The Whistler’s US counterpart), and myself spoke. The Whistler will officially be launched in the UK on 20th March, so watch this space.”
http://nsnbc.me/2014/02/28/celebration-whistleblowers/
Someone wrote “Seen On An ATM In Western Australia”. Feb 24, 11:54am
What the general public don’t know is that those atm bomb raids in WA were committed by an ex-ADF explosives expert and muslim convert. The money was to be used for bankrolling jihadist operations by an Islamist group, including blowing up a major police station in the city of Perth.
That brings me to the question Craig asked.
New generations have no personal experience of what precedes them. They are born into a new norm and will generally accept the arrangement having noticed nothing. They hear stories about “how things were” but cannot emotionally connect with those stories so will not typically feel inclined to agitate for a restoration of those things that have been lost.
Enter Islam.
Over the last fifty odd years, there has been an influx of muslims into Europe that has been facilitated by a naiive cult of xenophiles who invented the term “multi-culturalism”. This term has been drummed into the minds of a shallow thinking public and critics have been excoriated for daring to challenge the premises on which this concept was founded.
While civil unrest, social problems and religious violence are not new to Europe, there is now a nascent threat to post-war social stability in the form of a looming political entity in the form of a growing muslim demographic that has no affinity with the indigenous cultures of the region.
Europe is on an inexorable and *necessarily* slow course towards a major civil conflict with its domestic muslim populations. A defining factor is that Europeans really don’t notice. Well,
I have noticed. Have you? If you’re an enthusiastic adherent of “multi-culturalism”, then probably not.
A footnote on the above comment. The poster’s linked website used to be http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ as far as I remember. It is now fuckoff.com. How nice.
NHS England patient data ‘uploaded to Google servers’, Tory MP says
Health select committee member Sarah Wollaston queries how data was secured by PA Consulting and uploaded to servers outside UK
Randeep Ramesh, social affairs editor
theguardian.com, Monday 3 March 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/03/nhs-england-patient-data-google-servers
‘The patient information had been obtained by PA Consulting, which claimed to have secured the “entire start-to-finish HES dataset across all three areas of collection – inpatient, outpatient and A&E”.
The data set was so large it took up 27 DVDs and took a couple of weeks to upload. The management consultants said: “Within two weeks of starting to use the Google tools we were able to produce interactive maps directly from HES queries in seconds.”
The revelations alarmed campaigners and privacy experts, who queried how Google maps could have been used unless some location data had been provided in the patient information files.
The issue of which organisations have acquired medical records has been at the centre of political debate in the past few weeks, following reports that actuaries, pharmaceutical firms, government departments and private health providers had either attempted or obtained patient data.’
An outrage. Collusion with the fascists running this country is evident.