Unfortunately my plans for a weekend of drinking and watching golf were foiled on Friday by a really acute attack of illness, which by 3am Sunday morning had become quite alarming. Happily I feel a good bit stronger now. I did watch the golf all day yesterday, but I felt so unwell that when I awoke this morning I could not recollect any of it.
I am much cheered to learn that Sheikh Raed Saleh was released from jail on Friday. It is quite incredible that he could be imprisoned on the word of the Home Secretary – as grubby third rate politician – for his political opinions, but without clearly definable cause, and after he had already given on this visit a couple of public speeches in which he had said not one word which anyone claimed as constituting an offence.
Both the UK and US governments encouraged the Greeks to prevent the Gaza peace convoy from sailing. This from the invaluable Mary, who should take over writing this blog:
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central, Labour)
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To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the Greek Government on the Gaza Aid flotilla.
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Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 13 July 2011, c385W)
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David Lidington (Minister of State (Europe and NATO), Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Aylesbury, Conservative)
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Officials from our embassy in Athens have discussed the matter of the Gaza flotilla with the Greek authorities and have relayed to them the United Kingdom’s position on this. Our travel advice for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories gives clear guidance against any attempt to enter Gaza by sea. We continue to advise against participating in flotillas or overland convoys to Gaza because of the risks involved.
So between Saleh and that, it seems any attempt to support Palestine is simply to be blocked by the force of the state. What astonishes me is that so few people seem to care about this growing fascism.
When you have a fever, thoughts run though your head insistently, in a different pattern of thinking to the normal. Anyone know why this is? While I was ill this morning, I kept remembering one incident. When I stood as an independent anti-war candidate against Jack Straw in Blackburn, the large body of New Labour supporters inside the count booed and jeered me like a football crowd when my result was read out. The BNP candidate – who had been booed a little – turned to me in some astonishment and said “They hate you more than they hate me.”
I did record that in Murder in Samarkand, but had only ever thought of it as an amusing incident. While I was sweating last night, it kept hammering at my brain as important. Now I feel a bit better, it still seems important.
‘The BNP candidate – who had been booed a little – turned to me in some astonishment and said “They hate you more than they hate me.”’
As soon as I read those words, I was reminded strongly of something I had read long ago, Ah yes, that was it! Not that you are the Son of God, Craig (much as we admire you) – but isn’t it exactly the same pattern? A criminal (bandit or warmonger) is more popular than anyone who reeminds people of their duty and asks them to beahve virtuously.
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20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitudes that they should ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus.
21 The governor answered and said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?”
They said, “Barabbas!”
I have just got to learn touch typing…
Tom,
It would have had to be a worse fever to make me think of that one!
Too much of anything is not good for us Craig, you must have mixed your Pinot with some other grapes, or was it something you ate? indeed did you eat?
get better soon
Exactly the same happend at the count of Bushra Irfan last year, surrounded by his kind of rabble, Jack Straw gave his victory TV appearance as the count barely got going, he was assured of a win by his ‘helpers’ at town hall.
Blackburn has got the most incredibly corrupt administration, press and police force.
I very much hope you are feeling better Craig. It must be worrying for Nadira as well. How is Cameron doing? I forget how old he is now. 3?
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I blushed at what you said Craig and hope you are not having a dig. I apologize as I know I overdo it here but while I am laid up (like an old car on blocks) with my non-healing fractured left wrist, I have time to read and look things up. And as if I could fill your shoes. Really!
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The NuLabour lot in Blackburn only jeered you because you tell the truth. In the car just now, I switched on to LBC and that shockingly bad and dishonest ex-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who tried to remove whatever freedoms that remain to us, was co-hosting the programme with Iain Dale! She and her ilk always manage (so far) to find a new niche but I think that things are changing. In a new poll 85% of UK citizens agree that Britain has been corrupted.
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I am glad that Sheikh Raed Salah has been released. As you say, he should NEVER have been detained, arrested and imprisoned. It is as if the control of the government lies in Tel Aviv.
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Lidington went to Israel in January 2010 courtesy of the Conservative Friends of Israel. These entries in TheyWorkForYou usually indicate membership of CFoI.
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Registered 10 February 2010)
Name of donor: Conservative Friends of Israel
Address of donor: 45B Westbourne Terrace, London W2 3GR
Amount of donation (or estimate of the probable value): £1000
Destination of visit: Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories
Date of visit: January 2010
Purpose of visit: to meet Israeli and Palestinian Ministers and officials and business leaders to discuss the Middle East Peace Process.
