I knew it was only a matter of time, after opening this
web portal, that the world would be breaking down my
door, looking to hide whistleblowers.
It only took a Marxist Lacanian philosophical theorist,
who is not beyond analysing toilets (see posture blog),
to get the ball rolling. My only complaint is that he
produces his 'P' sound like something out of a Hanna
Barbera cartoon. He also keeps rubbing his nose
because his untrimmed beard tickles his
proboscis.
As he says, we all need to shield whistleblowers from
the evil empire-builders. We'll get good Marx for that,
and we Kant not help. Seriously, though, they are
brave and they obviously need protection. Snowden
was close to spending his life as a stateless Airport Guy.
Reminds me of a movie.
more soon
checkit: In these times
Freedom in the Cloud
Assange, Manning and Snowden are the new heroes of the era of digitalized control.
BY Slavoj Žižek
We all remember President Obama's smiling face, full of hope and trust, when he repeatedly delivered the motto of his first campaign, “Yes, we can!”—we can get rid of the cynicism of the Bush era and bring justice and welfare to the American people. Now that the United States continues with covert operations and expands its intelligence network, spying even on their allies, we can imagine protesters shouting at Obama: “How can you use drones for killing? How can you spy even our allies?” Obama looks back at them and murmurs with a mockingly evil smile: “Yes we can…”
However, such simple personalization misses the point: The threat to our freedom disclosed by whistle-blowers has much deeper systemic roots. Edward Snowden should be defended not only because his acts annoyed and embarrassed the U.S. secret services. Their lesson is global; it reaches far beyond the standard U.S. bashing. What he revealed is something that not only the United States but also all the other great (and not so great) powers—from China to Russia, from Germany to Israel—are doing, to the extent they are technologically able to do it. His acts thus provide a factual foundation to our premonitions of how much we are all monitored and controlled. We didn’t really learn from Snowden (or from Manning) anything we didn’t already presume to be true—but it is one thing to know it in general, and another to get concrete data. It is a little bit like knowing that one’s sexual partner is playing around—one can accept the abstract knowledge of it, but pain arises when one learns the steamy details, when one gets pictures of what they were doing.
Back in 1843, the young Karl Marx claimed that the German ancien regime “only imagines that it believes in itself and demands that the world should imagine the same thing.” In such a situation, to put shame on those in power becomes a weapon—or, as Marx goes on: “The actual pressure must be made more pressing by adding to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made more shameful by publicizing it.” And this, exactly, is our situation today: we are facing the shameless cynicism of the representatives of the existing global order who only imagine that they believe in their ideas of democracy, human rights, etc. What happens in Wikileaks disclosures is that the shame, theirs and ours for tolerating such power over us, is made more shameful by publicizing it.
What we should be ashamed of is the worldwide process of the gradual narrowing of the space for what Immanuel Kant called the “public use of reason.” In his classic text What is Enlightenment?, Kant opposes “public” and “private” use of reason: “private” is for Kant the communal-institutional order in which we dwell (our state, our nation…), while “public” is the trans-national universality of the exercise of one’s Reason:
The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men. The private use of one’s reason, on the other hand, may often be very narrowly restricted without particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment. By public use of one’s reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him.
We see where Kant parts with our liberal common sense: The domain of State is “private,” constrained by particular interests, while individuals reflecting on general issues use reason in a “public” way. This Kantian distinction is especially pertinent with the Internet and other new media torn between their free “public use” and their growing “private” control. In our era of cloud computing, we no longer need strong individual computers: Software and information are available on demand, and users can access web-based tools or applications through browsers as if they were programs installed on their own computer.
This wonderful new world is, however, only one side of the story, which reads like the well-known joke about the doctor who gives “first the good news, then the bad news.” Users are accessing programs and software files that are kept far away in climate-controlled rooms with thousands of computers—or, to quote a propaganda-text on cloud computing: “Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure ‘in the cloud’ that supports them.” Two words are tell-tale here: abstraction and control—in order to manage a cloud, there needs to be a monitoring system which controls its functioning, and this system is by definition hidden from users. The more the small item (smartphone or tiny portable) I hold in my hand is personalized, easy to use, “transparent” in its functioning, the more the entire set-up has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, in a vast circuit of machines which coordinate the user’s experience. The more our experience is non-alienated, spontaneous and transparent, the more it is regulated by the invisible network controlled by state agencies and the large private companies that follow the state's secret agendas.
Once we chose to follow the path of state secrets, we sooner or later reach the fateful point at which the very legal regulations prescribing what is secret become secret. Kant formulated the basic axiom of the public law: “All actions relating to the right of other men are unjust if their maxim is not consistent with publicity.” A secret law, a law unknown to its subjects, legitimizes the arbitrary despotism of those who exercise it, as indicated in the title of a recent report on China: “Even what’s secret is a secret in China.” Troublesome intellectuals who reported on China's political oppression, ecological catastrophes, rural poverty, etc., got years of prison for betraying state secrets, and the catch is that many of the laws and regulations that made up the state-secret regime are themselves classified, making it difficult for individuals to know how and when they’re in violation.
....
It is therefore not enough to play one state against the other (as
Snowden did, when he used Russia against the United States). We need a
new International—an international network to organize the protection of
whistle-blowers and the dissemination of their message. Whistle-blowers
are our heroes because they prove that if those in power can do their
job of controlling us, we can also fight back and throw them into a
panic.
Monday 26 August 2013
Sunday 25 August 2013
Shit-coin: what the rest of us must trade with
Now that
real coins (and even paper money) & the
electronic wizardry that keeps the banks functioning,
You see, we're now all suffering with Shitcoin Disease,
because it's dragging down OUR economy, the real one,
where we produce stuff and sell it to Sainsburys,
whereupon it is stacked on shelves by starving slave elves.
