I am becoming quite fond of my little corner of Schiphol airport. I have put up my Christmas cards and a few bits of tinsel. I now have a boarding card for the 0800 to Manchester. This is the sixth boarding card I have had. It is very hard to understand why, time after time, they don’t know a flight is cancelled until some time after it was due to leave and all the passengers have queued at the gate for hours.
Of course, Manchester is a lot further from Ramsgate than Schiphol is, so even if the flight atually goes, this represents rather dubious progress.
Happy New Year everybody.
Remarkably, KLM delivered my lost luggage, including my laptop, at 9.30 pm on New Year’s Eve. At that time a pretty lively party was already in full swing,much improved by the presence of a great many beautiful young women, mostly from Latvia. I am not sure why; my life as ever consists of a bewildering succession of chance encounters with really nice people. I am in the fortunate position of being able to say that Nadira was the most lovely of all, without indulging in dutiful hyperbole.
It was an extremely happy Christmas. Having my mum, both my brothers and all my three chidren together was as great as it was rare.
We have been through the laptop in lost luggage discussion before. The problem is that my shoulders dislocate at the drop of a hat, and I travel without hand luggage to avoid an accident.
2011 is going to be a very important year for me. particularly the first quarter. A number of crucial events are going either to set me up financially for the rest of my life, or result in real distress and failure. At present I have reason to be very optimistic. I am also very absorbed in my life of Alexander Burnes, which I hope will help establish a serious academic reputation.
The Portuguese edition of Murder in Samarkand has sold unexpectedly well in Brazil. The translation of the Turkish edition has just been finished.
I hope to do a Wikileaks retrospective in the next couple of days. Just a quick thought on the case of the poor young gardener in Bristol. Of the Jill Dando case, long before Barry Bulsara’s succesful appeal I blogged that this appeared to be a miscarriage of justice in which the police had fitted up the local weirdo.
Despite not being enamoured of landlords in general, I fear the same dynamic is at work in Bristol, albeit Chris Jefferies is much more intellectually capable than Bulsara. My instinct is that the police have picked up on Jefferies for being camper than a boy scout jamboree and archer than Trajan.
Jefferies’ release on bail has me worried that there was nothing against him other than the “He’s a weird one, guv” instinct of some not very bright cop. The case needs to be closely watched as history shows that the powers of the police to make the evidence fit the suspect are considerable.
‘”We are random binary accidents floating like sea-shrimp in a tide of absurdity.”
The fireworks outside my party say no, in fact.
(although has to be said there’s a very confused bat outside who might be thinking that.)
best to all from London!
Vronsky
Some of the atheists on this blog whinge about religion being shoved up their noses in this society. Why, I wonder do they then air their own bigotry and sometimes racism and shove it aggressively up the noses of people who believe in God.
A lot of Western culture is extremely distasteful to Muslims,one particular instance of UK atheist bigotry is to go to Afghanistan and tell the people ‘ You will listen to concerts’. People here are not aware of how counter-cultural western norms are to Muslims, because Muslims do not tell them how offended they are by builders’ bum cracks. hairy belly buttons. music and immodest ladies dress.
Before the bigots among them say or even think Well they should go back where they came from, let me remind them yet again that after centuries of colonial rule her Majesty the Queen established rights of abode within reasonable limits to the citizens of some previous colonies. Racists please note that they can approach their monarch through the appropriate democratic channels if they want to reverse the considered decisions of leaders who have tried to redress certain injustices done by this country, in the name of peace.
There is nothing more intrusive and offensive than bigoted trolls like Alan Campbell and Angrysoba attacking the jugular of the Muslim faith, belief in and worship of God, at a time when two completely illegal invasions, following on from the crime of the century, the zionist destruction of 9/11, are being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody is fooled by the fact that these wars are now sub-contracted out to mercenaries and western imposed politicians.
In fact the purpose of such trolls is not to attack Islam but to perpetuate and strengthen the post-war colonial chaos that exists now in Iraq.
WE WILL FIGHT THEM POINT BY POINT.
