I am an unabashed fan of Ken Clarke, and long have been. He was stating a simple truth when he created a furore by noting that some rapes are worse than others, a truth denied by politically correct feminist idiots who see rape not as what it is – a sordid and vicious crime of violence – but as a metaphysical act, incapble of degree, like the Eucharist. Murders can be aggravated or mitigated, but not rapes. What bollocks, and good for Ken for speaking sense.
He has now quite rightly castigated Teresa May’s claim that cat-owners cannot be deported as “childish”. Actually the frothy mouthed racist bigots cheering on their poster girl are much more dangerous than childish, but Clarke is right again. Doubtless a sacking offence.
Over 55,000 people were deported from the UK last year, and just 112 managed to stay here by using Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights – that is one in every 550 deportees, or 0.18%. Article 8 reads:
Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
How the Tories manage to disagree with that is beyond me. Bunch of xenophobic idiots – apart from Ken Clarke, who as a young man plainly wandered into the wrong party.
This is a good quote for the followers:
“The politically active classes today, led by the liberal-left, take their shopping trolleys and enter the supermarket of political causes. The only causes that attract their attention from the shelves are those in which western governments are complicit or perceived to be complicit.
How else do you explain Palestine becoming a cause de celebre amongst young politically active students who couldn’t even point to Darfur or Kurdistan on a map? How else do you explain anti-globalisation protestors solely focusing on western targets whilst ignoring the excesses and state supported abuses of Chinese and Russian corporations?
Familiarity breeds contempt and political activism today is not so much about values but about rebellion against the existing political order within which you live and are bitter and resentful towards.
It is parochial, isolationist and solipsistic. In standing up for select international causes, political activists are in fact acting like the over-privileged spoilt child who despises his/her parents and loses all sense of perspective.
The dark cloak of moral relativism and consumer feel-good activism has replaced the principle driven activism of yesteryear and left Iranian, Kurdish, Syrian, Darfurian and Zimbabwean activists feeling baffled and lonely.”
DLJ, you should cite your sources. The one above comes from Ghaffar Hussain of Quilliam, “an expert on counter-extremism” in The Commentator. He cites Nick Cohen and a female “passionate and enthusiastic Iranian-American activist based in New York”:
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http://www.thecommentator.com/article/513/in_answer_to_your_question_why_the_iranian_cause_isn_t_attracting_popular_support_
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He accuses George Galloway and Yvonne Ridley of “support[ing] al-Qaeda in Iraq simply because it was anti-US”. However, speaking plainly and failing to join the propaganda chorus could describe their crimes more accurately.
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There are other reasons that the “Liberal Left” may not wish to join with the Western war machine in baying for blood in Iran. We have seen the result of Western intervention in Iraq. We await a proper reckoning of the outcome in Libya, but it isn’t looking good. And the West’s most obvious intervention in Iran, Operation Ajax, was disastrous and has eventually led to the current situation.
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We in the West supposedly live in democratic countries. It is absolutely proper that our efforts are concentrated upon influencing our own governments to reform their disgusting foreign policies.
“their disgusting foreign policies.”
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You got, we take.
Thanks for your good research and links Clark.
Thanks again for links Clark – will you post them on ‘Occupy Britain’ – I’m sure they would appreciate?
DLJ, the site that published the article that you quoted from, The Commentator, is utterly disgusting. Here is an article justifying and trivialising torture, misrepresenting the Iraqi death toll, excusing the US and UK for the chaos they unleashed there, and claiming that Bush and Blair told no lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq:
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http://www.thecommentator.com/article/489/rumsfeld_bush_blair_aren_t_war_criminals_told_no_lies_about_wmd_iraq_the_left_needs_to_grow_up_
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DLJ, do you visit that site often?
I don’t know if I am allowed to say this here, but I am a few years older than Craig Murray and nearly as good looking.
I know I made her feel really good which is good enough for me.
You just look at her in her magnifence as she is dancing away to the band.
You wave at her with your hand
It is so loud and it is so packed, that is the only form of communication.
Then at half time or full time, you talk to her.
She knows it is just a game, and I am completely madly in love with my wife and she knows I would never betray her.
But you just become a human being and you talk about the kinds of things you wanted to say when you were 15 years old, and madly in love, but simply couldn’t speak to her, and ask her out for a date, cos she might reject you and if she rejected you, there seemed no other course of action except suicide – and you just couldn’t do it.