We're mired in Shitcoin. And this will only save the banks.
Then we'll be left up Shitcoin Creek, with no paddle, pension
or public services.
I've learned that only 3% of the money in the UK is
cash and paper. The rest is electronic, and much like
online gambling, it's an unregulated, out of control
financial robbery of the middle and poor strata.
If you want an awesome review of the point above
and all the other key ones, with a laugh, tune in to
Rory Bremner on the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038jkx6
more soon
monetary depreciation is
visible to the naked eye,
it's time for there to be a clear separation betweenreal coins (and even paper money) & the
electronic wizardry that keeps the banks functioning,
Shitcoin.
Honourable mention goes to Bitcoin,
the money of the digital revolution,
for outflanking the banking bastards.
You see, we're now all suffering with Shitcoin Disease,
because it's dragging down OUR economy, the real one,
where we produce stuff and sell it to Sainsburys,
whereupon it is stacked on shelves by starving slave elves.
We're mired in Shitcoin. And this will only save the banks.
Then we'll be left up Shitcoin Creek, with no paddle, pension
or public services.
I've learned that only 3% of the money in the UK is
cash and paper. The rest is electronic, and much like
online gambling, it's an unregulated, out of control
financial robbery of the middle and poor strata.
If you want an awesome review of the point above
and all the other key ones, with a laugh, tune in to
Rory Bremner on the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038jkx6
more soon
bad boom, bada bilder
I don't think people are taking seriously the need
to infiltrate the Bilder Burgh, that movable gypsy
feast that sets up camp every spring in a corrupt
country, or a colony of one, for all the corrupt
cronies to have a Circle-jerk Fest.
I'll soon post a video of the boys who got in
to this year's site, after the big boys had left.
They found some incriminating fliers and a
banner. Not good enough boys.
Even so, why aren't we discussing these
shreds of evidence to see where they're going next?
We have the power. We have twitter.
[do these Bilder watchers look like they'll do anything?]
They were all there for their own reasons.
to infiltrate the Bilder Burgh, that movable gypsy
feast that sets up camp every spring in a corrupt
country, or a colony of one, for all the corrupt
cronies to have a Circle-jerk Fest.
I'll soon post a video of the boys who got in
to this year's site, after the big boys had left.
They found some incriminating fliers and a
banner. Not good enough boys.
Even so, why aren't we discussing these
shreds of evidence to see where they're going next?
We have the power. We have twitter.
They were all there for their own reasons.
David Icke is the conspiracy, alien man
Mr. Infowars is a conspiracy man of a simpler kind
-he fills his fans with fear, but I'm sure he's been
threatened and so he keeps away from the heat
Luke of WeAreChange, of Twitter & live feed
fame is the most likely to bust in. He's fearless,
but he's not up to it yet. He doesn't yet see the need.
That David guy from Canada. He might eventually
slide in.
We need better infiltrators, NOW!
Rock of Ages stuck in Colon-y
2 years ago, I let loose an idea as soon as I saw Spain
getting into financial trouble with the IMF and ECB.
I don't think I blogged about it here, but I'm more certain
than ever that Spain will try to choke off Gibraltar from
British sovereignty, however long that takes. I knew they
would, for a couple of reasons.
1 The Spanish are a large, proud nation that has never been
publicly humiliated in the media age. So, when they
became the next whipping boy for the Neo-liberal con
job known as the Crisis to End All Economic Life, I knew
Spain would react badly.
2 It's also my hope that they're reacting against Britain
because that country is behind all the German noise about
debt and austerity.
That's what the EU seems to be for.
So, Ole'. Let the bulls run. Grab your popcorn and acid,
there's gonna be a bullfight.
UPDATE: British rhetoric
Checkit: 1
The Guardian,
Gibraltar: life under siege
It began with a dispute over an artificial reef and fishing rights. But the tension between Spain and the British colony has turned into a challenge against its very existence. So what is the mood on the Rock?
Stephen Moss
Wednesday 21 August 2013 17.33 BST
Jump to comments (674)
Cloud hangs over the rock of Gibraltar.
Leoncio Fernández Ramos is much in demand. "Please make this quick," he says through a translator. "I don't have much time." A film crew from Czech TV is waiting for him; a satellite TV van of unknown provenance is lurking too. The Spanish-Gibraltar standoff has gone global, and Ramos, the 67-year-old president of the fishing federation of La Línea and San Roque, is at the centre of the row.
I have tracked him down, after a three-hour pursuit, to a pier in La Línea, the impoverished little Spanish town on the other side of the Gibraltarian border. Boys swim in the clear waters; a fisherman is painting his boat; the view across to the Rock is lovely now the morning mist has cleared, leaving only a halo of cloud round the top. It is a beautiful setting for a bitter war of words.
The immediate cause of the battle between Gibraltar and Spain is the artificial reef that the British colony has lain around the Rock. Ramos says it is disrupting fishing in waters where Spanish boats have fished for generations. "It was done to cause us problems," he says, dismissing the Gibraltarian view that the reef – made from concrete blocks – is designed to help replenish fish stocks. "It exists only to stop us fishing." The Gibraltarians say they are their waters and they can do what they like, but Ramos cites custom and practice. "We've fished there for hundreds of years."
What began as a fight over fish has, through the dog days of summer, turned into something more significant – a struggle for the soul of Gibraltar. Spain's strident foreign minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, has declared "the party's over" as far as Gibraltar is concerned. Spanish border checks have been stepped up, leading to long queues for drivers at the frontier – pedestrians, subject to only the most cursory of bag searches, are so far unaffected. The Spanish have also raised the possibility of a €50 crossing fee and the closure of Spanish air space to flights bound for Gibraltar. The British response has been threefold. The foreign office has expressed concern; Boris Johnson, in his role as newspaper pundit, has demanded Spain take its "hands off the rock"; and the Royal Navy, in the spirit of Lord Palmerston, has sent a gunboat – the frigate HMS Westminster, which docked in Gibraltar a few hours ahead of me.
