* Posts by Scorchio!!

1640 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jul 2010

Assange: 'Ecuadorian embassy staff are like my family'

Scorchio!!
Happy

Re: Just for that statement....

Oh, but Julian does like herring, as do his chorus on these pages; red herring! ;->

Scorchio!!
Angel

Alongside bin Laden's arse! Indeed there are plenty of games to be played... ...oh, but wait, this is a family show.

Scorchio!!
FAIL

Re: Deluded

We've already seen the opinions of British lawyers and police officers that, under British law, Assange's acts would lead to a similar prosecution in the UK: NO means NO, even if there is a qualifier, NO condom NO sex, otherwise rape has been committed because the act of sexual intercourse would have been involuntary; then there is the wee matter of alleged force, holding down the alleged victim. In addition legal material has been cited over and over by other posters, to whom people apply the argumentum ad hominem simply because they cannot cope with the facts. However, you will be able to cite, chapter and verse, these supposed readings on international law and practise that Julian Assange (TM) have read and understood. Come on then, pony them up.

Assange said on the Radio 4 Today Programme that the women were in a tizzy on the question of condoms; this is not an allegation, it is publicly verifiable and you can go to their site, read the transcript or listen to the interview again. I have put the link up in the past and if you are not able to find it by going to the Today Programme's home page on the BBC's site I'll do it for you.

This is more than disgusting, as the case of Nadja Benaissa in Germany demonstrates, where a man has contracted HIV following unprotected sex with the woman, who knew that she had HIV but did not disclose. I know that there is a different attitude to sexual hygiene in the UK, and I know that it has unwanted consequences, but elsewhere in Europe this laxity if attitude is absent.

Scorchio!!

Re: What really pisses me off

It is much more than that, as the tale of the Snowdon arrests is beginning to show, and the Met have no choice; they are under government orders to apprehend a fugitive from justice, both justice in this land and in another EU country, a country which Assange itself alikened to a banana republic. Very silly of him.

Scorchio!!

Extending the embassy would require a number of things, not least of which is the permission of the host state and its local council, under planning laws. Secondly, do you know anything about property prices in the Knightsbridge area? I can assure you they are among the highest in London. It would cost millions to buy the neighbouring flat, even if permission for use were granted by a) the state b) the council under its planning laws.

It will not happen. Julian has chosen his place of confinement and there he will stay.

Scorchio!!
Happy

Re: Even assuming the Swedish allegations are false and are dropped...

""..the US only has to ask and we would happily hand him over.."

It seems extremely unlikely that the Swedish authorities would agree to this and their claim has precedence."

Not so; they offered to drop their business and allow the US to have first go, and extradite from here to there. It is much easier to do this than to negotiate the more complex Swedish and EAW arcana, believe me. By staying in the UK Julie is on top of a hornet's nest, never mind the bail jumping criminal offence.

Scorchio!!
Happy

Re: Just for that statement....

Really?

Does anyone remember Carlos the Jackal, aka Ilich Ramírez Sánchez? What about the now perhaps less spectacular Ronald Biggs. There are plenty more offenders who thought they could get away with it... ...but if Julie thinks that sitting in an embassy with a high profile will magic away his offences, well he may as well wait for Jesus to come and let him out.

I have a sack of popcorn standing by for the arrest, prosecution and conviction for jumping bail and thereafter return to Sweden... ...unless of course the British and Americans take the Swedes up on the offer to revoke the EAW, and thereby enable a simple extradition from the UK to the US. After all, we are perfectly aware that the treaty signed by Toni Bliar means that we bend over for Uncle Barack if he wants something.

Well Julie, I hope that you take a little time to read these words. Let them sink into that seemingly not very highly functioning pre-frontal grey. They are not going away Julie. Do you understand?

Laptops Snowden took to Hong Kong and Russia 'just a decoy'

Scorchio!!

Re: I hope Snowden didn't eat anything they might have given him

"Imagine that this is a webserver somewhere that he,or an acomlice, must log into every day otherwise it will spew out to all and sundry the important stuff that hasen't yet been leaked..."

That would be clever, wouldn't it? That way if he died naturally, perhaps because he was wanking too much (though the distinct possibility that the Russians have given him a honey trap to sleep with is distinct) shit would happen, even if he did not mean it to.

Scorchio!!

Re: I hope Snowden didn't eat anything they might have given him

What, do you mean to say that they might give him polonium tea. Oh no, wait, that's a Russian trick. Where's Snowden staying right now?

WikiLeaker-in-chief Assange refuses to meet Benedict Cumberbatch

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FAIL

Re: Stand trial?

