I can’t be bothered watching Brown at Chilcot any more. Mildly interesting but unsurprising that Blair kept him out of the loop on dealings with Bush,
Brown’s primary concern is to deny that Treasury constraints cost British soldiers’ lives. He has therefore said six times in the first half hour that, as far as the Treasury were concerned, cost was never an issue.
It bloody well should have been. To all those unemployed and steeped in debt, does this feel like a country that had £100 billion to throw away on a totally needless aggressive war?
Gordon Brown. Unquestioning writer of cheques for a psychotic warmongerer.
What a tosser.
Hahahaha. What a clear perspective you have Craig. Keep up the good work mate.
By a curious coincidence, I had a thought last night (chorus:” Gosh, that’s a suprise”) – namely, what a long way we’ve regressed.
Wasn’t the question of whether or not the people were prepared to pay for the leaders’ wars one of the issues that sparked the Civil War(s?) of the mid-1600s ?
Gordon Brown may be a tosser, but I am convinced that he virtually single handedly saved the entire Western World’s banking system from total collapse 18 months ago.
The situation was such, that if he hadn’t taken the action he did, that on the following Monday morning, no cash machines would have worked. Companies would have been unable to pay their employees. Literally everything would have ground to a halt, and people would have starved to death.
I am also convinced that this was deliberately planned, by whoever is in control of the US banking system. Crashing the entire banking system could not have been an accident, but a long term strategy.
At the time of the crisis, Brown flew to the US, and no one within the US Government would even speak to him.
His response was basically FUCK YOU then, and agreed his strategy with the rest of Europe, which actually forced the US to take on his plan to prevent total collapse.
The first US Bail-Out resulted in a massive transfer of wealth out of the US to recompense the toxic derivatives (which I refer to as human turds in a beautifully wrapped gift box) that they had spread throughout the World’s banking system.
All this was down to Brown’s strategy. Sure the World’s banking system is still in an aweful mess, with virtually all countries and populations in massive debt.
But really this is all meaningless nonsense. To who exactly is all this debt owed? To whoever it is, it must be a private entity of immense wealth – effectively the wealth of the World.
So the solution is to settle the debt by imposing a 99.9999% windfall tax to be fairly distributed amongst all the World’s National Governments, and for all the World’s National Governments to issue their own currency through their own Government Banks.
Any attempts to actually pay off this debt are ridiculous and meaningless and would impoverish the entire World, such that we are back at the very near point of collapse 18 months ago.
This is entirely unnecessary. There are evil forces at work here, and Brown is one of the few standing up to them.
Tony
Tony, you are entertaining if nothing else. No one could question your commitment to this blog, you must spend many hours composing your responses.
“Gordon Brown. Unquestioning writer of cheques for a psychotic warmonger”.
Very nicely put, unbeatably compact, and unquestionably accurate.
As an editor, may I compliment you on your excellent way with words? No doubt another reason your books are popular.
John E,
I didn’t even know that Brown was at Chilcot and it took me less than 20 minutes to write the above.
I may have followed matters closely, and actually wrote somewhere (it wasn’t here) that I thought Brown had saved the World, even before he accidentally spurted those words out in Parliament to the derision of the Tories.
I think it hardly likely that Brown or anyone else in Government reads the stuff I write, but it is my opinion, most of which may be complete nonsense and almost always is when I’m pissed.
anno,
I haven’t gone back to drinking baby milk again, its just that I attempt to analyse things from first principles without any political allegiances or sacrosanct pre-conceived ideas.
I came to the conclusion around 10 years ago, that most economists didn’t have a clue, and most politicians were even worse.
The only real use that money has is to motivate people to do useful work.
Whilst I admit to accusations of insanity, I am not quite as insane as the banks.
You may not believe this, but from 2002-2006, banks were literally giving free money away. They were nearly all offerring 0% rates on credit cards for up to 18 months, and at the end of the free period you could role the debt over to another card. Millions of people had multiple cards and debts up to around £50,000 for which they were paying 0 interest. They could invest this money in the very same interest baring accounts of the same banks and receive significant amounts of free money. Of course the banks were well aware of the fact that most people would spend it instead, and then they would pull the plug on them and take all their assets, which is exactly what is happenning in the US now.
Debt in itself is not a problem for an individual or a company, providing there is a stable economic system and reasonable terms for repayment – for example a traditional repayment mortgage for a house over 25 years, or the provision of working capital for a company’s production run of a new product with a virtually guaranteed profitable market.
But over the last 15 years the whole ecomomy went completely insane, as if it was being specifically manipulated to crash.
The position of Governments is completely different to individuals and companies, because they have the legitimate right to issue their own Currency through their own National Bank.
Complete reform and a new economic system is inevitable, because the current banking system is unsustainable, as the debt (to God?) will otherwise exponentially expand towards infinity. God has no use for this money and doesn’t need paying back, so the World has to design a new system that is fair for all and motivates people to do useful work.
