That was my comment on Guardian cif.
How long before it is moderated out?
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@ All,
Speaking of global tensions – let’s stop racism, and let us live as a species in unison on the one planet we have so far inhabited for eons.
Idealist? – no – absolutely realistic – for if we do not rearrange our global schema – the prospects are not very promising for our species:-
AN AWAKENING MESSAGE
A Poem by D L Lin
Published by the Washington Post April 2008
When we were the Sick Man of Asia , We were called The Yellow Peril.
When we are billed to be the next Superpower, we are called The Threat.
When we closed our doors, you smuggled opium to open markets.
When we embrace Free Trade, You blame us for taking away your jobs.
When we were falling apart, You marched in your troops and wanted your
fair share.
When we tried to put the broken pieces back together again, Free Tibet
you screamed, It Was an Invasion!
When we tried Communism, you hated us for being Communist.
When we embrace Capitalism, you hate us for being Capitalist.
When we have a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet.
When we tried limiting our numbers, you said we abused human rights.
When we were poor, you thought we were dogs.
When we loan you cash, you blame us for your national debts.
When we build our industries, you call us Polluters.
When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming.
When we buy oil, you call it exploitation and genocide.
But when you go to war for oil, you call it liberation.
When we were lost in chaos and rampage, you demanded rules of law.
When we uphold law and order against violence, you call it violating
human rights.
When we were silent, you said you wanted us to have free speech.
When we are silent no more, you say we are brainwashed- xenophobics.
Why do you hate us so much, we asked.
No, you answered, we don’t hate you.
We don’t hate you either,
But, do you understand us?
Of course we do, you said,
We have AFP, CNN and BBC’s…
What do you really want from us?
Think hard first, then answer…
Because you only get so many chances.
Enough is Enough, Enough Hypocrisy for This One World.
We want One World, One Dream, and Peace on Earth.
This Big Blue Earth is Big Enough for all of Us
Duncan, that is a truly magnificent and incisive post. If I may suggest, you may wish to consider posting it here too, for everyone to read easily and also becasue I fear the Guardian’s Moderator might remove your original post – we shall see. You have directly challenged Campbell in direct, second person speech in relation to the specifics of his active part in mendacity. Good on you for doing it!! 15 recommendations and counting!
Does anyone here have any knowledge of what the Grauniad moderation team actually do? I imagine someone at a screen, watching the “report abuse” total on each comment slowly climbing, and occasionally deleting any comment that gets enough anti-votes.
Tony, you LOOK LIKE BORIS??? You’re right about the telegraph, many – not all – of their bloggers (please note that I am NOT saying many of their readers; bloggers are a self-selecetd subgroups and many may not ewven be ‘readers’ in the old-fashioned sense) are raving racists. If now your hair is longer, does that mean you resemble Rick wakeman?
Even blue leopards do not change their spots. Johnson reverts to type at the end of his piece. He is critical of torture and confirms its uselessness in the ‘war on terror’.
…..That is the real disaster of the waterboarding policy ?” that we are left with the impression that the entire US military are skidding their heels on the slippery slope towards barbarism. And that is emphatically not the case. Yesterday at the Cenotaph we remembered the sacrifice of men and women not just in two world wars, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan. The purpose of these conflicts is not so much to defeat “the enemy”, but to defend things we believe to be inalienable goods ?” freedom, democracy and, above all, the rule of law.
I believe that, of all nations, America still best upholds and guarantees those things. It would be ludicrous to suggest that the waterboarding disaster, or the evils of Abu Ghraib, have set up some kind of moral equivalence between America and ?” say ?” the murderous Taliban regime, let alone Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. If you want to appreciate the difference, remember that the perpetrators of Abu Ghraib were court-martialled, and we know about US interrogation techniques because of rules on freedom of information. But if your end is the spread of freedom and the rule of law, you cannot hope to achieve that end by means that are patently vile and illegal.
How could America complain to the Burmese generals about the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, when a president authorised torture? How can we talk about human rights in Beijing, when our number one ally and friend seems to be defending this kind of behaviour? I can’t think of any other American president, in my lifetime, who would have spoken in this way. Mr Bush should have remembered the words of the great Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who said in 1863 that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty”. Damn right.
C’mon guys, the comment was feeble and its removal is no great loss. To compare Alastair Campbell to Goebbels is just lazy. And unfair on Goebbels.
@ Suhayl,
Let us be honest.
