Happy Birthday USA

the stars and strips

Congratulations USA, on your 250th birthday except, the constitution of the republic was ratified 4th March 1789 making it the 237th birthday; it entrenched slavery and excluded native Americans, blacks couldn’t vote until 1870 and women until 1920, although this was before the UK permitted women to vote.

They adopted what they saw as the results of the English Civil War albeit with an explicit separation of powers, and guaranteed local democratic powers invested in the constituent states and the people by the 10th Amendment.

The growth of political parties, and the designed unaccountability of the Senate and Supreme Court can be seen  today as critical weaknesses which one hopes are not copied by Europe’s constitutional reformers and that democrats in the US are able to fix. …

Backdoors

Backdoors

Earlier this week, the Guardian in conjunction with its partner publishers, New York Times and ProPublica ran an article, Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security. As we’ll see, the title is a bit misleading, but the agencies certainly gave it their best shot. This story builds on the initial Snowden leaks that the NSA has been using computer technology to spy on everyone using the internet in the USA. The story rapidly came to the UK where it became clear that Britain’s GCHQ was tapping the UK/USA telecom links, sharing intelligence with the USA and providing the NSA with a slightly more legal way of spying on US citizens. There is little doubt that the US & UK’s intelligence agencies have outsourced their own domestic spying which is legally restricted to each other. …