Let's see. Your post is distinguished by its argumentum ad hominem content (use of the neo con smear), and generalisations about justice. It is of course rubbish. That there are publicised cases of miscarriages and so on does not mean that justice is never or rarely done, and to expect that the judicial system be perfect every time is to expect humans to be perfect, and I do not know of such a thing. Perhaps you do. Perhaps you are a paragon of such virtue, but no; you made generalisations and deployed the argumentum ad hominem. I would not want you on a jury.

Scorchio!!

Re: Wot, no defenders?

Indeed, it is a badge of pride for me. Someone once looked up my profile and asked me what I thought I was doing, and did I notice how many down votes I have; I replied to the effect that the truth is not necessarily popular, and popularity does not make something true. As we found out in the USSR, as we found out between 1939-45, as the Venezuelans have been discovering, and so on.

Scorchio!!

It was a personal statement, and YMMV. However, he is by the reports sexually hyperactive. Witness the report that he walked off with the girlfriend of a reporter. Witness the 16 year old mother of his son. Witness the (until recently) doe-eyed and naive women who have supported him, putting up bail, on legal teams, working on leaks. Something does not smell right here. That is my judgement, it is my personal opinion, I make decisions like this in my life as everyone else does. It is the way we survive. However, given his propensities, his criminal record and this repeat offence, that is to say he is an offender already, I see a behavioural profile, and that is an undeniable fact; once someone has built up, over many years, a profile for offending, for not following social rules and mores, there is the basis for more offending. I base this reasoning on my training, and would love to do an assessment on this most peculiar man, whose mother raised him to break the rules and educated him herself. It all adds up to a noxious cocktail, and that as I say is the basis for my reasoning.

Scorchio!!
Happy

Re: Wot, no defenders?

You were down voted; what you want for nothing, rubber biscuit? (RIP John Belushi)

Scorchio!!

Re: would the techie readership that occasionally graces the forum

Let's not forget the use of NMap in The Matrix.

Scorchio!!
Happy

Re: Cumberbatch?

Hah; "Don't tell them Pike!"

Scorchio!!

Well, he did give him a little fiscal help for his defence. A little.

Scorchio!!

Indeed. However his behaviour will not change. He will stay there either until he is forgotten (and, as you correctly prognosticate, this 'film' will keep him in the public eye), or until he is forced to leave out of necessity (dental, medical), or (fat chance) his ethics wake him up. As the depiction in the film of Domscheidt-Berg says:

"It's just you and your ego, the lies you tell to get whatever you want."

Of that there is no doubt at all. Witness the pay wall fiasco, his hissy fit at the Guardian for publishing what he described as "his" (stolen) property, the broken contract for his auto biography, from which he broke off carrying with him a handsome advance, claiming foul when the publisher went ahead (naturally they wanted to recoup their losses and publish), then there is his lavish salary of some 80,000 stlg, and on and on it goes. I'll try to dig out the other bits if prodded, but these data are enough to prove that St Julie is interested in the money.

I remain convinced that Julie is a tad rapey.

Assange: 'I'm fond of your work, Cumberbatch, but let's leave it at that'

Scorchio!!

Re: ASSANGE: 'I'm fond of the truth but only when it's the truth I approve of."

Reading his personal communications convinces me of one thing; he is a net.kook. I have a lot of experience of them, and his writing has much in common, never mind the fact that net.kooks tend to be monomaniacs. Ghastly creature.

Snowden journo's boyfriend 'had crypto key for thumb-drive files written down' - cops

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Re: Highly sensitive UK documents? Really?

Correct. In brief, when Margaret Thatcher wanted a couple of her senior ministers checked out for suspect associations, she passed the job on to either the Americans or the Canadians. I think the latter, but can't be sure. Dammit, I have to say it; Echelon is one of the facilities at work here, but no one seems to worry about it.

Oh that's better. Almost as good as a man dump. Now for a post work shower.

Scorchio!!

Re: "very poor information security practice"

Wasn't that under Labour? Mind you, it's happened so often that keeping records is difficult. However, the reason why we know so much is the speed and pervasiveness of digital news gathering and reporting. In the past it was a 'dark figure'.

Total cost of THAT axed NHS IT fiasco to taxpayers: £10.1bn

Scorchio!!

Re: Big Centralist stuff concentrates and amplifies risk; it is fragile, it is fail bait.

"Everyone with any brains should read the book Anti-Fragile by Nicholas Taleb, so that they know why centralisation of risk is not just idiotic, but mental cripple territory, where Black Swans breed."

As a philosophy graduate I'd like to point out that, in order to find black swans and their breeding grounds, you need only go to New Zealand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan

I'm not as sure about white crows as I was before today, because my searches gave patchy (no pun intended, though it is apposite) returns. Such as: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/whitecrows.htm

Scorchio!!
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Re: How many lives

"Another Labour epic fail was the GP contracts and it can't be over-emphasised how damaging this has been for primary care. [...]"

