Friday, July 31, 2009

Gary McKinnon

The more I read about the case of Gary McKinnon, the more astonished and angry I get. This is perhaps because my own daughter is on the autistic spectrum and is also highly intelligent, so these issues personalise themselves. But the whole thing is just ridiculous in any case. McKinnon is accused of hacking into U.S. military computers and causing $800,000 of damage (he denies the second of these charges) – roughly what the U.S. spends on maintaining its military presence in Iraq every few minutes, I’ve no doubt.

The U.S. Government (headed by Bush when proceedings began), embarrassed and vengeful, want to extradite him under a 2003 treaty formed with the aim of bringing terrorists to justice. But McKinnon is no terrorist. He has Asperger’s Syndrome and is obsessed with UFOs. He claims he hacked the data because he was convinced the U.S. were hiding evidence of UFOs.

The whole idea that someone with Asperger’s Syndrome could defend himself adequately in a trial, especially one far from familiar surroundings, is insane. The stress of a trial would, in itself, play havoc with his state of mind. There was clearly nothing malicious in what he did. He will have been single-minded about it. Nothing would have been allowed to get in his way once he’d decided the computers were hiding secret UFO data. The idea that he might have been doing something wrong won’t even have occurred to him.

The argument that the bulk of the evidence is situated in the USA may be true, but the offence took place in the UK. Therefore, the UK authorities and legal counsels could quite easily argue that a trial should take place in the UK and that extradition isn’t necessary.

But there are other serious issues at stake here. The U.S. penal system could impose a sentence of 70 years imprisonment on Gary McKinnon. What’s to be gained for anyone by that? His mum claims he is very shy, too timid even to use the London Metro system. What's jail going to do for him? What’s it going to achieve for anyone else? Surely we have the ability to formulate a more appropriate form of punishment. It occurs to me that someone of Mr McKinnon’s obvious talents could be highly useful to both the UK and U.S Governments!

The extradition treaty contains the following clauses: that a) the U.S. has to prove ‘reasonable suspicion’ for extradition of a British citizen, and that b) to extradite an American from the US, Britain must prove ‘probable cause.’ It seems to me that this treaty is grossly unequal. Surely ‘probable cause’ is a greater burden of proof than ‘reasonable suspicion’! You have to ask why the UK government signed under these terms. What were they thinking? No doubt Blair was acting as Bush’s toady as usual, but this ought to be revisited at the earliest possible opportunity. Gary McKinnon’s mother has petitioned Obama today. Will Obama listen? Or have the realities of power made that impossible for him without paying a heavy domestic price? We’ll soon see.

And as for Britain’s MPs, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Pressure should be brought to bear on the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson – not just the inevitable pressure from opposition MPs and a few rebels, but from every fair-minded Labour MP (are there any left?) – to refuse the extradition. I note that 90 percent of American requests for extradition have been backed by the UK, and only 70 percent of British requests have been backed by the USA. It’s about time that inequality was placed under careful scrutiny as well.

Gary McKinnon is a pawn in a game. There is heavy external pressure on the UK politicians who could do something about this if they wanted to. It’s clear the U.S authorities, for reasons best known to themselves, will stop at nothing to bring McKinnon to trial in the U.S. He’s compromised their security and shown everyone that an intelligent hacker can invade their systems. How embarrassing for them… They obviously plan to do whatever it takes, for however long it takes. They are behaving like someone with Asperger’s Syndrome! Someone should tell them…

You can keep up to date with developments at the Free Gary McKinnon website.

4 comments:

Alison said...

I entirely agree, Rob, that someone with Asperger's Syndrome should not be deported. I'm not being facetious when I suggest that a better response would be for the US to re-examine the vital computer systems which Gary was able (in effect) to shut down for 24 hours - and that perhaps they should ask him how he did it...

Coirí Filíochta said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Coirí Filíochta said...

Thank you very much Rob for daring to speak up on this.

~

Annually the sun emits enough free energy, to deliver current human consumption-quota/s of fossil fuel, by a ratio of 10,000: 1 - ?

Annually, 10,000 times more energy comes our way via the sun; than all the fossil fuel consumed in a year by wo/men. ie: us.

~

McKinnon's case is truly fascinating. What's happening is some wheels are turning here which may reveal ideas and material which challenge our very concept of what Reality is (or think it is, according to GMcK)

There are numerous urban legends sprouting up around him; some of the most contemporary cutting edge online stuff of which is, i'm sure, t/here at abovetopsecret.com.

The latest development in my own apprehension of what the full and true particulars of this case are; is a 16 minute video interview in which McKinnon makes extraordinary claims about supressed technologies the people in charge of the most (non) secret data storage systems have to hand today.

~

GMcK claims the secret/s he knows about, (if true) offer at a stroke, the practical means with which to immediately solve the fuel crisis and usher in the first era of Free Energy we know about in our history as a race who clumped about for hundreds of thousands and several million years pretty much unchanging: until 10,000 years ago when we began behaving in a way unknown before in the history of human intelligence.

A milisecond the last eight thousand years have been in relation to the full of our evolution (as current scientific thinking has it); in the one night and day of History's template and blueprint for r-evolution across all levels of Life and letters: dominant as the one unifying duality and theme of binariness and two state wo/men way/s of being a sole sapient being at the guarding edge of contemporary Letters, Rob and Alison; who is singularly unique and yet perfectly as one with both you and the Reader.

What is McKinnon's position, please - do you know?

Incredibly bizzare; if McKinnon is correct: get ready for the biggest head-fuck YOU will ever know.



Technologies which route back and relate to extra-terrestrial source/s, back-engineered 50 years ago in top secret programmes in which retrieved material was farmed out to civilian aero-engineering companies under the cover of being Russian and/or American captured pieces of planes and the advanced, suppressed technologies put to use in the military and civilian arenas: to such an extent we as a speciaes are now wholly reliant on and defined by: the most advanced technology to have existed in the recorded history of our race.


ha ha ha ha humbug the (un?)knowing ones may say; but what if the boot suddenly slid onto the other foot or feet of the few, pole-shift-reverse instantaneously when Gazzer's brief in possession of his full position, gets gassing in the higher chamber, and the argument which brings him to the highest court of appeal thus far on the compelling arc of this tale, holds global attention in an unprecedented way.

Here are we all seeking fame as immortal poets, and what of GMcK is not wrong, deluded or mentally ill; but telling the truth?

Is it a Truth you could/have/will/want to/won't entertain, please Ali and Rob?

~

I have not watched much of McKinnon's interview; as I am hoping YOU READER: MY COUNTRY NEEDS YOU - rob and/or alison who I very much urge (along with your majesty, dear R) will report proceedings there here, to stimulate further discussion of GMcK sufficient for a literary enabling which promotes further back and forth amongst this gathering of Letters competitively on guard and at the ready for avante sentience as WE who are cued into the here and now of free ? - energy?

meh !

Anonymous said...

It's about time that the USA stop living off its reputation... that it's a free country, this and that... the prosecutor misconduct and the de facto presumption of guilt, the fact that people who lie to convict people are never punished, the fact that it's considered normal and desirable to have near 100% conviction rates, this is cause for alarm. Britain should not extradite people to such a place. It figures also that Britain did more for bankers of the Natwest three then for McKinnon - he is not a banker, one of the brahmans...

I am disturbed by AS people who want to throw him to the wolves to prove that AS people can be trusted... we have nothing to prove, nothing...