There are many thousands of people imprisoned in Uzbekistan alone who should not be imprisoned and who suffer much worse conditions than even the genuine horrors of Wandsworth being visited on Julian Assange. But the Assange case has implications for ever deteriorating Western freedoms which should not be overlooked.
Then there are many war criminals who ought to be in jail and who are not. Most prominent of these are Bush, Blair, Cheney, Straw and their crew. A minor figurewho ought to be in jail is Anna Ardin. Here are two tweets she published after being “raped” by Julian Assange:
‘Julian wants to go to a crayfish party, anyone have a couple of available seats tonight or tomorrow? #fb’
‘Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing! #fb’
She subsequently deleted and tried to expunge those. I doff my hat to Rixstep:
http://rixstep.com/1/20101001,01.shtml
For another avowed feminist trying to bring Assange down, analyse the use of language in this article by the Guardian’s useless Helen Piddle. For a worm like her to use words like bizarre and raggle-taggle in relation to John Pilger really defies rationality.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/08/julian-assange-celebrity-supporters
“Serious musical commentators say that the Ninth is passe, written for an age of naive optimism, unintelligible in our times, and it will be long before it can be understood again. Not on tonight’s showing. This is the sort of thing you have to stop, angrysoba. It’s a conspiracy theory if I ever saw one.”
What are you babbling about?
Clark: “We believe that terrorist attacks are a response to dreadful Western foreign policy, of which those wars are a part.”
Speak for yourself.
“”when the smears emerge from your own pen.”
OK SS, put or shut up. Give us the quotes.”
Alfred under the now superfluous pseudonym of LOL:
“The answer, I suggest, is that Craig Murray is a shill for the NWO.”
Craig Murray is not a “shill” he just favours very fashionable causes: “Scots Nationalism”, for example, yet oddly ran for MP in Norwich on the platform of anti-corruption by pandering to his Norwich through-and-throughness.
Stuxnet hit Iran’s centrifuges hard causing chaos by interfering with very high frequency speed control in the frequency control modules, speed converters and inertia braking according to a returning Iranian friend.
A report here which includes some information on the murder of a key Iranian scientist. Very depressing news indeed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/world/middleeast/30tehran.html?_r=2&hp
“What are you babbling about?”
Nothing you’d understand.
Ooooh! Filibuster!
The Senate’s only Socialist Senator is filibustering the Obama-Republican tax deal:
http://cspan.org/Watch/C-SPAN2.aspx
LOL/Alfred: ” Hence also the policing of comment on 9/11 by the supposedly banned extremely aggressive Angrysoba and Larry.”
Nuh-huh! I was never banned. Only branded an agent provocateur.
“supposed to be a Soros funded outfit”
This is recurring. Someone here (larry?) suggested that Medialens was ‘Soros funded’. Seems to be a stock put-down (‘cos if it’s Soros funded it can’t be pukka, no?).
I’ll ask Medialens if it’s true. Wait here…
Vronsky: “Nothing you’d understand.”
Shavian wit!
Well, I’m glad you enjoyed the concert. Not sure why you felt the need to take a swipe at me over it, though.
“This is recurring. Someone here (larry?) suggested that Medialens was ‘Soros funded’.”
It’s a RIGHT-wing/NWO conspiracy theory that George Soros is the funder of all left-wing opposition groups.
“John Pilger, Lindsey German Stop the War Coalition, Salma Yaqoob, Craig Murray, Alexei Sayle, Mark Thomas, Caryl Churchill, AL Kennedy, Celia Mitchell, Ben Griffin (former soldier), Terry Jones, Sami Ramadani, Roger Lloyd Pack, David Gentleman, Miriam Margolyes, Andy de la Tour, Katharine Hamnett, Iain Banks”
Sounds like the dinner party from Hell.
“It’s a RIGHT-wing/NWO conspiracy theory”
You’re so utterly paranoid. Not enough tinfoil in the world to make you even a little bonnet.
“Not enough tinfoil in the world to make you even a little bonnet.”
It gets worse. SOMEBODY, though I am not sure who, is deliberately driving up the price of tinfoil.
Wonderful comment on the Poor Charlie episode.
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2010/12/10/mobs-and-monarchs/
“SOMEBODY, though I am not sure who, is deliberately driving up the price of tinfoil.”
George Soros.
TOTALLY OFF TOPIC BUT TO THE IMMEDIATE POINT – ON THE STREETS…
A FEW THOUGHTS FOR TODAY ?” ON RIOTS AND EDUCATION
The students protesting on the streets of London take the view that delivering the opportunity of an affordable education is for the general public good. It raises the general average of qualified and technically knowledgeable people in the general population.
