Let’s put aside for the moment the immediate furore over Boris Johnson’s future and the further flood of Downing Street festivity stories which may not be finished yet. We need to ask the question that must, given what has prevailed in our lives for the past two years, be most serious. How on earth did we get to a point where events and decisions which would once have been regarded as commonplace, even virtuous – an employer expressing good wishes to staff at a party, a child embracing elderly grandparents, a relative making regular visits to a dying hospital patient – became illegal?
Archiv: welcome to the club
Fast 20 Prozent der bayerischen Polizisten sind nicht geimpft
https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/fast-20-prozent-der-bayerischen-polizisten-nicht-geimpft,SqNM1r3
‚I was physically and mentally under siege‘: Daniel Craig admits he ‚locked himself in and closed curtains‘ while struggling to cope with James Bond fame
However, Bond producer Barbara Broccoli said she was determined to hire him: ‚I always thought whenever he was on the screen you could not watch anyone else.
„Pegasus-Projekt“: Macron im Visier
In der Liste von Telefondaten, die Journalisten im Rahmen des „Pegasus-Projekts“ einsehen konnten, finden sich Nummern mehrerer hochrangiger Politiker in Europa. Sie waren den Recherchen zufolge mögliche Ausspäh-Ziele, die von Kunden der israelischen Spionagefirma NSO ins Visier genommen wurden. Mit der NSO-Software „Pegasus“ können Mobiltelefone unbemerkt ausgespäht und etwa als Wanze missbraucht werden.
Israelis Don’t Care if the State Is Spying on Them
The Irgun’s intelligence unit, known as Delek, collected information based on gossip with equal enthusiasm. A 1945 file, for example, contains details about a 50-year-old Herzliya man whose wife was said to be cheating on him with Jews and Englishmen alike. The source of the item elaborates: “He doesn’t like his youngest son because it’s whispered in Herzliya that he looks like a certain Englishman who used to court his wife.” That’s the sort of intelligence, among others, that our excellent boys came up with.
Police in England ‚using Covid lockdown rules to halt any protests‘
Analysis by Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring, reveals there have been at least nine high-profile instances of police using Covid regulations against demonstrators, including two asylum seekers protesting outside Napier barracks in Folkestone, Kent and a woman fined £500 for organising a protest after the death of a man released from police custody in Cardiff.
The human rights group Liberty said the police were too often indiscriminately using Covid rules to disperse responsible, low-risk protests, arrest people and issue extortionate fixed penalty notices to organisers regardless of the risk to public health.
Lockdown in Deutschland und Israel: Am Ende sind wir alle Schafe
Ich war enttäuscht darüber, dass die deutsche Regierung, die bis dato vernünftiger als die israelische mit ihrem Hang zum Lockdown erschienen war, schließlich einknickte und sich am Ende doch für einen harten Lockdown wie in Israel entschied. Wenigstens war der Flughafen noch offen und es gab keine Maskenpflicht im Freien. Trotzdem war ich ernüchtert, festzustellen, dass ich fälschlicherweise angenommen hatte, dass die Deutschen, nach allem, was sie durchgemacht hatten, den enormen Wert individueller Rechte gelernt und verinnerlicht hätten.
Stattdessen wartete die deutsche Regierung nur auf die gesetzliche Erlaubnis, Grundrechte zu entziehen.
Ireland. Just had a 16 Billion Euro COVID bill, that it gets 1.5 back from. Waits patiently for the EMA to approve its vaccines. No sign of the EMA approving Oxford any time soon. 2009 – gets another Lisbon ref, whilst being threatened with perdition. „Independence“
Police Spying on Israelis Online via Secret Backdoor
“This system allows authorities to follow everything someone does online, and even permits them to manipulate the website these users visit,” said ethical hacker Noam Rotem, from the CyberCyber podcast. “This system allows tracking of each and every citizen or resident of Israel. But it’s not just that; the system is built in such a way that it can also follow intentions or motivations, and not just specific people. For example, it can track everyone who visited the website of the protest movement against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and can even block the real website and change what people are seeing,” Rotem said.
So the Pfizer vaccine is expected to be up to seven times more expensive than the Oxford one, reports the Times.
Welcome to profit first, morals later America.
Tables Turned: Biden Now Distrusts Intelligence Chief .
Ned Price, a former CIA analyst who served as a senior director on the Obama administration’s National Security Council staff and is not involved in the Biden campaign, offered another explanation. In an interview with RCP, Price said the most recent assessment claiming that China wants Biden to win isn’t convincing because it relies on open-source public comments from Chinese officials, not more penetrating intelligence.
Inside NSO, Israel’s billion-dollar spyware giant
(19.08.2020)
In an age of ubiquitous technology and strong encryption, such “lawful hacking” has emerged as a powerful tool for public safety when law enforcement needs access to data. NSO insists that the vast majority of its customers are European democracies, although since it doesn’t release client lists and the countries themselves remain silent, that has never been verified.
With Israel’s Encouragement, NSO Sold Spyware to UAE and Other Gulf States
The Israeli company has signed contracts with Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
CIA ‘Obsessed’ With Former UK Envoy Who Will Testify in Spying-on-Assange Case
The former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange says he was the “top target” of the 24/7 surveillance of Assange at Ecuador’s embassy in London by the Spanish security company UC Global, which, according to press reports and court documents, shared the surveillance with the CIA.
Craig Murray said he has been contacted by an attorney in the spying case on Assange and that he will be going to Madrid to testify. The founder of UC Global, David Morales, was arrested over the surveillance (including privileged Assange-lawyer conversations) and is on trial.
Murray told former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in an email, shared with Consortium News with Murray’s permission, that the CIA was “obsessed” with him.
Misstrauensvotum gegen Regierung – Demos in Bulgarien: „Staat wie Schweinestall“
Unbeachtet bleiben positive Entwicklungen wie etwa die Aufnahme Bulgariens in den EU-Wechselmechanismus II am 10. Juli, der als das „Wartezimmer“ für den Euro gilt. Kein Lob gibt es auch für die Finanzdisziplin des ärmsten EU-Staates.
Refugees From the Zionist Left: How the Jewish Vote for Arab Party Spiked in Israel’s Election
Meital, 31, also from Tel Aviv, had been a lifelong Likud voter. But this week, she voted for the Joint List. “I voted Likud thinking that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is a leader with experience who can be relied on. I didn’t see anyone who could replace him,” she says. “But recently I started thinking about it differently – not to vote according to the question of who would be prime minister, but who would best reflect my values and my desire for a more tolerant society.”
Experts warn democracies facing autocracy: Protect your institutions
Rachel Maddow looks at what has turned out to be prescient advice from Masha Gessen and Timothy Snyder about the necessity of institutions in preserving democracy, and the necessity of engaged citizens in protecting those institutions from a threatening autocracy like the Donald Trump presidency.
I’ve been resisting the idea that the Iowa debacle was driven by malice, result-manipulation and corruption rather than ineptitude and stupidity — I just hadn’t seen convincing evidence of deliberate fraud — but I’m starting to change my mind:
https://twitter.com/bagniewski/status/1224884476213387265
Total Surveillance Is Not What America Signed Up For
The largest such file known to have been examined by journalists, it reveals more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans across several major cities.
By analyzing these pings, our journalists were able to track the movements of President Trump’s Secret Service guards and of senior Pentagon officials. They could follow protesters to their homes and stalk high-school students across Los Angeles. In most cases, it was child’s play for them to connect a supposedly anonymous data trail to a name and an address — to a real live human being.