Security

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud (Reuters / Fahad Shadeed) – Courtesy RT
 
 

Q: When is a lie not a lie? A: When it’s an excuse.
Charlie Brooker, Dawn of the Dumb (2007), 66.

There should be nothing polite about it, whatever the curious start of the article in Gizmodo (Feb 3) suggests. The “future of privacy on the internet in Australia” is simply but one in a series of skirmishes being waged by a mishmash of authoritarian sentiments against the domain of private citizenry. At its heart is the nervous and nigh ridiculous desire that retaining data – that is to say, the metadata on individuals in the course of using various services – will somehow curb criminality, foil terrorism, and keep deviance at bay.

Numa hung a left turn only to find himself caught up in the middle of a nastily developing situation.
Line after line of passengers stood waiting, bags by their side, as they slowly, one by one, were herded to the front.

RT | February 13, 2015 Conceding to a federal lawsuit, the US government agreed to release a 1987 Defense Department report detailing US assistance to Israel in its development of a hydrogen bomb, which skirted international standards. The 386-page report, “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,” likens top Israeli nuclear facilities to the […]

Laws have certain flexibility to them, the vast legroom that allows a degree of significant contortions.  The most resilient ones tend to be those concerning security.  Where safety is perceived to be at stake, the legroom widens.  Interpreters of national security laws tend to make leaps to extend their application as far as possible.  Rather than reading down the effects of legislation, with the tendencies to limit civil liberties, the desire lies in expanding power. The drafting, for that reason, is fundamental.

The tragic shooting in Paris of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in 2011, that left 12 people dead is a direct consequence of Western imperialism’s interventions in the Middle East.

There are two ways to look at the alleged terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
One is that in the English speaking world, or much of it, the satire would have been regarded as “hate speech,” and the satirists arrested. But in France Muslims are excluded from the privileged category, took offense at the satire, and retaliated.

Diana Johnstone asks the rhetorical question at CounterPunch, “What to Say When You Have Nothing to Say?” in regard to the I Am Charlie “terror” attack in Paris. Hers is an emotional response, exasperation; there is plenty to say that is quite rational.

Historic outcomes of pivotal events often dangled on threads of various possibilities. As they were outnumbered by more than two to one, an early morning fog enabled America’s future first President, George Washington with his command, to escape death or capture by British troops on Long Island, New York in 1776. As the last of 9000 men to board one of the transport boats, it’s unlikely Washington would have safely made the East River crossing without the fog’s appearance. Subsequent U.S.