Indeed, and you can lay at their feet the blame for overpaid doctors, an infrastructure that is so under pressure that some patients have difficulty in seeing their patients, it is also the case that Labour milked the PFI idea so much that some 50 NHS trusts are on the verge of bankruptcy. There are so many other cockups this guardian of the NHS has made.

Scorchio!!

Re: Disgusting

"Brought to you by the same people who want to have a (whack a mole) porn filter."

No, not the current government, the last government, who brought you a variety of white elephant projects, including the centralised emergency/rescue coordination centres; the Liebor party. It is a classic criticism of these people, since the war, that they set off massive projects which turn into money traps. That they haven't changed and that people still vote for them says a lot. I voted for them, once.

Snowden journo's partner wins partial injunction on seized data

Scorchio!!

Re: There's more going on here...

"Miranda almost certainly did hand over the decryption keys to the files, because he would have been prosecuted if he didn't."

That is not only the parsimonious answer that would have been demanded by William of Occam, but it is also the fact as spoken in public.

Scorchio!!

Re: Irony strangely uncommented upon

"I find it strange but does anyone find his last name rather ironic?

[...]

Knowing and understanding your rights as I have explained them to you, are you willing to answer my questions without an attorney present?"

...and that was one of the interesting points to come out of this tawdry imbroglio, in which senior Guardian journalists spoke with injured tones about their 'rights' to see classified information stolen from another country.

You see, Miranda would have been held for only one (1) hour but he felt that the duty solicitor was not good enough for him. Oh no; instead Miranda opted to invoke a solicitor who, it transpired, could not be with him for a further eight (8) hours. Uhuh.

The whole thing has the stink of something rotten, starting with Rusbridger's terminological inexactitudes, running through the photographs of kit supposedly destroyed (no sign of storage devices though), later quiet confessions by Rusbridger that Miranda was indeed on a mission for his partner and not an 'innocent civilian' in this matter, and indeed that Miranda's travel expenses were being paid by... ...the Guardian.

At the bottom of this pit of journalistic dissimulation are heaps of data, stolen from a NATO power, and given by the thief to foreign journalists who speak confidently of their 'rights' in the matter. (Hollow laughter.)

Scorchio!!
FAIL

Re: So what's changed?

"Maybe because there wasnt a convenient direct non stop flight from Germany to Brazil? Transiting in one of the busisiest international airports in the world isn't exactly uncommon."

If he expected to travel through the territory of a NATO ally of the USA carrying classified documents stolen from the USA without being touched then he, and anyone else who is of the same opinion is a fool. Did he expect a handshake? Did he expect a polite smile and red carpet treatment? Did he really think that people would pay absolutely no attention to the matter? Does anyone?

Well, perhaps IQs really did drop overnight. To the floor.

Chinese firm applies for 'Edward Snowden' trademark

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Re: The Edward Snowden Car

" "I'd of said"

Today is GCSE results day too."

Yarp. ;->

Mystery of Guardian mobos and graphics cards which 'held Snowden files'

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Re: Even huger flaw in the article

"You're assuming the people from the Guardian are telling the truth, and not just trying to add more spook factor to a story that's getting a little stale in the minds of the general public."

It is certainly the case that Rusbridger has had to recant substantial parts of his story.

Scorchio!!

Re: Huge flaw in article

"The Gaurdian _used_ to be too reputable to even think about making things up, but I'm not so sure these days[...]"

Indeed. It is the case that Rusbridger had to climb down from the nine (9) hour claim; Miranda was in the presence of officials for one hour against his will, the other eight (8) are entirely his own fault, it being that he requested that a specific solicitor other than the duty solicitor attend; solicitor was busy, Miranda therefore had to wait.

It is also the case that (1) Miranda was travelling at Guardian expense and that (2) he was acting as an information courier for his partner, but this was previously denied.

Finally, given that Miranda was carrying highly classified documents that had been stolen from one of Britain's NATO partners, what the fuck made him fly a route that took him through the UK? Did he think that officials there would a) ignore him, b) say 'Hi there, don't worry about the classified documents or c) offer to carry his bags to make sure that, e.g., no one from Al Qaida/the IRA/any other terrorist organisation to whom these files would be of interest could steal them? Flying via the UK was a most stupid, amateurish act, worthy of a very hard kick up the arse; it was capped by buggering up his choice of solicitor.