She said to me Tony, I have to go to a party now, but I will see you at the punky gig tomorrow afternoon.
Far too fragile for me
But she is simply georgeous
My wife was doing exactly the same at the same time
Its called Flirting
Its a Flower Thing
Tony
Because she writes some brilliant stuff on her blog, I spent a couple of hours trying to find out who she really is. I still have no idea what she looks like, but I found Chapter 27
It went something like this
Yes, I sometimes completely fuck people over, but you don’t deserve it
A Female Fleet Street Journalist about 33 years old.
Hi Suzy
Tony
“Do we need a passport to get into Ireland?”
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No, you don’t. Not from Britain.
The internet is there. There are no secrets. Because people write what they think. Different people can’t hide their true identities if they have anything interesting to say. They might think they can, and because I took the unwritten oath, I will never reveal their real identities.
Its just not what you do.
Its like taking the hippocratic oath.
Tony
Her comments after Johann Hari had been taken out and beat up just served to kick the guy on the ground.
She didn’t add anything.
If you are going to do that girl, and you want your own column in a mainstream newspaper
Then start writing about what is really going on.
Not the artificial illusion you are living in.
Get some balls and try and find out the truth, rather than the political/control agenda of the people who pay you to write what they allow you to write
But I ain’t going to slag you off.
Any girl who has the courage to do the kind of stuff that you do, has my utmost respect
Especially your “Anonymous” Stuff
Tony
Tony, your thread on advfn is missing you. It was concentrated and cool.
The Commentator –
Who’s running The Commentator?
The website was conceived by the journalist and author Robin Shepherd in 2010. Since then Raheem Kassam has worked with Robin to develop, maintain and edit for the site. Recently, we announced Harry Cole as our UK Political Editor and we hope to have a raft of Contributing Editors signing up over the next few months. Watch this space
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Harry Cole is ‘News Editor Order Order.com, ie Guido Fawkes!
‘He is now the News Editor of Order-Order.com, the UK’s most read political website with a circulation of over three million readers a month.
Harry is also the regular paper reviewer for the Sunday Times website, and writes for The Daily Beast and Total Politics and The Commentator.’
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{http://www.harrycole.net/2009/11/freelance-hack-and-editor-of-political.html}
ex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Shepherd
‘Robin Shepherd (born 6 January 1968) is a prominent British-born political commentator and analyst. He is currently Director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society.[1] Formerly a senior fellow at Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London, he has been associated with a number of leading think tanks in the United States and Europe.[2]
The early focus of his work was post-Communist transition in Eastern Europe and Russia, such as in his first book, Czechoslovakia: The Velvet Revolution and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan/St. Martins Press, 2000)[3] which dealt with the post-communist reform process. His research and commentary have since branched out into transatlantic relations, European politics and the relationship between the Western world and the State of Israel. He regularly appears in the international print and broadcast media. Before entering the think tank world, he was a foreign correspondent for The Times in Moscow.
It has been suggested that he was forced out of Chatham House because of his pro-Israel views.[4] His book A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel was published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson in September 2009.
Contents
1 The Commentator
2 Books
3 References
4 External links
The Commentator
Shepherd is currently the owner/publisher of the political news and commentary website, The Commentator.’
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Enough said. Other members of the Henry Jackson Society,
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Supporters and influence
Its statement of principles has been publicly signed by
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Members of Parliament Michael Ancram, Michael Gove,[5] Edward Vaizey, David Willetts, Denis MacShane, Fabian Hamilton, Gisela Stuart,
former MPs David Trimble, Jackie Lawrence, Greg Pope,
former soldiers Tim Collins and Jonny Gray,
as well as Sir Richard Dearlove — former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, and presently Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge – and the American economist Irwin Stelzer. Its patrons include Richard Perle, William Kristol, James Woolsey (former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency), and Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj, former Prime Minister of Mongolia.
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What a nest of vipers.
Clark: We in the West supposedly live in democratic countries. It is absolutely proper that our efforts are concentrated upon influencing our own governments to reform their disgusting foreign policies.
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It needn’t be either/or though. I would prefer some kind of very serious disinvestment from Saudi Arabia by the British government. And also a serious effort by the British government to stop Saudi/Wahabi/Salafist funding of UK mosques which have resulted in their radicalization. But unfortunately I get the feeling that if the British government did this and became enemies of the Saudi government a large bulk of the liberal/left would switch their allegiance to the Saudi government and ask why it is that the UK is so hostile.