The UK government claims it simply cannot afford the provision of the educational opportunities, and have set out to almost triple the cost of tuition fees. In response the students have taken to the streets.
In Finland, a country I have visited, the government there makes all education free at all levels ( I stand to be corrected if this is incorrect). The quality of the society, so far as I observed it, while having its problems ( drink being one that was evident) did present to me many people who were knowledgeable. Remove those opportunities and then the quality of the society changes.
Back to Britain ?” am I wrong in making the following observations:-
A. Her Majesty’s Government ( HMG) has wasted several millions of pounds in the war being waged in Afghanistan ?” while the defence portion of the British budget is disproportionately large relative to social and educational allocations. My personal view is that the war was from the onset ?” unwinnable ?” and HMG had to have known, especially given British historical experience there.
B. HMG did cut defence spending somewhat in the last budget, but shouldn’t those cuts have been much deeper? Come on ?” some of the most advanced weaponry being deployed against the rag-tag Taliban and Afghanistan resistance fighters who simply want the “infidels” and imperialists out of their country and HMG simply can’t defeat them. How does one justify this grade F military performance, with grade A financial allocations ?” or ?”for that matter ?” reward it with more taxpayers money while simultaneously cutting student fees in the UK? Madness!
C. O.K. let’s use the opportunity costs argument. You spend less on education and more on the military and war ?” so ?” what does that get you. More dead soldiers and a less educated population. Guns ?” or ?” dumb. Now choose.
Am I missing something?
I think the students do have a point.
When I went to London University I had a grant, and it did help me. I worked during the holidays at various things ?”on building sites, in a meat factory, street cleaner to mention a few ?”but it all balanced out and I am where I am today with my qualifications.
And a few thoughts on the use of violence.
The British government has supported the most horrendous use of violence in assisting the American government busily building an oil pipeline across Afghanistan and sending drones to bomb Afghan villagers. With all the military might of the US and UK combined, one would have thought that with an iota of true intelligence as distinct from ” military intelligence” there would not have been the advance of policies that clearly have deeply alienated the Afghanistan population en mass. Thus, what war is to be won with the squandering of these funds from the British Treasury while the students are told by their elected Tory/Liberal Government ?” we can’t afford it. Well ?” bring the troops home and save both money and lives and start helping the students. Dumb – war mongers ?” many of who in parliament are my age group and were beneficiaries of the old system which did deliver educational opportunities to many – myself and them included.
CB ( http://www.globaljusticeonline.com)
@Dreoilin,
‘”We believe that terrorist attacks are a response to dreadful Western foreign policy, of which those wars are a part.”
In a nutshell. :)’
The nutshell being your cranium.
The thing is Dreoilin it’s time you understood that as a feminist you lose all right to loopy arguments, punching below the belt, feminine logic and all the rest. So, in future, if you can’t say something sensible, don’t say anything at all.
@Angrysoba
“Nuh-huh! I was never banned. Only branded an agent provocateur.”
Right, I stand corrected.
“Craig Murray is not a “shill” he just favours very fashionable causes: “Scots Nationalism”, for example, yet oddly ran for MP in Norwich on the platform of anti-corruption by pandering to his Norwich through-and-throughness.”
Hm. You mean I’m looking for logic where none exists. That could be the problem.
“Religion will continue to be eroded by rationality and by movement of people. Religion is a horrible evolved mess, with vital emotional and social functions inextricably interwoven with incompatible dogmas and superstitions.”
I agree somewhat Clark especially that religion is messed up and incompatible with superstition. I think superstition could be the opposite to religion because it interferes with the understanding of religion if one believes that religion is an understanding of our relationship to the universe. It is that relationship or our attempt to manipulate phenomena in the environment for our own benefit that will prevent religion in the sense I describe, from being eroded.
Superstition is the fear element in a false religion, a fundamentalist religion intent on power and control with no regard for cause and effect.
I believe we must be morally responsible for our own destiny and that we are all part of the consciousness of the universe that is evolving into existence.
Seemingly then this understanding tells us it *is* our moral responsibility to contend, resist and repel fear and war that can destroy a conscience especially the innocent conscience of a child, by exposing the fundamentalists and those intent on destruction. This then is our purpose, the survival of the human race; we are each our own God either with the power to destroy earth or contribute towards future generations who will eventually leave an exhausted earth for another pure and young bathed in the warmth of another star.