So who is the biggest fool, Rusbridger of the Guardian, Greenwald whose information courier Miranda was, or the information courier himself. As readers may have observed, this is a rhetorical question, because I consider them all to be stupid fools, but Rusbridger is a liar for sure. He has had to recant which detracts from his credibility and that of the Guardian, a loss making paper that represents a few fools, would not survive without the backup of its investments and is thus the instrument of propaganda by, well, by and for whom?

Assange's WikiLeaks Party running-mate departs in blaze of glory

Scorchio!!

"The distinction between left and right is what keeps the current stranglehold of the powerstructure going."

The terms left and right wing are a hangover from the French revolution; the left wing sat to the left of the speaker/chairman, the right wing to the right; it being that the left wing were responsible for the execution of many thousands for kooky, dreamed up crimes, and it being that all revolutions are followed by grim, bloody periods, I prefer gradualism. It has been taught for decades in UK universities and it causes much less pain than the dangerous and frankly stupid liberation of human beings from the regulations and codes of conduct that prevent them from slaughtering, abusing, torturing and humiliation of their peers.

Moreover, the terms left and right in fact have no meaning. There is need of a different linguistic currency in political debates, one that obviates the problems that stem from such dangerous clichés, which ultimate result in ordinary conserving parties being labelled as, well I'll allow someone else to invoke Godwin, not that it means very much.

Scorchio!!
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Re: St Jules doesn't like to share.....

"Personally I think Wikileaks is good and useful, but Assange is a clown."

Cryptome is fine, and I have actually given them information. Nothing spectacular, but I would not trust Wikileaks with the steam off my shit.

Scorchio!!

Re: St Jules doesn't like to share.....

"I can't help laughing at the outrage expressed by the upset councilors, didn't they know about Julie's track record before they signed up to be his puppets?"

(I see thou hast been voted down by zitted ones.)

Well indeed; when you see that something is going wrong in an organisation, it is a truism in occupational psychology that you must look higher up the food chain to find the problem's source. In this case it is clear that the replicated problem in this organisation comes from the head of the unregulated Wikileaks. Oh yes.

Scorchio!!
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Re: Funny that

"Someone trying to build an alternative power center, outside of an approved and open process ?

Gosh, I wonder why I see Assange fit absolutely perfectly in that role."

That is why Domscheit-Berg left Wikileaks to form an alternative site, and it is why Cryptome's head describes Wikileaks as a criminal enterprise. Someone wants control of it, and I am beginning to see that it is more than money that someone wants; the attempt at a philosophical treatise in politics leads me to believe that someone wants, if not wurl dominayshun, then at least to dominate a sizeable chunk of it.

This man is ambitious, and he is a very naughty boy, 17 x in an Australian court, absconding twice, one of them was bail jumping. Yet all the while people's eyes still glaze over as they speak of him as the new one, Neo no less. Hah.

'Symbolic' Grauniad drive-smash was not just a storage fail

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FAIL

Re: You've all missed the point, except me :)

"[...] And that's why they spent nine hours on Sunday coaxing Miranda's passwords out of him."

Thank you for proving that a lie spread by the Guardian will, in spite of correction by same rag, replicate unhindered. FYI, the Guardian have admitted that 8 of the 9 hours were spent by Miranda waiting for the solicitor that he decided to contract, rather than using the nearest available duty solicitor; in the absence of a solicitor he could not be interviewed, he was kept for one hour, he kept himself for 8 hours, presumably because he is an idiot, ditto the Guardian for lying.

Next, it is the case that Miranda was working for his partner, as an information mule/carrying data for him, whilst it is also the case that the Guardian paid his travelling expenses.

I do not expect you to believe me; I expect you to continue to perpetuate these fairy stories and accept Guardian bullshit as uncritically as people here write about government lashing out at its bread and butter, openly, publicly, unlike New Labour, which did so by privately breaking from its mandate, and denying in public that it had done so. A considerable difference, and the silliness that I read here reinforces me that some posters here really ought to tell their parents what they are up to in their bedrooms.

Scorchio!!
FAIL

"Our rulers have been found out and now they're lashing out at anyone and everyone to try and distract us from what we know. This is not going to end well for anyone who values personal freedom and liberty."

This sort of specious argumentation exemplifies to me the problem of misunderstanding. Lashing out? Are you projecting here? Do you think that the government has actually taken a disliking to the very electorate whom they hope will return them to office next election time? Really, this is too much, too sensationalist, too removed from reality. As for the 'nothing to hide' quip it smacks of the paranoid sensationalism that populates alt.* Usenet newsgroups, where people set off tidal waves of silliness with a mere faux truth or two.

Keep wearing the mask. It makes you seem more ridiculous, while preventing people from ridiculing you in person.

Scorchio!!
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Re: And why aren't the Government using the law for these things?

"don't imagine for one moment that you can blatantly spill NATO secrets and then expect to be able to walk in and out of NATO borders without a shedload of trouble."