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A similar thing happened with Libya. When Gaddafi was an enemy of the West he was promoted by “Third Worldists” (and quite a few of that political persuasion appear on this site much to Craig Murray’s despair) as a leader of the Arab/Muslim/African/Socialist/whatever-other-ideology-he-was-pandering-to-that-day resistance to the US/UK capitalist/imperialist/Sithian. When Blair and others started canoodling with Gaddafi, the latter suddenly became evil with all the attributes that people such as Reagan had given him accepted by Third Worldists (Mad dog playboy vicious dictator). When NATO began its rather obvious military support of the rebels then suddenly Gadaffi was once again a saviour of Libya and that he even had a better system of government in Libya than the UK has because either a) the UK has no democracy – presumably unlike Libya or b) because democracy is bad and totalitarian in nature anyway – despite the contradiction and despite Gadaffi’s own totalitarianism. As proof, high literacy rates in Libya are produced.
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This is a little similar to when leftists used to parade around pictures of Mao, dismissing concerns or outrage over his mass killings as the sentiments of “bourgeois morality”. This adulation of Mao only came to a juddering halt with Nixon and Kissinger’s embrace of Mao.
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Which was the more disgusting? The US’s support of Taiwan and recognition of that government as the legitimate rulers of China and no trade with China or the US’s support of the Communist government’s rule of China and trading with China. Answer: whichever policy is not official US policy.
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So, it goes with US and UK support of dictatorships in Central Asia and the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Uzbekistan etc… I think there should be no support for them. Most people on this blog rightfully criticize US and UK support for those regimes yet they also urge kinder and gentler policies towards other dictatorial or totalitarian regimes such as – in particular – Iran. Russia also gets looked on favourably despite being patently run in a highly undemocratic fashion. Cuba’s government exercises the apologists, also. And then there are groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah who openly make exterminationist aims part of their agenda and who are looked on with utter indulgence.
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I would think that even if your policy was to try only to influence those who you think you have a chance of influencing it still wouldn’t hurt to refuse to support obviously undemocratic, totalitarian or racist alternatives.
Mary
The Electronic Intifada link revealed that May described Shaikh Raed Salah’s case as ‘ very finely balanced ‘. But in government speak that doesn’t mean that there was a questionmark over his integrity. It meant that given the enourmous justification for his cause, it would be a very finely balanced process to swing his case to Israeli lobby point of view.
Most of the decisions of government are very finely balanced because most of them go directly against the interests of justice or UK citizens.
As for equipment for spying, I think it is too simplistic to say that spying is good for one side and no good for another.
The electronic intifada illustrates the usefulness of the tools of spying in conditions of war. But in the Muslim mind spying is now justified against innocent targets, on the justification that all Muslims are now permanently engaged in war, perpetrated by the West over the last millenium against Islam, even if they are sitting reading the newspaper on the Clapham omnibus.
In conditions of war, all boundaries are broken, and this explains why all aspects of life are now in jeopardy. Human Rights of the Geneva Convention were cancelled by George Bush
and the principles of finance have been shredded as well.
Normal rules do not apply anywhere now in any aspect of life.
What I am wary of is that our politicians are susceptible to the wiles of Muslim flattery, which they do not receive much of from their normal constituents, and there is a collusion of silence from the Muslims about UK foreign policy in order to gain political power. We do not need spying, lying, cheating, from any quarter, least of all when it appears that the political minds of UK politicians and Muslim leaders start to converge.
We do not need an Israel lobby running our parliament and we definitely do not need a Muslim lobby either.
Such lobbying from any self-selected interest group undermines the freedom of individual choice. Islam should advertise itself by its own good qualities, not become part of the dirty political system we already have, in my humble opinion.
Best news of the day.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/09/virus-infects-drone-plane-command
Computer virus infects drone plane command centre in US
‘Keylogger’ virus disrupts computers at Creech air force base in Nevada where planes are piloted remotely in Afghanistan
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Anno – I agree with what you are saying. On ‘We do not need an Israel lobby running our parliament…’ I am afraid to say that we have one already which is deeply embedded in all three main parties.
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For instance, I have just looked at Simon Burns MP Chelmsford, who is also one of the Health Ministers trying to push through the changes which will wreck the NHS.
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Apart from paid-for visits to Dubai UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, India, China, and separately Hong Kong, there was one to America paid for by Aventis a pharmaceuticals manaufacturer and one to Israel paid for by the Conservative Friends of Israel.