The traditional argument of colonisers that the occupied are savages who have illogical faiths is so blatantly reminiscent of previous colonial eras, that it definitely has no place whatsoever in a civilised discussion blog.
The denial of the use of false-flag deception in these colonial enterprises is also much too close to the recorded histories even of our relationship with our neighbours in Ireland, let alone other continents, for it to have any credence whatsoever in an intelligent talking space. False flag dirty politics is a fact of the colonial powers and they remain guilty until proven otherwise in the context of UK foreign policy.
It is fundamental to the progress of western civilisation that it recognises what it has been guilty of in the past, and ceases to steal by lies, instead of trading fairly. If we do not learn this lesson very soon, we will be under the shoes of China. We should call to account all of our politicians who are continuing to be double-faced, which means this government and the last.
Thirdly, we must insist now that the UK throws out the Israeli lobby and its vast and influential banking power in order to avoid the well-documented domination that has occurred in the United States. Banking power is a separate issue to dirty colonial politics. It is an issue in its own right because we as a nation have just been bankrupted by these Jewish-run banks and by the adherence to interest-based lending which is their historical specialist dis/service to our economy.
The banks use debt to gain funds, and money shortage to purchase national assets, so that eventually the entire government enterprise is in the hands of the associates of the banks. Quite apart from the specious cries of anti-semitism to distract from these points, it is the purpose of those who belittle the Muslim faith to attack people who sincerely try to follow the Laws of God, in such a way as to make the ways of those who have long ago abandoned those laws seem more culturally normal. Whereas in fact we, and the rest of the world know well that the people of this country are traditionally respectful of religion and obedient to law, religious and secular.
I wonder why so many enemies of faith appear on a political forum, if not to harbour and protect the people who are in fact eroding our pockets, our freedoms and our good reputation globally. We get the blame, they get the cash.
A separate issue again is the ability of these banks to direct UK foreign policy by blackmailing our governments. It is utterly shameful and indeed unimaginable that in my lifetime, so close to two world wars, that this country has been an active party to these two illegal and inconceivably destructive invasions.
The dissolution of Palestine is the clue. It is the influence of the Zionist lobby in the US and the lack of checks and controls over our own parliamentary systems that has allowed these dreadful events to take place.
We are only strong when we are united, and at the moment there is a catastrophic rift between government and people. For short term selfish reasons, our politicians have seen fit to ally themselves with zionist foreign interests, whether for personal benefit or to obtain credit to service the national debt at the country’s expense, while the people totally disagree, ( except where they are brainwashed by the zionist run media,) with the foreign policies imposed from above.
I don’t believe that anything I have said so far is different from most contributors to this blog. I would suggest that those parties who make anti-Islamic statements are by definition pro-Zionist trolls.
I really do not mind or want to interfere with those who do not agree with or want to understand my faith. But I will not allow unchallenged a type of politically motivated bigotry, which masks itself as Joe Bloggs atheism, to surreptitiously support the people who are destroying our country and its values, as well as and other countries which share our humanity and respect for law, like Iraq and Palestine and Pakistan.
The reason I call you fools, is because you do not seem able to detect that these people who purport to share your dislike of religion, are in fact politically motivated and full of hate against the majority of what you care so passionately about.
I made a mistake in the heat of the moment about the name of one of my school contemporaries. The other Dominic, Dominic Grieve, seems to have matured from stick insect into a perfectly reasonable politician, in fact the only Conservative apart from Tim Yeo for which I have even the tiniest piece of respect. Enough said.
Jon
Yes we said it was brave of you to try and answer AB’s questions re-the Frankfurt School agenda with it being New Year’s Eve an’ all but you might just as well have got pissed instead!
LOL!
Doubtless your instinctive need to control and moderate the thoughts of other human beings stems from your upbringing in a religious sect.
The same controlling instincts appear to be at work in your answers to AB’s questions.
Here’s a free-thinker’s take on these answers:
(1) Indoctrination is one thing but SOCIAL ENGINEERING via mass education has always been a pillar of the Left Hegelian or what today might be called Frankfurt PC thinking which you espouse.