Good and evil are not myths, but biological laws which are prerequisites for human survival and immortality.
We all have that choice.
Close the Washington Monument! The risk from terrorism is just too great…
http://www.schneier.com/essay-332.html
@Clark
“Would it help if there was some kind of non-religious religion?”
There already is one. It’s called socialism. And of course there are many others.
As someone said, when people stop believing in religion, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.
“We believe that terrorist attacks are a response to dreadful Western foreign policy, of which those wars are a part.”
Come on. You cannot have the wars as both cause and effect.
But if you say that it was US policies alone that provoked the 9/11 attacks and that these attacks were, as claimed by the US, undertaken by al Qaeda, which was then hosted Afghanistan, then you are acknowledging that 9/11 was pre-emptive strike, and that the inevitable violent reaction against Afghanistan was at least technically a defensive response in accordance with international law.
But this is a totally unrealistic scenario, since responsibility for 9/11 was never pinned on anyone other than the 19 alleged hijackers. Bin Laden not only did not accept responsibility, he explicitly denied it, and certainly no sovereign state claimed responsibility.
So it remains to be explained how one can oppose the war without first showing at least plausible grounds for saying that 9/11 was not, as claimed, the work of Bin Laden’s al Qaeda.
Courtenay,
The object of military operations in Afghanistan is not to win, merely to hang on, the way the Brits hung on in India for about a hundred years. A hundred years is a significant time in the life of an empire.
It is not productive to consider the trade off between education and war spending if education is basically a bad investment, which I contend it is for the majority of the population when carried beyond the age of about 16.
At 16, under a well run school system, anyone of normal intelligence should be literate and numerate. What more do you need to serve in a restaurant or stock supermarket shelves.
Yes some people should be more highly educated, but only those of reasonable aptitude and commitment. I mean, how many graduates in planetary sciene, anthropology and linguistics does a country need?
Students are justfied in being mad because the government lied to them, or at least Clogg and co did. But the idea that everyone has the right to spend years socializing at uni at the taxpayers expense is crazy.
The law of the jungle has not been repealed. Young people need to grow up, take responsibility for themselves and be prepared to work for a living, which is, I am sure, what most of them really want to do. But the stupid media keep telling them they’ve been ripped off if they don’t stay in school til they’re near middle-aged.
The thing folks should be rioting about is the absence of jobs. WTF cannot the British people make shoes and shirts for one another as they used to. Oh yeah, margins at the big box stores would be squeezed, and prices generally would rise. But at least there’d be a mechanism for circulating the wealth of the nation.
I’m an Atheist for Jesus tonight. Jesus said, love the Creator, and love your neighbour as yourself. I can object to the war on that basis.
Angry’s reference to : http://cspan.org/Watch/C-SPAN2.aspx
Thanks! I’m very fond of Bernie Sanders, and find his views absolutely right on, with nearly every issue. He’s still going at the time of writing.
*
“LOL”: As with Bernie, so also for Craig Murray. I think they’re both courageous people who have sacrificed a great deal in order to follow their honest sense of what’s right. But all American journalists know they might as well clear their desks, and put all their office possessions in a box ready for their instant dismissal, should they write an article critical of the Israeli regime. Likewise, “Abandon All Credibility All Ye Who Enter Here” is writ for all intents and purposes, for those who entertain anything except the internally inconsistent Official Account(s) of that Holy Day of “nine-eleven”. It rates a regard more akin that of a religion from True Believers with each passing day, now I come to think of it, with all the sacraments (box cutters, etc.) acquiring magical properties. A baby’s bottled milk might even today become a powerful explosive, for example, as a result of the powerful magic performed back then. And it’s now necessary for strangers to grope children in airports, with the approval of the parents, so far have we allowed ourselves to abandon all reason and decency in the name of this delusion.
So personally, I find it regrettable but understandable that good people like CM and Chomsky can dismiss opposition to the Official Story. They are doing a good job in other areas, and cannot afford to take the easy path to instant dismissal as nut-jobs, and make themselves so easily waved away at an official level. Heck, they do that with CM concerning his alleged behaviour, when the same is a very easily provable falsehood.
They can’t all do everything. The problem is, there are very few people in public positions who’d like to tell the truth, who aren’t also doing something else which is arguably essential.
“In the land of shackles and fools, our slogan is this: we are not slaves, slaves are not we! So who are we?” (from a 1987 soviet rock song but the sentiment is relevant here and now perhaps). I remember going to see the Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park for the first time and feeling unmoved afterwards. I saw some crazies shouting from atop boxes at small crowds. I couldn’t understand then what they were saying but I thought they looked crazy. Perhaps there was a mix of speakers there, some crazy and some desperate just like the mix here on this forum. What of this kind of freedom of speech?
