The New Yorker: State of Deception

newyorker

A fascinating article from The New Yorker. Much, much more at the link.

State of Deception
Why won’t the President rein in the intelligence community?

In practice, Obama has not wavered from the position taken by the N.S.A.’s lawyers and embraced by Feinstein and the majority of the Intelligence Committee. “The system generally has worked,” Matthew Olsen told me. “One way to think about the current debate is the degree to which, as a lawyer or as a citizen, you have confidence in our government institutions to operate effectively and trust our system of court oversight, congressional oversight, and executive-branch responsibilities.”

The history of the intelligence community, though, reveals a willingness to violate the spirit and the letter of the law, even with oversight. What’s more, the benefits of the domestic-surveillance programs remain unclear. Wyden contends that the N.S.A. could find other ways to get the information it says it needs. Even Olsen, when pressed, suggested that the N.S.A. could make do without the bulk-collection program. “In some cases, it’s a bit of an insurance policy,” he told me. “It’s a way to do what we otherwise could do, but do it a little bit more quickly.”

Full article at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/16/131216fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all.

Updated to add this leaked NSA slide from Der Spiegel

317 thoughts on “The New Yorker: State of Deception

  1. Very True… Ever since the few months after 9/11, i have realized just how much they care – When Experts started picking at the evidence – they truly don’t give a shit about the people.

    DECEPTION….

    We had this B.s from war criminals of the bbc….( from Medialens F.book)

    ‘Fallujah is a highly symbolic city for many Iraqis, particularly Sunni Arabs, say correspondents.

    ‘It is remembered for the battles fought there between insurgents and **US-backed forces** in 2004.’

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25614767

    WTF…

    “That’ll be the *US* forces that flattened Fallujah in November 2004 (following an earlier assault in April that year). The Red Cross reported “at least 800 civilians” killed.” ( M.L )

    http://dahrjamail.net/800-civilians-feared-dead-in-fallujah

    http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2004/11/07/international/08falluja3.ready.html

    http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/middleeast/08hospital.html

    Then on video we had Dahr Jamail, telling the truth –

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoYADmA_gb0#t=33

    So now from New York( Again) we get this crap –

    “With Syria’s Western-backed sectarian war for regime-change spilling over into both Iraq and Lebanon between forces that root themselves in divisions between Sunni and Shia, the New York Times has come forward to attribute this nightmare scenario to Washington’s insufficient engagement in the region.

    “Power Vacuum in Middle East Lifts Militants,” declares the voice of liberal imperialism in a January 4 article.

    In alliance with a new imperialist partner, Saudi Arabia has pledged a massive $3 billion to pay for weapons being supplied by the government of French President Francois Hollande to the Lebanese army in order to target Hezbollah, an ally of Iran and Syria

    These sordid manoeuvres prove only that every imperialist power abides by Lord Palmerston’s injunction, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-york-times-on-destabilisation-of-the-middle-east-falsifying-history-and-calling-for-more-u-s-involvement/5364115

  2. Ref my comment on the most recent crash of a train carrying oil from North Dakota and the ensuing fireball.
    http://squonk.tk/blog/2013/12/19/the-new-yorker-state-of-deception/comment-page-2/#comment-2001

    This journalist is well informed on the corruption and payola behind this act which Obama has just signed off.

    Obama Signed Bill Hastening Fracking Permits on ND Public Lands
    Days Before Casselton Oil Train Explosion
    by Steve Horn / January 7th, 2014
    http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/01/obama-signed-bill-hastening-fracking-permits-on-nd-public-lands/

  3. Yahoo malware turned up to TWO MILLION European computers into ‘Bitcoin slaves’

    Virus stole computer power to make it easier for criminals to mine Bitcoins
    There are 21 million Bitcoins hidden across an internet-based network, which are expected to all be found – or ‘mined’ – by 2040
    Security breach took place last week affecting computers across Europe

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2536493/Yahoo-malware-turned-TWO-MILLION-European-computers-Bitcoin-slaves.html

  4. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/09/x11_has_privilege_escalation_bug/

    Anatomy of a 22-year-old X Window bug: Get root with newly uncovered flaw

    The X Window System, which today underpins Linux desktops the world over, has been around for more than two decades – and so have its bugs.

