… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: politics

  • Wednesday Wisdom

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    Shall we try a Wednesday Wisdom series? Commentary and analysis of contemporary British politics.

    Priti Patel

    International Development Secretary Priti Patel has been having secret meetings with Israelis – including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – accompanied by Lord Polak, honorary president of Conservative Friends of Israel. Patel originally claimed that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was aware of the meetings.

    The main issue with Priti Patel’s visits is missed. Theresa May’s government announced beyond doubt that they are Neo-Conservatives by hosting Netanyahu to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration. Neo-Conservatism is an awkward term and Zionist-supporting may be easier although not exactly the same.

    The real issue about Priti Patel’s meetings in Israel is that they were conducted without the presence of civil servants so that there is no official record of what was discussed. It’s an ideal situation for the Zionist and Zionist-supporting governments to brief each other on their situation and intentions, the ideal situation to brief each other on intended spin and military action.

    Paradise Papers and the Royal family

    The Paradise Papers reveal that the Queen had some ten million pounds invested offshore. Ten million is small change to the Queen and the Queen very likely had no knowledge of it. Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of demanding an apology from the Queen. This is media spin. What Corbyn did was reply to a question concerning the Paradise Papers and the Queen by concentrating on the Paradise Papers.

    Prince Charles has been criticised for promoting sustainability, etc while his trust held investments in a business that could benefit. It’s a further non-story. Everybody knows Prince Charle’s commitment to sustainability and it’s hardly a surprise that there are investments in that area. Yet again, Prince Charles is not likely to be involved with management of the trust.

    Comments are welcome

  • Muhammad Rabbani in court for refusing ‘digital strip-search’

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    Campaign group director in court for refusing to divulge passwords

    The international director of the campaign group Cage has appeared in court charged with obstructing or frustrating an examination under counter-terrorism stop-and-search powers for refusing to hand over passwords.

    Muhammad Rabbani was stopped coming back into Heathrow by police, who had advance information of his travel plans, Westminster magistrates court was told.

    Rabbani, 36, was arrested at the airport on 20 November last year under the Terrorism Act. He refused to hand over passwords to an iPhone and laptop he was carrying.

    Rabbani said that to hand over such details would breach his privacy, and that schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 did not give officers the right to demand that he hand over the passwords.

    The director of Cage has pleaded not guilty to a charge that “on 20 November 2016, at Heathrow airport, he did wilfully obstruct, or sought to frustrate, an examination or search”.

    …

    Airport Police Demanded an Activist’s Passwords. He Refused. Now He Faces Prison in the U.K.

     

     

    9.30pm update

    Activist Found Guilty of Terror-Related Crime for Refusing to Disclose Passwords to U.K. Police

    …

    Rabbani said in a statement after the verdict that the judgment highlighted the “absurdity of the Schedule 7 law” and called for it to be reformed. “If privacy and confidentiality are crimes, then the law stands condemned,” he said. “They accept that at no point was I under suspicion, and that ultimately this was a matter of having been profiled at a port … Schedule 7 actively discriminates, and this will hopefully be the start of a number of legal challenges as more people take courage to come forward.”

    During the trial, Rabbani’s lawyer, Henry Blaxland, questioned three police officers who were responsible for carrying out the search at the airport. The most senior officer acknowledged that Rabbani had not been randomly stopped, and was instead deliberately targeted for reasons that were not disclosed. Prior to the trial, Rabbani had told The Intercept he believed the authorities may have wanted to obtain a copy of the information provided to him by his contact in the Middle East. He had been searched on several prior occasions, he said, but never before had police seemed so determined to gain access to his electronic devices.

    Schedule 7 is supposed to be used solely to determine whether a person is directly involved in the “commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.” In 2013, however, the power was used to detain David Miranda, the partner of Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald, in an effort to impede reporting on documents leaked by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Miranda’s detention caused controversy in the U.K., and aspects of Schedule 7 were subsequently changed. Police were issued with a revised code of practice that told them they must not review or copy information which they have grounds to believe is attorney-client privileged, is journalistic material, or is another kind of information held in confidence, which a person has “acquired or created in the course of any trade, business, profession or other occupation.”

    …

  • Diane Abbott received half of all abusive tweets sent to women MPs

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    Image of Dianne Abbot

    by Emma Bean

    …

    The shadow home secretary experienced the vast majority of online abuse sent to women MPs, and had 10 times more abusive tweets sent to her than any other figure in the run up to the election. She also suffered eight times more abuse in the whole six month period which was analysed.

    The research, conducted by Amnesty International, looked at messages sent in the period between January 1 and June 8. In this time she received almost a third of all the abuse directed at women political figures.

    The list of the five female politicians who received the most abuse included two other Labour MPs, with Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, and Jess Phillips, chair of the women’s PLP, coming in third and fourth respectively. Joanna Cherry, SNP MP, got the second most abuse and Anna Soubry, Conservative MP for Broxtowe and a prominent Europhile, being placed fifth in the ranking.

    However, Abbott’s level of abuse far outstrips those mentioned, with the trailblazing Hackney North MP receiving 31.6 per cent of abusive tweets, and the rest of the top five getting nearer three per cent of abusive tweets. She also received more abusive tweets than all the women in the SNP and Conservative party combined in the six month period.