(2) The “persuasive mechanisms” you talk of using against “recalcitrant parents” of unruly children smack of the type of social engineering and coercive government interference that New Labour was so fond of advocating.
Do you mean these parents should be frog-marched to the nearest cash-point or just starved to death?
(5) Immigration WAS a means to destroy national identity and has had precisely that intended effect.
The idea that it was an accidental effect of globalisation is cock-up theory of the worst kind. It shows little understanding of how globalist elites operate and even uses their own terminology to try and describe the process.
Your lack of pride in your own nation is just the type of guilt and self-loathing the Frankfurt School sought to foist on people. Unlike you, most people do not want to carry these rather absurdly anachronistic feelings of negativity re-their national identity around with them.
(6)”Sweeping away” religious belief again is intolerant unworkable social engineering we don’t need.
(7) Dependency on the state did not come about by accident. It was a product of deliberate elite social engineering.
Lo and behold you’re in favour of community service for the single unemployed as well. The PC Leftist appetite for dragooning the masses into ideological lock-step with their elite managers’s directives didn’t die out with Stalin!
(8)This is the bit that really shows your gate-keeper pedigree. You would have us believe in the teeth of all the evidence to the contrary that the controlled corporate/gatekeeper media just came about by accident. Part of the globalisation’s wonderful serendipity.
The intensely concentrated pattern of media ownership today is a product of the elite-led propaganda industry Bernays and Lippmann helped birth.
Thankfully these ideas for controlling people’s behaviour in the direction you perceive is best for them remain merely embryonic. But your appetite for a kind of radical unity and secular simplicity is still rather frightening for those of us who know anything re-the roots of totalitarianism.
Please God you and your PC friends don’t get your way in 2011 or ever!
Happy New Year all, my Zionist ‘buddies’ included. How about a resolution that you won’t commit any acts of mass murder this year? 😉
Has Craig decided to stay at Schipol Airport?
The idea that mass immigration only accidentally had the effect of diluting national identity is plainly untenable.
That there was considerable Jewish involvement in the shaping of US immigration policy, for example, is undeniable as Kevin Macdonald shows here:
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/CofCchap7.pdf
Ha, you’re disappointed that the brave individual was, in fact, me! I am probably going to live to regret this, but:
1. Is teaching egalitarianism “social engineering”? What is bad about teaching equality between genders, sexualities, races? Do you think one gender, or one sexuality, or one race, has more worth than another? I am not sure why this is negatively labelled ‘PC’, when it seems entirely sensible to my mind. Free of the old discriminations and hypocrisies of old.
2. So you’re a fan of limited government, fine – but you’ve avoided the question. If you accept the premise that teachers are no longer seen as authorities in their own classrooms, what would you do about it?
I don’t think cash-point (or starvation) policies would be at all consistent with legal, humane treatment. How about withdrawal of “reward” benefits? Or, community service for school-children during evenings or on Saturdays? (A sort of worthwhile detention, in which the time is spent usefully).
5. “Immigration WAS a means to destroy national identity and has had precisely that intended effect.”
But you haven’t shown that to be the case. Can you persuasively argue this to be so, without referring me to a variety of websites?
“Your lack of pride in your own nation is just the type of guilt and self-loathing the Frankfurt school…”
Are you arguing that a person should be proud of his nation regardless of what it does on the international stage? This is a valid position, but surely you see that Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine alter this perspective for some people. You cannot on the one hand declaim all these invasions as Zionist evil, and also on the other say that every Brit should be proud of their country!
You could elucidate on your point here. Are you suggesting, as I mentioned on my last post, that one’s national pride is linked to the character of ones countrymen, the resourcefulness and humour of its people, etc – rather than the decisions of its politicians we have no control over?
We know very little about you, so for the debate I’ll presume you’re American. Are you proud of your country?
6. Now you surprise me. You’re in favour of religious teaching? I’d have put you down as believing religion to be the opium of the masses, to be honest. Isn’t this the distraction and the fuel for many of the wars you’re against?
