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Megaphone

"Tramp the Dirt Down": Margaret Thatcher is dead

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George Galloway
The old saw that one shouldn't speak ill of the recently dead cannot possibly apply to controversial figures in public life. It certainly didn't apply to President Hugo Chavez who predeceased Margaret Thatcher amidst a blizzard of abuse.

The main reason it must not preclude entering the lists amidst a wave of hagiographic sycophantic tosh of the kind that has engulfed Britain these last hours is that otherwise the hagiographers will have the field to themselves.

Every controversial divisive deadly thing that Thatcher did will be placed in soft focus, bathed in a rose-coloured light, and provide a first draft of history that will be, simply, wrong.

As is now well-known, I refused to do that today on the demise of a wicked woman who tore apart what remained good about my country, and set an agenda which has been followed, more or less, by all of her successors. I certainly wasn't prepared to leave the obituaries to those who profited from her rule or those who have aped her ever since.

So here is my own memory of Thatcher and what she did in her time on this earth.

Crusader

Best of the Web: Margaret Thatcher's criminal legacy

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Hours after the death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the history books are being re-written and the beatification of the Iron Lady is well underway.

Current British premier David Cameron praised Lady Thatcher for having "saved Britain" and for making the has-been colonial power "great again".

Tributes poured forth from French and German leaders, Francoise Hollande and Angela Merkel, while US President Barack Obama said America had lost a "special friend".

Former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev also lamented the loss of "an historic world figure". Polish ex-president Lech Walesa hailed Margaret Thatcher for having brought down the Soviet Union and Communism.

Such fulsome praise may be expected coming from so many war criminals. But it is instructive of how history is written by the victors and criminals in high office. Obama, Cameron, Hollande and Merkel should all be arraigned and prosecuted for war crimes in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia and Mali, among other places. Kissinger has long evaded justice for over four decades for his role in the US genocide in Southeast Asia during the so-called Vietnam War in which over three million people were obliterated in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The British state is to give Thatcher, who died this week aged 87, a full military-honours funeral. The praise, eulogies, wreaths and ceremonies are all self-indictments of association with one of the most ruthless and criminal political figures in modern times.

USA

Secret FDIC plan to loot bank accounts

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It shouldn't surprise. It's already policy. Market analyst Graham Summers explained. Depositor theft is coming. Europe is banker occupied territory. So is America.

Finance is a new form of warfare. It's more powerful than standing armies. Banking giants run things. Money power has final say.

Economies are strip-mined for profit. Communities are laid waste. Ordinary people are impoverished. Even their bank accounts aren't safe.

Cypriot officials agreed to tax them. Canada, New Zealand, and Euroland member states plan doing the same thing. So does America.

Officially they're called "bail-ins." It's code language for grand theft. Instead of breaking up, nationalizing, or closing down failed banks, depositor funds will keep them operating.

Money printing madness can't go on forever. Regulators, like FDIC, haven't enough money to insure depositors. It's simple mathematical logic.

Handcuffs

CFAA 2013: Congress' new draft could incarcerate teenagers that read news online

Minors could become
© ReutersMinors could become "criminals" by misrepresenting their age to access news sites, according to proposed changes to an anti-hacking law.
Reading the news should be an essential habit, especially for students and children, yet anyone under 18 found browsing through the news online could hypothetically face jail time under the latest draft of proposed changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is supposed to be "rushed" to Congress during its "cyber week" in the middle of April.

You can read these proposed alterations to the bill in its entirety here.

According to the new proposal floated by the House Judiciary Committee, the CFAA, which was originally passed in 1984 as a measure to thwart hacking, would be amended to treat any violation of a website's Terms of Service - or an employer's Terms of Use policy - as a criminal act. Under the proposed changes, users could be punished and possibly even prosecuted for accessing a website in a way it wasn't meant to be used.

Heart - Black

The woman who wrecked Great Britain

Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet
© ReutersMargaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet in March, 1994, during a private meeting in Santiago.
Margaret Thatcher earned every single cheer that greeted her death

Aging punk rockers, trade-unionists and decent people around the world greeted the news of the passing of Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, with something less than respectful restraint. Millions of people had been looking forward to yesterday for years

Despite their quaint maintenance of a monarchy, British politics are less respectful than ours, and the prime minister is afforded much less regal deference than our president - though by the end of her reign Thatcher was always using the royal "we" - so the death of Thatcher has and will be debated in the United Kingdom much more critically than the death of her comrade-in-arms against the postwar liberal consensus Ronald Reagan was in the United States. The more cowardly American press, though, calls her time in office "controversial" and then moves on to the much more comfortable territory of her extraordinary ambition, forceful personality and skill with a cutting remark. (Our weird class of privileged British expat media leeches have also guided the discussion of the Iron Lady along those lines.)

It would be a crime to allow hagiography and personality to distract from what made her so deeply despised: She ruined Britain.