Tony
Gordon Brown is what I term, a ‘man in the middle,’ terrified of being branded ‘old Labour’ but equally wanting to call time on the aberration of Blairite New Labour.
Gordon seems to perpetually be in a fog of permanent fear, scared of criticism and constantly making furious notes in an attempt to calculate what might go wrong.
It is a great pity that he showed no interest in what might have gone wrong in invading Iraq. A man 10 years in waiting, his attempts to please everyone while internally exploding when the unforeseen happens will ultimately be his downfall.
A pity though for this man has championed the poor in more ways than one; with a little more courage he might well have become Flash Gordon and won a forth term for ‘Middle Labour.’
Tony, have you considered joining a political party or getting involved in campaigns? I don’t mean the mainsteam parties who are just vehicles for the vainglorious careerists we see in parliament, but campaigns like Stop the War and Unite Against Fascism are a very worthy use of our energies. And they do make a difference you know. Did you know there is a mobilisation today outside parliament because the English Defence League are supposed to be demonstrating today to welcome the Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders. I’d be there myself now but I’m at work now.
Tony,
“as the debt (to God?) will otherwise exponentially expand towards infinity.”
The exponential progression lies within our own conscience, light years away from infinity, held back by our thirst for blood and the destruction of the innocent in preemptive ‘wars’ whose only purpose are the pursuit of power and greed.
The massive slaughter of innocent children in Iraq and Gaza serves to remind us how unbalanced that ‘system’ is, completely out of step with a sharing and dividing nature.
God is rarely accused of lying, so why have we have become obsessed with untruths like the fictitious Saddam-al Qaeda axis to the rosy updates on the Switzerlandization of Iraq, from the bogus tales of WMD to the assurance that democracy is the future of the region.
All bollocks and all those innocent souls that terminated prematurely cannot be saved, even by God.
Firstly, sorry for continuing off-topic but I will endeavour to bring it back to Craig’s original post…
Jon: exactly, there are indeed some conspiracies but when there is a simpler (or in this case IMHO bleedin’ obvious!) explanation with evidence to back it there’s no need to get all metaphysical.
Larry “BURN THE WITCH!” St. Louis: *yawn* End of.
Tony: I’m afraid you don’t enhance your reputation for perspicacious economic analysis with statements like: “The only real use that money has is to motivate people to do useful work.” – actually the principle function of currency is as a means of exchange.
You say that “the whole ecomomy went completely insane, as if it was being specifically manipulated to crash.” As if. It may have looked like that to you but unless you have some evidence for this it is simply an empty assertion.
You make a better point about governments having the right to manage their economies via the intervention of their national bank. Unfortunately this good point undermines your case regarding Gordon Brown. If you remember, one of the first acts of the incoming Labour government in 1997 was to relinquish influence over the Bank of England removing any suggestion that Brown would exercise any political influence over the British economy for the benefit of ordinary working people (or to assist the unemployed to become ordinary working people for that matter).
And this brings me back to Craig’s post: just as Brown didn’t have the politics or backbone to stand up to Blair over the destruction of Iraq, likewise he won’t take a real stand against finance capital and those ostentatiously feathering their nests while the rest of us are squeezed.
Larry,
Where did I say anything of the sort?
If you are suggesting that Zionism – as a political creed – does not exist then you are seriously ill-informed. If and when anno uses any terminology as vile as that you used above then my position will be clear.
So far the only truly offensive poster on this thread is you and I believe you need to take a long hard look at the beam in your own eye before you complain about imaginary splinters in the eyes of others.
And be careful using terms like ‘mature discourse’ it just makes you look more daft. “I just want those hooked-nose Illuminati Zionist money-changing bankers sent back to the gas chambers!” – mature discourse… I think not.
Right, Chris, so you approve of anno’s use of the term “Zio-banker”
Assuming that you would have a problem with someone claiming that the Jewish bankers are the cause of all the world’s problems (and it’s not clear to me what your position is on this), I’m not sure why blaming everything on Zionist bankers is any better.
That’s a not-so-clever trick that anno pulls. He just substitutes a word.
Are you intelligent enough to figure that out?
Apparently you’re not so intelligent, as you don’t understand that I was using hyperbole above to make a point.
L/Cpl Joe Glenton is sentenced to 9 mths’ imprisonment for refusing to return to the war in Afghanistan. Like Ft Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith who refused to return to Iraq, he will be in prison in Colchester.
Shame on all the warmongers and shame on Her Majesty’s Government with the bloody hands.
aaa
BBC website page last updated at 15:02 GMT, Friday, 5 March 2010
Anti-Afghan War Awol soldier Joe Glenton jailed
L/Cpl Joe Glenton was absent for two years and six days
A soldier who refused to return to Afghanistan because he opposes the war has been jailed after admitting going absent without leave (Awol).