Why are you in favour of religious teaching? Are you in favour of teaching just the ‘state religion’, or all religions?
7. “Dependency on the state did not come about by accident. It was a product of deliberate elite social engineering.”
You haven’t shown this to be the case. Can you argue this persuasively here, on your own, without reference to a variety of websites?
You mock my ‘PC’ thinking on how to reduce welfare dependency, but again you’ve not suggested how you would do it. What would you do?
Are you in favour of welfare mechanisms at all?
8. I certainly don’t regard the state of the media as serendipitous! There are components of deliberate intent in propaganda, to be sure – stories inserted into the media by security services, or withheld (in the UK) via D-notices. The Murdochs of this world will also influence editorial line to a degree. But if we disagree on how the media got into its current state, we can agree it is propagandist. What would you do about it?
My desire to moderate comes about to control the slanging matches that this blog sometimes descends to. I have plenty of moderator experience, and find people behave themselves a whole lot better if they know their posts may disappear. This is not intended to censor the kinds of anti-NWO/anti-Zionist links you like to post – just to prevent the atmosphere from turning nasty.
Since I am referring to you, why do you often insult people, rather than calmly and rationally discuss what you believe?
@AB – interested in your responses!
Syd – we understand that Craig did get back home!
@anno
“I don’t believe that anything I have said so far is different from most contributors to this blog.”
Indeed not. But you don’t have to be Muslim to say these things, as I think is clear from the many – uh – atheists here who agree with you. I think you should leave calling people fools to larry and alan, lest you sound like a fool yourself. Here’a little excerpt from an essay by Bertrand Russell – another atheist:
“If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution.”
The penultimate sentence is a characteristic Russellism – you have to think it over very carefully to see why it’s true.
I’ve got to go and make a steak pie now.
Craig’s STILL at Schiphol?
Bloody Hell!
Anno I fully concur. My brother David Halpin also said –
Dear ….,
Thank you for this. Although I am a ‘Christian’ atheist!, you know I am respectful of believers where they are true and good. I think of Huddlestone and Romera. I think this is a good analysis and it is unusual coming from this direction. As you know, many Christian manques march in step with the colonisers, liars, and false flag supporters. They set up altars in the deserts of Iraq and they are cosy with Mammon. Might you put a comment from me by name that I appreciate the post greatly. Of course, the reference to Mr Grieve is of interest to us but that is tangential.
1-1-11 A New Beginning
2011 – The Year of Attrition
“Freedom has to be earned”
Demand prosecution for war crimes.
Denounce ‘drone’ pilots as war criminals.
Berate complicity in torture.
Condemn false-flag propaganda.
Remember David Kelly.
Don’t burn – Mulch.
Vronsky; thanks for the Alex Ross, it looks outstanding. I already know the person to buy it for (having read it myself first to check, obviously). Like the Russell too.
I ask Alfred one simple question which he is well able to answer and he tries to avoid answering it by firing three or four questions at me, all of which I answer. Then, when I repeat my very simple question, he attempts to diver the discussion by asking 6-7 questions relating to various policy matters concerning 9/11 and Wikileaks.
I did not endorse anyone’s calling anyone names on this site. I suggested that angrysoba become mellow and that it was “enough already” (which of course is NYC jargon for “stop now”).
Why will he not answer my single very simple question? Interesting, too that the other troll is supporting him – hardly surprising though.
As I said, just about everyone else on this blog would answer, “No” with no suggestion of having been “smeared”. I responded to all of, eg. Alan Campbell’s questions about “Do you condemn suicide bombing”, etc. with no anger, because I had no difficulty in responding in the negative. I did not accuse him to trying to “smear” me. I just answered the question.
Now, Alfred, Jon has already answered your questions and I very much agree with what Jon has written. My answers to your plenitude of questions are the same as Jon’s.
It seems clear that Alfred now is promoting imperial war.
My views on 1) 9/11 and 2) Assange are that:
1) After all this time and discourse, I still am unsure of the precise provenance of that event. I keep an open mind about it.