    Sysadmins have a few days to patch libXfont to remove a newly discovered, 22-year-old privilege-escalation bug in the code before any tiresome users whip out an exploit. The flaw allows someone logged into a vulnerable machine to crash the X server, or possibly execute injected code as a superuser.

    Hard on the heels of a Chaos Communication Congress presentation that found “hundreds” of bugs (discussed at the X.org mailing list here), the newly found bug is a textbook stack buffer overflow that dates back to 1991 – and is present in all versions of X11.

    The bug is very straightforward, and will impact shared computers, but it is ideal to dissect to reveal how this sort of security blunder happens.

    As the X.org advisory states: “A BDF font file containing a longer than expected string could overflow the buffer on the stack. Testing in X servers built with Stack Protector resulted in an immediate crash when reading a user-provided specially crafted font.”

    I’m sure there’s plenty more in X… Squonk runs Linux but is “headless” – which means it doesn’t run X. Old fashioned text console only.

  5. Jacob ApplebaumTo Protect and Infect – The Militarization of the Internet

    Hamburg 30th December 2013 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILAlhwUgIU

    This talk may have you wrapping yourself in tinfoil by the end (although you might then start sparking from 1KW of microwave energy if unlucky). It’s fairly technical in places but try to watch it to the end. Applebaum has had access to the Snowden documents. He is also an associate of Julian Assange/Wikileaks and is closely involved with the Tor project.

  6. Squonk, thanks for the X11 bug article. Am I right in what follows? The X server can manipulate windows on the display of its host machine in response to requests from an X client, which can be local (on the same machine) or remote (across a network). But in a typical desktop distribution such as Ubuntu, the X server is configured by default to only accept local X clients.

    So does, say, Firefox talk to its local X client? Can Firefox download a ‘custom font’ and then tell the X server to load it as a BDF font file?

  7. Clark,

    I’m fairly sure that Firefox (or other browser) only ever loads remote fonts internal to itself. There is a facility in X to load remote fonts but you would have to go out of your way to configure it and it is deprecated. I believe this is more of a part 2 bug. You would use it to gain root after you had used another exploit to gain code execution in an unprivileged firefox.

    That’s how I think the situation is at the moment. I could be mistaken.

  8. The Tory’s of Windsor and Maidenhead are having their houses flooded by the river Thames, still rising. It is now pulpable to even the most dim planner that these flood occurences are repeating themselves.
    Insurance companies who have an interest to keep their policies at a competitive level, knew that tyhese floods will reoccure, their loss assessors told them the last time Tewksbury flooded.

    They also have the financial clout to make a difference, rather than making all of us pay by spreading the risks on to all our policies, our Government could give them the task/power to pay and build tidal energy sea defences and storm surge barriers, and getting their return from the sold energy.

    We could save 18 billion pounds by building a wash barrier and lock system, including a massive tidal energy generation scheme that would dispense with the need for 2 nuclear power stations and would buy safety and time for the Hinterland, our vast Fenlands currently producing 1/5th. of our national fresh food supplies and rising. Now that is a 4-6 billion annual economic necessity worth the precaution,imho.

    One single stormsurge breaching the dykes and inundating the much lower Fenlands with saltwater would send fresh food prices sky high, it would take vast amounts of chemicals and 5 years to regain anything like previous production with many fields talking much longer.

    Inland flooding, newly constructed reservoirs and overflow marshes next to rivers, much bigger drains and NO MORE PLANNING/ BUILDING OF HOUSES ON FLOOD PLANES UNLESS THEY ARE ABLE TO FLOAT.

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=floating+dutch+houses&newwindow=1&client=firefox-a&hs=2Qy&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=fflb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=i_XPUrWxM_OT0QWDrIGgDg&ved=0CC8QsAQ&biw=1152&bih=579

    In my opinion, insurance companies have an equal part to play, just as they did when the fire services created these mutual societies, they invested in firebrigades, so why should they not feel able today? show some social responsibility rather than make all of us pay for what they could partially remedy?

