https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41923007
It is completely unsurprising that there is little care shown by our government.
The current government is a huge ally of Israel.
Well, that's certainly one angle.
The other angle is, let's face it, Israel is good at playing the Jewish card and portraying that if you're not pro-Israel you must be some sort of antisemite.
There are all sorts of political ties along those lines, e.g. "Conservative Friends of Israel"[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Friends_of_Israel
Russia was a very close friend twenty years ago, Iraq was a very close ally in the 1980s. I'm sure Israel realises how quickly the west can turn on friends and allies when it suits us and that this is why they spend tens of millions a year wooing US and UK politicians.
Russia became a pariah over night and the moment it becomes politically convenient to diplomatically recognise Israel as an apartheid state the trade won't count for anything (not least because most of it is the direct consequence of billions in annual US subsidies)
They look at Israel and see a democratic, technologically advanced state with a liberal economy much like their own. They look at the repressive, autocratic extraction economies in the Arab world and recoil in horror.
I'm not making any judgement on this, or whether they're right or wrong, but that's just how many Europeans see the situation.
We're a vassal state, there's no Brexit on the special relationship.
How much the UK and EU are allies remains to be seen too
Only if we define it as criticism of Israeli policy.
Otherwise, that's a smear, substituting criticism with antisemitism.
>A smear campaign can only be really effective if there is a solid truth behind it.
Nope, it can be very effective without any truth. Try smearing someone as a pedophile - you think they'll be able to wash it off? Goebbels, for one, advised for complete lies, repeated often.
In fact, a complete huge lie can be even more believable, as people go "would they said something that great, if it wasn't at least a bit true?".
Which appears to basically be the criteria these days - which is terrifying.
Using a very extreme example: if I got 4 people to call you a pedophile, then people will believe it until you submit proof that you're not.
The problem is that it's impossible to prove the absence of something, so you're forced to push back on me: "Where's your proof that I'm a pedophile", where I can reply with anecdotes or other useless information.
The point is not to "prove" you are a pedophile in that case, the point is to make people associate your name with pedophilia, and to make it unclear if you are or if you aren't. 80% of people will not look further into it.
Pedophilia is probably too extreme of an example and people may be more critical of pedophilia accusations than, say, racism ones.
True, but in this case it was quite easy to prove the presence of anti-semitism in the Labour party, especially in the far left membership.
edit: probably worth mentioning, i read the report of the external investigation (all ~300 pages of it) on antisemitism in the labour party. to call it thin on the ground is somewhat of an understatement.
It's also easy to find "presence of anything" in some members of any large group, including satanism, doesn't mean it defines the group or is a big element of it.
First, who are "all those Jews"? This is handwaving to make it sound like multitudes.
Second, people worrying about anti-semitism in the Labour party in general, either lack common sense (if we accept your argument that is "this attitude" I wrote about above that is their concern), or conflate anti-semitism (as in Hitler, Nazis, pogroms, and co) with criticism of actions by the state of Israel.
In fact, actual jews in favor of Corbyn and the party have been accused of "anti-semitism" (!) - like the Jewish Voice for Labour (jewish members of the UK Labour Party, because they are nonetheless critical about the situation with Palestine).
This wasnt antiracists purging antisemites.
It was racists purging antiracists.
""" According to Labour statistics, by March 2021 there had been 1,450 "actioned complaints" against Labour party members in relation to allegations of antisemitism - equivalent to 0.29 percent of Labour’s membership, which averaged 500,000 between 2015 and 2020, when Corbyn was leader.
By contrast, says JVL, there were at least 35 actioned complaints against Jewish members. This is equivalent to 1.4 percent of Jewish members, who the group estimate to have numbered around 2,500 during the same period. """
Having 35 "actioned complaints" against Jewish members does not sound like a purge from the Labour Party, and portraying it as such is pretty misleading. I'm also wondering if there's some careful wording here, since they're comparing a total number of actioned complaints against Jewish members, vs number of actioned complaints specifically relating to allegations of antisemitism. Interesting that one of the two authors of the article is a Conservative (ie, the party Labour is in opposition to)
35 isnt a purge. > 1000 IS a purge. The fact that being an Jewish made it 5x more likely you would be purged simply underscored the fact that it was exclusively a project to purge anti-racists who were critical of Israel.
This point was underscored again when the party hired an ex Israeli intelligence agent.