2) I think Wikileaks is probably a genuine phenomenon. This does not prevent it being manipulated – indeed, one would expect such manipulation to occur. Again, however, I keep an open mind.
Jon, the multiple-headed troll has told us on this blog that he is British, that he is a Knebworth-era Led Zeppelin fan and that his father wore a bowler hat. He has told us that (like Alfred- according-to-Alfred) he is en ex-Leftie.
The moral of the tale? Beware ex-Lefties.
Now, Alfred, back to you. Will you answer my one very simple question? I gave you an alternative option, which was:
Will you say that you categorically would not vote for the BNP if you lived in the UK today?
Thank you.
I think you deserve and answer from Alfie, Suhayl, his evasive moves being more contortionist than the famous Houdini.
personally I would not vote for the BNP, Conservative, NoLabour, Lib dems or Greens, sadly all of them are centralists and out for their own aims, not there to represent our mandates.
I will not allow myself a judgement on ex lefties, brownies, uppeties or any other deluded and long tried political connotation, but judge everyone on their own merits and outpourings.
That said, I hope you all slid well lubricated into the new year. Inflation will go up something rotten, fill up your vehicles/heating oil tanks before the VAT cuts in on the 4th.
I hope we will get some guidance soon from Craig on West Africa’s current malaise, not to forget the seabed boundaries of the eastern mediterranian.
Open mind – Open mind – yes thanks Suhayl – I had an open mind until I had accumulated enough evidence to formulate an elusive truth obfuscated by layer upon layer of ludicrous diversions.
Further to Alfred’s questions directed at me (I have no problem with answering even complex questions the best I can, while not pretending that I have all the answers):
If anyone wants to learn more about the infiltration of the military into the economic life of Pakistan, I would recommend ‘Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy’, by Ayesha Siddiqa.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ayesha+Siddiqa.+Military+Inc.%3A+Inside+Pakistan%27s+Military+Economy.-a0210033202
The nexus b/w Islamism as a military force in South Asia and the Pakistan Military Economy goes back to the late 1970s/early 1980s. The USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan was the catalyst for the regional expansion of this nexus, engineered, funded and supplied by Saudi Arabia and the USA.
The Pakistan military-intelligence structure has always played a double, or even triple, game with the USA. Their primary focus (apart from their own bottomless pockets) is India. It is not in the interests of the militaries of either India or Pakistan for a political solution to be found to either Kashmir or Afghanistan.
Over 30+ years, Pakistan’s military has been systemically and deliberately infiltrated by Islamists.
The USA has been sucked into a regional morass against the advice of its better analysts and indeed the analysis suggested by common sense.
If capture of Bin Laden and his lieutenants was the original goal, it has been a spectacular failure. Diplomatic/ economic pressure on the Pakistan military regime and possibly a ‘police action’ involving Special Forces, might have have a better chance of producing the desired result. I think it was one of the the precise aims of the Islamist groups based in Afghanistan to provoke the USA into invading. If one assumes the official narrative of correct (and this an assumption), the USA was justified in taking some form of action against the alleged perpetrators. The question is, what form of action of action.
The USA has poured legions and bombs and bullets and billions and God-knows-what-else into Af-Pak for nine years now, with what result (in terms of the original stated goal)? I think it unlikely that yet more of the same will produce the desired result. I think it may not even be in the compass of the USA now to produce the desired result (one can argue about sub-texts and covert agendas, etc., but I’m focussing here on the official stated aim). In other words, the USA has lost the war, just as the USSR and the British Empire did before it, going right back to 1839.
Now, if (and it’s a big if) Bin Laden is alive and if official elements (in the military-intel complex) of Pakistan are protecting him and if the USA really wants him, then if the USA threatens to stop all military aid to Pakistan with immediate effect and for an indefinite period, they might actually get the result which supposedly they have been searching for at least a decade.
Personally (though it’s not up to me!), in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I’d like to see the removal of all connection b/w the state and religion, land reform with the abolition of feudalism (as Nehru did in India immediately after independence), massive health and social programmes of vaccination and education, etc. A proper mixed economy, with the expulsion of all military (or ‘ex’-military) involvement; send the soldiers back to barracks.