Motorists queue to cross the border between Spain and Gibraltar, 15 August. Motorists queue to cross the border between Spain and Gibraltar, 15 August. Photograph: Marcos Moreno
It was quite like old times when I arrived. The crew of the Westminster and its auxiliary vessels were already ashore and swaying drunkenly outside the pubs in Casemates Square, the booze-and-burger hub of Gibraltarian nightlife. Stepping into a pool of vomit within half an hour of arriving was my unfortunate initiation into the Gibraltar imbroglio, but as the booze continued to flow beyond 2am the message to the Spanish foreign minister was clear: the party is most definitely not over.
Next morning, on the crowded, vomit-free street in the centre of town, Gibraltar-born septuagenarian Joe Brugada and his wife were making the same point. They had set up a stand outside the parliament building and were selling a CD called Stand Firm for £5 a pop. Brugada had written the lyrics, set to the tune of his old school song, and it had been recorded by the band of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment.
"Stand, stand firm Gibraltarians,/Firm as the Rock that guards the sea./To God and our Queen, and traditions of our land,/Stand ever steadfast in love and loyalty." Brugada plays it loudly over and over until his wife suggests he give it a rest for the sake of the customers in the adjacent cafe. Why is he making this very public statement? "It's a song for Gibraltar, rallying them against the aggression from Spain," he tells me. "This is the worst crisis since Spain closed the frontier [in 1969]. They've hit us from all sides. This has never happened before. It's usually been concentrated on the frontier."
"Do you know Simon Jenkins?" he suddenly asks me. Brugada had been incensed by an article Jenkins had written in the Guardian last week dismissing Gibraltar and the Falklands as "relics of empire". "The British empire had much to be said for it, but it is over – dead, deceased, struck off, no more," Jenkins had written. "The idea of a British warship supposedly menacing Spain is ludicrous. Is it meant to bomb Cadiz? Will its guns lift a rush-hour tailback in a colony that most Britons regard as awash with tax dodgers, drug dealers and rightwing whingers?" Jenkins was not standing firm.
Bien-pensants back in the UK may want Gibraltar to be shared with Spain, or better still handed over lock, stock and barrel, but it is hard to see it happening any time soon. "We're not interested in discussing sovereignty," says Brugada. "If you think of the days that led up to the closure of the frontier and the [Spanish] state [that existed under Franco], and the so-called democratic government of today and what they have been doing to us every other year when it suits them to raise the temperature at the border in pursuance of their sovereignty claim, how could we ever want to be under that regime which does not even respect its own people? No one with two ounces of common sense could enter into that discussion."
Joe Brugada selling his CD Stand Firm. Joe Brugada selling his CD Stand Firm. Photograph: Richard Atkins/Solarpix
Brugada speaks for traditional Gibraltar, even though he complains that his fellow citizens are proving reluctant to fork out a fiver for his stirring anthem. Further down Main Street a dog has been decked out in a union flag bandana and sunglasses, and on the Glacis estate close to the border – the heart of the working-class part of Gibraltar – even more British and Gibraltarian flags than usual are draped from windows alongside the washing. There is, though, another, more shadowy Gibraltar, centred on the million-pound flats that have been built on reclaimed land in the lee of the Rock. You won't see any flags fluttering from those expensive executive dwellings, and it seems unlikely that these wealthy, geographically mobile financiers give two hoots about which country claims ownership of Gibraltar as long as its offshore tax advantages are protected. Their attachment to "Gib" is a matter of pocket, not heart.
I first visited the colony in 2002, when the Blair government's intention to do a deal with Spain on joint sovereignty was causing uproar on the Rock – it was eventually thwarted by Spain's refusal to forgo its long-term claim for complete control. I returned last year and was surprised at how much plush new housing had been built. As the navy reduced its presence and financial services and offshore betting moved in to fill the gap, what had been a rough-and-ready garrison town had become a player in the casino capitalist game. The centre of Gibraltar, with its bobbies on the beat, fish and chip shops, red telephone boxes and old-fashioned pubs, may resemble Great Yarmouth circa 1964, but around the new marinas they fancy themselves as the next Monaco, and these New Gibraltarians might prove less recalcitrant than Brugada, the patriotic dog-owner and the residents, many of them ex-military, on the Glacis estate.
I find Gibraltar claustrophobic. How many times can you shuffle up and down Main Street, past Peacocks, Marks & Spencer, Topshop, Clarks and all the stores selling cute miniature Barbary apes, without going mad? Some Gibraltarians like to talk about the diversity of society on the Rock – a well-established Jewish community, Muslims from north Africa, a new influx of Asian shopkeepers and traders – but they remain buried beneath the cult of Britishness. I played in a week-long chess tournament on the Rock in January, but chose to stay in La Línea and commute, in part because the hotels and restaurants are a lot cheaper but also because it's less odd, less self-absorbed than Gib, this strange amalgam that prides itself on being "more British than the British", yet is in many respects so Spanish.
Take the language. Native Gibraltarians are bilingual, and one of them tells me that, while his working language is English, Spanish is his "emotional" language. It seems symptomatic of the contradictions that in the little shop on the Glacis estate, the two people serving behind the counter, presumably residents of La Línea, speak no English. This bastion of Britishness depends on the 7,000 workers who cross the border every day to keep it running, and, as the critics of the Spanish government are quick to point out, it is those cross-border commuters who are principally being inconvenienced by the go-slow at the frontier.