Yes. It would seem that a lot of people here do not understand the basis and the point of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and it seems to me to add strength to my view that the greater number of reg posters here are indeed of the acne kind. True, NATO has had a hard time defining its role in the shadow of the USSR's collapse, but the beauty of such an organisation - take for example also the now sadly defunct SEATO - is that all members come to the aid of one another when attacked. Hence George Robertson consulted after the WTC attack and announced that if one NATO member is attacked, all members are attacked. That is the point and the basis of the military, intelligence and security functions of the alliance; the intelligence and security functions secure rear areas and also enable the organisation and its members to determine, hopefully accurately, forthcoming threats.

What the WTC attacks demonstrated was that a core member of NATO, the USA, was riddled with significant and hampering problems; these were due to the a) the competing nature of national security organisations, b) the excessive number of national security organisations, c) the lack of an overall command structure to supervise and task organisations, thereby preventing wasteful and unnecessary and dangerous competition and d) the problems of an inflexible form of 'need to know' that prevented these organisations from inter communicating, sharing data and sharing analyses. (Pfc Bradley Manning apparently took advantage of the lazy password habits of his colleagues, namely their tendency to write their passwords on Post-it notes which they stuck on their monitors, and I believe also the use of weak passwords.)

In addition to the 2001 attacks the key to understanding how we came to be here is to remember the attack on the USS Cole, the earlier WTC attack, the embassy attacks in Africa, the killing of a number of private citizens such as Daniel Perl whose murder was filmed and made publicly available, the Bali bombings and many, many other such examples across the world. Clearly something has to be done in order to understand, anticipate and prevent further attacks, and this means more than pissing about with spy satellites, recruiting people en situ and other such techniques; traffic analysis is crucial, especially in data sharing alliances such as NATO whose members are the exemplar/premier Al Q'aida attack targets. That means us, human beings, people on the bus and the tube; people on holiday in Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood wiped out a bus full of German tourists years back; even Jewish tourists in Romania aren't safe, never mind Australian and British tourists in Bali).

The scale of the problem is daunting, especially at a time when NATO members - indeed even their former enemies in Russia and similar - are cutting back on military expenditure for reasons of recession. Clearly the sensible way forward is to monitor the very facilities used by terrorists and fellow travellers to collaborate and to communicate. Given the widespread availability of PGP - something which the USA tried during the 1990s to prevent, rating it as weapons grade software - opening email is unlikely to profit anyone. Indeed, using software such as True Crypt to encrypt substantial files and place them on various 'cloud' storage sites is even more effective, where greater amounts of data are to be transmitted. Given the request by Brazil's intelligence/security services for the CIA/FBI to decrypt/break into a True Crypt container, which resulted in failure, this form of encryption would appear to be as unbreakable as PGP/GNU PG.

All that is left is traffic analysis; who is contacting whom, and so on. Those who object do so short sightedly. The wars of the future may not involve large alliances and nation states. Indeed, as long ago as 40 years back Arthur C Clarke was predicting this, saying that drugs barons, private armies/terrorists and private nut cases (the unabomber is case in point) would constitute the greatest problem. Yes, the threat would come from within our ranks, and here it is, now, today. Aside from Al Q'aida, Laskar e Tauba (I forget the spelling but this is phonetically close), Ansar al Islam, the 'real IRA' and many other such muddled nutcase organisations, there is now a very significant problem in the form of drugs barons, their armies and their finances; it is so bad in Mexico that even the Mexican marines experience difficulty in subduing the problem, and you will notice they always wear a balaclava on ops. Remember for a minute the murder of a British soldier on UK streets, and you will see that the problem is to be found everywhere, in singular form, in group form and in loosely knit group/ideological form.

So far every attempt to deal with the problem has been met with specious objections by a variety of people who think they have a reason to fear traffic analysis, but do not. Intelligence and security agencies do not have time to waste on petty criminals, or people with a penchant for zoophilia, or whatever other private secrets these sorts of people could better communicate using PGP encryption. What they want are the links between people that will enable them to trace the skeins back to the originators of these messages to known hostile individuals and groups. It is here that "24" was far ahead of its time, anticipating the use of a variety of proxy styled means of communication that would help hostiles to remain ahead of their pursuers.

It was quite clearly recognised during WWII that people would necessarily have to lose freedoms in order to defeat a common enemy, one who would slaughter many of us during the process of defeating us, and during the process of 'pacifying' us. Our problem now is that we are complacent, we are individualists, we do not identify with the group and we do not identify enemies of us as a group; we scarcely even think of ourselves as - in particular - English, not least because the last government was indisposed to such a national culture, identifying it with racism, such was the non sequitur thinking of those who represented us, and came from our midst, thus reflecting a prevailing trend.

