It is my birthday today.
Here is a picture of Tilda Swinton which I lifted from Mondoweiss. It is apparently from a photoshoot for the November 2011 edition of Vogue. Good for her, and here is a small parcel of praise to counter the avalanche of hate which will shortly be launched at her.
Celebrate in London Craig – http://www.livestream.com/OccupyLSX
Always been in 2 minds about La Swinton – she’s a damn fine actress and whilst ‘have to talk about Kev’ will no doubt be good, it’s a bit of a shame that she’s sooo bloody selective about what she does. Obviously, none of my bleedin’ business but she’d make an excellent baddie, drug kingpin (queenpin?) or assasin. You can sort of correlate her career with Lord Gary of Oldman and, well, as mentioned – none of my business.
All the best Craig !
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’re sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that
DonnyDarko,
My grandfather used to read me that poem. I love Burns.
Yes, it’s that blond(e), androynous, 1920s Weimar appearance – the wan artist, suffering for their art, or maybe the essence of English Pre-Raphaelite maiden, floating down the river. Or to 1980s machine-humanoid. Perhaps, ultimately, it dates back to the Romantic period, where, for a wealthy artist, to be dying slowly of ‘consumption’ was to be truly hip. Tilda Swinton is a superb actress. She didn’t go to Drama School, I understand, and so tends to be somewhat dismissive of such places, but then, she did have a very privileged upbringing. Arsalan, where have you been for the past 30 years, man?! You’ve missed yourself!
Quote Nextus
“Does anyone know of any screen stars who have been shunned due to Palestinian sympathies?”
No but what about the erudite Glaswegian comedian Frankie Boyle.
months after he made noises about not liking the way Israel treated it’s neighbours people started to complain about his the content of his comedy act. Not long after that he lost his job on the BBC’s “Mock The Week”
Yes Frankie
Arsalan, check her out on Wikipedia. A really impressive appearance list!
“Up until around twenty years or so ago any human being worth the name would have borne witness to the grotesque suffering of the Palestinian people as a human duty and without much fear of rebuke.” Herbie.
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Herbie, my perception is the opposite – that whereas in the past, it might have been the kiss of (career) death or at least of marginalisation to express sympathies with the Palestinian cause, now, at least in the UK and Europe, it’s not deemed unacceptable. Public sentiment has shifted. The USA may be a different matter, but even there, the Presbyterian Church in the USA recently has come out publically in favour of a Palestinian state. The media/arts/ academic world in the USA may be somewhat different, though. Vanessa Redgrave gve a pro-Palestinian speech at one of the Oscar ceremonies, didn’t she? I think she may have been booed, I can’t recall now. So, Tilda is following in auspicious footsteps. There is a very strong pro-Zionist contingent at Hollywood – Stephen Spielberg is one of the most of these – and US cinema is notoriously averse to delivering any narratives that even humanise Arab people, let alone allow for countervailing political/historical portrayal.
Happy Birthday Craig!
I remember Tilda Swinton as Queen Elizabeth, but i confused her with Kate Blanchett too.. She was in “Constantine” -a silly supernatural hollywood action film with Mr Reeves and Ms Weisz. She was in something really good recently to but i forget. sorry!
Good on her for daring to break this horrible taboo of mentioning Palestinians.
Reading wikipedia – i see she was a classmate of Lady Dianna in school and was a member of the Communist party in Cambridge University. Surprising!
Today is the anniversary of the massacre of 200 French Algerians which took place in Paris fifty years ago and about which I am afraid to say I was ignorant. It’s always killing of people of a different skin colour by whiteys.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/16/massacre-paris-denied
Actually, there have been a number of prominent Communists at Cambridge over the years – and remember the Cambridge spy-ring? Very few stay communist, or even left-wing (to paraphrase Churchill). Tilda Swinton has stayed the course, politically. I do think that it is easier for aristocrats (or near-aritocrats), though, to espouse unusual/ oppositional political viewpoints, you know? They’re in a position to be relatively impregnable and perhaps also it helps them deal psychologically with the privilege and fame they were given or have acquired. And there are of course genuinely good people among them.
Yes, Mary, that massacre was covered-up for many years. Thanks for reminding everyone of it.
Happy birthday.
”November 30, 2009 11:05 pm in War and Iran?
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”One of this blog’s finest hours came when I was able to point out that the British Navy personnel captured by Iran were quite possibly in Iranian waters, and that the British government had produced a fake boundary map with no legal basis to justify its claims.