If Gibraltar is claustrophobic now, it must have been unimaginably so in the 16 years from 1969 to 1985 that the frontier was closed. In 2002, I met a Gibraltarian man whose grandmother lived 10 minutes away in La Línea – a round trip that, when the border was closed, used to take him 12 hours, with a ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar to Tangier, another boat to Algeciras in Spain and then a bus to La Línea. No wonder animosities – directed at Spain's government rather than its people – are so entrenched.
Gibraltarians welcome HMS Westminster into the harbour. Gibraltarians welcome HMS Westminster into the harbour. Photograph: Ben Birchall
Yet some Gibraltarians look back fondly on those days. "Things were laid back when the border was closed," says Eric Shaw, who served as a soldier on the Rock in the 1960s and has lived here for 40 years. "People partied. We've got beaches, wonderful weather, we had a nice time. Everything came in by boat or by aeroplane, and it was a hell of a holiday. There was live music somewhere in town each night, every night." Now all they have is Julian Lennon's Beatles memorabilia exhibition (John and Yoko got married there in 1969) and a curious obsession with Miss World. Local woman Kaiane Aldorino won the competition in 2009 and a large poster illustrated by her photograph and proclaiming Gibraltar as the "Home of Miss World 2009" is the first thing you see as you pass through customs. Somehow it makes more of an impact than the big stone and bronze memorial emblazoned with "Gibraltar – Cradle of History" that you pass as you start to cross the runway on to the Rock. Having to walk or drive across the airport's runway – "Pedestrians are to keep within the white lines. Please cross quickly," says a sign, though the occasional tourist does stop for a photograph –is one of the more endearing quirks of life on Gibraltar.
The traditionalists are convinced that in Gib, a little bit of old England under a Mediterranean sun, they have created a heaven on earth. [that sounds sick to me- Costick67] "Life is wonderful here," says Brugada. "It's a little paradise. That's what irks the Spaniards. Every time they see a cruise ship come in, they must have a stroke." He says that, by contrast, life across the border is much tougher. "La Línea has 40% unemployment, despite the fact that so many of the people who live there find jobs in Gibraltar."
Shaw uses almost exactly the same terms to describe Gibraltar. "This is Shangri-La and has been for an awful long time. It's changing, but you can't stop things from changing. I wish one could. We're being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and we don't really want to be there." Like Brugada, he also believes the Gibraltarian and Spanish political traditions can never find common ground. "In Spain the dons at the top really, truly do believe they're dons. You don't have citizens in Spain, you have subjects. The difference is that citizens have a say and subjects do as they're told." Shaw is 67 – the same age as Ramos, the head of La Línea's fishermen – and it may be that the generation that came of age in the Franco era will never see eye to eye.
Shaw has a peculiar dual role. He runs the nature reserve at the top of the Rock that looks after the apes, but is also a marine biologist – it was a logical progression from his career as a diver in the army – and is the man who admits to starting the great artificial-reef controversy. The recent dropping of concrete blocks that has so annoyed the Spanish is only the latest phase of a programme that has been running for 30 years to create reefs around Gibraltar to replenish fish stocks and encourage biodiversity. He cites the fact that the Spanish are only now making a fuss as evidence that it has been dredged up as an excuse for a political row designed to divert attention from Spain's domestic problems. "It's an attempt to misdirect the Spanish population and make them forget what everyone really wants to talk about [the state of the economy]," he argues. "It's not really the Gibraltarians' fault. The Spanish government is flim-flamming its own people."
Back in La Línea, Ramos is by no means an uncritical supporter of the way the Spanish government is dealing with the crisis. "They have been playing with us as well," he says. "The stone used for Gibraltar's reef came from Spain. They have been selling arrows to the Indians." He says he is not interested in playing politics and doesn't care whether the Rock is British or Spanish. He just wants to carry on fishing. "The tragedy is that we are all related," he says. "The Gibraltarians are family. I've got cousins there." The cemetery on the Rock is filled equally by the standard-issue military graves of British service personnel and more elaborate constructions with Spanish names and photographs of the deceased – two traditions united in death.
There have been reports of attacks on Gibraltar-registered cars in La Línea, but no one I speak to in the town seems unduly exercised by the abstract issue of sovereignty. They just want an accommodation that is fair to both sides.
Shaw doesn't believe the Spanish government even want the Rock. "What would they do with it? There are 30,000 of us here. We'd be a ghost town in 30 days if the Spanish took over. All the commerce would disappear overnight." He reckons the Spanish wouldn't be allowed to keep it offshore because the EU would deem Gib to be an integral part of Spain rather than an overseas dependency with its own rules. The Rock may be an anachronism, but that's the only basis on which it can function. "We'd be of no use to the Spanish," he says. "We can't grow anything here. We don't produce anything here." They don't even fish any more, despite being surrounded by the sea, which is why the Spaniards were able to fish in their waters undisturbed for so long. Without offshore commerce, they would be nothing: a Rock without a role.
For the moment, the great summer of discontent is keeping everyone happy. The government in Madrid has its useful diversion; the Gibraltarians can do what they love doing – fly their flags, embrace the navy and revert to the siege mentality that has always defined them; global media organisations have a quirky tale; Boris Johnson some instant copy. Shaw is amused by the way it has become a global story, and just hopes artificial reefs get some positive publicity out of it. The only people suffering are the Spaniards in the traffic queue. As dusk falls, it snakes along the coastal road that runs around the east of the Rock. "Normally, it would take half an hour to get across," says Ana Fernandez, who has spent the day on Gib with her boyfriend looking at the apes. "Today, it is going to take us two or three hours. It's annoying." Yet as she says it, she laughs. That's usually the best way to respond to Gibraltar.
