POINTS OF LIGHT

Latest chapter in the Snowden-NSA story involves an encrypted email service, Lavabit, run by Ladar Levison, and reportedly used by Edward Snowden. Levison completely shut-down the service rather than participate in what he described as "crimes against the American people". See a full report in The Guardian newspaper. A second e-mail service, Silent Circle, has since also shut down.
(Hat-tip to Ganga Seva Nidhi for the photograph.)


A commenter (myguardian001) to The Guardian article wrote:

On a positive ... this protest/battle for our privacy, in the long run this will turn out to be a good thing for the cause. Everyone on this comments section already is aware of the implication of government surveillance ... it's the majority who go about their business either not caring or not worried enough that we need engaged.
There's now a further 350,000* people who (if not already concerned about government intrusion into their privacy) will be made more aware of whats going on, and hopefully a good proportion will take a more active part for change. (Me: * meaning Lavabit's clients).

Hopefully more companies make a stand, and more people are sucked into the debate ... we can't really depend on the traditional media outlets to spread the word (seems like they've all been gagged)..................Lose some battles, win the war ... patience, it will happen ... I hope.

Me too.

"Points of light" in the courage of Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, have come into view through the darkness, one after another, though quite slowly. The pace seems to be quickening now. I hope that soon more and more points of light will shine, to join those already shimmering and form a massive searchlight to cut through the gloom, shed light on, and expand the much-needed debate on this very important issue of our time .

Glenn Greenwald finished his piece HERE thus: "There will undoubtedly be more acts inspired by Snowden's initial choice to unravel his own life to make the world aware of what the US government has been doing in the dark."

And borrowing, again, another point made by a commenter at The Guardian
(Lidblownoff)

There are critical moments in history - when the mob hunted down Ceaucescu in Romania, when the Germans turned a blind eye to grim reality, when the Resistance in France took enormous risks, when each one of us gets the chance to demonstrate which side of the line we are willing to live on.
So the govt can force you to collaborate and violate the privacy of your customers thereby damaging the reputation of your business OR
if you refuse, then you can give up your business.
With regard to ordinary people, we are on notice that all our communication--phone, email, postal mail, and conversations--are now subject to govt surveillance.

Last 2 verses of a poem by W. H. Auden titled September 1 1939. I've probably quoted these before, but they continue to remain so very apt.

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages;
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

CRIMES

THAT WAS NOT A CRIME - THIS IS:

AND THIS:

AND THIS:

(Post on Bradley Manning from June this year: Pour Encourager Les Autres)

"Pour encourager les autres"? ~ Bradley Manning

One of this week's highlighted news stories is the trial of Bradley Manning. Sadly, I'm not optimistic of any lenient verdict. As I've commented in the past, it's a sad old world where, when the military kill innocents as collateral damage shoulders are shrugged, but when a guy with high ideals crosses the line he is punished in such an excessive way.

Yesterday at Common Dreams: Bradley Manning Trial Begins: A 'Danger Zone' for Civil Liberties
Snips:

Law professor Marjorie Cohn, describing The Uncommon Courage of Bradley Manning, wrote:

When he was 22 years old, Pfc. Bradley Manning gave classified documents to WikiLeaks. They included the “Collateral Murder” video, which depicts U.S. forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and wounding two children.

“I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan,” Bradley told the military tribunal during his guilty plea proceeding. “It might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day.”


Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who taught constitutional law to President Barack Obama told the Guardian that the trial, and Manning's most serious charge of 'aiding the enemy,' could hold a dangerous precedent:

Charging any individual with the extremely grave offense of 'aiding the enemy' on the basis of nothing beyond the fact that the individual posted leaked information on the web and thereby 'knowingly gave intelligence information' to whoever could gain access to it there, does indeed seem to break dangerous new ground.

"The case is a sledgehammer," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Huffington Post last week. "It is there to try and terrorize anyone else into being a force for the media, by trying to terrorize this young man."

This is shaping up to be a classic case where "pour encourager les autres" applies. It's a phrase I first learned when I sat in on employment tribunals in my old UK civil service job. The chairman would occasionally use it when commenting on some particularly harsh-seeming dismissal doled out by an employer determined to stamp out certain behaviour among his workforce. Chairmen were not usually in favour of such arbitrary dealings, so it would be said in decidedly cynical tone.

The French phrase is sometimes used in the media whenever official punishment for an act seems to be out of proportion to the act itself, or where the punishment has an element of political bias to it - in order to encourager les autres (the others) to shut up and keep their heads down.

The phrase's origin is interesting: it's a a quote from Voltaire's 'Candide': in full ~ "dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres" (in this country, it is good, from time to time, to kill an admiral, to encourage the others), and refers indirectly to the unfortunate fate of Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1756 at the outbreak of the Seven Years' War.

Byng was sent to relieve Minorca from French assault, the island being as valuable at the time as Gibraltar. A French fleet lay around the island, and it was Byng's job to seek battle and smash through; but when the time came his attack was half-hearted, and Byng soon withdrew to Gibraltar. Minorca fell, the Admiralty were appalled, and Byng was hauled back to England for court-martial. The court found that he "did not do his utmost to take, seize, and destroy the ships of the French king, which it was his duty to have engaged". He was convicted of negligence.