    BTW. We have some very active flying today in the beautifull skies over Norfolk, the weather is perfect for them.

  9. http://falkvinge.net/2014/01/06/censorship-causes-liability-uk-isps-need-to-be-sued-way-out-into-atlantic/

    “Internet Service Providers in the United Kingdom have started censoring the Internet wholesale by default. This is a horrible transgression against the free exchange of ideas, cheered on by authoritarian politicians. However, there is an important weapon built into the legal framework against this kind of censorship, and it’s high time to use it in full scale.”

    http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/outsourcing-intelligence-062013

    “One can’t help but infer that the US Department of Justice has become just another security contractor, working alongside the HBGarys and Stratfors on behalf of corporate bidders, with no sense at all for the justness of their actions; they are working to protect corporations and private security contractors and give them license to engage in disinformation campaigns against ordinary citizens and their advocacy groups. The mere fact that the FBI’s senior cybersecurity advisor has recently moved to Hunton and Williams shows just how incestuous this relationship has become. “

    My emphasis in bold; examples, including Glenn Greenwald on Snowden’s leaks, cited in the article.

  10. Arianna Huffington announces launch of World Post news website
    • Tony Blair and Bill Gates among new site’s contributors
    • Backers include ‘homeless billionaire’ Nicolas Berggruen
    http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/08/world-post-news-website-launches-huffington

    ‘The publication’s initial editorial board has deep ties to media companies around the world. Alongside Huffington and Berggruen it includes Juan Luis Cebrian, founding editor of El Pais, Dileep Padgaonkar, consulting editor of the Times of India, Yoichi Funabashi, former editor-in-chief of Asahi Shimbun, and Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman of eBay and backer of a new investigative reporting organisation, First Look Media, set up with former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald.’

    What is Greenwald up to associating with people like Omidyar who is connected to this new outfit? Anything that includes B.Liar and Gates is immediately suspect IMO.

    As one of the comments on this Guardian piece said –
    ”Reading this article gave me a sad empty hollow feeling.’

    Me also.

  11. It made me sick when I read that this piece of the proverbial is involved in the World post, it has made it a sham outfit before it started. Be prepared to hear all about Ariel Sharon’s life in the world post, with added comments by the resident warmonger Bliar.

    I despair at the prospect of seeing links to this new pro zionist outfit.

  12. The editor of ‘Countrylife’ on Radio 4 just now said that ‘fracking is to be preferred to windturbines, what a prat. It seems that prats run the country.’

    Total, a french owned empire who has just now bought into Quadrilla, is prohibited from fracking in their own country, but are well up for drilling into British shalerock.

  13. Had a good wee afternoon oot on the Mountainbike…aint it a Mission to clean the things down afterwards…..

    Heading out to watch Barcelona do their magic!!!!…Messi is back.

    it’s always good to see soldiers Speak up…. Especially at a time when new carnage ( Crimes) are being planned… Poor, Poor Falluja….Not Again….PLEASE

    http://stopwar.org.uk/news/what-we-are-not-being-told-about-falluja-today-by-the-ex-us-marine-who-helped-destroy-it-in-2004#.UtGOFNJ_uqj

  14. Remember Barcelona’s affiliations Brian. Craig said this in 2009
    ‘Uzbekistan is perhaps the most brutal dictatorship in the world, but Barcelona receive $10 million a year to promote the Karimov regime and the propaganda “Show club” owned by the President’s daughter.’
    http://pitchinvasion.net/blog/2009/03/15/bunyodkor-barcelona-and-the-dictators-daughter/

    Agree on the fracking free for all. Total are going to ‘invest’ in UK shale gas, ie rip the guts out of the countryside. Caroline Lucas goes to court this month for her Balcombe protest.

    French oil giant Total to invest in UK shale gas
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25695813

    An ex energy minister John Hayes misreported a U of Durham report on ground water contamination. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9757086/Minister-misleads-over-fracking.html

    He is the MP for South Holland and The Deepings where RAF Holbeach is located.
    See what goes on at Holbeach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Holbeach

    He was replaced by the pro fracker Fallon and is now an ‘adviser’ to the PM in the Cabinet Office. So he is in the Letwin and Maude team.