If you criticise Israel, you're an anti-semite. We're all scared of being called such, so we let them do whatever the fuck they want.
Fuck Israel; but not because of their religion.
That naturally elicits a bit of a reaction.
By contrast I dont remember anybody calling anybody an Islamophobe because they condemned Mohammed bin Salman's killing of Khashoggi or invasion of Yemen.
There's also an element of what is done in Israel being done in our name, since it was essentially a remnant of European colonialism (a particularly shameful part of our history) and continues thanks to support from our governments.
That includes the US, Russia, China, UAE, SA, Myanmar and whatever other examples you wish.
Why pro-genocide israelis feel (and shout that) they get an inproportionate amount of criticism vs the other dickheads of the world is an exercise I leave to the reader.
This rhetoric is not any different than conservatives arguing Af-Am play the 'race card'. In both cases there's actual bigotry that some people want to sweep under the rug by a mindless counter-accusation.
as implied by "too much" - your comment is truly rhetoric as it cheaply dismisses this claim as "mindless" and makes a poor tribal comparison - African-Americans aren't currently occupying another state.
Saying so does not make you a bigot or an anti semite. Israel and it's defenders hide behind these kind of statements and they're nonsense. Labour if elected would not have given Israel such an easy ride and they throw a lot of money around -- thus, Corbyn is an anti-semite and labour has 'issues' around Jews, and surprise surprise; the tories got in and are happy to sell them lots of nice missiles and intelligence.
It's bullshit. They just have ethics. I Would feel the exact same way if it was Christians or Hindus or whatever in charge of Israel and behaving like this; where is the defence then? Criticise us and you're anti-christian? Doesn't have the same ring to it does it?
It's not remotely difficult, and I'm sure 99.999999% of Labour Leftists with nigh-identical positions would not be so compromised. Can't understand why the Labour Left had to (politically) die on that hill.
The book was presumably "Imperialism: A Study" - not wholly about Jews, and Corbyn describes the accusation as "mischievous representation".
These are weak examples, basically a degrees-of-separation argument coupled with your own opinion of what is black-and-white anti-Semitic without informed discussion (or even examples since you only provide suggestive anecdotes, not sources). Feel free to demonstrate your "99.9..%" numbers for politicians that are under the same amount of scrutiny.
Feel free to demonstrate where this exists in the comment you replied to. I can just as easily decide the more relevant topic is "rhetoric used to ignore ethnic nationalism", which your post could be.
EDIT:
I'd also note the comment you replied to says:
> Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously
your own comment elsewhere (on Noam Chomsky):
> Noted genocide denier (repeatedly) with zero credibility on anything.
Why is dismissive labelling ok in one case, and not another?
Because the only source given for the quote was Chomsky himself*. In that case, the question of Chomsky's credibility is directly relevant.
* It's possible Chomsky had an actual source etc., but if so, it was not provided in the original comment.
They use it in very specific circumstances that relate to criticizing the idea of Israel being a Jewish state. I can understand that people may innocently criticize this, due to missing the historical context of why Israel was created, but I agree that this form of criticism against Israel should be condemned.
P.S. There are very specific actions by the Israeli government that I do condemn. Notably, not stopping settlement expansion in the West Bank. However most comments against Israel are far more gangue and sensationalist.
That was only very recently codified and was very controversial inside and outside of israel.
> They use it in very specific circumstances
I'm sorry but that's just incorrect, it's been used much more broadly.
for example according to Noam Chomsky:
"Actually, the locus classicus, the best formulation of this, was by an ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations.... He advised the American Jewish community that they had two tasks to perform. One task was to show that criticism of the policy, what he called anti-Zionism—that means actually criticisms of the policy of the state of Israel—were anti-Semitism. That's the first task. Second task, if the criticism was made by Jews, their task was to show that it's neurotic self-hatred, needs psychiatric treatment. Then he gave two examples of the latter category. One was I. F. Stone. The other was me. So, we have to be treated for our psychiatric disorders, and non-Jews have to be condemned for anti-Semitism, if they're critical of the state of Israel. That's understandable why Israeli propaganda would take this position. I don’t particularly blame Abba Eban for doing what ambassadors are sometimes supposed to do. But we ought to understand that there is no sensible charge. No sensible charge. There's nothing to respond to. It's not a form of anti-Semitism. It's simply criticism of the criminal actions of a state, period"
Very recently as in 'in the UN assembly resolution authorizing the creation of Israel' (1947) or the 1985 basic law etc.