The verdict did not actually state that he was to be punished in order to encourage other admirals to fight harder, and indeed clemency was recommended, but when Byng was executed - by firing squad, on the deck of HMS Monarch as it lay in Portsmouth harbour - the message seemed clear enough. Britain's navy distinguished itself during the rest of the war, although whether this was because of Byng or simply because it was a very good navy is unrecorded by history.

The phrase 'pour encourager les autres' has subsequently entered the language.

(SEE HERE)

ETCETERA.........

Remember a few weeks ago I posted an old photograph from my husband's vintage collection and asked if anyone recognised the couple, or either of them, in the photo? Here's a link to the January post. Someone has solved the mystery. The original photograph is shown again below, and a cutting from husband's Flickr page. Link to Flickr page where there's another photograph and more detail among comments.

The male is Warner Oland. He played Charlie Chan in the movies in the 1930's. The female (from AskArt):
Born in Massachusetts on May 12, 1870. Edith Shearn moved to Los Angeles in 1910 and opened a studio in Hollywood in 1922. She married actor Warner Oland who is best remembered for his portrayal of Charlie Chan in the movies. Mrs. Oland remained in Hollywood until her death on May 14, 1968.

Astrologer Eric Francis wrote an excellent piece in 2011 (LINK) on Bradley Manning and his natal chart. (Manning is US Army private who stands accused of leaking the "Collateral Murder" video and State Department cables to Wikileaks.

There's a transcript at Common Dreams of Private Manning's statement this week at a providence inquiry for his formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications for lesser included offenses. He pleaded not guilty to 12 other specifications. The transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at the Article 39(a) session of United States v. Pfc. Bradley Manning on February 28, 2013 at Fort Meade, MD, USA.




I received this in a forwarded e-mail, thought it worth saving:

Photograph below was taken around 9 years ago when I was in Oklahoma on vacation, before husband and I were married.
We had stopped to read this sign on Highway 81, just over the Red River in Texas. I was amazed to see bullet holes all over the steel sign. Locals had obviously been using it for target practice. The sign might well have been replaced by now - and shot at all over again - I guess.


The text reads:

Highways Paved With Gold - From the immemorial man has searched for a land where streets were paved with gold. As early as the 16th Century he was in Texas, lured by Indian reports of "Seven Cities of Gold." They never were found. But they provided the basis for legends of untold riches--stories still spun by some Texans. Surprisingly, perhaps, many of the "tall tales" are more fact than fiction. For instance, both this section of U.S. Highway 81 and a portion of adjacent U.S. Highway 287 are actually paved with gold! The story began in 1936 when the Texas Highway Department was paving the two highways here in Montague County. Sand for the concrete was taken from a nearby pit, opened three years earlier. The grains glistened with such intensity as they were mixed that a closer examination seemed prudent. So a small supply was sent to a Fort Worth laboratory for assay. Back came the report: the sand contained gold. The news sent the owner of the pit in feverish search of the mother lode. But in vain. Top assays on his extensive "soundings" came to no more than 54 cents per ton of ore. His ardor was cooled further when he learned the gold was not free but deeply imbedded in the sand. Disheartened, he settled back into routine sand production. From his pit, however, eventually came $250,000 in gold--all part of the sand. It has been reckoned that as much as $31,000 is distributed along 39 miles of roadway. Some $25,000 in U.S. Highway 81 and $6,000 in U.S. Highway 287. The remainder has gone into other construction in the region, including numerous buildings in which concrete has been used. So it is that today's motorist has discovered the highways paved with gold and the "golden" cities which his predecessors sought in vain. (1963)

Which brand of supermarket cheddar should you reach for when you want something affordable? That was the question asked in an article recently at HuffPo HERE. I've complained often about the quality of cheese available in the USA - or at least in the part of the USA where I live. I dare say that people in New York and environs, or Los Angeles, or cheese centre Wisconsin have better choices. Supermarket Feta is good here - that's the extent of it though. We visit Sam's (sorry to the purists) mainly to buy Black Diamond premium vintage Canadian Cheddar, the only cheese I've found that comes anywhere near what I was used to eating in England. England isn't the sophisticate's idea of a cheese-making Mecca - that'd be France or Italy; but good no-nonsense, tasty, crumbly or smooth, sharp or mild - English varieties such as Cheddar, Leicester, Stilton (blue & white), Wensleydale, Cheshire, Lancashire, etc etc. are the best for me.

In Yorkshire we used to enjoy a piece of cheese with our apple pie - straight apple pie mind, none of yer cloves or other spicy additives, and not melted cheese, and no ice cream required!

Mustn't forget Welsh Rarebit (yum!) - it's the Brit open equivalent of America's toasted cheese sandwich. Mouth-wateringly wonderful it was - everyone has their "secret" special ingredient: beer, mustard, bacon, Worcestershire sauce, herbs......

When eating out, even in modest restaurants and cafes, years ago, there was always on the desert menu an option of "cheese and biscuits" for those who didn't sport a sweet tooth. Biscuits in this context are not the American biscuit, but more like American crackers. "Cream crackers" were the most common accompaniment to cheese in Britain in everyday restaurants, but in upper class places you'd be offered "the cheese board" with a variety of cheeses and different types of cracker, maybe even a little fruit, grapes, berries, an apple. This might all still go on, and in the USA too for all I know, but in my own limited experience, I haven't seen cheese and biscuits, or the US equivalent, on any menu anywhere we've eaten out here, or in the UK for many years.




Dr. Seuss was born today, 2 March in 1904:



"Teeth are always in style"
(Dr. Seuss)