L/Cpl Joe Glenton, 27, from York, joined the Army in 2004 but absconded in 2007 after serving with the Royal Logistic Corps in Afghanistan.
He handed himself in after two years and six days’ absence.
Glenton, who is based at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, was jailed for nine months at Colchester and reduced to the ranks.
The court martial was told that Glenton, who later campaigned against the conflict, was discovered to be absent on 11 June 2007, when he was due to return to Dalton Barracks in Abingdon.
When he first raised with his staff sergeant his reluctance to be deployed again… it resulted in the sergeant at the time bullying and intimidating
He returned to barracks 737 days later on 16 June 2009, when he was charged.
During that (time) Glenton went to south east Asia and Australia.
He had previously performed a seven-month tour of duty in Afghanistan.
When he returned he was ordered to go back to the conflict zone.
Nigel Wrack, in mitigation, told the court martial that this was nine months after his previous tour had finished, even though military guidelines suggest soldiers should not be deployed again within 18 months.
Mr Wrack said Glenton had suffered from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after his first tour of duty.
‘Coward and malingerer’
He told the court that when Glenton raised concerns about going back he suffered bullying.
“When he first raised with his staff sergeant his reluctance to be deployed again, instead of being dealt with in a sensible way it resulted in the sergeant at the time bullying and intimidating L/Cpl Glenton,” he said.
“He was called a coward and a malingerer.
“When this information was brought to his commanding officer, the sergeant was spoken to, but this reinforced the bullying.”
Consultant psychiatrist Lars Davidsson told the court Glenton may have reacted the way he did because of PTSD.
Glenton took part in an anti-war protest in October last year.
After the hearing a spokesman for the Stop the War Coalition said: “Joe Glenton is not the person who should be facing a jail sentence.
“It should be the politicians who have led us into disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
aa
Alan Campbell
So you think that DC is soft? I’d be surprised if he didn’t bring back the workhouse for debt-defaulters, if he gets more than three years in office.
Maybe you don’t remember Mrs T constantly winding the people up by scrapping the manufacturing jobs and the welfare state.
Now that they have got Zionist funding, they’ll have another stick to beat the British working class. You want more, just wait till May 6, and you’ll see for yourself.
“does this feel like a country that had £100 billion to throw away on a totally needless aggressive war?”
No, Craig, not from my side of the sea, anyway. But the same could be said of the US. What always strikes me as weird is that the public there will kick up blue murder over their tax dollars going on an improved system of health care, but they don’t even bother to find out how much of their tax goes on war, and weapons, and weapons R&D. They don’t even know the figures. Same goes for bail-outs. They’ll kick up hell about them. But never about what their military costs, or those ~800 bases around the world.
—————————
I believe Craig said that he’d delete any references to 9/11 from threads other than the one below. How many times does Larry have to be reminded??
Brown should have looked to his history…
http://tinyurl.com/yhopwk6
“The BBC reported Thursday the statistic from doctors in the city of Fallujah that the number of heart defects found in newborn babies is 13 times the number of similar birth defects in Europe.”
Bush ordered Fallujah to be essentially destroyed in 2004.
The BBC story states: “British-based Iraqi researcher Malik Hamdan told the news organisation that one doctor compared the number of birth defects from before 2003 to today. Before the war began, she saw about one case every two months. Now she sees cases every day.
“Her research shows that as of January, the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births or 13 times Europe’s rate.” Blair is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Many tens of thousands of children have died directly as a consequence of the Blair/Bush’s war that was based exclusively on lies and deceit. In addition to the spike in birth defects, a whole generation of Iraqi children will face a lifetime of physical and emotional wounds. Seventy percent of children are suffering from trauma-related symptoms reports the Iraqi Society of Psychiatrists and the World Health Organization. That conclusion was based on a survey of 10,000 primary school students.
We owe it the people of Fallujah and all the still suffering people in Iraq to let them know that the people of Britain, like they, recognise that a government that spoke in our name committed some of the worst atrocities in modern times.
Please demand that Blair is brought to trial for war crimes. Join:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&gid=271159066031
I can tell when I have posted omething effective because the New Labour trolls dash in with truly peculiar allegations of anti-semitism, then sparking a row about Israel with other commenters. Just massacred some thiry comments by a rough and ready process- sorry if some suffered collateral damage.
If you put the blame on one man, you are exonerating the big guys who put him up to it. Maybe I ought to have a tantrum like Larry, whenever anyone casts aspersions on the big guys. Keep it simple for the British electorate. Labour baaad, Conservative gooood. Play new game?
Being an American, I’m hardly a member of New Labour or a New Labour voter.
I got pissed off when Anno wrote of “Zio-bankers” and “Zio-crimes”.
You let such things go on your blog. Odd, because you seem to think other comments demand deletion. In any event, mission accomplished on my part.