Most of the blinkered exchanges that go on here and in The Guardian completely miss the point, lives on the razor's edge of sensationalism and is useless, except perhaps to occupy idle and perhaps to be charitable small minds. The work will go on, sensationalist nonsense about it will always be there and will be encouraged, in much the same way that the CIA encouraged belief in UFOs in the region of area 51, focusing people's attention on the area, but at the same time diverting it from the true product, namely high flying spy planes, followed by stealth fighters and bombers, and then the successors to these things.

If people here think that the Prism data are spectacular they have evidently not been paying attention to the other forms of intelligence gathering, the sub text of which can be read in between the lines of UK government unwillingness to disclose material in court, for to do so would publicise the source and techniques. It seems largely to work. I don't seen anyone here mentioning it, but if you go to Usenet newsgroups people quite frequently chatter about it, and I suppose possibly even on Web 2x +, though I believe from observing the content in one or two sites that they are not populated by the brightest lights in the harbour. Usenet still seems to be the domain of intellectuals, along with closed lists.

Meanwhile the bunfest will continue, until such time as the next large slaughter takes place and then, eventually, people will forget the last slaughter and start to consider what they think is an invasion of their privacy, when in fact invading their privacy will prove to be a waste of precious processor and manpower time. The point is to prevent the people who wish to slaughter others, by interruption, by interference, by disclosing knowledge of their plans, by reducing the profile of targets, by increasing awarenes, by recruiting cooperation from target populations, by means of IT, and by means of human espionage on site, and by means of satellite monitoring where relevant.

The bunfest will continue. People will escalate their beliefs, desires and inclinations into absolutes, and they absolutely will not bother to understand what the military, intelligence and security functions of NATO are for. Perhaps the common misattribution to Eric Blair is illustrative of the things that we forget in this domain: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Scorchio!!

"Thus demonstrating why Governments seem incapable of getting IT projects up and running"

In particular it is a classic criticism of Labour governments over the past four or five decades that they are incapable of getting any major project running, IT included, and that they waste vast sums of money getting nowhere to prove this point. I learned this in my 1980 lectures, and was disappointed to see that they had not learned their lesson by 1997. In fact I can see that they had learned no lessons at all, especially in fiscal/economic arena, where in the 1970s they had to call out the IMF to pull them out of the merde, and in this century they left us with the biggest peacetime debt in our country's history.

Their claims that this had to do with the recession are infinitely weakened by their reckless handling of public spending (at the end civil servants refused to sign off wild expenditures and made their political masters do so, which is almost without precedent [Labour excepted], their piss poor handling of regulation - 'light touch regulation' - which led the economy into quicksand, they committed various parts of the public sector to debts that could not be managed (leading to NHS trusts facing bankruptcy, due to PFI over stretch), they borrowed silly amounts of money, and they encourage José and Josétte public to take on a trillion pounds of debt, and showed no signs of interest in controlling lending. As to selling 60% of treasury reserve gold when the market was at a 20 year low, announcing it in advance, selling it en bloc, absofuckinglootly clooless, and I would love to rap the bastards up the side of their pointy heads with a clue by four. Criminal stupidity.

The list of recklessness is too large and with such manifold implications as to merit a vast treatise, rather than a paragraph or two in a forum like this, yet each time members of the last government are confronted about their recklessness the country is greeted by a mixture of Vicky Pollard and Pinochio.

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Re: Correct

"Or the Silly Party."

Or Rupert the Hun from the All Night party. I haven't seen much of him lately. Pity.

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" " It was petty and stupid, the action of an ignorant and frightened bully...". Yep, that sounds like this government."

You will of course supply sufficient citations/examples as to constitute a 'course of conduct', won't you?

As you do you will probably need to recall the Jewish Labour party member and wartime survivor who was thrown out of the Labour party conference for pointing out the obvious, namely that the Labour party was neither democratic nor caring. You may also wish to remember Labour's record for military adventurism, coupled with its clandestine immigration campaign, a campaign which, when highlighted by voters who called them out pointing to their manifesto commitment to 'maintain firm control' over immigration, prompted accusations of racism.

Oh yes. This government makes the Labour party seem like your favourite nanny, doesn't it? After all, to keep the populace quiet as it made them (from the perspective of a sympathetic and grateful voting population) redundant, it fed them with so much in the form of benefits that going to work was pointless... ...meanwhile they blew our money on white elephants, such as the ID card fiasco, the emergency rescue coordination centres, a variety of government IT projects, oh and let us not forget the billions they spent on subduing Johnny Foreigner (admittedly not so much to the liking of many of their imported voters, who happened to have the same religion as 'Johnny Foreigner').