    He voted strongly for the Iraq War and is a CFoI. Went to Israel in 2000. http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=10265

  15. Ahh Mary, i remember reading that..kinda forgot about it though… it was before i got caught up in the way they started playing their football…the beautiful game…old street footballers like myself find it a joy to watch…( most of the Time ) amazing skills… i’ll look into it all again soon…Cheers for link

    This coming in from several sources –

    Fema Region 3 has been activated, National Guard has been called out as the area has been declared a state of emergency.

    All water in the area has been contaminated with the chemical (4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol), a chemical used in the coal industry. This chemical will make a person sick but it is not deadly unless ingested in huge quantity.

    The incident occurred Thursday on the Elk River in Charleston, West Virginia’s capital and largest city, upriver from the eastern U.S. state’s largest water treatment plant.

    All stores have been depleted of bottled water, situation has become desperate as citizens are now fighting over resources.

    Over 300,000 are affected in a 9 county area.

    http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2014/01/fema-region-3-has-been-activated-emergency-situation-breaking-in-west-virginia-civil-unrest-simmering-2587396.html

  16. All my life I’ve heard of the advantages of “strong government” and “leadership”. Our world is boiling away, and our “strong leadership” encourage and propagandise for the pumping of poisons into the subterranean water and the fracturing of the ground, so that yet more gas can be extracted and burnt, and the atmosphere can boil away even faster.

  17. Money money money! Happy happy happy!

    Come and play our new board game Survival of the Thickest; pit your skill and judgement against your opponents to see who can achieve the biggest pile of MONEY before making your environment incapable of supporting civilisation. Is it better to extract and burn it faster for quicker profits? Or can you overtake your opponents if conservation extends the time scale a bit? Exactly when will the game end? Hours of fun for elite policy makers and their families everywhere.

  18. A bit of good(ish) news: ipnas (injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance) have been defeated in the House of Lords. Here’s what they would have done:

    “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”

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/06/law-to-stop-eveyone-everything

    I regard this as ‘goodish’ rather than ‘good’ news because a decent House of Commons would never have submitted such legislation; it’s ridiculous that we need ‘Lords’ to protect us from our MPs legislation. In a way, I wish it had been passed; we could all have had great fun taking out ipnas against political candidates threatening to engage in canvassing before elections.

  19. Absolutely agree Clark, this bill should have never been proposed by Norman Baker. he should be ostracised from the House, for having even thought it out.

    How about an ‘instant dismissal without pay if you shout at each other in Parliament Bill’?

  20. @Squonk

    I found the video interesting but unfortunately Applebum, like all the geeks from 303c vids I have seen, has a misplaced faith in corporations. They peddle the “bad nsa screwing with our lovely technology corporations” type of nonsense.

    Maybe all these revelations are so behind the technology curve that their being known is no real problem and the current ‘debate’ (ha!) is simply normalising the notion of total surveillance.

  21. Are you aware of the EU’s Indect project? Total surveillance and behavioural analysis research – with a web site.

    The research conducted may appear terrifying but don’t worry because they have an ethics commitee.

    http://www.indect-project.eu/

  22. Mary,

    More on the Elk River chemical spill
    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/chemical-guesswork-in-west-virginia/

    State of Emergency

    On Thursday, operators at a chemical storage facility located near the banks of West Virginia’s Elk River discovered a leak. Specifically they discovered that a special “detergent” used for washing coal had overflowed its holding area and washed right into the nearby river. By today, more than 200,000 people in the state had been told that their tap water could no longer be guaranteed safe.

    The owner of the storage facility, Freedom Industries, said that it had not yet determined how much of the compound had seeped into the river. And state regulators and water experts said, equally frankly, that they weren’t really sure what to expect from the spill. “This is the first I’ve heard of this chemical,” the director of the West Virginia Water Institute told Salon.

    Really, I thought? Well, how exotic could it be? I got my first sense of that in a conversation with a government toxicologist, who said: “Interestingly, and unusually, there is very little information on the compound spilled in West Virginia.”