2 theguardian.com
Gibraltar criticises Spain for sending divers to inspect reef
British territory says 'serious incursion' into its waters 'will not assist in de-escalating present tensions'
Staff and agencies
, Saturday 24 August 2013 10.54 BST
Gibraltar has accused Spain of breaching British sovereignty by sending divers to inspect an artificial reef in Gibraltarian coastal waters.
The police divers took photographs of themselves holding a Spanish flag and examining the underwater concrete blocks of the reef.
The Gibraltar government said in a statement: "Her Majesty's government of Gibraltar notes the incident of executive action taken by the guardia civil in British Gibraltar territorial waters in the area of the new artificial reef. The matter of this serious incursion will not assist in de-escalating the present tensions."
The territory's governor, Sir Adrian Johns, told the BBC that Spain's actions constituted a serious violation of UK sovereignty over Gibraltar. Spain disputes UK sovereignty over the territory, which has been ruled by Britain since 1713.
Last month, Gibraltar's government dropped 74 concrete blocks onto the seabed to create an artificial reef to encourage the return of marine life. Spanish fishermen claimed that the reef removed one of their best fishing grounds. In retaliation Spain began forcing travellers between Gibraltar and Spain to undergo lengthy checks.
Many commentators believe that Spain's actions are related to domestic politics rather than any serious desire to regain Gibraltar, which could damage its claims to Spanish enclaves in Morocco. The European commission is to send a fact-finding mission to Gibraltar to investigate controls at the border.
getting into financial trouble with the IMF and ECB.
I don't think I blogged about it here, but I'm more certain
than ever that Spain will try to choke off Gibraltar from
British sovereignty, however long that takes. I knew they
would, for a couple of reasons.
1 The Spanish are a large, proud nation that has never been
publicly humiliated in the media age. So, when they
became the next whipping boy for the Neo-liberal con
job known as the Crisis to End All Economic Life, I knew
Spain would react badly.
2 It's also my hope that they're reacting against Britain
because that country is behind all the German noise about
debt and austerity.
German banks owe British banks a lotta wonga.
That's what the EU seems to be for.
An opportunity to settle old scores
start new ones
& to start new colonies,
Troika Lands.[TM,c]
So, Ole'. Let the bulls run. Grab your popcorn and acid,
there's gonna be a bullfight.
UPDATE: British rhetoric
"if we can't have the Gib, you spics
can't have 2 rocky outcrops in Morocco"
Firstly, all colon-ies are bad. But, Spain is lucky in that Morocco is
outside of the EU. The Brits own a parts of EU member-states,
Cyprus and Spain and probably Germany too.
[see story below -2]
Cyprus and Spain and probably Germany too.
[see story below -2]
Checkit: 1
The Guardian,
Gibraltar: life under siege
It began with a dispute over an artificial reef and fishing rights. But the tension between Spain and the British colony has turned into a challenge against its very existence. So what is the mood on the Rock?
Stephen Moss
Wednesday 21 August 2013 17.33 BST
Jump to comments (674)
Cloud hangs over the rock of Gibraltar.
Leoncio Fernández Ramos is much in demand. "Please make this quick," he says through a translator. "I don't have much time." A film crew from Czech TV is waiting for him; a satellite TV van of unknown provenance is lurking too. The Spanish-Gibraltar standoff has gone global, and Ramos, the 67-year-old president of the fishing federation of La Línea and San Roque, is at the centre of the row.
I have tracked him down, after a three-hour pursuit, to a pier in La Línea, the impoverished little Spanish town on the other side of the Gibraltarian border. Boys swim in the clear waters; a fisherman is painting his boat; the view across to the Rock is lovely now the morning mist has cleared, leaving only a halo of cloud round the top. It is a beautiful setting for a bitter war of words.
The immediate cause of the battle between Gibraltar and Spain is the artificial reef that the British colony has lain around the Rock. Ramos says it is disrupting fishing in waters where Spanish boats have fished for generations. "It was done to cause us problems," he says, dismissing the Gibraltarian view that the reef – made from concrete blocks – is designed to help replenish fish stocks. "It exists only to stop us fishing." The Gibraltarians say they are their waters and they can do what they like, but Ramos cites custom and practice. "We've fished there for hundreds of years."
What began as a fight over fish has, through the dog days of summer, turned into something more significant – a struggle for the soul of Gibraltar. Spain's strident foreign minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, has declared "the party's over" as far as Gibraltar is concerned. Spanish border checks have been stepped up, leading to long queues for drivers at the frontier – pedestrians, subject to only the most cursory of bag searches, are so far unaffected. The Spanish have also raised the possibility of a €50 crossing fee and the closure of Spanish air space to flights bound for Gibraltar. The British response has been threefold. The foreign office has expressed concern; Boris Johnson, in his role as newspaper pundit, has demanded Spain take its "hands off the rock"; and the Royal Navy, in the spirit of Lord Palmerston, has sent a gunboat – the frigate HMS Westminster, which docked in Gibraltar a few hours ahead of me.
Motorists queue to cross the border between Spain and Gibraltar, 15 August. Motorists queue to cross the border between Spain and Gibraltar, 15 August. Photograph: Marcos Moreno
It was quite like old times when I arrived. The crew of the Westminster and its auxiliary vessels were already ashore and swaying drunkenly outside the pubs in Casemates Square, the booze-and-burger hub of Gibraltarian nightlife. Stepping into a pool of vomit within half an hour of arriving was my unfortunate initiation into the Gibraltar imbroglio, but as the booze continued to flow beyond 2am the message to the Spanish foreign minister was clear: the party is most definitely not over.
Next morning, on the crowded, vomit-free street in the centre of town, Gibraltar-born septuagenarian Joe Brugada and his wife were making the same point. They had set up a stand outside the parliament building and were selling a CD called Stand Firm for £5 a pop. Brugada had written the lyrics, set to the tune of his old school song, and it had been recorded by the band of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment.
