Other News

At last, a law to stop almost anyone from doing almost anything

The bill would permit injunctions against anyone of 10 or older who “has engaged or threatens to engage in conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person”. It would replace asbos with ipnas (injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance), which would not only forbid certain forms of behaviour, but also force the recipient to discharge positive obligations. In other words, they can impose a kind of community service order on people who have committed no crime, which could, the law proposes, remain in force for the rest of their lives.

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On Secrecy, Oaths, and Edward Snowden

contrary to the frequent assertions in the last week (including by Fred Kaplan) that Snowden is particularly reprehensible because he “broke his OATH of secrecy,” neither Snowden nor anyone else broke such a secrecy “oath.”

Such an oath doesn’t exist (look up “oath” on the web). Rather he—and I—broke an agreement (known as Standard Form 312) which was a condition of employment.

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The Last Gasp of American Democracy

We, like those in all emergent totalitarian states, have been mentally damaged by a carefully orchestrated historical amnesia, a state-induced stupidity. We increasingly do not remember what it means to be free. And because we do not remember, we do not react with appropriate ferocity when it is revealed that our freedom has been taken from us. The structures of the corporate state must be torn down. Its security apparatus must be destroyed. And those who defend corporate totalitarianism, including the leaders of the two major political parties, fatuous academics, pundits and a bankrupt press, must be driven from the temples of power.

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Arming Repression – Today Programme, 2 January 2014

The sad truth is that Britain sells arms to repressive regimes in the Middle East, and elsewhere, mainly because it supports them. It wants to keep them in power, and often prefers them to democratic movements which may not support Western policies. This is not simply my view. It is what policy makers have expressed in private government planning files, which are declassified after 30 years. British arms exports have for decades helped favoured regimes maintain ‘internal security’, meaning repression

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Obama 2013: How low can you go?

No doubt 2013 will go down as Barack Obama’s annus horribilis. The President of the United States (POTUS) currently faces a 55 percent disapproval rating on “the way he is handling his job,” according to the latest Washington Post-ABC poll.

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U.S/UK: al-Qaeda’s Indispensable Allies

Obama and Cameron also know that their unquenchable thirst to intervene in the Muslim world has yielded lethal results for their own people. Foregoing an adult-like silence, they, like mindless adolescents, cheered on the “freedom-loving democrats” in Tahrir Square, promoting and deepening the chaos that led to the Islamists’ stripping Egypt’s arsenals of modern weaponry and freeing thousands of veteran and talented mujahedin who were incarcerated in Mubarak’s prisons. Those men and weapons are now in active service from Algeria to Afghanistan to Nigeria to Syria.

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The Changing Contours of US Imperial Intervention in World Conflicts

Following the Vietnam War, US imperial intervention passed through several phases: In the immediate aftermath, the US government faced a humiliating military defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese liberation forces and was under pressure from an American public sick and tired of war.Imperial military interventions, domestic espionage against opponents and usual practice of fomenting coups d’état (regime change) declined.

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Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice? Scientists Consider Extinction

The signs of a worsening climate crisis are all around us, whether we allow ourselves to see them or not. Certainly, the scientific community gets it. As do countless communities across the globe where the effects of climate change are already being experienced in striking ways and local preparations for climatic disasters, including increasingly powerful floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves, and storms are underway.

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Edward Snowden: Person of the Year

Edward Snowden is vilified as a “traitor” by politicians of the American political duopoly, and hunted like Public Enemy Number One by the global imperial apparatus. However, for a large proportion of Earthlings, Snowden has made the singular contribution to humanity of the year 2013.

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An Open Letter to the People of Brazil

My greatest fear was that no one would listen to my warning. Never have I been so glad to have been so wrong. The reaction in certain countries has been particularly inspiring to me, and Brazil is certainly one of those.

At the NSA, I witnessed with growing alarm the surveillance of whole populations without any suspicion of wrongdoing, and it threatens to become the greatest human rights challenge of our time.

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Has Morley Safer Ever Told John Miller This Story?

“Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. Did you hear that?—stupid.”

One of the most respected of all the newsmen in Vietnam—a veteran of World War II, the Indochina War and Korea—suggested that Sylvester was being deliberately provocative. Sylvester replied:

“Look, I don’t even have to talk to you people. I know how to deal with you through your editors and publishers back in the States.”

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