>Noam Chomsky
Noted genocide denier (repeatedly) with zero credibility on anything.
You are correct. I'm sorry. I was misremembering the news from when "Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People" [1] was passed in 2018. My bad, I can no longer edit my post though. So apparently "Jewish ethnic homeland in Palestine", "Jewish state" and "Jewish nation-state" mean different things and have different connotations. The latter being the recent and most controversial one.
for people that want to check the resolution referenced is UNGA181.[2]
Turns out the Palestinian opposition to the term is because they see it as giving up on their right of return (given to them by UNGA194 [3] )
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Natio...
Noam Chomsky is a lot of things, but 'genocide denier' label is at best inaccurate and, more importantly, does not automatically make him wrong on any other issue. I get that character assassination works well, but this is HN, where stuff like that will be called out.
"That was only very recently codified and was very controversial inside and outside of Israel.
Very recently as in 'in the UN assembly resolution authorizing the creation of Israel' (1947) or the 1985 basic law etc."
I think parent is referring to this piece of legislation[1]. I might be wrong, but if not, that would strike me as recent.
[1]https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-n...
>I think parent is referring to this piece of legislation
I believe you are right, but the particular issue parent's objecting to is not new at all [EDIT: Note that parent clarified his position in a later comment].
That said, I accept your argument that credibility is relevant. Not to search very far, if we accept him as some sort of authority on geopolitical matters, is he wrong, say, about US-Iraq relationship? My point is that opinions should not be automatically dismissed or automatically accepted. It should be based on the merits of the argument. And Chomsky can present an interesting argument based on what I heard.
However, the quote in question goes a bit further, Chomsky says Eban started a specific strategy of using antisemitism to Eban's own ends, almost directly paraphrasing something Eban allegedly said. I think I'm entitled to ask what's Chomsky's source, and if there isn't any, than it rests on Chomsky's credibility which, well, isn't very much IMHO.
[EDIT: On the Balkans, you can see Kraut's video on YouTube. This text has similar arguments though:
https://srebrenicagenocide7111995.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/n... ]
Separately, I did some basic googling of Eban quotes and his positions[2] do not seem at odds with the gist of Chomsky's quote though:
"One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism….”
I only started reading the link you provided so it may take a while before I respond.
[1]https://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/27/noam_chomsky_at_unit... [2]https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/18/corb-n18.html
I would like to differ slightly. Chomsky has it that Eban wants to tar criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitic* - which leads to the 'oh well, they just accused Corbyn of antisemitism because of his Israel position' argument you see in the comments.
Eban wants to argue against a specific ideological position which at least is aimed at completely modifying the Israeli state (not 'policy criticism') and he has his argument for it - an argument we can safely say Israel has lost in the West. People may defend Israel, but they usually do not consider their opponent antisemitic per se.
* There's also the 'neurotic self-hatred' part, where Eban supposedly is naming Chomsky specifically, but I think we can safely discard that.
It's a fundamental contradiction embedded from the Israeli declaration of independence (which commits to racial and religious equality) onwards: what does it mean for a state, rather than individuals, to be Jewish?
The underlying argument is that it's necessary for the continued survival and security of Jewish people that there be a Jewish state, and unfortunately the continuous attacks on Israel suggest they might be right.
You can certainly state that the right of self-determination doesn't trump the rights of others. So a Jewish state somewhere is a right, but not if there are already people living in that particular somewhere who object.
You can also state that predominantly European migration to a part of the world where there are other people living has been somewhere between a mistake and a disaster and a tragedy, be that America, Australia or Israel.
I think the last part is the issue that causes much of the problems. Many people in Labour party wanted to protect the right of those directly affected by the migration to call it out in their terms. We wouldn't deny native americans or aborigines using terms like 'racist' to describe what has happened to them. Yet the misuse of the IHRA examples (turning examples into a legal definition) did exactly that. And many people in Labour objected.
I can understand the continuing need for there to always be a place of safety for Jews. Although it's tragic that this is the case, but understandable, not least given the holocaust still being within living memory. The current direction of Israel can't be it though, there has to be some other way.
>Jean-Luc Melenchon, a far-left politician running for France's presidency next year has suggested that a jihadist's 2012 murder of Jews was part of an elections conspiracy.