"Stand, stand firm Gibraltarians,/Firm as the Rock that guards the sea./To God and our Queen, and traditions of our land,/Stand ever steadfast in love and loyalty." Brugada plays it loudly over and over until his wife suggests he give it a rest for the sake of the customers in the adjacent cafe. Why is he making this very public statement? "It's a song for Gibraltar, rallying them against the aggression from Spain," he tells me. "This is the worst crisis since Spain closed the frontier [in 1969]. They've hit us from all sides. This has never happened before. It's usually been concentrated on the frontier."
"Do you know Simon Jenkins?" he suddenly asks me. Brugada had been incensed by an article Jenkins had written in the Guardian last week dismissing Gibraltar and the Falklands as "relics of empire". "The British empire had much to be said for it, but it is over – dead, deceased, struck off, no more," Jenkins had written. "The idea of a British warship supposedly menacing Spain is ludicrous. Is it meant to bomb Cadiz? Will its guns lift a rush-hour tailback in a colony that most Britons regard as awash with tax dodgers, drug dealers and rightwing whingers?" Jenkins was not standing firm.
Bien-pensants back in the UK may want Gibraltar to be shared with Spain, or better still handed over lock, stock and barrel, but it is hard to see it happening any time soon. "We're not interested in discussing sovereignty," says Brugada. "If you think of the days that led up to the closure of the frontier and the [Spanish] state [that existed under Franco], and the so-called democratic government of today and what they have been doing to us every other year when it suits them to raise the temperature at the border in pursuance of their sovereignty claim, how could we ever want to be under that regime which does not even respect its own people? No one with two ounces of common sense could enter into that discussion."
Joe Brugada selling his CD Stand Firm. Joe Brugada selling his CD Stand Firm. Photograph: Richard Atkins/Solarpix
Brugada speaks for traditional Gibraltar, even though he complains that his fellow citizens are proving reluctant to fork out a fiver for his stirring anthem. Further down Main Street a dog has been decked out in a union flag bandana and sunglasses, and on the Glacis estate close to the border – the heart of the working-class part of Gibraltar – even more British and Gibraltarian flags than usual are draped from windows alongside the washing. There is, though, another, more shadowy Gibraltar, centred on the million-pound flats that have been built on reclaimed land in the lee of the Rock. You won't see any flags fluttering from those expensive executive dwellings, and it seems unlikely that these wealthy, geographically mobile financiers give two hoots about which country claims ownership of Gibraltar as long as its offshore tax advantages are protected. Their attachment to "Gib" is a matter of pocket, not heart.
I first visited the colony in 2002, when the Blair government's intention to do a deal with Spain on joint sovereignty was causing uproar on the Rock – it was eventually thwarted by Spain's refusal to forgo its long-term claim for complete control. I returned last year and was surprised at how much plush new housing had been built. As the navy reduced its presence and financial services and offshore betting moved in to fill the gap, what had been a rough-and-ready garrison town had become a player in the casino capitalist game. The centre of Gibraltar, with its bobbies on the beat, fish and chip shops, red telephone boxes and old-fashioned pubs, may resemble Great Yarmouth circa 1964, but around the new marinas they fancy themselves as the next Monaco, and these New Gibraltarians might prove less recalcitrant than Brugada, the patriotic dog-owner and the residents, many of them ex-military, on the Glacis estate.
I find Gibraltar claustrophobic. How many times can you shuffle up and down Main Street, past Peacocks, Marks & Spencer, Topshop, Clarks and all the stores selling cute miniature Barbary apes, without going mad? Some Gibraltarians like to talk about the diversity of society on the Rock – a well-established Jewish community, Muslims from north Africa, a new influx of Asian shopkeepers and traders – but they remain buried beneath the cult of Britishness. I played in a week-long chess tournament on the Rock in January, but chose to stay in La Línea and commute, in part because the hotels and restaurants are a lot cheaper but also because it's less odd, less self-absorbed than Gib, this strange amalgam that prides itself on being "more British than the British", yet is in many respects so Spanish.
Take the language. Native Gibraltarians are bilingual, and one of them tells me that, while his working language is English, Spanish is his "emotional" language. It seems symptomatic of the contradictions that in the little shop on the Glacis estate, the two people serving behind the counter, presumably residents of La Línea, speak no English. This bastion of Britishness depends on the 7,000 workers who cross the border every day to keep it running, and, as the critics of the Spanish government are quick to point out, it is those cross-border commuters who are principally being inconvenienced by the go-slow at the frontier.
If Gibraltar is claustrophobic now, it must have been unimaginably so in the 16 years from 1969 to 1985 that the frontier was closed. In 2002, I met a Gibraltarian man whose grandmother lived 10 minutes away in La Línea – a round trip that, when the border was closed, used to take him 12 hours, with a ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar to Tangier, another boat to Algeciras in Spain and then a bus to La Línea. No wonder animosities – directed at Spain's government rather than its people – are so entrenched.
Gibraltarians welcome HMS Westminster into the harbour. Gibraltarians welcome HMS Westminster into the harbour. Photograph: Ben Birchall
Yet some Gibraltarians look back fondly on those days. "Things were laid back when the border was closed," says Eric Shaw, who served as a soldier on the Rock in the 1960s and has lived here for 40 years. "People partied. We've got beaches, wonderful weather, we had a nice time. Everything came in by boat or by aeroplane, and it was a hell of a holiday. There was live music somewhere in town each night, every night." Now all they have is Julian Lennon's Beatles memorabilia exhibition (John and Yoko got married there in 1969) and a curious obsession with Miss World. Local woman Kaiane Aldorino won the competition in 2009 and a large poster illustrated by her photograph and proclaiming Gibraltar as the "Home of Miss World 2009" is the first thing you see as you pass through customs. Somehow it makes more of an impact than the big stone and bronze memorial emblazoned with "Gibraltar – Cradle of History" that you pass as you start to cross the runway on to the Rock. Having to walk or drive across the airport's runway – "Pedestrians are to keep within the white lines. Please cross quickly," says a sign, though the occasional tourist does stop for a photograph –is one of the more endearing quirks of life on Gibraltar.