    More at http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/chemical-guesswork-in-west-virginia/

    Mary, I’d be wary of quoting beforeitsnews as it is a “Sorcha Fall” site. Mixes fact and fiction (with the emphasis on fiction) intentionally to confuse.

    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sorcha_Faal
    http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_autor_booth.htm
    http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=194595

    David Booth is widely reported as being CIA. That might be dis-info. Others suggest possible Israeli connections. One of the earliest David Booth/Sorcha Faal articles was entitled “Dirty, Filthy Christians”.

  23. O/T but the New Yorker is cited as one of the main US propaganda outlets to peddle racist, imperialist attitudes about Africa.

    I found this video very informative about the machinations of the west (mainly US/UK/France/Israel) commits genicide whilst stealing African resources. It names governments, politcians, busineeses, mercenaries and propaganda. He discusses the holocaust industry.

    I am going to find out more about the journalist: Keith Harmon Snow. Anyone already know about this stuff? How reliable is KHS? He says 10 million dead in Congo.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF0Z_OEkuuE

  24. Phil,

    On average squonk.tk gets between 100 and 200 unique IP address visits per day. There’s a lot more reading than posting.

    Thanks to all the posters for keeping the site worth reading and if anyone fancies de-lurking, feel free to say hello 🙂

  25. Excellent Squonk, that is a very respectable. I like that you are transparent about your counts too.

  26. Nothing to see…..eat lotsa fish, especially mussels lobster and crab….oh don’t forget Ahi tuna.


    I have been reading about what exactly happened and is still happening in Fukushima and have some more news to share. It seems that in response to the nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011 the US and Canadian governments decided to raise the safe radiation levels, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made the following changes to their “safe radiation levels”:

    “A nearly 1000-fold increase for exposure to strontium-90;

    A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for exposure to iodine-131; and

    An almost 25,000 rise for exposure to radioactive nickel-63.

    The new radiation guidelines would also allow long-term cleanup thresholds thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever judged safe in the past.” http://bit.ly/1c19cXz

    Then the EPA claims that suddenly 8 out of 18 radiation monitors in Oregon, Washington, and California are not functioning properly and are being looked into. Saying the rest of the monitors are showing normal levels. http://bloom.bg/KKy4fS

    The worst is the EPA is supposed to be there to protect the environment and us, humans, and when the tough questions start being asked of them…..

    “EPA officials, however, refused to answer questions or make staff members available to explain the exact location and number of monitors, or the levels of radiation, if any, being recorded at existing monitors in California.” http://bit.ly/1ewv5Re

    Even more shockingly, the above link actually reports that both the Soviets and the Americans covered up more than 30 nuclear “events” between 1957 and 1985, more than 1 every year! Why? To keep the nuclear industry from getting shut down, to make some wealthy people even richer. This is pretty sick stuff.

    “Officials at UC Berkeley have tested rain water that turned out to be 181 times the limit for drinking water. This is happening at the same time that our corporate media is telling the sheeple that there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

    In the graph below, published by UC Berkeley, Iodine-131 peaked at 20.1 becquerels per liter, a measure of radioactivity, on the roof of Etcheverry Hall during heavy rains a week ago. The federal maximum level of iodine-131 allowed in drinking water is 0.111 becquerels per liter,” coupmedia.org/terror-threats/us-nuclear-radiation-exposure-acceptable-levels-raised-0404

    Government covering up the #radiation threat from #Fukushima:http://www.bubblews.com/news/1986177-government-covering-up-the-radiation-threat-from-fukushima

  27. Eh up , Phil, good to hear you squeak, did you have have a rough enough slide into the new year?….:) 2014 seems to be a ‘Met policeyear’ of promises for those who habituate the capital, watch out for them crims.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/exclusive-scotland-yards-rotten-core-police-failed-to-address-endemic-corruption-9050224.html

    If that was 2003, what sort of gangsterdom is reigning now and have they got a political party persuasion? one wonders.

  28. French Fox in African Hen House
    By Finian Cunningham

    January 11, 2014

    The French finally got what they wanted in the restive Central African Republic – regime change.

    Interim President Michel Djotodia and his Prime Minister Nicolas Tiengaye have resigned and the former French colony is now set to form a new government under the watchful eye of Paris.

