221–230 of 381 posts
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Israel was also behind many of the efforts to smear the former opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn - https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/news/israeli-diplomat-sough... The current government is a huge ally of Israel.
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I'm surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel too, since the Israeli intelligence company was supposedly "closely monitoring how their customers were using the software" or akin to that. 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.
Because western countries use the same services to spy on their citizens. Even if they feigned outrage, the potential blowback could topple some people. 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. Th…
» 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.
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Israel was also behind many of the efforts to smear the former opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn - https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/news/israeli-diplomat-sough... The current government is a huge ally of Israel.
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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?".
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/how-democracie...
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That's not really how smear campaigns work. 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 "…
> it's impossible to prove the absence of something 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.
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.
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Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously. The issues I have with Israel are because of the actions of its government and absolutely nothing to do with the majority religion there. 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.
> Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously 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 ac…
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.
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Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously. The issues I have with Israel are because of the actions of its government and absolutely nothing to do with the majority religion there. 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.
> Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously 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 ac…
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.
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Politics... If russia did that, they would be treated a lot differently than israel or eg. USA.
> 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. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51722301
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I'm not challenging your assertion, I'm genuinely looking for backing evidence here. Do you have evidence that NSO knows who is being targeted by the tools they sell?
Here you go: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/100/
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.
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> And what were GCHQ, MI6 and NCSC doing to protect our prime-minister at this time? Nobody is perfect - but there are people who blatantly ignore ITSEC best practices and are therefore almost unprotectable.
> Nobody is perfect - but there are people who blatantly ignore ITSEC best practices and are therefore almost unprotectable. I hear you, but I would contest that they're not at liberty to ignore them. If pizza delivery drivers consent to obligations to carry issued and configured devices while on duty by what exceptionalism is Downing Street excused? Secondly, I'd say that they may make themselves unprotectable, but…
However, I'm not one to defend either MI5 or Johnson here. MI5 routinely surveil anyone to the left of the Tory party as being some kind of dissident. The Johnson government is notorious for ignoring any kind of rules, restraint, or best practice. If they had something to say about it, they should have done so in public like the rest of us, once privately recommending had failed.