“Duncan, that is a truly magnificent and incisive post. If I may suggest, you may wish to consider posting it here too, for everyone to read easily and also becasue I fear the Guardian’s Moderator might remove your original post – we shall see. You have directly challenged Campbell in direct, second person speech in relation to the specifics of his active part in mendacity”
Many of us can see very clearly through Campbell’s attempt at clever apologia:-
Ed got it just right:-
“Shorter Alistair Campbell:
War criminals have feelings.”
Brevity is the soul of wit; intelligent comment; incisive blogging; elegant comment ?” and ?” thus with Ed’s prefect example – there I leave it.
True, as a barristyer you’ll know that there is a place for punchy brevity and there is a place for detailed exposition, for the painstaking deconstruction of a case. The two approaches are complementary.
Campbell is trying to use a technique that would have been effective, if, and only if the truth had not already been so widely disseminated.
The headlines say:-
“Decision Points by George W Bush ?” review Alastair Campbell lays down a challenge for Guardian readers to reconsider the legacy of George Bush.”
We see Bush bad; I say he ain’t so…bad!
You fucking warmonger supporter – but what else can you be at this stage of your horrible life? You horrible man.
Suhayl,
I’m sure Viktor Bout is being fixed up by the America as a favour to the UK government just as the UK government made a deal with Libya for the release of Megrahi to help the US and of course the Scottish judiciary.
Viktor Bout must know too much about who owned the cargo his planes carried.
In recent years, the involvement of what is believed to be an SIS agent in VAT and excise frauds has come to light. The courts have made perverse judgments which hide his role. This alleged agent was a senior logistician in the army.
I believe some of the monies from the frauds went abroad to purchase arms in such countries as Romania and then sent to Africa. It’s quite interesting that Hain called Bout the Merchant of Death in 2000 when a VAT fraud has links to Monrovia at exactly that time. Also in the trial concerning this fraud the companies involved in these transactions were cut from the proceedings.
But there are more links of Bout’s companies to the UK and Ireland, where much of the proceeds of VAT and excise frauds were sent at that time.
@ Suhayl,
My apology to you Sir. However, this stirs my blood.
I did at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq put my mind to the legal issues.
I think that immediately I got it right in my legal analysis. My posts still stand these many years later, and upon re-reading there is very little that I would want to change. I do not thereby claim any special accolade – I just wrote honestly and applied the law as I learned and knew it. I did that with an honest and clear conscience – unlike some of the ones from that time who still spin and publish untruths in papers like The Guardian – then cause othewise perfectly polite persons to be moved to use the ‘f’ word to express deeply held views.
Oh ‘f’ my apology to you Sir and all others on this blog – and may the warmongers rot in ‘f…ing’ hell!
@ All,
Sorry,
I should have added:-
And all their ‘f…ing journalist types and spin doctor supporters’.
BASTARDS! Actually ‘f…’ sorry enough!
Courtenay, no need to apologise, man – I gladly would share a jar with you if we were not an ocean apart (geographically, not thematically!).
Ruth, now that is fascinating. You’ve expanded a little more on this whole area to which you’ve aoften alluded in past months.
What about writing an article on the subject for somewhere like Znet or Counterpunch or Indymedia or similar? I really think you ought to consider it. I don’t know much about this area; I’m sure most people don’t. So we’d like to learn.
What a very lazy blog.
Kind of the equivalent of having a go at Polly Toynbee at the Speccie’s Coffee House. Open goal, boring football.
Perhaps, Alan. Nonetheless, we’ve learned that Tony once resembled Boris but that he now may resemble Rick Wakeman circa 1972. And I’ve sipped a metaphorical jar with Courtenay. What’s the Colombian tipple par excellence, btw.
And having a go at the soap-opera journalism of (Alistair) Campbell is de rigeur.
Polly T: London liberal elite. Sometimes makes one want to dance Glasgow kisses all the way to the moon.
Still, she’s not Boris. Unless Tony now resembles Polly…?
“Yep. It’s gone.”
If what you say doesn’t get deleted by CiF, then you really have nothing to say.
…best not to expect too much from the guardian, then you won’t be disappointed by its airy fairy bleeding heart nonesense, and if you pay good money for it to take up house room then you are feeding the fat mouths of those you dispise and you have only yourselves to blame…
F@uck Me….
I thought it impossible that I could come to any kind of agreement with such a simple person…
I mean what did they give you for brains in your “all boys school”???
Blotting Paper?
Nah _ you are too young for that…
We had Real ink when we went to school
They had a nib – and you stuck the nib in the ink – on your desk…
And that was even at the Primary School I went to
None of this Private stuff for me – I actually liked Girls….