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The latter appears in the Register of Interests of many MPs. El Al must do well out of it.
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All Burns’ freebies and perks are listed here.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=10079
Kenneth Clarke is not really such a jolly fellow after all. This lies behind the image of fairness. He was complicit in the change in the law on Universal Jurisdiction especially as it applies to the Israeli war criminals like Livni.
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[…]In February 2010, Ken Clarke and Edward Garnier met with Livni in Israel and pledged to change the law once in government; they are now the Secretary of State for Justice and Solicitor-General respectively. [….]
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http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/10/special-mission-livni-visit
A very special mission
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The article includes many links, one of which is a Jewish Chronicle article on Clarke and Garnier visiting Livni in early 2010. There is a photo of the three of them.
‘Shadow business secretary Ken Clarke and shadow attorney general Edward Garnier met her in Israel as part of a party charm offensive.
Mr Garnier said: “The Tories will change the law if this government doesn’t, although we remain happy to co-operate if there is still an appetite for reform. There is support this from David Cameron and William Hague downwards. Our courts will not be used as the venue for street protest.” ‘
Angrysoba, excellent comment. I, too, would like to see disinvestment from Saudi Arabia. The episode when Blair halted the Serious Fraud Office’s investigation into the BAE/Saudi arms-deal corruption was disgusting. The subsequent words of the Saudi king to the UK queen read, to me, like a mobster renewing the contract of his protection racket. However, I doubt that such disinvestment would lead to protest from the “Left”. There is a big difference between disinvestment and actually starting a war.
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Regarding radicalisation due to Saudi/Wahabi/Salafist funding of UK mosques, some might argue that this is permitted or even encouraged as a covert policy that maintains the “War on Terror” and provides an excuse for domestic repression and surveillance; indeed, I think that Anno has argued something along this line. My own view is that a very few evil people would pursue such a policy consciously, but that it emerges mostly structurally, as a result of personal, political and corporate greed and pursuit of power, and possibly as the “fall out” of rivalry between factions in various organisations.
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I have thoughts about your other points, but I’m having trouble phrasing them and I’m running out of time, so I’ll just post this for now.
Mary, you wrote “best news of the day”; I’m not so sure. While I’m glad that operations have been interfered with, it implies that these cretins are using Windows to control these airborne Daleks, with all the potential for “plausible deniability” that this permits.
Probably right Clark but thought that they would not be killing at least for today.
Unfortunately the keylogging software has not stopped them from dropping any bombs. But I have found some of the leaked keylog files, its just:
↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A start over and over. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code
Clarke, but it sure brings new meaning to the Windows BSOD =P en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSOD
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.
More nonsense on this story involving Huhne.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15233811
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Chris Huhne apologises to May over cat speech tip-off
The message was deleted shortly after being posted
Huhne’s fingerprints on mis-tweet
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Chris Huhne has apologised to Theresa May for pointing out similarities between her speech, and one by UKIP leader Nigel Farage, to a journalist.
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The energy secretary told the Guardian journalist that a website had noted Mr Farage had made similar claims about her controversial cat deportation case.
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He said the reporter asked if he would be quoted about it but he declined.
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That was behind his mistakenly published “tweet” last week, intended as a private response to the reporter.
/….
@Mary “Computer virus infects drone plane command centre in US”
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The fact they let that kind of information out in the public is suspicious for several reasons. If the information was true, which I doubt, it should at least have been labeled “Embarrassing Secret”. On the other hand, from a black-op perspective, it saves a lot of logistics since you could just use a drone to do the dirty work and blame a virus made by .
……to do the dirty work and blame a virus made by “(insert enemy of choice)”
Clarke
Since you so kindly have used my name in vain, I suppose that gives me an excuse to explain what I have been saying about Islamic Reform.
Mr Nasty Angrysoba obviously detests Islam and its reform, which might threaten the Christian-Zionist-existing system we live in.
There occurred an extraordinary phenomenon in this country after the period of the Enlightenment, after UK academics became exposed to Arabic language and culture and realised that the Qur’an was actually saying the same thing as the Jewish and Christian scriptures, that they felt moved to translate the Bible into English.
They were constrained by dire laws of heresy from challenging the Christian doctrine of Trinity, even though they were now able, by studying the Qur’an, to see that the doctrine was pure and unadulterated bollocks. They were constrained by politics from even thinking about importing a foreign religion from Arabic texts. But they realised that Bible, which was hitherto not known by ordinary people because of Roman Catholic prohibition, still contained enough of its original spiritual dynamite, to make it worth translating for ordinary peoplke to understand.