The traditionalists are convinced that in Gib, a little bit of old England under a Mediterranean sun, they have created a heaven on earth. [that sounds sick to me- Costick67] "Life is wonderful here," says Brugada. "It's a little paradise. That's what irks the Spaniards. Every time they see a cruise ship come in, they must have a stroke." He says that, by contrast, life across the border is much tougher. "La Línea has 40% unemployment, despite the fact that so many of the people who live there find jobs in Gibraltar."
Shaw uses almost exactly the same terms to describe Gibraltar. "This is Shangri-La and has been for an awful long time. It's changing, but you can't stop things from changing. I wish one could. We're being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and we don't really want to be there." Like Brugada, he also believes the Gibraltarian and Spanish political traditions can never find common ground. "In Spain the dons at the top really, truly do believe they're dons. You don't have citizens in Spain, you have subjects. The difference is that citizens have a say and subjects do as they're told." Shaw is 67 – the same age as Ramos, the head of La Línea's fishermen – and it may be that the generation that came of age in the Franco era will never see eye to eye.
Shaw has a peculiar dual role. He runs the nature reserve at the top of the Rock that looks after the apes, but is also a marine biologist – it was a logical progression from his career as a diver in the army – and is the man who admits to starting the great artificial-reef controversy. The recent dropping of concrete blocks that has so annoyed the Spanish is only the latest phase of a programme that has been running for 30 years to create reefs around Gibraltar to replenish fish stocks and encourage biodiversity. He cites the fact that the Spanish are only now making a fuss as evidence that it has been dredged up as an excuse for a political row designed to divert attention from Spain's domestic problems. "It's an attempt to misdirect the Spanish population and make them forget what everyone really wants to talk about [the state of the economy]," he argues. "It's not really the Gibraltarians' fault. The Spanish government is flim-flamming its own people."
Back in La Línea, Ramos is by no means an uncritical supporter of the way the Spanish government is dealing with the crisis. "They have been playing with us as well," he says. "The stone used for Gibraltar's reef came from Spain. They have been selling arrows to the Indians." He says he is not interested in playing politics and doesn't care whether the Rock is British or Spanish. He just wants to carry on fishing. "The tragedy is that we are all related," he says. "The Gibraltarians are family. I've got cousins there." The cemetery on the Rock is filled equally by the standard-issue military graves of British service personnel and more elaborate constructions with Spanish names and photographs of the deceased – two traditions united in death.
There have been reports of attacks on Gibraltar-registered cars in La Línea, but no one I speak to in the town seems unduly exercised by the abstract issue of sovereignty. They just want an accommodation that is fair to both sides.
Shaw doesn't believe the Spanish government even want the Rock. "What would they do with it? There are 30,000 of us here. We'd be a ghost town in 30 days if the Spanish took over. All the commerce would disappear overnight." He reckons the Spanish wouldn't be allowed to keep it offshore because the EU would deem Gib to be an integral part of Spain rather than an overseas dependency with its own rules. The Rock may be an anachronism, but that's the only basis on which it can function. "We'd be of no use to the Spanish," he says. "We can't grow anything here. We don't produce anything here." They don't even fish any more, despite being surrounded by the sea, which is why the Spaniards were able to fish in their waters undisturbed for so long. Without offshore commerce, they would be nothing: a Rock without a role.
For the moment, the great summer of discontent is keeping everyone happy. The government in Madrid has its useful diversion; the Gibraltarians can do what they love doing – fly their flags, embrace the navy and revert to the siege mentality that has always defined them; global media organisations have a quirky tale; Boris Johnson some instant copy. Shaw is amused by the way it has become a global story, and just hopes artificial reefs get some positive publicity out of it. The only people suffering are the Spaniards in the traffic queue. As dusk falls, it snakes along the coastal road that runs around the east of the Rock. "Normally, it would take half an hour to get across," says Ana Fernandez, who has spent the day on Gib with her boyfriend looking at the apes. "Today, it is going to take us two or three hours. It's annoying." Yet as she says it, she laughs. That's usually the best way to respond to Gibraltar.
2 theguardian.com
Gibraltar criticises Spain for sending divers to inspect reef
British territory says 'serious incursion' into its waters 'will not assist in de-escalating present tensions'
Staff and agencies
, Saturday 24 August 2013 10.54 BST
Gibraltar has accused Spain of breaching British sovereignty by sending divers to inspect an artificial reef in Gibraltarian coastal waters.
The police divers took photographs of themselves holding a Spanish flag and examining the underwater concrete blocks of the reef.
The Gibraltar government said in a statement: "Her Majesty's government of Gibraltar notes the incident of executive action taken by the guardia civil in British Gibraltar territorial waters in the area of the new artificial reef. The matter of this serious incursion will not assist in de-escalating the present tensions."
The territory's governor, Sir Adrian Johns, told the BBC that Spain's actions constituted a serious violation of UK sovereignty over Gibraltar. Spain disputes UK sovereignty over the territory, which has been ruled by Britain since 1713.
Last month, Gibraltar's government dropped 74 concrete blocks onto the seabed to create an artificial reef to encourage the return of marine life. Spanish fishermen claimed that the reef removed one of their best fishing grounds. In retaliation Spain began forcing travellers between Gibraltar and Spain to undergo lengthy checks.