Such a process would take 30 years in Pakistan and 50 years in Afghanistan and it cannot be done without a grassroots political mass movement. The USA, even if wanted to do these things (let’s suspend disbelief and put on Disney spectacles for a moment) is not able to effect such changes.
When given the chance, the people in the NWFP (Pukhtunwala) in Pakistan voted for a relatively Leftist, secular political party; they booted the Islamists out. So the Islamists, probably in cooperation with the right-wing military-intelligence complex, attacked schoolteachers and local officials beheading, etc. as they went.
So, the destruction of the Left as a powerful mass movement in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a destruction which the USA, in cahoots with local interests (feudal landowners, the military, etc.) actively promoted for many years, has had the consequences we see today.
Gosh, Anno, you went to Westminster? So you’re a chinless wonder as well. I went to a comprehensive in Southport, so I’m as hard as nails.
“All that rugby put hairs on your chest..”
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope we all gain some peace.
As to technicolour’s query about films, books, etc., right now, I’m reading a book entitled, ‘My Name is Gauhar Jan!” by Vikram Sampath.
If you’re interested in music (esp. South Asian music) and/ or you enjoy the books of, say, William Dalrymple, this may be one for you.
It’s about the life of the first Indian recording star, a woman, who made recordings on shellac from 1902-1920 with among many others, Frederick Gaisberg (who worked for Emile Berliner, the Hanover-born inventor of the gramophone).
I actually alluded in some detail to this amazingly talented woman in the novel, ‘Psychoraag’ (2004). She was half-Armenian, quarter-English and quarter-Indian. Her original name was Eileen Angelina Yeoward. Her father was William Robert Yeoward, an Armenian Jew who’d been working as a dry-ice engineer in India and her mother was the Anglo-Indian, Adeline Victoria Hemmings (aka ‘Malka Jaan’, herself a wonderful poet and singer). He divorced Victoria and mother an daughter ended-up in poverty. It’s an amazing story, but was by no means untypical of the times.
She spoke – and sang – in at least six languages and was the diva of her day. Anna Pavlova and others visited her and she was feted by all and sundry.
She was a real manifestation of female power in India.
Then, very deliberately, she and those like here were forgotten, effectively airbrushed from history.
Until now, courtesy of Vikram Sampath. Now, someone needs to make a good quality feature film about her life, like the brilliant French one on Edith Piaf (who, interestingly and in not dissimilar vein, was quarter-Algerian). Both women were brought up in penury.
http://www.thehindu.com/arts/music/article429071.ece
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauhar_Jaan
funny that, alan, because previously you said you’d grown up in Ireland. have you reflected on the nonsense of your telegraph post yet?
Comprehensive from 11 to 16. Kiltimagh as a kid. Glad you’re following my life story. Never reflect. I leave that to posh boys like you and anno.
Ah, religion. Don’t you just love it? Happy New Year my arse.
Egypt bomb kills 21 at Alexandria Coptic church
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12101748
PS Anno were you regularly rogered by the even wealthier lads at Westminster? Might explain – TE Lawrence like – your antipathy to expressions of sexual liberality and your subsequent descent into the mediaeval.
If you read, ‘From the Holy Mountain’ by William Dalrymple, you’ll see that this kind of utterly abhorrent act (see alan campbell at 3:52pm) is by no means an isolated one. During the entire history of land empires, Crusades, colonisation, post-war neocolonialism, the establishment of Israel, this type of sustained attack on Eastern Christians was the exception rather than the rule. With the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, shamefully this now has changed. All religious minorities – including Shias, including women who don’t conform to their twisted vision – are now targets of these murderers.