Reading the Bible in English satisfied an enourmous thirst for personal and social reform from a world which put all men very unequal indeed as per divine command, to a world free from hundreds of layers of mental and physical slavery. We are the lucky heirs to that social, moral and spiritual reform.
The Saudi rulership has to its vast credit over many decades, performed a similar purification and education process by explaining the texts of the Qur’an, both to Arabic speakers who have vested interests in concealing the clear commandments of the Qur’an, and who like doing things the way they have always been done i.e. corruptly and also to a huge audience of those who were deprived of being able to read the Qur’an by the vested interests of a controlling and manipulative imam-hood for want of a better word.
These reformers have also been constrained by huge religious and political considerations. Not least by those who have hijacked the process of genuine reform and return to obedience to and implementation of the holy scriptures into the politics of jihad. The obedience to the scriptures has to come before jihad. You can’t bolt jihad onto corrupt political leadership or popular ignorance of the religion. The enemies of Islam have tried to stop the benefits of reform by diverting Muslims who themselves are uneducated, through leadership that still wants a top=down command system which gives them overwhelming power, into the Warrant of Error, or the War on Terror.
Angrysoba can fuck off with his racism and religious prejudices.
The fact is, that in spite of UK and US power in the Muslim world, of equally dire repercussions to the constraints of those UK academics in the 13, 14 and 1500’s here in the UK, reform is slowly happening. And when you get ground=roots reform, based on God’s Holy scriptures, dynamite will happen – a nuclear explosion, that will wipe this Zio-Christian moral, and spiritual bankruptcy we live in now – off the screen.
p.s.
Just as the reading of the Bible in the vernacular was followed by evil Puritanism and even more evil African Slave Trade, which were deliberately introduced and implemented to frustrate social and moral change in this country, so also you will see many attempts to frustrate Islamic reform. The principle one being the politicising of Islam to the extent that an Al-Qaida (so=called)subject of UK renditon, is being used today to terrorise Libyan civilians in Sirte using UN 1973 coalition and allies’ ammunition.
There has been constant demonising of the madrassahs of Pakistan, precisely because they represent the kernel of truth which the Zio=Christian powers want to suppress. Having visited them and daily sharing my worship with the product of them, I can inform you that this demonisation is 1,000,000 per cent false. When Gordon Brown and others describe these people and these places as fermenting extremism or fundamentalism, really they were standing in front of the mirror when they said these words. Look at what they have done in Iraq and Libya and ask your heart who are the terrorists and extremists in this world.
God knows what possessed the Islamic groups in Libya to befriend and do their dirty work for them.
I’m a bit confused by Anno’s comments. I agree with part of it which is that there is possibly a parallel between the Protestant Reformation and the rise of Wahabism. Certainly both groups sought to return to a purer form of the religion. In the case of Protestant reformers like Wycliffe and Tyndale they probably considered themselves even more truly Catholic than the corrupt Popes (same went for Luther) just as Wahab considered himself a true Muslim when compared to the debauched khalifas of the Ottoman Empire. But why does he then go onto say that the Puritans were bad given that they were just a logical end result? In fact, I think the Taliban could have learnt a lot from Oliver Cromwell. Maybe it’s because he cancelled Christmas.
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Also I wouldn’t consider Wycliffe, Tyndale or even King James to be after the Enlightenment. Maybe they were at a kind of proto-Enlightenment stage though. I’d not heard that the Bible was translated into local languages as a result of having read the Koran in Arabic. Could you provide a bit more information about that as it sounds interesting. I would have thought that there were more opportunities to have read Orthodox Bibles from Greece or Armenia before then, not to mention the original Ancient Greek manuscripts.
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Angrysoba can fuck off with his racism and religious prejudices.
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I will plead guilty to not being a fan of religion except as an interesting area of anthropology but could you please take back the accusation of racism. I have said nothing racist at all.
Clark and Mary – don’t blame the messenger. I am merely trying to explore the idea that perpetual adolescence is the professional hazard of the Craig Murray commentator. Arguments like …
‘See that Zionist over there … that’s you that is.’
I wasn’t aware that I had communicated directly with DLJ (he of the raw nerve) whom I now assume is a fully paid up member of the Henry Jackson Society, and possibly of the Hasbara fraternity.