    Western media portray French conduct in the Central African Republic (CAR) as a benevolent force. “We are there to save lives,” said French President Francois Hollande recently.

    This is like lauding a fox in a hen house. The reality is that violence and suffering have largely stemmed as a direct result of illegal French interference in that African country.

    /..

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37355.htm

    This journalist is a truthful man who writes as he finds. He is resident in Africa.

  29. Hello Nevermind, hope you are well mate. Congratulations with the baby thing.

    That report is astounding if not totally surprising. Although it acknowledges organised crime can infiltrate Scotland Yard “at will” it then recommends covering up the corruption!

    So yes here in London we are all very much looking forward to having our seditious eyeballs displaced by the Boris water cannon.

  30. Squonk I think it was Brian with the ‘beforeitsnews’ link but thanks for the tip.

    Phil I have followed Keith Harmon Snow on Dissident Voice for several years. He is very knowledgeable on African events, the connections and the politics. His articles are extremely long.

    He blogs on Black Agenda Report
    http://blackagendareport.com/?q=blog/144

  31. Nevermind January 12, 2014 at 7:34 pm
    “…have they got a political party persuasion? one wonders.”

    I assume not. But then I would say that. I can imagine bent fascist coppers, like all fascist coppers, being perfectly comfortable in the company of any of the neo liberal/fascist Westminster gangs. Party choice is purely career progression. For example there’s that nice, pro-pot, gay fascist who runs for mayor on the fascist Liberal party ticket.

    I might be over egging the fascist thing. Maybe not. After all the Police do kill and attack with impunity.

  32. Thanks Mary. I have subscribed to his blog. I will read some later.

    The video is astounding. It explains the genocides in Africa better than anything else I have seen. If you have a vague notion that western companies and government are killing Africans for resources using proxies, NGOs and mercanaries but have never been satisfied with the details available then watch the video. It lays out the full cycle (including the racist propaganda that sells these interventions to us). I had no idea that Mossad put Mugabe into power! An astounding claim. I must read him to find references that are absent from a video.

  33. Mary

    Thanks for the NHS link…ALL of the girls amongst my friends, and some dudes…Work in the NHS…Morale is at a low ebb…think i’ll repost just a snippit from that link…lest it catches someones eye 🙂

    In the past two years, £11bn worth of our NHS has been put up for sale, while 35,000 staff have been axed, including 5,600 nurses. Half of our 600 ambulance stations are earmarked for closure. One-third of NHS walk-in centres have been closed and 10% of A&E units have been shut. Waiting lists for operations are at their longest in years as hospitals are consumed by the crisis in A&E.

    The morale of the NHS family is at rock bottom. Their pay has been frozen for two years under the coalition, and they have been forced to accept a major downgrading of their pension benefits. Freezing and squeezing pay is heaping financial misery on more than one million NHS workers.

    Thanks also for the Finian Cunningham info…he writes for Global research often, i like the dude.

    Squonkie ( stealing that from Ben )…wonder if Any of Ison will turn up as a meteor shower…on now for the next couple of days… Que effin cloud cover.

  34. Co So Thatcher’s dream has come true then.

    Would any of the ex-council houses be owned by this couple who say they own 1,000 houses and intend to evict all tenants who are on housing benefit? What a revolting show of greed.

    Buy-to-let tycoon evicts tenants on benefits in favour of Eastern Europeans – because ‘they are better at paying rent’
    Fergus Wilson has sent eviction notices to 200 tenants on housing benefit
    He said Eastern Europeans less likely to default on rent than Britons
    Mr Wilson said many other private landlords had taken the same decision
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2534331/Landlord-1-000-homes-evicts-tenants-benefits-He-claims-Eastern-Europeans-better-paying-rent.html

  35. brian; what’s your take on NHS? Is it failing? Why? Is it the direct payments to physicians to end-run around the bureaucracy, the lack of electronic efficiencies, or what?

  36. Ben I know you were addressing Brian but could I add my comments.

    It’s the privatisation of OUR NHS by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition currently in power. They brought in the Health and Social Care Act last year which allows private companies to tender for NHS contracts. The NHS was founded post WW2 to provide medical treatment free of charge at the point of need.