Many commentators believe that Spain's actions are related to domestic politics rather than any serious desire to regain Gibraltar, which could damage its claims to Spanish enclaves in Morocco. The European commission is to send a fact-finding mission to Gibraltar to investigate controls at the border.
Monday 19 August 2013
data mining for gold
Everybody is worried that the NatSecAg will see
them in their knickers in the bedroom, watching porn.
Well, that is true, but the worst thing is that the ideas
that we exchange every day, if they are collated and
sifted, just like gold, can reveal secret shiny stuff,
that government insiders can take to the bank, or
stock market.
It's like they're stealing your inner thoughts, except
that you've spewed them out in an impetuous email
to your best friend. so, BOOM. There goes your big
win. The NatSecAg will cash those chips in, happily.
Oh, and that big story you've been writing, that would
make you "rich" (in 2000+never), well, the NatSecAg
has already stolen it and given it to the copyright bandits
in H-Wood.
them in their knickers in the bedroom, watching porn.
Well, that is true, but the worst thing is that the ideas
that we exchange every day, if they are collated and
sifted, just like gold, can reveal secret shiny stuff,
that government insiders can take to the bank, or
stock market.
It's like they're stealing your inner thoughts, except
that you've spewed them out in an impetuous email
to your best friend. so, BOOM. There goes your big
win. The NatSecAg will cash those chips in, happily.
Oh, and that big story you've been writing, that would
make you "rich" (in 2000+never), well, the NatSecAg
has already stolen it and given it to the copyright bandits
in H-Wood.
checkit: Naked
capitalism
How
Much Are the NSA and CIA Front Running Markets?
A
2008 paper by Arindrajit Dube, Ethan Kaplan, and Suresh Naidu (hat tip MS)
found evidence that the CIA and/or members of the Executive branch either
disclosed or acted on information about top-secret authorizations of coups.
Stocks in “highly exposed” firms rose more in the pre-coup authorization phase
than they did when the coup was actually launched.
Here’s
how the dataset was developed:
We selected our sample of coups on the
following basis: (1.) a CIA timeline of events or a secondary timeline based
upon an original CIA document existed, (2.) the coup contained secret planning
events including at least one covert authorization of a coup attempt by a
national intelligence agency and/or a head of state, and (3.) the coup
authorization was against a government which nationalized property of at least
one sufficiently exposed multinational firm with publicly traded shares.
Out
of this, the authors found four coup attempts that met their criteria: the
ouster of Muhammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, two programs in Guatemala in 1952
and 1954 that eventually removed Jacobo Arbenz Guzman; the unsuccessful effort
to topple Castro in 1961, and an operation that began in Chile in 1970 and
culminated in overthrow of Salvador Allende. Then they chose companies:
We apply 3 criteria to select our sample of
companies. First, a company must be publicly traded, so that we can observe a
stock price. Secondly, the company must be “well-connected”, in terms of being
linked to the CIA. Finally, the company should be highly exposed to political
changes in the affected country, in the sense that a large fraction of a
company’s assets are in that country.
They
used these criteria to devise two samples (based on different definitions of
“highly exposed”) and tested both.
Their
conclusions:
Covert operations organized and abetted by
foreign governments have played a sub- stantial role in the political and
economic development of poorer countries around the world. We look at
CIA-backed coups against governments which had nationalized a considerable
amount of foreign investment. Using an event-study methodology, we find that
private information regarding coup authorizations and planning by the U.S.
government increased the stock prices of expropriated multinationals that stood
to benefit from the regime change. The presence of these abnormal returns
suggests that there were leaks from the CIA or others in the executive branch
of government to asset traders or that government officials with access to this
information themselves traded upon it. Consistent with theories of asset price
determination under private information, this information took some time to be
fully reflected in the stock price. Moreover, the evidence we find suggests
that coup authorization information was only present in large, politically
connected companies which were also highly exposed.
We find that coup authorizations, on net,
contributed more to stock price rises of highly exposed and well connected
companies than the coup events themselves. These price changes reflect sizeable
shifts in beliefs about the probability of coup occurrence.
Our results are robust across countries,
except Cuba, as well as to a variety of controls for alternate sources of
information, including public events and newspaper articles. The anomalous
results for Cuba are consistent with the information leaks and inad- equate
organization that surrounded that particular coup attempt.
Now
sports fans, given the fact that there’s reason to believe that people in the
intelligence with access to privileged information weren’t above leaking it to
people who could take advantage of it, why should we expect things to be
different now? And given what has already been revealed about the NSA’s data
gathering, if you were a clever trader and had access to this information, how
would you mine it? How would you go about finding patterns or events to
exploit?
the lives of other motherf*ckers
This is my roast for the NatSecAg that is getting involved
in the lives of innocent citizens of countries around the
world.
The East German Stasi was a kindergarten next to the NatSecAg.
And yet there was a movie made about Stasi spying
called The Lives of Others.
But by telling the world that they're all being spied on,
what you have done is created a large minority of
people who are turning into enraged motherf*ckers.
So, the NatSecAg is peeping into the lives of other
motherf*ckers because the NatSecAg is populated by
motherf*ckers, for sure.
I'm sure such petty insults will not even register in
the meta data, so raise a glass to the new hegemons.
in the lives of innocent citizens of countries around the
world.
The East German Stasi was a kindergarten next to the NatSecAg.
And yet there was a movie made about Stasi spying
called The Lives of Others.
But by telling the world that they're all being spied on,
what you have done is created a large minority of
people who are turning into enraged motherf*ckers.
So, the NatSecAg is peeping into the lives of other
motherf*ckers because the NatSecAg is populated by
motherf*ckers, for sure.
I'm sure such petty insults will not even register in
the meta data, so raise a glass to the new hegemons.
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