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” http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/03/fake_maritime_b.html ”
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Fantastic.
I am pleased you are back here Suhayl.
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I have been puzzling why I knew nothing about the Paris killings of Algerians. It seems that I am not alone. The author of this article written in 1997 explains.
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‘Journalists had been warned away from coverage of the demonstration and were not allowed near the detention centers.
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With few exceptions, the British and American press stuck to the official story, including suggestions that the Algerians had opened fire first. Even the newsman who saw the piles of Algerian corpses was not allowed to report the story; his bosses ordered that the bureau reports stick to the official figures.
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Both French and foreign journalists in Paris seemed tacitly to agree that nothing should be done to further destabilize the French government or endanger de Gaulle, who was widely seen as the last, best hope for navigating France out of its troubles.
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The story quickly died, drowned out by fresher alarums and excursions in Europe and elsewhere.
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And, of course, in the next year, Algeria would have its independence.’
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http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/algeria_napoli_article.htm
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There was just a terrible cover up.
15mins.14secs in. This is a highly biased report on Radio 4’s Six O’Clock News tonight.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b015sh9q/Six_OClock_News_17_10_2011/
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Rupert Wingfield Hayes gives an Israel centric report on the release of Palestinian prisoners and the exchange of Gilad Shalit. He starts off by saying that ‘many if not all of them have been convicted of taking part in bloody attacks’. Details follow of a suicide bomb attack on a pizza parlour and parents of a child that was killed give their views. Kevin Connolly follows with talk of jubilation in Gaza. ‘Men and women of violence’ was one of the descriptive phrases that I picked up referring to Hamas followers.
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We do not hear from any bereaved Palestinian parents needless to say and the listener is left with the impression that suffering Israel mourns and triumphant Palestine celebrates.
The oppression and the injustice of the cruel Occupation is not mentioned.
Happy birthday Craig.
Tilda Swinton will have the knives out for her,I hope that she is strong enough to stand up to the studio owners.I wish that others in the public eye would take a stand on this issue.During a `phone conversation with a friend [who lives in Newark] he told me that AIPAC are not having it all their own way and they are being challenged during meetings.Cannot find anything on the inter-tubes would be grateful that if anyone has heard similar could they tell me where I can get info.
Many thanks
happy birthday, craig, and many happy returns…
the MSM – including Aljazeera – only know one name in the prisoner swap. none of them can recall how Hamas had abided by a ceasefire for 12 months until the Israelis shelled a Gaza beach and killed eight Palestinians, including nearly the entire family of seven-year-old Huda Ghaliya and injured dozens more on 9 June 2006. of course there were the usual obscene attempts by Israel and many in the MSM to deny Israeli responsibility, but no independent investigation was allowed to take place.
Huda Ghaliya
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04l6pE1Q8k4
meanwhile, an extraordinary interview with the man whose false evidence led to Libya being suspended from the United Nations Human Rights Council and the matter referred to the United Nations Security Council:
Video: Humanitarian War in Libya – there is no evidence!
Interview with General-Secretary of the Libyan League for Human Rights, Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir
http://www.laguerrehumanitaire.fr/english
Sliman is doing okay:
13 Oct: Swissinfo: “We have no animosity towards the Swiss”
The new Libyan ambassador to Bern says the crisis between the two countries
following Hannibal Gaddafi’s 2008 arrest in Geneva is “a page that has been
turned”.
In his first interview to a Swiss media outlet, Sliman Bouchuiguir says he
believes the Libyan side would like to see Swiss companies contribute to the
reconstruction process.
Bouchuiguir, who was secretary-general of the Libyan League for Human Rights
and holds Swiss nationality, presented his credentials to Swiss President
Micheline Calmy-Rey on September 29…
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/specials/the_arab_spring/We_have_no_animosity_towards_the_Swiss.html?cid=31333628
an odd footnote:
14 Oct: WorldRadio Switzerland: Former Gaddafi servant in fatal U.S. car crash
http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/switzerland/former-gaddafi-servant-in-fatal-us-car-crash.shtml?27011
A Bold look from a Bold woman taking a Bold stand…bravo!
of course i should have said Hamas retaliated after the Gaza Beach killings and attacked IDF soldiers, killing two, and capturing the only name known in the prisoner swap.
btw marwan barghouti will not be released. due to a trick, not all the Palestinian women will be released – 9 will remain inside. some of the Palestinians released will be forced into further exile outside the Occupied Territories and Gaza, and there is no assurance the larger group of 800 or so prisoners will be released in the coming months, as Israel could use any pretext to go back on its word, if we go by past experience.
plus as the swap goes ahead, many more Palestinians have been detained in recent weeks in the West Bank following yet more IDF incursions, and the Israeli Govt has announced plans to construct 2,610 new settlement units between the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
somehow none of this makes the news.