    Tories’ hidden privatisation plan revealed
    25 Feb 2013
    The massive step towards full privatisation of the NHS is being made in regulations sneaked out earlier this month exposed by the Daily Mirror
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-tories-hidden-privatisation-plan-1729681

    Here is a run down of how the plan to privatise the NHS started and the process to date. It really began in the time of Thatcher, who got Eindhoven of the Rand Corporation over from the US to lay out the framework. The plan came to fruition with Thatcher’s other acolyte, Cameron, putting the final nails in the NHS coffin.

    In this lecture, based on the book The Plot Against the NHS, co-author Colin Leys attempts to set the record straight on plans for a new healthcare market. He argues that the healthcare reforms proposed by the Coalition are not as radical as they seem, but are part of a plot to dismantle the NHS born under Blair
    http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/colin-leys/plot-against-nhs

    Further
    http://grahamscambler.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/the-assault-on-our-nhs/
    and another
    http://blog.plain-sense.co.uk/2013/03/the-appalling-consequences-of-nhs.html

    I understand that the American medical system leads to 2 million personal bankruptcies every year. That is an astounding figure.

    Medical Bills Are the Biggest Cause of US Bankruptcies: Study
    http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148

    Hope this helps Ben. Best wishes. Did you know Craig is back?

  37. Ben, my dad was a NHS administrator, though he retired decades ago. His complaint was that the NHS was used as a political football. “As soon as I have my department running smoothly and efficiently, the politicians reorganise everything and I have to start again. I’ve done that three times so far”…

    I wouldn’t say that the NHS is failing. You still get treatment… eventually. A load of bureaucracy seems to have been inflicted by ‘middle management’. My local general practice surgery is now headed by a ‘practice manager’, and there seem to be a load of rules about what constitutes “best practice”.

    Morale among staff seems to have been low for over ten years. There’s far too much pressure, many staff are overworked and have little control over their hours and conditions. Privatisation of health service infrastructure has been happening for a couple of decades, so cleaners, maintenance staff etc work for sub-contracted private companies, whereas in my dad’s day everyone was on the same team.

    There’s what they call the ‘postcode lottery’. Provision of specific services varies depending upon the budget decisions made by the Health Area you happen to live in. So I can’t get psychotherapy; my Health Area only offers cognitive behavioural therapy. But if I lived two miles down the road psychotherapy would be available.

  38. Clark

    Your dad must have been tearing his hair out sometimes, dealing with all that crap

    “Privatisation also leads to the build-up of a huge bureau­cracy of people whose job is to calculate and collect charges, distribute fees and compete with other companies to promote the commercial success of their own”.

    Dr Willie Wilson,

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/letters/a-no-vote-may-well-lead-to-privatisation-of-the-nhs-in-scotland.21826511

    Ben

    Mary covered that point very well ( cheers Mary )…and thanks Clark too for the personal take on admin strife….but also one of the Very worrying things going on Cloak n dagger style is the consequences of the TTIP….A major part of the TTIP is harmonisation between EU and US regulation, . the UK Health and Social Care Act has also been prepared – to harmonise the UK with the US health system…Scotland May be able to save it’s NHS through independence….Maybe… here’s an article a friend pointed me to in early December …Worrying Stuff –

    The TTIP ensures that the Health and Social Care Act has influence beyond UK borders. It gives the act international legal backing and sets the whole shift to privatisation in stone because once it is made law, it will be irreversible. Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) laws, fundamentals of the agreement, allow corporations legal protection for their profits regardless of patient care performance, with the power to sue any public sector organisation or government that threatens their interest.

    Once these ISDS tools are in place, lucrative contracts will be underwritten, even where a private provider is failing patients and the CCG wants a contract cancelled. In this case, the provider will be able to sue a CCG for future loss of earnings, thanks to the agreement, causing the loss of vast sums of taxpayer money on legal and administrative costs.