So you think it is impossible for anyone to organize a smear campaign based on lies and/or misrepresentation?
Seems naive to me.
I wonder, are you just trying to add to the “labor is anti-Semitic” smears that Zionists push online? You know the smears they push because they have no answer to the criticism that zionist Israelis are (a) stealing other peoples lands through settlements (b) supporting racist Apartheid laws and (c) supporting a criminal state which regularly oppresses and violates the universally-acknowledged rights of the native population.
Epstein had many rich and powerful friends. Epstein was a pedophile. Epstein died within an inexcusable lapse in custody. These are all truths. Combine them together into the Q narrative, and now you have a massive conspiracy that is mostly wild speculation but contains some kernels of truth.
Also very suspicious that some of the biggest advocates for Palestinian rights have suddenly become anti-Semites seemingly overnight.
The conversation has moved from Israel's utterly disgusting treatment of the Palestinians to almost trivial claims of anti-Semitism.
One a systematic and brutal campaign of regression against hundreds of thousands of people, the other a few people got called names.
I always thought it was probably a very successfully Mossad smear campaign akin to Putin's anti-Hilary campaign.
And a lot of the British press helped because they hated Corbyn.
Does that make me an antisemit? Because then the term has been redefined and I'll gladly wear it
Labour party antisemitism goes way beyond criticism of isreal, including support for hezbollah and hamas.
https://labourhatesjews.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/29-examples...
Also: Jeremy Corbyn faces fury after praising ‘brilliant’ book which claims Jews control world banks
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8975188/jeremy-corbyn-praises-...
Corbyn also backed the artist behind the mural clearly depicting evil jews controlling the world like a board game:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/23/corbyn-crit...
The excusing away of this behaviour on HN is crazy, it's not just about isreal. Not by a long shot.
e.g. on Hobson's book.
This was a book that was widely referenced. Certainly referencing it didn't mean endorsement of Hobson's antisemitism ( a few lines in that book).. like praising the works of many other authors of the time that contain antisemetic references.
Here's the then leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg citing Hobson.
http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Liberal_moment_-_EMBARGOED_18.0...
Or Blair:
"J.A Hobson was probably the most famour Liberal convert to what was the literally 'new Labour'"
or Gordon Brown
"In Britain, this idea of liberty as empowerment is not a new idea, J A Hobson asked, “is a man free who has not equal opportunity with his fellows of such access to all material and moral means of personal development and work as shall contribute to his own welfare and that of his society?”"
Is the same for all other cases.
This is how smearing works. People take something that happened (that cannot be denied) and then insist this is proof. If the person says nothing they seem guilty, if the person tries to explain and put things into context they seem guilty.
That's very different from a general reference to a phrase that a person said (Brown) or mentioning a person as part of an historic development (Clegg) - the difference between say, an historian mentioning Goebbels, compared to writing an approving forward to a new edition that a book that Goebbels wrote.
Corbyn has a long long history of happening to not notice antisemitism by people he has been encouraging.
>People take something that happened (that cannot be denied) and then insist this is proof.
How dare we look into mere evidence?! Apparently the important thing to some is that the guy is left-wing and that covers for everything.
Throw enough stuff at the wall and hope something will stick.
And if I put up a list of the times where Corbyn has gone above and beyond to support Jewish communities in the UK, people will undoubtedly put the effort in to dismiss them.
Yet somehow it’s always Corbyn labour that gets “misquoted”. Why is that? The Labour Party has plenty of motivation to smear the conservatives over antisemitism, yet somehow they don’t have the material for it. Why is that?
But whatever, I won’t convince you anyway, you refuse to look at the evidence. The mural one is the best example but you claim it’s a smear too. Yet somehow again it’s corbyn who got messed up in it.
But fine, I understand why the left is antisemitic, just like the Soviet Union was, it would just be nice if you were honest about it. If you blame identity groups for the worlds problems it’s hard to not blame Jews, and it must really frustrating seeing a successful nationalistic nation be successful against all odds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_UK_Conserv...
And On the Tory Prime minister
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/11/boris-johns...
On the mural. Yes I agree that is the clearest example. The mural is clearly antisemetic. Corbyn claims he wasn't paying attention and made the comment about censorship without opening the image. He has since agreed the mural was antisemetic and that he made a mistake.