Video

Taping of farm cruelty is becoming the crime

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© The Humane Society of the United StatesSeveral states have placed restrictions on undercover investigations into cruelty.
On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets into the air. And at one of the country's largest egg suppliers, a video shows hens caged alongside rotting bird corpses, while workers burn and snap off the beaks of young chicks.

Each video - all shot in the last two years by undercover animal rights activists - drew a swift response: Federal prosecutors in Tennessee charged the horse trainer and other workers, who have pleaded guilty, with violating the Horse Protection Act. Local authorities in Wyoming charged nine farm employees with cruelty to animals. And the egg supplier, which operates in Iowa and other states, lost one of its biggest customers, McDonald's, which said the video played a part in its decision.

But a dozen or so state legislatures have had a different reaction: They proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups. They have also drafted measures to require such videos to be given to the authorities almost immediately, which activists say would thwart any meaningful undercover investigation of large factory farms.

Critics call them "Ag-Gag" bills.

Attention

Flashback Amazon secretly removes "1984" from the Kindle

1984
© io9
Thousands of people last week discovered that Amazon had quietly removed electronic copies of George Orwell's 1984 from their Kindle e-book readers. In the process, Amazon revealed how easy censorship will be in the Kindle age.

In this case, the mass e-book removals were motivated by copyright . A company called MobileReference, who did not own the copyrights to the books 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded both books to the Kindle store and started selling them. When the rights owner heard about this, they contacted Amazon and asked that the e-books be removed.

And Amazon decided to erase them not just from the store, but from all the Kindles where they'd been downloaded. Amazon operators used the Kindle wireless network, called WhisperNet, to quietly delete the books from people's devices and refund them the money they'd paid.

An uproar followed, with outraged customers pointing out the irony that Amazon was deleting copies of a novel about a fascist media state that constantly alters history by changing digital records of what has happened. Amazon's action flies in the face of what people expect when they purchase a book. Under the "right of first sale" in the U.S., people can do whatever they like with a book after purchasing it, including giving it to a friend or reselling it. There is no option for a bookseller to take that book back once it's sold.

Dollars

Exxon Mobil must pay $236M in New Hampshire pollution case

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Exxon Mobil Corp. was found liable Tuesday in a long-running lawsuit over groundwater contamination caused by the gasoline additive MTBE, and the jury ordered the oil giant to pay $236 million to New Hampshire to clean it up.

The jurors reached their verdicts in less than 90 minutes, after sitting through nearly three months of testimony in the longest state trial in New Hampshire history.

The panel awarded the state the $236 million it was seeking to monitor and remediate groundwater contaminated by MTBE. The chemical was added to gasoline to reduce smog but was found to travel farther and faster in groundwater than gasoline without the additive.

''We appreciate the jurors' service during this long trial, but erroneous rulings prevented them from hearing all the evidence and deprived us of a fair trial,'' said Exxon Mobil lawyer David Lender.

Jurors found that Exxon Mobil was negligent in adding MTBE to its gasoline and that it was a defective product. They also found Exxon Mobil liable for failing to warn distributors and consumers about its contaminating characteristics.

Bad Guys

Secret tape: McConnell and aides weighed using Judd's mental health and religion as political ammo

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A recording of a private meeting between the Senate GOP leader and campaign aides reveals how far they were willing to go to defeat the actor/activist.

On February 2, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, opened up his 2014 reelection campaign headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, and in front of several dozen supporters vowed to "point out" the weaknesses of any opponent fielded by the Democrats. "They want to fight? We're ready," he declared. McConnell was serious: Later that day, he was huddling with aides in a private meeting to discuss how to attack his possible Democratic foes, including actor/activist Ashley Judd, who was then contemplating challenging the minority leader. During this strategy session - a recording of which was obtained by Mother Jones - McConnell and his aides considered assaulting Judd for her past struggles with depression and for her religious views.

Last month, Judd announced she wouldn't challenge McConnell, whose reelection campaign could become one of the most watched races of the 2014 cycle (if a serious Democratic opponent emerges). But at the February 2 meeting, McConnell and his team were fixated on Judd. McConnell told his aides that at the early stage of the campaign they had to clobber any potential challenger:
I assume most of you have played the, the game Whac-A-Mole?" (Laughter.) This is the Whac-A-Mole period of the campaign...when anybody sticks their head up, do them out.

Bizarro Earth

Beyond missionary work: The porn that's watched in Vatican City

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© @tiffanystarrxxx @DirtySheenShaw via TwitterTranssexual porn star Tiffany Starr, left, and female star Sheena Shaw, right, starred in an XXX-rated video downloaded by someone in Vatican City.
Thou shalt not steal porn off the Internet seems to be a commandment some residents of Vatican City choose to ignore.

The tiny city-state within Rome that houses around 800 people doesn't exactly have the highest downloading levels in the world, but that hasn't stopped some of its residents from swiping files starring the likes of female porn stars Sheena Shaw, Lea Lexis and Krissy Lynn, according to TorrentFreak.com.

Additionally, someone within the Catholic Church's headquarters also likes the work transsexual superstar Tiffany Starr.

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A list of torrent files downloaded from Vatican City.