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I think the mention of meeting Palestinian ministers is added for good measure to pretend that there is balance.In any case they are Israel’s stooges. He did meet Mustafa Barghouti but his pretence of listening to what he was told was obviously for effect. http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=256906
I seem to remember at that particular election Jack Straw and Tony Blairs results were both anomalous, perhaps your support was greater than was shown I can see that upsetting the bastards. I think the greatest fear of the current political scum is wholesale replacement by troublemakers like you. In the states when Jesse Ventura won as an independent to become governor of [where?] the cia turned up to interview him and it gradually dawned on him that they were quite concerned that an ‘outsider’ could win without the backing, and inevitable compromise, of party machinery.
Brooks has been arrested (by appointment) on a charge of conspiracy to withhold information. Takes her out of the Tuesday committee hearing nicely?
actual charge – Rebekah Brooks has been arrested by officers investigating allegations of corruption and phone hacking, according to Sky sources.
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The 43-year-old went to a London police station by appointment and is being held on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and corruption allegations.
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Operation Weeting has been launched to investigate claims that newspaper journalists hacked into the phones of high-profile figures and even victims of crime.
Mary, exactly my thoughts. It is most satisfying to see RB arrested, but I wonder if this is a move designed to stymy information coming out at the committee hearing. Still, she may still be able to go – I would be surprised if they held her for that long. I should think she would be questioned today and released – I should think it’s risky to hold onto people for a lengthy period if they can afford good solicitors!
@Tom, Craig
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Craig is more like Brian:
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“He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!”
Hackgate: The Movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFufrqhp0eE&feature=share
@Dreolin
Pure magic, love who is playing Rebekah (not spoiling it for anyone else)!
More funny stuff:
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“The Most Incredible Thing Fox News Has Ever Done
Or at least the most amazingly brazen I can think of at this moment.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/07/the-most-incredible-thing-fox-news-has-ever-done/242037/
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(presenting News of the World as victim of hacking problem, rather than perpetrator)
Paul, best fun I’ve had so far today.
Agree Jon. btw an earlier message to Craig with commiserations on his illness and wishing him better and about Sheikh Salah, Lidington et al is still awaiting moderation.
When your body temperature is above normal by a few degrees I believe you get memory leaks which may cause slight depression; hence your ‘booing’ recollection. To dismiss it remember ‘booing’ and ‘laughter’ are collective responses with the difference that latter is an instant individual spontaneous reaction while the former is slow to build relying on one to start then others follow in ‘sheeple’ fashion and is normally preceded by a buzzing of whispers or heckling. In public speaking if a ‘buzz’ is perceived confront it directly by saying to the audience, “do I hear signs of disapproval” which normally short-circuits the disapproval and may even produce laughter.
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Im sure you feel better Craig; love for you outstrips the hate by far.
@Mary, I have approved the message. Not sure why it got caught, although I think the number of links inside a message might have something to do with it. The Machine has a mind of its own!
@Mary:
> I apologize as I know I overdo it here but while I am laid up (like an old car on blocks)
> with my non-healing fractured left wrist, I have time to read and look things up.
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FWIW, I don’t think you overdo it here at all – I wish I had time to look into things in the same depth! Hope the wrist gets better soon.
Thanks Jon for your good wishes and for putting my post through. It was odd as I only had the one link. A plate and pins plus an artificial bone graft make my wrist strong enough to drive with it in a splint, but the actual laying down of new bone is proving to be slow. I cannot praise the beloved NHS highly enough for their care and skills. For the time being I can’t get stuck in to any outside jobs that are strenuous and will have to be patient.
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The golf is good today and I am glad that Clarke is in the lead. He has found a new love too which is good to hear.
Turning the facts around and presenting ‘News of the World’ as a victim of the hacking problem I regard as typical American deception.
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I am reminded of Susan Lindauer, a brave American lady who requested to testify before Congress about a comprehensive peace framework that would have fulfilled all U.S. and British objectives without killing a single Iraqi child. She had detailed knowledge of the comprehensive peace framework negotiated by the CIA in the two years before the Iraq War. Blair knew from the MI6 back-channel that every single objective, oil, construction & engineering contracts, repatriation, election monitoring(manipulation) demanded by Washington and London could be achieved through peaceful means.
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To Blair Susan was persona non grata and later indicted as an “Iraqi Agent” in “conspiracy with the Iraqi Intelligence Service.”
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Blair needs to be grilled again – if we let Blair getaway with his crimes then we are all complicit in those crimes.
Mary, very sorry to hear about your wrist, I’m sure we all wish you a speedy recovery; from your description, it sounds maybe like a scaphoid fracture (?); in any case, I’m really pleased the graft is taking. And I’m also sure that Craig was being entirely sincere, you’re a superb font/source of information (I agree with Jon), good humour and refreshing opinion hereabouts and I for one certainly learn a lot from your input. Well, I did mention Mariolatry earlier, but it seems that Tom now has gone the whole hog with Craig (!) Craig’s post also reminded me of the great Peggy Lee song, ‘Fever’! Fever can also render great lucidity. All power to your elbow! Wrist, I mean.