I remember also elections in the USSR. They came and knocked on your door to make sure you didn’t forget that it was your duty to vote. The candidate list was drawn from the same party. Here we have more than one party, or so it seems if you don’t think too hard about it. Sure, I have more freedoms here, my “freedom of speech”, my freedom to leave. I could also have a go at being a capitalist myself. Woo-hoo. On the other hand I feel less secure – I am not guaranteed a job, free education and a place to live.
I appreciate the freedoms, but they are small concessions for the sake of appearances. All in all, I still feel like a slave. Of what democracy do we speak? Our democracy is not ‘slipping away’ because it was never there. They just said so in school and on radio and TV and in the papers, again and again.
It is clear to me now that freedom of speech/press and fake democracy are not incompatible. So long as these are toy freedoms and not the real thing then shamocracy can continue. To convey the truth to the people it is not enough to know it and to say it. It must be delivered through trusted institutions, by what is perceived to be the MSM. Perhaps Wikileaks was getting dangerously close to gaining such legitimacy in the eyes of many. If so it had to be discredited, its rise to mainstream status prevented. Character assassinating JA makes sense then.
Mark: ” I think superstition could be the opposite to religion because it interferes with the understanding of religion if one believes that religion is an understanding of our relationship to the universe.”
Doesn’t that exactly describe religion AND superstition? I don’t want to over-quote you, your post is right above at December 11, 2010 1:01 AM. How does any religion differ from any comprehensive set of superstitions? At least some superstitions and adherence to horoscopes, etc. etc. have some sort of internal consistency. All the major religions have none whatsoever – you can pretty much interpret what you want, as you want, and indeed all power-hungry religious demagogues have done so throughout history!
You go on to say: “I believe we must be morally responsible for our own destiny and that we are all part of the consciousness of the universe that is evolving into existence.”
Well, exactly. And that looks to me as much an argument for humanism as it could ever be an appeal to some religious zealotry, and with rare exceptions just as Buddhism, when has religion ever provoked these ideals in its followers on a general basis? With all the blood and anguish on the hands of any religion you’d care to name, it is kind of tough to believe them to be divinely inspired.
“Thanks! I’m very fond of Bernie Sanders, and find his views absolutely right on, with nearly every issue. He’s still going at the time of writing.”
I think he finished after eight and a half hours.
Clark said:
“I’m an Atheist for Jesus tonight. Jesus said, love the Creator, and love your neighbour as yourself.”
In times of fear, temptation, grief or perplexity, the words of religion can imbue mere mortals with the great strength necessary to rise above animal impulse.
Some of the saints surely were atheists for Jesus.
But to apply the golden rule to people in a far away country about which we know nothing, while the media are buzzing on about peak oil, winter gas supplies, and geostrategic necessity, that is truly a challenge.
33 OTHER SCAMS WIKILEAKS FORGOT TO MENTION:
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2010/10/13/33-conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true-what-every-person-should-know%e2%80%a6/
The Met’s Chief Constable should resign over the utter mistakes that were committed by his force not liasiong properly with the royal protection squad.
Students will now hopefull organise and align themselves with other ‘cuts causes’ out there. maybe our silent NGO’s will also want to make a difference, its not all about membership and charity laws. But then many of them are establishment themselves and have no intentions of rocking the boat, dare I mention Lord melchett, heir to the vast ICI empire and nowe a large organic farmer in Norfolk.
These hirarchical NGO’s purporting to safe this and look after that, should realise that democratic rights and promises work into their goals.
I will approach FoE/Greenpeace chugger with messianic zeal in future, Coordinate with students is the messdage.
The Mets chief constable should resign now, it down to him failing to coordinate with the royal protection squad. He can count himself lucky that non of his fully armed officers used their glocks.
The black limousine should have never taken the route it did take and to not coordiante frequencies was so simple a mistake to make it almost looks arranged.
Angry, Craig stood because he thought he’d have a fair chance in the county he was born in. As it turned out, fair did not come into it, we were refused public debates with other candidates.
FFS even the Green candidate Rupert Read, a lecturer at UEA and a fellow UCLU member, agreed to have Craig ousted from a BBC organised education debate, with friends like that you stand no chance.
I see Alfred has come back from his holiday in LoL.
I will also try and sign the AAvaz petition.