Doesn’t it say ‘PALEST ONE’?
“PALEST ONE”? Free the Palast One, maybe? AFAIK, Greg Palast is not in prison. But he does undertake actual investigative journalism, and his reports are pretty interesting. His books make lively reading too, last one I got was “Armed Madhouse”.
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http://www.gregpalast.com/
Anon. The figure 1 in green that you see on the scarf is in fact the keyhole into which the key, also in green, fits.
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Yours for £20 from the Hoping Foundation set up by the designer Bella Freud.
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http://www.hopingfoundation.org/img/uploads/products/product/752_448/5_1276003519.jpg
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ABOUT
‘HOPING stands for Hope and Optimism for Palestinians in the Next Generation. Supporting Palestinian children is a real catalyst for change. Young Palestinian refugees need the simple chances and ordinary possibilities that can offer them creative solutions to their lives. The most important thing we can do is to help generate these possibilities, giving them a belief in the promise of a better future. We want to show young Palestinians that their struggle to transform their lives is encouraged and supported by the people in Britain and throughout the rest of the world.
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At Hoping we provide grants to grassroots community associations working with young people in the refugee camps. Our application procedure ensures that it is the Palestinians themselves who identify their needs and design the activities we support. We work closely with local Palestinian volunteers in the refugee camps, particularly through the Youth Activity Centres, which are at the heart of the camp communities. The projects we are asked to support give these children the opportunity to play, to learn, and to express themselves through art, photography, film, music, theatre, dance and sport.’
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The live coverage of the release on BBC and Sky this morning is unwatchable because of the overwhelming pro-Israel bias. I have not heard the Occupation mentioned nor Cast Lead nor the daily acts of oppression that the Palestinians, many still in refugee camps, experience.
There’s a keyhole between the T and the N; if it’s to be taken as a letter it could be whatever you choose; it looks a bit like a P. The only letters that make sense, though, are I and O.
I have just switched off the TV as I found that the coverage was unbearable to watch especially when Regev came on to BBC 24 which was more biased than Sky.
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Also not mentioned is the fact that 8,000 other Palestinian ‘prisoners’, some children, are languishing in Israeli prisons. No children are involved in this exchange.
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http://www.dci-palestine.org/
Sinnce The Times is so difficult to access through the paywall, here is a report from elsewhere on a story in it today:
Israeli officials shared sensitive intelligence on Iran with Liam Fox’s best man because they believed that Adam Werritty was an official adviser to the former Defence Secretary, it has emerged.
Several officials and defence specialists have told The Times that Mr Werritty claimed to be representing Dr Fox and the Ministry of Defence during the past three years and pressed them on how close Israel was to launching a military strike against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while himself expressing a hawkish world view.
“He was a very straight talker, very insistent, almost pushy,” one said. “I remember he used the ‘we’ to talk about the MoD, so there was no doubt that when he was talking about his opinions they were shared by the top guys in London.”
With the official report refusing to give the names of Fox/Werrity’s backers, its just given the scandal legs.
Anon The Palestinians’ Right to Return in case you have not heard of it.
http://tinyurl.com/6hnpyv8
Hi Suhayl,
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I’m really thinking back to a time in Britain when it was completely unproblematic to support and highlight the plight of the Palestinians. In the 1970s and 80s that was certainly the case, even on the BBC.
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Increasingly during the 90s and especially during the Blair regime it was certainly career or political suicide to be overly concerned about Palestinians, especially if not accompanied by pretending that there was some sort of equal fight going on between Israeli and Palestinians or Arabs generally, in which Israel remained the transcendental victim.
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We’re not quite back to the humanitarian position of the 70s/80s, but you may be correct that there is some shift from an abject obeissance to the Israeli view of things. I haven’t seen much evidence of it, especially at the BBC.
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As they always say on MediaLens in reference to the BBC, “but Israeli spokesmen deny this”.
@ Mary:
Regev is Comical Ali without the humour or the charm…hope he comes to a nasty end.
Herbie, thanks. I don’t think the BBC is in tune with UK public sentiment on this issue. I take your point though – in the early 1980s, Jonathan Dimbleby wrote a good book entitled, ‘The Palestinians’.