Presumably now that she’s been arrested she’ll be able to claim to the committee that she’s unable to say anything whilst she’s under investigation.
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The police still seem to be colluding with them in a coverup.
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And where’s the IPCC in all this? Another useless scratchy back organisation like the PCC which have fiddled whilst the outfits they were supposed to be holding accountable have become increasingly more and more corrupt, lawless and contemptuous of due process and the public they’re supposed to serve.
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The whole thing is rotten from top to bottom, and these gangsters are certainly not the people to fix it.
Think, too of the Romantic poets, dying slowly of consumption, coughing up words and blood and periodically sinking into in a state of nocturnal pyrexia… incipient visions… What one needs, in such circumstances, is a box of candles and a set of white shirts with very large, pleated sleeves. A small window, and a house, far from the madding crowd.
‘Arrested by appointment’? You mean, they didn’t smash her door down at 5am like they do with asylum-seeking families with young children in high-rises in Glasgow? And why not? She is most definitely a flight risk – Murdoch’s private jet could take her anywhere in the world, right now. One law for the rich, another for the rest of us.
@John , you are right, if you want to get in you have to be one of them. If you are not and managed somehow to get in, then you have to become one of them or get crushed… read the following, I think it is a fair analysis of the current political situation here and elsewhere.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/07/16/for-the-few-by-the-few-in-the-name-of-the-many/
Hope the wrist injuries will heal soon mary and vronsky. good to hear you are back Suhayl, thought for a second that you could afford a holiday..:). Agree with you wholeheartedly, whilst normal plebs are woken up at 5 am with rams sending the front door some lenght down the corridor on the behest of some stooge or snitch, kids screaming for mum, adults in a daze and coppers in full flow, this little missi is probably sitting around with officers, setting out her answers.
Why should she not be able to be questioned in front of the select committee, with a police officer at her side? It can only further her case, can it not?
Three deep cuts and half a liter of blood for a live CCTV feed into the police station.
I too am happy that Sheikh Raed was released from jail; I believe however he will in the end be exported back to Israel. With little thought we realise the chilling double standards of agent Cameron’s government who while rewriting the British laws on Universal Jurisdiction to make it easier for suspected Israeli war criminals to visit the UK without the fear of arrest warrants being issued against them, condemn Sheikh Raed, the first Palestinian leader here to expose Israeli war crimes and discuss peaceful methods of resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This while having to endure character assassination and jail while trying hard to expose the plight of Palestinian people in East Jerusalem who routinely lose their homes to Israel command centres or have their homes completely destroyed. Meanwhile Israeli immigrants steal more Palestinian land!
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This is NOT the British way folks and Cameron must consider his position (again), having exposed himself willing to do the dirty work for the Israelis against British standards of democracy i.e. free speech and justice.
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Sheikh Raed was the first Palestinian political prisoner and on your watch agent Cameron. I, for one, will not forget that fact.
An amusing account of just how incestuous the corruption of public life has become:
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2015563/Elisabeth-Murdoch-threw-party-Camerons-cronies-hours-beofre-Milly-Dowler-scandal.html
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Democracy and due process is supposed to limit the power of the scratchy back set. In Britain they just got worse, and very very much so under Blair, who knew as much about democracy as his mate Berlusconi. It’s so rotten now it’s really not fixable from within.
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The thing is that these people came to accept corruption as the norm. That’s what happens. Everyone else is doing it, they say. It’s just networking.
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This is one great big Humpty Dumpty that will not be put back together again by the likes of these.
“‘They hate you more than they hate me.'”
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“… While I was sweating last night, it kept hammering at my brain as important.”
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It was important.
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You hurt the guy’s feelings.
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The BNP were there to be hated. That’s their function.
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To contaminate opposition to the project for the New World Order, opposition to wars for empire, opposition to the destruction of the United Kingdom and all other nation states, the outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, and much more.
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But you attacked not only the war policy of the government, you attacked the man.
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The BNP would never do that. Their job is to get the Cameron’s and Blair’s elected despite the fact that their policies are genocidal — to their own people — and are opposed by the great majority of the British population.
Mark (Golding): That’s fascinating about Susan Lindauer. I hadn’t heard of her – thanks for letting us know. So, they say she is psychotic and unfit to stand trial, possibly to avoid an open trial where material would emerge they are keen to keep under wraps and simultaneously to discredit anything she says/writes.