I can still remember one of my tricks in the classroom..
I would “accidentally” drop my pen on the floor…
So I could scramble down on the floor and look up “at the girl I really fancied”‘s knickers…
And all you had was boys to look at….
No wonder you seem to have sh*t for brains
They never taught you critical thinking….
But anyway my fins are in complete agreement with you
“I believe that all Water Board council workers should be given a monthly paid incentive reward scheme. Mixed nude diving courses in their local swimming pool and occasional weekly extras depending on demonstration of performance.”
You should try swimming behind a totally nude girl underwater who knows how to do the breast stroke properly.
You mean you haven’t done this yet?
And you haven’t yet been Gliding?
And you haven’t been diving with all the full gear in the most Beautful Place in The World?
Time is running out. Get fit and do it…
Muslims are O.K. They won’t kill you – they will help you see their Beauty
Tony
I call Alistair Campbell a contemptuous arrogant bastard to his face; a disgrace to the Scottish clan. I remember Campbell’s words at a meeting of journalists questioning the Iraq war when he said, “I don’t mind people saying we made the wrong call, what I can’t stand is the motive thing.”
The issue of motivation is bollocks! It was not just a “wrong call” it was a catastrophic and murderous error that cannot be redacted by drowning the screams of dying children with high volume rhetorical excuses about overthrowing a bad man called Saddam. That became the pathetic excuse OF SPIN DOCTORS, but the occupation and smashing of Iraq WAS the Bush administration’s aim way before the 911 catalyst that generated pyroclastic clouds of fear.
A plan we know that resulted in murder, suffering and trauma of over 300,000 Iraqi babies, toddlers and teens. The public NOW understood this folly. The Campbell and Blair “call” was clearly a disastrous mistake for which they were warned and took no fucking notice whatsoever. Campbell now relies on a false sincerity to save his arse – it is his conceited, egotistic, self-cantered truth masquerading as sincerity that tries to displace attention by narcissic works masquerading as journalism.
Fuck Campbell and his so called principled walk of life.
Suhayl,
Have you seen my photos of the English Rock Ensemble…
I don’t know Rick Wakeman – But YES
The next time Dave Colquhoun turns up in our local I will ask him if he wants the photos I took…
No you don’t understand…Dave Colquhoun is a real person and he turns up in our local pub and plays in a band…amd he always says – “Hello Tony – How Are You Doing”
And I can never remember his name… and Say Hello Mate….
And sometimes I just sit on the Bar Stool – and I Marvel at Seeing One Of The Best Guitarists in The World (He IS) and he is playing in my local pub.
I took the photos at Cropredy
Tony
This Fame thing is completely bizzare…
I will give you an example – we were at Cambridge Rock Festival – and we didn’t know the Headline Band “THUNDER” Yet there were thousands of these fans who had travelled from all over the World to see the band THUNDER – and particularly Harry The Drummer…
We were camping – and these huys couldn’t believe that “Harry” and Chris were completely ordinary people and they turned up in our local pub – and they actually spoke like normal people…and you may think they are Superstars…
And I break down laughing….
And no – they say – he is really Famous…and I could tell by their T-Shirts and Banners and Emblems – That
Yes Harry is Famous
# Chris Childs – bass guitar
# Gary ‘Harry’ James – drums and percussion
Or so he tried to convince me at Christamas
Tony
About 5 or 6 years ago (when was it incredibly fucking hot – and we bought a thing to collect our water off the roof (waterbut – stop rambling)
Well my wife and I got the Train to Brighton – and Like You Do…
Well Her Parents Had Done It a Few Years Before (I was amazed – they are both incredibly conservative)…
So we thought that – well why not…???
So we both stripped off and swam naked in The English Channel…
And it felt wonderful….
This was after all The Politicians Had Fucked Off and Gone Home From Their Annual Conferences….
We were swimming Naked in Late October….
And who do we see coming back from our naked swim
The Bass Player In The Band
He was naked too so it was O.K.
Tony
And The American Who Didn’t Really Know The History Of England
Said…
What ???? You Have You Got The British Royal Family On Your Side Too????
I said don’t you know what Princes Elizabeth did during The War in London???????