The fight against racism is always an important fight.
Mark Golding
Yeah, I saw the BBC cover the ‘birth defects’ story yesterday as it if were a dramatic new revelation. And professing mystification as to what might be causing it. I don’t get it. Surely this story has been going on since the first Gulf War and is quite obviously caused by depleted uranium? Where have they been? Mind you, the US military spokesman dismissed the story and said they took public health very seriously. So that’s all right, then.
If an Englishman does something that causes offence for example to a Frenchman, intentionally or unintentionally, it does not mean that he was being racist. But if a pattern emerges in which a particular race is consistently targeted over along period of time, it is racism. In the case of the War on Terror, the US and UK and Israel have been attacking Muslims on a truly monumental scale. So let’s not hear one more squeak from Larry justifying this blatant racism.
Furthermore, even if the offence was not intended, but offence was taken all the same, the sensibilities of the offended person should be respected. Point taken.
I will no longer use the J word or the Z word on this blog again. But I will never withdraw my accusation that the war on terror is a war on Islam, or that its advocates and supporters are Racists, or that its agents are perpetrators of genocide. From now on, inshallah, I will only use the R word, to describe those people Muslim or non-Muslim who sponsor state terror on the ordinary, practising Muslims, because of their religious beliefs, even if they belong to the same nationality, family or tribe.
“mission accomplished on my part.”
Didn’t I hear that somewhere before?
I found it totally disgusting that the inhuman monster expressed his regret over the loss of British soldiers’ lives but did not even mention the loss of over a million Iraqi lives. It is even more sickening when you consider that the British soldiers were essentially war criminals since they were fighting an illegal imperial war. Besides, I believe his cynical words were just an electioneering ploy.
I think I posted this link already but I’ve got lost among the threads. Here goes again anyway:
“The revision thing:
A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies”
(All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers)
http://tinyurl.com/ybu989p
Thought of it today, watching Gordon …
Reading this:
“Gordon Brown to stop courts issuing arrest warrants for foreign officials”
http://tinyurl.com/ydjb6kn
about Gordon making sure that Tzipi Livni and friends can visit without hassle.
One commenter wrote:
“Considering how that country went all over the world after the Second World War kidnapping war criminals and trying them for their crimes, why do they expect other people to be less vigilant in their fight against war criminals.”
and another
“Can we have a list of those countries and organisations that can phone up Gordon Brown and tell him to change UK laws they don’t agree with?”
Heartening. Because I’d read comments on the subject of torture (in another publication) that really depressed me. I don’t expect people to condone torture, and when they promote it, I’m shocked and depressed.
I rate Anno’s perspectve pretty highly too.Muslim’s are the new Jews, i.e In my opinion anybody who rants about muslim threat or buys the whole’They hate our freedom and want to blow us up’, is no better than the Germans who silently or vocally supported the demonisation and killing of Jews during the second world war.Thats because the same propaganda mechanisms are being targeted on the public to allow them to sit back and do nothing whilst innocent people are bombed or tortured in concentration camps such as Guantanamo bay (anybody who thinks that is an outrageous comment should contemplate the fact that the supposed ringleader/alqueda linchpin currently on trial in the U.S regarding 9/11 has been waterboarded 183 times)Insanity. Sorry for the rant , but sometimes I can’t help it. : )
Anno: Well said. Leave out the Z-stuff, because it gives entirely disingenuous mischief-makers the chance to get all hysterical, wet their panties and start shrieking. Much easier for them, which is why they steer any conversation into that “OMG! You’re all Nazis!” frame and load you up with all that baggage. They’ll be offering a shrill “When will anyone think about the children?” the first chance they get – mark my words.
Thus any discussion about pro/anti Israeli foreign policy would become a question of being an “anti-semite” or not one. Any questioning of Official Truths now comes down to whether one is a “loon” (how quaint an ad hominem!) or not. As Craig said, he’s being effective when such types start to come out of the woodwork.
So glad the AngryLarrys are here to keep us straight, stopping us getting too nutty and racist. Gosh, it brings a lump to my throat just to contemplate their selfless devotion.
You whining dumbass fuckfaces.
One can disagree with Israeli domestic and foreign policy. I often disagree with Israeli domestic and foreign policy. I do so without remotely being an anti-Semite.
I wasn’t going anywhere near that issue.
I will say that if you’re a person who thinks there’s a Jew or Zionist banker conspiracy behind the scenes that manipulating the world’s decision-makers, then I think maybe you should apologize for being a racist anti-Semite.
Larry: I will say that if you’re an apologist for child molesting priests, you should say so at once, and stop trying to protect them.
Not that I was going near that issue myself.
Also, AngryLarry, you should apologise if you think that you can keep your own children locked up for years, and force them to have sex with you. Really, you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself, if that’s what you think.