Sure, as in Algeria, elements in the hard state (in Pakistan, for example) directly or indirectly may well be behind many of these terrorist atrocities. But in one form or another, the hard state, too, has been around for a long time and it too will have been infiltrated by Islamist dogmas. As the former UN Secretary-General says in the news report, these attacks are of recent provenance. They don’t come from nowhere.
oh god (who is both merciful and compassionate, I hear) forgive me for having given the fairly unmitigated awfulness of alancampbell what he sees as an opportunity for attacking anno. i suppose my sin is mitigated by the fact that yet again it exposes him as a bully whose glee at an apparent weakness (“where your parents happen to have sent you to school”) would result in him being rejected by even the Class War crowd as dangerously unpleasant, but still.
By the way, alan, I am neither ‘posh’, nor a ‘boy’ (when did you start applying that word to people over 30?). So your facts are as usual, not facts. I’ve already asked you about your curious classist assumption that people who can read and spell must be ‘posh’. You didn’t reply: no surprise there, either.
Reuters reports Dec. 25:
Zimbabwe’s attorney general plans to set up a commission to investigate possible treason charges against locals over briefings with US diplomats reported in confidential State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.
The move appears to be targeting Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, following state media reports that hawks in President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party wanted an official probe into Tsvangirai’s briefings with the US ambassador in Harare.
In comments cited in one US State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks, Tsvangirai appeared to suggest that his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was not genuine in calling for the lifting of Western sanctions against ZANU-PF.
this, on the other hand, is brilliantly, unsettlingly funny:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/google-responds-to-privacy-concerns-with-unsettlin,16891/
Personal abuse, vindictive sniping, totally off topic comments, CIA and Mossad apologists, 911 lunatics, and of course Tony. When I see Craig in a couple of weeks I will tell him to shut this blog down for good. No wonder he does not post as frequently as he did.
Agreed technicolour – good post ‘not facts’ are immortalised in Alan’s statement that set in stone his demeanour:
“Personally I was always against the Iraq War. It simply wasn’t in our self-interest – which is what our foreign policy should be based on.”
If fact what that means is rather than chasing liberal internationalist mirages, we should focus on what we want and need, think about how we can get as much of it as possible at the best price — and go for it in the most efficient way possible regardless of civilians casualties, torture of prisoners and complete disregard towards efforts to win the peace.
Humanitarian intervention withered with the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and perished after the Iraq war.
A chastened Britain and America must be a good thing – time to reflect and time to punish the war criminals who lied us into destruction.
Dr. Suhayl Saadi said:
“I ask Alfred one simple question which he is well able to answer and he tries to avoid answering it by firing three or four questions at me, all of which I answer.”
The question implies a lie: the lie that my position concerning the BNP is ambiguous and that there are reasonable grounds to suppose that I am a crypto-nazi and a racist. But I have already stated my position on the BNP multiple times and unequivocally, as confirmed by Jon, who states:
“You don’t support them, and latterly – perhaps always – have maintained the BNP is a security services operation. But you speak positively of a number of their policies.”
And of their policies of which I have spoken positively, perhaps Dr. Saadi, who claims to be so ready to answer questions, will say to which he is opposed; namely, immediate withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan, withdrawal from the EU, devolution of power to the lowest practical level of government, and protection of British industry from competition from Asian sweat shops.
But I’m not holding my breath for the answer. When Dr. Saadi says of my earlier questions “all of which I answer” it was another lie, for he has answered none of them.
Lying, it seems, is Saadi’s chief debating tactic: keep spewing lies in the assumption that most people will lose track while some of the mud sticks.
But here you are Dr. Saadi, here are a couple of the questions you say you’ve answered but haven’t.
(1) If Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, and if on 9/11 Al Qaeda was run by Osama bin Laden, and if Osama bin Laden was then a guest of the Afghanistan Government, and if as was the case, the Afghanistan Government refused to hand Osama bin Laden over to American justice, on what possible grounds can the US and its allies, including Britain, be condemned for their war against the Afghanistan Taliban?
(2) According to Wikileaks, Osama bin Laden’s is alive and well and and living in Pakistan from where he is directing military operations against the US in Afghanistan. So are not US military operations in Pakistan, however tragic the consequences, entirely justifiable, or are we to conclude that Julian Assange is an unwitting dupe or conscious agent of US disinformation?