Don’t you relise how brave she was…
She was Nursing The Injured on The Street and Getting Them To Hospital – Ok She Drove The Ambulance – She Could Drive – She Was Posh – O.K. – but she could drive an ambulance and did…
So Fuck Off Back to Your Queens in New York
The British Royal Family have ALWAYS been on OUR Side
I mean what would be the point of having a British Royal Family If They Were Not On Our Side…
We have a Very Long History Here in England – and whilst we have had to put up with The Welsh and The Scots and Even The Bloody Irish
Our Royal Family Have Always Been On Our Side
They are Not On The Side of You Fucking Americans
You Told Us To Fuck Off in 1773 – and We Did…
You Were Fucking Mad Then Drinking Tea
We Drunk Beer
And Look at The State of You Now???
Grow some Balls For Fuck Sake and Get Yourself a REAL PRINCESS
You Once One Had One….
Why The Fuck Did You Kill Your Last Real President…
http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=TW1&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=s&q=President%20John%20F%20Kennedy&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=836&bih=492
Tony
Actually, the fatuous Alistair Campbell piece is reflective of the prevalent, and I think very dangerous, tendency of news and even ‘science’ reportage to be uncoupled from the rational.
So, we are told (in essence) that because Bush wrote letters to his family, etc., he is to be excused unleashing mass death on other people’s families. The ‘Hollywood’ dramatic requirement for redemption trumps everything.
It fits with this heinous individual, Alistair Campbell, weeping at opportune moments and depicting these moments in his own memoir yet remaining unmoved when it doesn’t suit his purposes. Is this not indicative of psychopathy?
The elevation of such people is emblematic of our times.
It fits with the Blairs’ fixation with ‘New Age’ charlatanry. It accords well with the gradual tabloidisation of the ‘quality’ press, much of which now reads more like an almanac and glorified gossip column than serious journalism. This is the deliberate, insidious decoupling of the media from reality that, it seems to me, is the consequence of:
1) Journalists who seem no longer to ferret out stories themselves but often, and without being honest about it, merely re-print press releases from corporate/state entities. Editors who drive this profound and reactionary intellectual deceptiveness.
2) The development of a dominant and detached, upper middle class of media people who, whether or the ‘left’ of ‘right’, seem to share a similar world-view and who (to an outsider) seem to dwell in a wisecracked, ‘North London’ bubble and seem to have almost no experience of working in the real world.
3) The plutocratic near-monopolisation of the mass media. Free local papers, once exciting, are now bought-out immediately by the big players and turned into advertising garbage. This prevents critical grassroots journalism from permeating upwards.
4) The transformation of TV journalists into sterile, monolithic performers who seem able to act according to a single, corporate template. Like machine cartoons, they all make the same hand-movements, they all talk using the same, quasi-authoritative phrasing. They wear the same suits. They seem interchangeable. I find it almost unbearable, now, to watch them. And so, I do not watch them.
Please note, there are some really good journalists/ editors. But sadly, in the UK, they are becoming the exception. The media is a reflection of the prevailing economic system. The economic system is conceptually bankrupt and so, sadly, is much of the mainstream media.
Bollox, Hitler was much better!
Aguardiente. Rum. Beer.
Thanks: firewater!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguardiente
Now that’s the barman for me!
Indeed a self induced psychopath ‘Suhayl’ – one who possesses a synapse void from damaged neuro-transmitters that even teetotal and an ‘obliging’ Hutton report’ failed to compensate.
The heat from your searing post that ‘locked in’ truth has made me impotent to repetition hence:
I call Alistair Campbell a contemptuous arrogant bastard to his face; a disgrace to the Scottish clan. I remember Campbell’s words at a meeting of journalists questioning the Iraq war when he said, “I don’t mind people saying we made the wrong call, what I can’t stand is the motive thing.”
The issue of motivation is bollocks! It was not just a “wrong call” it was a catastrophic and murderous error that cannot be redacted by drowning the screams of dying children with high volume rhetorical excuses about overthrowing a bad man called Saddam.
That became the pathetic excuse of so called SPIN DOCTORS, but the occupation and smashing of Iraq WAS the Bush administration’s aim way before the 911 catalyst that generated pyroclastic clouds of fear.
A plan we know that resulted in murder, suffering and trauma of over 300,000 Iraqi babies, toddlers and teens. The public understood this folly soon after the cluster bombs stopped falling. The Campbell and Blair “call” was clearly a disastrous mistake for which they were warned and took no fucking notice whatsoever. Campbell now relies on a false sincerity to save his arse – it is his conceited, egotistic, self-cantered truth masquerading as sincerity that tries to displace attention by narcissic works masquerading as political journalism.
Fuck Campbell and his so called principled walk of life.