That's basically the only scandal that has stood up though, that he said he wasn't paying attention when surfing on Facebook 10 years ago, and people who believe the other scandals insist he was paying attention and was deliberately endorsing a piece of antisemetic art.
And on the 'left' blaming Jews for everything. You are wrong obviously. but also worth noting many of the heros of the left : Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Jesus Christ. Are Jews.
corbyn famously laid a wreath on the grave of a hamas fighter[1]. an interpretation - more in line with how corbyn has historically treated war and violence - reads:
> "They insist Jeremy Corbyn was at the service to commemorate the Palestinians who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in 1985"
i'll leave "support for palastine is equivalent to antisemitism" argument to the side here, needless to say i don't think i'm unique in thinking that this isn't the case.
> Jeremy Corbyn faces fury after praising ‘brilliant’ book which claims Jews control world banks
if this is in reference to the hobson book foreword, then, this would be very similar in nature to calling me misogynistic for recommending the 1st edition K&R C book, because it presumes the programmer is a man.
the book in question, Imperialism, is a treatise on how capatilism causes imperialism. which does sound like something corbyn would be interested in. i implore you to read it and tell me how antisemitic it is.
> Corbyn also backed the artist behind the mural clearly depicting evil jews controlling the world like a board game:
look at the damn mural![2] where is the antisemitic message? it's literally called "freedom for humanity". it seems clear to me that this is a complaint on the power the rich have over the rest of us.
every single one of the threads i've ended up going down over years has always been a variation on: corbyn, or the labour party, is decried as antisemitic for something. this "something" is rarely made clear or obvious when it gets media coverage. surface level investigation makes claims of antisemitism look not particularly strong.
in the meantime, i need to learn advanced memory keeping techniques to keep track of conservative government scandals from the last 6 months.
> The excusing away of this behaviour on HN is crazy, it's not just about isreal. Not by a long shot.
if corbyn is antisemitic, then let me be clear: fuck him. it would be at odds though with his otherwise radical socialist and humanitarian track record: views on which he has been remarkably consistent on for the majority of his political career. somehow, even today.
the only thing that seems crazy to me is just how effective the campaign against him was.
[1]: https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-jeremy-cor...
[2]: https://i0.wp.com/inspiringcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/...
They dont even give a damn about anti semitism. They backed Orban when he put out hook nosed Jew campaign adverts because he backed Israel and they treasure their relationship with anti semitic US evangelicals.
That particular smear campaign wasnt very effective but it was remarkable in its audaciousness - just like the fantastically stupid czech spy smear.
[0] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-embassy-rep-caug...
[1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220214-espionage-is-a-di...
At least from an outside view, it's the UK now that is showing a good leadership in the current worldwide crises. While the US, France and Germany are completely lost, especially on how to deal with a "strong-man".
(Meanwhile nobody remembers Cameron or that guy that was a pure puppet of the US in the forced Iraq war, and they were the posh gentleman everyone was expecting)
Are you really surprised? I'd be surprised if the UK and its media made a fuss about it. Certainly we won't be making a fuss about it here in the US that's for sure. I'd imagine russia and china wishes they had 1/10th the influence that israel has in the US/UK. Say what you want about israel, but for such a tiny country, it punches far above its weight.
So the US has responded, quite forcefully, to people much lower on the food chain being hacked by Pegasus.
See: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/12/the-s...
I wonder how this is enforced in practice? I have to assume Israel has retailer shops where anybody can just buy whatever, most likely even Dell laptops and monitors.
The idea that this is the “main” problem in the UK is frankly laughable.
Controversially, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Lebedev has been ennobled and is now qualified to sit in the House of Lords, most definitely a position of power though he has not as yet chosen to appear there as far as I know. It turns out that Unelected Lords are also permitted to be ministers in the cabinet, so...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Disraeli
The rabbit hole goes deeper, keep digging! They can't keep the truth hidden forever.
The only surprise here is that he's Labour, not Tory.
Half of the current Great Offices of State are held by brown people under the Tories, who also had the first Jewish PM, the first (and second, and only) female PMs, and then there's Saj who's been Chancellor and Home Secretary, and I reckon is about as likely as Sunak to be the next PM. They appointed the first female, gay head of the Met Police, and the leader of the party in Scotland was also a gay woman for 8 very recent years.
Some of these people are clearly the worst of British politics (hello Priti Patel!), but the Tories have an excellent record of putting people who aren't straight, white, Christian men into positions of power.