    Even more worrying is that, once the TTIP is enacted, repealing the Health and Social Care Act in the UK will become almost impossible. As Kaucher explains: “Even if outcomes of the NHS changes are disastrous, ISDS will effectively disallow any attempts by any future UK government to reverse the changes.”

    “It means liberating the NHS budget to hand it over to the corporate sector; and among those companies waiting like vultures around a dying animal are the very same companies that spent a million dollars a day in the States lobbying against Obama’s healthcare reforms.”

    The public has the democratic right to contest the agreement, and fight for a health service that protects them. But how can they when MEPs do nothing to inform opinion or gather support back home? The NHS is in a very precarious position. It seems that soon, with the help of Brussels, its fate will be sealed.

    http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/12/how-eu-making-nhs-privatisation-permanent

  39. Phil, January 12 at 3:42 pm:

    “I found the video interesting but unfortunately Applebum, like all the geeks from 303c vids I have seen, has a misplaced faith in corporations.”

    Applebaum is an advocate for software freedom, and the Free Software community is politically diverse. Richard Stallman is one of the more Left-leaning, whereas Eric Raymond is a notoriously Rightish libertarian.

    I didn’t take Applebaum’s comments as showing faith in corporations. He doesn’t seem to be expecting corporations to behave in morally good ways.

    I think my own attitude is similar. I regard corporations as essentially amoral rather than immoral. A corporation’s reason for existence is to make profit, which is of itself amoral, neither morally good nor bad; in fact, an issue not related to morality.

    We expect governments to behave morally; that’s the purpose of democracy. Part of a government’s job is to force essentially amoral entities like corporations to behave within morally acceptable limits. But in this case (and many others) a US government department, the NSA, is encouraging immoral behaviour by corporations.

    That’s obviously bad from a Left-wing perspective, but it’s bad from the perspective of the Right, too. The Right tend to stress liberty and privacy among their values, and from that perspective the NSA interference is corrupting commercial activity and thus making commercial products less attractive on the market. Because the NSA have more influence over US companies, it’s US products that get corrupted most by NSA influence, and in a global market that’s bad for US competitiveness. From a Rightish perspective, the NSA are tainting commercial activity, and you know how much the Right hate government interference in the market.

    Applebaum’s argument thus holds appeal for both Left and Right, and that’s a good thing because too many are not concerned enough, all across the political spectrum.

  40. Alan Little did a report from Paris tonight on the Hollande mistress scandal and came out with some real laugh-out-loud gems ~ unintentionally. At pains to explain why the French media are more forgiving of their politicians telling lies to hide their romantic affairs (ie, cheating on their wives/partners) or simply don’t report them, Little explained that many if not most of the senior politicians, newspaper editors,top business people, opinion leaders etc (the establishment) all attended the same prestige private academies and top universities. Therefore they knew one another from quite a young age and weren’t going to squeal on a fellow chum by spilling the beans and betray the code just because he’d been caught shagging somebody not his wife or partner.

    The supremely funny bit was when Little was strolling by the elegant facade of a university in Paris and saying (this is the gist) “Yes, most of the top politicians and editors in France were groomed from an early age to aspire to positions of power by attending the right schools and universities such as this one, and therefore they grew up together, were educated together, knew each other …” etc etc.

    But as he was giving this spiel, I think I detected a shadow of unease or even slight panic flicker across Alan’s brow as he realised he was giving a precise description of quite another country’s method of educating and grooming and choosing its future leaders. I think privately he must have been thinking, “Christ, I’m supposed to be holding the corrupt French system up to censure and ridicule and it’s so feckin obvious that I’m describing our own … ooohhh shit and corruption.”

    Gave me my best chuckle of the evening.

  41. Thanks Someone. Very true. They are lining up like vultures.

    ~~~

    That comment above about Alan Little’s report on Monsieur Hollande’s activities was copied from the Medialens message board.

    What Little said is so true of this country too. Think of Eton and other public schools and Oxford and Cambridge. I just looked at the list of alumni of St Johns, Oxford where B.Liar read Jurisprudence (that’s funny) to see who else was there.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alumni_of_St_John's_College,_Oxford

    B.Liar went to Fettes where Falconer, later his Lord Chancellor, also attended.

Comments are closed.