Yes. Of course. This government is bullying you. Into working for a living, into taking responsibility for your lives.

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Re: thuggery isnt it?

I like the classic "HTH" ending to this unequivocal reply. I expect to be voted down, but you will be alright, as you are not me.

Scorchio!!
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Re: brought to you by the same people who want a "porn filter"

"Year 2013 - someone who is obviously not a terrorist held for 9 hours[...]"

Wrong; he was held for one hour, the extra eight hours of the affair were due to his choice of solicitor, who took eight hours to arrive; The Guardian proved themselves as ever extremely unreliable for not admitting this sooner, as well as their failure to make it clear that Miranda was travelling at Guardian expense as his partner's information mule.

Scorchio!!
FAIL

Re: thuggery isnt it?

"When you've been held for 9 hours you aren't always that happy and logical in thought."

Wrong; he was held for one hour, the extra eight hours were at his own choice as he waited for a solicitor other than the duty solicitor to arrive. It is also the case that Miranda was working for his partner, at Guardian expense, as an information mule. The Guardian have belatedly conceded this.

Scorchio!!
FAIL

Re: thuggery isnt it?

"Fortunately, the US has a veto on the use and targetting of the UK's nuclear missiles. Now you feel so much better."

Wrong. That was once the case, but it no longer is.

Scorchio!!

Re: thuggery isnt it?

"Unfortunately, as much as I disagree with the Government's position, it seems the Guardian has been a little melodramatic in their reporting of this."

Truly, and much more so than you report; it transpired that 8 (eight) of the hours spent by Miranda with the police were at his own choice, it being that he chose to rebuff the official/duty solicitor, and preferring to wait 8 hours for the solicitor of his choice to appear. This much the Guardian has had to concede, along with the fact that Miranda was travelling at the Guardian's expense and on his partner, Greenwald's behalf. There is no doubt that he was carrying classified information that was stolen from a NATO ally.

As far as the root of the story is concerned, there has been a lot of misconceived debate about the collection of metadata, namely the collection of data that shows who calls/texts/emails whom, and that is a part of the confusion. Espionage, both internal and external, in this country began with Walsingham and his stunning coup with Mary of Scotland; her communications were intercepted and decoded; in one of them a correspondent offered to lead a rebellion that would ultimately have led to regicide and the overturning of the existing protestant state; Walsingham allowed this communication to go through, Mary bit hard on the bait and almost all of the rest, including the dramatic red dress worn by the drama Queen Mary (and there are plenty of those this very day) for her execution, is history.

People have claimed that it was unethical of Walsingham to have allowed the intercepted communication through to Mary, that he facilitated her plot, but of course opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one. It is a fact that then as now the state was under internal and external threat, and the interception of communications was vital to maintaining security: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Otherwise, and as with the earlier case of LOIC users, people who steal secrets will ultimately pay for their misdeeds, as will those who accept and publish stolen goods. Where Rusbridger is concerned, it is all very well for him to say that he has withheld the most important and sensitive of the classified information - and do remember that Miranda has, in spite of his earlier claims to be an innocent party, announced during a hissy fit that he has lots of juicy information on British intelligence and security services that he intends to release, and it is now clear that he IS a courier - but how does he know? Does he work in the business and is he thus trained and experienced enough to know that everything of a sensitive and important nature has been withheld, and nothing damaging has been released? Pfc Manning made it quite clear that he was not appropriately qualified and knowledgeable, and I am certain that Guardian journalists are no more qualified/experienced than he. I am also more than certain that the information is not particularly secure in the hands of people like Miranda, notwithstanding the case of Snowden himself, about which I am sure intellectual lightweights will be more than happy to fire cheap shots.

In the longer term, as various intelligence and security organisations around the world adjust to the implications of modern digital security, it will become clear both to journalists and those who might decide to slip information out of the office, that this is not merely illegal according to the appropriate jurisdiction, but punishment will swiftly follow, one way or another.

Meanwhile, a lot of people are making a lot of money, writing articles based on the steam and cloud surrounding this confusion, and making it worse; Miranda lied, he was not held for 9 hours, he chose to wait 8 hours for a non duty solicitor and, in addition, he travelled at Guardian expense as a data mule on Greenwald's behalf.

Please, do me the favour of applying the down arrow; the more the merrier, for it is a mark of distinction that fools disapprove of the truth and think that voting on it is of any relevance, other than to show that they are dense and cannot take it.

HAND.

Getting worried, Assange? WikiLeaks spaffs out 'insurance' info

Scorchio!!

Re: Instead of an elected Government ...

"Yes, that's the problem with vigilantism, starts off with good intentions and unfortunately doesn't last."