It is quite likely the next PM will be of Pakistani or Indian ancestry (unless it’s a Labour PM; they have a poor record of promoting minorities to the top of Government) It's simply not true that the UK is xenophobic.
What on Earth are you talking about?
10% of parliament are from ethnic minorities (including many high profile positions, Tories included), against a UK background of 14%.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01...
9% of parliament identifies as gay/bi against a UK background of 5%.
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/12/31/lgbt-mps-gay-lesbian-b...
I think Realpolitik is the reason why and that's all I'm going to say about that.
Last year:
The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, warned Boris Johnson in a text message that UK-Saudi Arabian relations would be damaged if the British government failed to intervene to “correct” the Premier League’s “wrong” decision not to allow a £300m takeover of Newcastle United last year.
As for the NSO, it is rather likely that the UK government itself is a client. In fact taking all of that into account it isn't unlikely that the UK government is more than just a customer and was already aware of being "hacked". But that's all I'm going to say about that.
the sale has been stalled for more than a year at that point , the league had decided arbitrarily to put a fitness check and delay(not reject) the deal. Roman, usmanov (minority holder ) and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund are current owners of major clubs before Saudi Arabia .
The stalling and later approval has nothing to do with concerns of sportswashing (PL has sold out any morality they had long before then). The block and later approval was mostly because Qatar was pissed .
Qatar owns PSG , hosting 2022 World Cup and most importantly owns lucrative PL broadcast rights in Middle East.
beIN with Saudi government informal support has been streaming matches illegally. Complicating this Qatar for last 4/5 years has been pretty much isolated in Middle East and kicked out of many forums in unrelated diplomatic fights.
In the end Saudi paid 1Billion pounds to Qatar to settle that dispute before Newcastle could be bought.
Sovereign/government influence peddling and involving in sports clubs is nothing new. Real Madrid has benefited a lot over the years , west ham got a brand new stadium for nothing , even in the U.S. favorable policies , tax breaks are used heavily to attract sports teams at city /state level all the time.
Democracy or dictators sports are cheap trick to improve ratings , it has been used at least since gladiators in Rome as a tool.
My intention is not defend Saudi actions just that it is not surprising governments were involved.
Disclaimer : I am a Newcastle fan
As-salamu alaykum
I reckon the fans of rival clubs will absolutely terrorize you with taunting going forth.
I had to look them up. Today I Learned about one of the earliest football paintings in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunderland_A.F.C.#/media/File:...
That is pretty neat actually.
I don't really follow football but I do enjoy the shit talking. This seems like a fun team to root for actually :)
No, I cannot explain.
I don't support the team, but I still found the series quite fascinating and found myself rooting for them to succeed. I was surprised to see two of my university friends in the show - Sophie (one of the backroom staff who clashed with the management) and another friend who happened to be in the crowd and got an extreme-closeup before/after a goal in one of the match sequences.
I would rather be taunted and be in the conversation rather than fade away as a once good club .
Newcastle were good once? ;-)
The UK itself is one of the largest weapon exporters in the world, exporting to many countries in the Middle East with dubious human rights track records. The UK government can't possibly know what happens with every single pistol, bullet, missile or drone they sell (if they could, nobody would be buying):
[1] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_arms_export
A private Israeli company is exporting weapons to the same countries the UK does, and when those weapons get used inappropriately, you're then "surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel".
By the same account, are you suggesting that there should be a major diplomatic incident between every country in the world and the UK/USA every time they catch terrorists somewhere around the world using either UK/USA built-or-designed firearms?
There wouldn't be any diplomatic relationships left then:
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-produced_firearms
This is a 69 minutes podcast episode, I'm not in a position to listen to all of it and try and pick out the relevant details. A lot of links are provided, but again - which of those are relevant here? Skimmed through some of them, and they don't even touch on this specific issue at-all?
As I've mentioned before, I'm not challenging your assertions - I'm looking for credible proof that NSO can tell, at any given moment, which specific people are being targeted by the clients/governments to which NSO is licensing its' software.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/whatsapp-israe...
—-
According to WhatsApp’s filing, NSO gained “unauthorised access” to its servers by reverse-engineering the messaging app and then evading the company’s security features that prevent manipulation of the company’s call features. One WhatsApp engineer who investigated the hacks said in a sworn statement submitted to the court that in 720 instances, the IP address of a remote server was included in the malicious code used in the attacks. The remote server, the engineer said, was based in Los Angeles and owned by a company whose data centre was used by NSO.