    Ethnic minority women politicians, excluding Abbott, received 35 per cent more abuse than white women. Some 5.8 per cent of all tweets sent mentioning Abbott’s twitter handle were classified as abusive.

    The report found that “intersectional discrimination” meant that a figure who had more than one identity, e.g. if LGBT, BAME or disabled, meant that they were then more likely to face abuse.

    In a New Statesman article describing the report, Amnesty’s researcher in technology and human rights Azmina Dhrodia writes: “Diane Abbott standing out in our analysis is an acute example of how intersectional discrimination works. The abuse that she faces is not just sexist and misogynistic; it’s also incredibly racist.”

    “Nearly 90 years after women won the right to vote, there is a real danger that the high levels of online abuse against women MPs will have a chilling effect on women taking part in public life  —  particularly women of colour. This is not only detrimental in terms of the possible long-term effect on the representation of women in politics in the UK but also continues to deepen societal inequality between genders.”

    ©LabourList

  • Judge condemns Amber Rudd for ignoring orders to release torture victim

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    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/23/judge-amber-rudd-orders-torture-victim-asylum-seeker-detention

    A high court judge has said she is “deeply concerned” about the behaviour of Amber Rudd for failing to release a survivor of torture from detention despite repeated court orders requiring her to do so.

    On Wednesday Mrs Justice Nicola Davies DBE presided over an emergency high court hearing to examine the home secretary’s delay in releasing an asylum seeker who had been tortured in a Libyan prison with electric shocks and falaka – beating on the soles of the feet.

    “The court is deeply concerned,” she said. “Four weeks have elapsed since an order was made.”

    She added that the home secretary had failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for the delays in releasing the man from detention.

    …

  • Amber Rudd plc trashing peoples’ computing devices

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    The privatised – presumably for the purpose of tax evasion [sorry, avoidance] – Home Secretary Amber Rudd is trashing peoples’ computing devices.

    I have been a political activist for many years. I’ve engaged in totally legal political commentary. That’s why I have been regarded for years as a potential terrorist. I suppose it helps if you’re a bit of a capable and successful political activist too. Then there’s Cressida Dick echoing her previous master’s voice. Home grown again, “Fenians” again. I wish he’d just FO and die. The record’s stuck. It’s unstable not “apparently volatile” btw. I keep intending to do that video.

    Theresa May and the Tories recent Investigatory Powers Act extends the UK snooping services snooping powers. They had huge powers before and did it illegally regardless. They can hack any of your connected devices now.

    On Saturday, all of a sudden my phone’s battery discharged like a really-fast discharging thing. I know my phone and I’m familiar with how long the battery lasts. The battery discharged so much that I thought the phone was broken. I knew that something was up and it was so obvious.

    I can’t send email from a webmail account. WTF? It’s sooooooo obvious.

    Deliveries are delayed. I send an email from one of my email addresses to another one and it’s obviously going round the houses. They’re checking emails that I send to myself FFS. They’re not only watching but actively interfering.

    So I’m buying a used part for my boat on ebay. It’s obviously a part for my boat. I’ve told the seller it’s to replace an exact part on my boat. It’s for my boat. If the snoopers were any good they would see that it’s for my boat and that I’ve been searching how to fix that part on my boat.

    The seller’s saying she’s having terrible [trouble] with ebay and her puter. She’s getting really frustrated with her puter because these snoopy bstards are fekking it up for her because she has the misfortune to sell me something on ebay to me. It looks to me like she’s using speech-to-text – she may well be blind – and these Fascist fukkers are fukking her computer.

    slightly later: I regard Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Cressida Dick and her former boss as the terrorists. I could be regarded as a counter-terrorist in that way. The above terrorists are not too keen on me recognising them as terrorists.

    3/8/17 10am. Years ago – back in 2003 or 2004 – I’d wander around doing completely legal things and devices would be frying around me – mostly online tills in shops. Any shop I went into would have devices suddenly breaking down. These devices are usually very reliable of course.

    I wondered if it was deliberate. It can be used like that of course, the message would be something like “You’re out of order disobeying the strong State and it’s glorious Leader. Shut up and Obey!”. They were attacking me while hiding then after all.

    Having experienced all this BS – being treated as a pretend potential terrorist and being attacked by the State and the State’s repressive forces – I’ve come to realise that it’s all bullshit. Terrorism is a political tool and the politicians are the terrorists.

    I’m a pretend suspected terrorist. I’m not really regarded as a real suspected terrorist. I’m a pretend suspected terrorist because of my political views and because I have been a political activist. Nobody seriously believes that I would ever do any real killing or explosive suiciding. I’m a pretend suspected terrorist so they can watch every move I make, so that they have advanced warning of my totally legal political actions.

    16/8/17 My Android Tablet also appears to have been rooted. I use that for marine navigation.

    I’m assuming that it’s UK govt, GCHQ, etc because that’s exactly what they do and I expect that there is that convention that nation states do not interfere with or murder a state’s citizens/subjects without that state’s acquiescence. Yes, that also applies to 911, 7/7 and particularly to the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. I accept that it could be the US or a few other states on this basis.

    21/8/17 I’m finding that my Android tablet is not connecting on trains and buses. It suggests that internet access on UK public transport is monitored by and under the control of GCHQ. It appears that UK under the Tories is a Fascist regime.

    22/8/17 This all seems very provocative in a way which I don’t expect. It’s almost as if it’s provoking me to respond.