Yeah, but it's a profitable business; look at Julie's £80,000 salary for starters, never mind the other clever scams this scallywag has. The hell with ethics, this is big business, and it's gonna get bigga if we kun git eeeeelected (background music of Alice Cooper singing 'I wanna be elected').

Scorchio!!
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Re: Why can't they leak...

"They may go for, say, Russia, but I doubt it. Assange seems to think that his enemy's (US Gov) enemy (Russian Gov)is his friend."

Plus the Russians don't fuck about where this sort of thing is concerned; ask the families of hundreds of murdered Russian/Russian commonwealth journalists. Anna Politkovskya springs to mind, plus also it is the case that a certain former Russian KGB Lt Col. had to die because he wrote a very frank, revealing and damaging assessment of another former Russian KGB Lt Col. whom he in the line of duty some years back investigated for fraud and other criminal activity; yes, if you hadn't guessed it, the latter former KGB senior officer was in fact the very one responsible for industrial espionage against the west, grandson of Stalin's former cook, the very macho Vladimir Vladimorovich Putin, aka 'Voro', to use kindergarten Russki.

No. I don't think they want to fuck with Russia, because Russia will fuck them back good and to hell with political correctness, yuman rights and any other western 6th form debating point; they'll do it and not even discuss it, never mind the denial bit. Why? Look at the Russian state duma; it's almost completely filled with Voro's former colleagues, that is to say former KGB placemen.

To these people the burden of thinking morally, or of treating people like Brazilian information couriers, Guardian journos and the like with anything resembling respect is not a priority; no use being a faux naif 'partner' of a Graniad journo, claiming you did nuffink wrong, later only to say in the midst of a hissy fit that you will reveal lots of interesting things about (UK in the current instance) Russian int & sy services, that'll pop you straight in line with the crosshair, no problemo.

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Re: Julian should have been reading El Reg...

"Wikileaks isn't just about releasing data and exposing corruption and illegal activities. Oh no, its to promote Julian and to capitalize on others sekrets."

Indeed; Julie's found a lot of ways to make money; take massive advances from publishing houses wanting his autobiog, then withdraw; pay wall; demand a million for an interview... ...oh, I forget all of the clever devices that greedy St Julie has invented. Quite soon he'll be as rich as St Tonibler, and people will wake up to what a fake it has been.

I mean, stealing a state's secrets and selling them. The King is completely, absofuckinglootly naked.

Scorchio!!
FAIL

Re: No charges have been filed

" there are many who believe that it is a ploy to get him where he can be extradited or renditioned by the US government."

Beliefs, are like opinions, which are like arseholes; everyone has one. However, the Swedes have made a number of things quite clear; 1) under EAW terms they cannot extradite without UK permission; 2) they would not extradite for capital offences; 3) they are willing to let the US have first go at extraditing Assange from the UK if they wish to charge Assange: Given that the last Labour government signed a 'we bend over for Uncle Sam whenever they tell us to" treaty, such that we ship suspects back to the US as soon as Uncle Barak flutters his eyelashes at the British PM, it is the case that your claim is completely irrelevant, fictional, a phantasm, not connected with reality, ignores the easy way to do things which would be to inform Sweden that they want first go, with Assange in the barrel in a UK court.

Pah.

Scorchio!!
FAIL

Re: The one way this could work properly

"Um, there haven't been charges. Accusations, but no charges."

As has been pointed out multiply, Assange's Swedish counsel was advised by the Swedish police that they wished - as per the legal process in their jurisdiction - to interview him prior to charging him; almost the next day Assange appeared in the UK; Assange's lawyer claimed he'd never heard from the Swedish police, but had to recant in a UK court, on perusing his mobile phone logs.

That's it, that's all; the Swedish police would have charged Assange had he not absconded.

That he has now repeatedly absconded - the second time obviously being his bail, coughed up by many worthies who are a few spons the lighter - makes me inclined to believe that he is a tad rapey. Since the case of, e.g., Nadja Benaissa in Germany and others throughout the EU there's no excuse for claiming that you meant no harm, that you thought the woman was 'in a tizzy' and nothing more, because you fucked them without wearing a condom, when they'd said no condom=no sex, and CJS officials in the UK have said they'd charge such an individual with rape.

Interestingly the posters who see no problem with Assange allegedly having bareback sex are all men, and AFAICT in the UK, where sexual hygiene standards leave a lot to be desired.

Scorchio!!
FAIL

"Reductio ad absurdum."

Employing an argument to extreme forms to demonstrate its absurdity? Certainly not; this is indeed blackmail, as in if you try to do me for my involvement of the theft of your state secrets, why, I'll publish them.

Silly billy. Attend Logic 101 this autumn.