NSO has said in legal filings that it has no insight into how government clients use its hacking tools, and therefore does not know who governments are targeting.
But one expert, John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab, who has worked with WhatsApp on the case, said NSO’s control of the servers involved in the hack suggests the company would have had logs, including IP addresses, identifying the users who were being targeted.
“Whether or not NSO looks at those logs, who knows? But the fact that it could be done is contrary to what they say,” Scott-Railton said.
In a statement to the Guardian, NSO stood by its earlier remarks. “Our products are used to stop terrorism, curb violent crime, and save lives. NSO Group does not operate the Pegasus software for its clients,” the company said. “Our past statements about our business, and the extent of our interaction with our government intelligence and law enforcement agency customers, are accurate.”
The reason I bring that up is that it's precisely the service you might offer if you wanted more plausible deniability. I still don't consider this hugely complex stuff.
You say that, but UK export law imposes a bunch of conditions, including that you're not knowingly facilitating resale to embargoed countries. And the legality of exports to Saudi Arabia has been litigated - it's legal, but only just.
Both the UK and Israel have export law, complete with conditions and legal frameworks for enforcement. It surely reduces the possibility of weapons ending up in the wrong hands, but it doesn't eliminate it completely. Regardless, it still doesn't imply that the manufacturers themselves or the jurisdictions they are incorporated in should somehow bear blanket responsibility for misuse.
Cyber-weapons and spying are particularly complex from this perspective, because it can be difficult to draw the lines on what constitutes as "misuse". Especially when the operator of the weapon is part of a government (a law-enforcement agency, for example), and when the victim is a citizen of a foreign jurisdiction.
With this out of the way, we're only really left with the "legal, but immoral" argument. I'm not going to argue against that (mainly because this is where things get very subjective and nuanced) - but I will say that the bar for holding an entire government accountable by invocation of "major diplomatic incidents" should be higher than that.
Oh, yes they would. And they do. Quite fucking happily, too.
There will always be cyberweapon brokers. If not NSO, then someone else. And money talks.
Why would there be any oversight? What you need is plausible deniability.
I’d prefer if they started selling Pegasus to absolutely anyone at all. Like, online, for $999 a month or something. Maybe then there will be actual efforts to patch the vulnerabilities that are being exploited for it to work.
Of course the problem is that these services are geared towards protecting the state, as distinct from the people. It is a distinctly unpleasant legacy of the cold war. We'll learn the hard way before there's a change of mindset.
There's a big difference between an underground group doing it in semi-secrecy, vs a state-sponsored company doing it publicly. With said company somehow not being sued into the ground or said country's action not being taken as an act of war in situations like this.
> I’d prefer if they started selling Pegasus to absolutely anyone at all
The high value of what they offer comes from the scarcity, which result in lower likelihood of it being patched.
Implying Israel has anything to do with NSO or that the government is behind it, coupled with the amount of attention this gets relative to a company like Italian based Hacking Team (which both the FBI and Russian government made business with) is cause for concern. Is this hacker news or culturally biased vent club?
I think the domain cyclonefront is nice for a new forum, don't you? You can be an admin there, grow a short mustache and do quarter jumping-jacks.
While NSO isn't part of the government, their work and existence is obviously very much endorsed and allowed by their government.
The justification that "somebody else would have done it" is morally bankrupt, of course, as shown in Nuremberg or the Eichmann trial. It's also just not true: by definition, the alternative would be worse in some way, or it would have been the first choice from the beginning. For simple products, the margin between the knife you are selling and the next-best choice might indeed be small. For nuclear weapons, the marginal product is 100 % less useful, as far as I can tell: there is no other seller. For tanks, you can probably get some Sowjet era relics if you know the right people in the 'stans, which will be significantly worse than western state-of-the-art but not entirely useless.
I'd say Pegasus is somewhere between the tank and the nuclear bomb on that spectrum, right now. Which might well be the point where export controls are most useful, because they also reduce the need and incentive for others to enter the market as buyers and sellers, respectively.
If we can't stop Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, thinking that we can stop sale of software is, mildly speaking, delusional.
I also fail to see the relevance to Nuremberg trials, because this is a simple matter of supply and demand. There definitely is demand.
I don't see any nukes in Iran.
Maybe because "we" kept that from happening, idk.
I am not convinced if we way we treated Iran is justified, but thats a different suvject. And after Ukraine, noone will. Ever give up nukes
Besides, governments also tend not to want to be scrutinized on moral ground for trading war assets of any kind.
Why should I be enraged if government officials were put under surveillance? They made abundantly clear that they are in favor of increased monitoring. Their secret surveillance programs were laid open.
So how do you propose they should do better?
» Why should I be enraged if government officials were put under surveillance?
I am not worried about the officials themselves but the people who talk to them. Once again, the next thought leader, who could be but will never be because of the surveillance and subsequent actions.
It doesn't even have to be malicious, there are people working in these agencies that are trained to follow orders. They believe intrinsically that what they do is necessary for security. No appeal will ever work, just a tight corset of regulation or protections by law that have actual teeth with heavy sanctions against misconduct. Today some agencies just blatantly disregard the most fundamental laws. If you scrap those you don't even need terrorists anymore, you did it all to yourself.
That's thr rub isn't it - if you startva security agency thst does terrible things, it will hire people that can somehow justify and rationalise those terrible things
Very few people in KGB or whatever thought that they did anything wrong
Then there is the other dimension where corporations just help the worst dictators for profit or provide surveillance capability against the population. Almost all major names in tech are guilty here to certain degrees. Some more than others, but there are no morals in business. Especially not with investment mechanisms like ESG or similar constructs to provide wellness to rich investors, but that is another topic.
[0] https://theintercept.com/2021/05/25/oracle-social-media-surv...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220328071032/https://www.nytim...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ceCOhdgRBoc
There was only minor fallout from this incident, and I imagine it will be the same here.
If russia did that, they would be treated a lot differently than israel or eg. USA.
Russia poisoned multiple British nationals with chemical and radioactive weapons on British soil and got away with it scot-free.
He doesn't hide his opinions, some of which are quite strongly worded, but I don't think that makes him less worthwhile as an observer. I'd say he is less of a fact-finder/whistleblower and more of an analyser/commenter.
I personally find his articles insightful and nuanced.
Actually Yes Minster joked about surveillance put on certain ministers. Can watch for fun. Sitcoms nowadays rarely talk about political issues.
UAE on the other hand is a decrepit money laundering people smuggling cesspit and should face the full brunt of Iran/Russia style sanctions.
For all we know the security services already knew about this and were feeding false info to manipulate the UAE. Heck, the Israelis might have even tipped us off, I'm sure they value their relationship to us much more than with the UAE. I'd give it at least 50/50 Munk School trying to 'help' us just trashed a perfectly good MI6 counterintelligence op. That's the sort of way these things work.
Yeah, I agree. The western nations which built their lead through brutal colonialism and presently maintain that lead with neo-colonialism structures where brutal governments (Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE) do the dirty work which they (western countries) ostensibly condemn.
How about this: let’s have the western countries leave the world alone. Let’s have the western countries abandon their profit by misery business models (eg western arms industries which profiteer by instigating conflict and supplying aggressors).
It all depends who the (UK) Government is "friends" with. Let's not forget the infamous Russian Novichok poisoning cases in Salisbury - those naughty Russians! The Saudis execute 81 citizens in a day, and Boris visits the day after to beg for oil and gas - those naughty Saudis!
I'm not surprised it isn't a major diplomatic incident!
…Israel’s intelligence finds or creates blackmail on more than enough key politicians and their staff in the western countries.
On the other hand, Johnson and many of his staff clearly can’t be blackmailed because he and many of them are totally shameless.
Perhaps the treatment they got for the book is the reason many serious academics and intellectual steer clear of the topic. Which is unfortunate since the pernicious influence of the lobby has arguably grown steadily since they published the book, culminating in the election of Trump and such disastrous consequence for the world like shredding of Obama's Iran nuclear agreement.
If the Israelis were going to veto a country's use of the software, it's reasonable to assume that the country was intelligent enough not to tell them what they were doing with it.
NSO maintains control and is semi-actively involved in the exploitation (NSO servers are used and they control this access). This is very different from selling someone a knife that is later used in a murder.
There is a very good Darknet Diaries breakdown of what the NSO group can and cannot do - https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/100/ - and despite their claims otherwise, the evidence strongly points to them being complicit in attacks rather than just being a vendor.
Like, yeah, blame the UAE mostly for this but let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better.