Just back from Accra and just about to set off for Berlin. I am very rude about the partiality of the Guardian’s focus on occasions, but they deserve congratulations for getting it spot-on with this article explaining Cameron and Hague’s sudden activism on Somalia.
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I’ve had a happy break from this board and coming back it is strange, perhaps, to see both the far right and the anguished sharing a popular meeting ground here. The far right want to whip up empty trouble and strife, of course: you can hear their busy little minds beavering away at it. The anguished, on the other hand, are falling into the old trap: a longing for a strong leader; a wilful ignorance about the track record of these strong leaders. China is a corporate dictatorship which is spending more on internal security this year than on its defence budget. Its crushing of Tibet and its dissidents is well-known. Russia is effectively a totalitarian state, and what has happened to Chechnya under Putin has been documented here. And yet somehow this seems to win relative approval, or to be useful tool with which to attack the BBC. It’s as if many here are blind to the reality and wilfully ignorant of the suffering of the people under these regimes – which is of course comparable in every way with the suffering inflicted by the ‘West’ (although not, I think, Luxembourg) on their victims.
And in the meantime the fact that the people of Israel are largely against the brutal slow murder of Gaza, and largely against any attack on Iran, as Downwiththissortofthing pointed out, goes uncommented upon because it suits people, some of whom will be the sort who desecrate Jewish graveyards, to see something called ‘Israel’ as the enemy.
People everywhere are being led/dominated by the wrong sort of other people: to me the fact that people feel they need leaders at all is part of the problem. But to pretend that one evil empire is better than another, or that one de facto murderer a block away is preferable to the one next door, sounds like the height of self-deception or a very unpleasant agenda.
Right, that’s me. Excuse generalisations, anyone who might feel accidentally wounded.
Passerby
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Well, interestingly to note that despite criticism Georgia was one of only 3 of former USSR states (excluding Baltic states) where presidential elections took place twice with presence of real oppositional candidates. It would also be interestingly to know that according to Georgians themselves in the last 8 years Georgia turned from the most corrupt former USSR state into one where corruption is least and where all 3 power branches are really working without absolute domination of executive branch (which is typical for all former soviet republics). Before criticising Georgia one could look onto Belarus.
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People’s wish and aspiration you say? And then turn your blind eye onto aspiration of many people in may countries branding them US Imperial conspiracy. You not me should get head straight.
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Constitutional change in Syria you say? In Uzbekistan since Karimov took power in 1989 and since Uzbekistan gained (or better say was awarded) Independence in 1991 we have had 3 constitutional changes, 3 presidential elections, 1 referendum BUT yet we have ONE blood sucking bustard ruling over Uzbekistan. I am quite sceptical when dictators offer some changes WITHOUT agreeing to step down.
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And to add that I am not a member of Uzbek Transitional Council. And guess why??? It is because there is no such a thing. It is because Mr Karimov (who like Assad offered constitutional changes) acts very quickly to prevent people from participating in any sort of political life. I have relatives back there and I would not risk their well beings and lives for dirty politics.
Thank you for inadvertendly answering my questions from earlier, Uzbek in the UK, i.e. So you are a renegade, an asylum seeker from Karimovs regime with interests in better conditions and human rights for your fellow Uzbeks, understandably.
Do you think that if Uzbekistan would change into a different society with an elected Parliament that Russia’s harliners and oligarchs would be the next to fall and dispose of Putin, or will those who like to undermine mother Russia, be having more success in establishing a Parliament open to western manipulators?
Are we not seeing a more open kind of cold war developing?
btw. thanks for reminding us of the victims of cast lead Mark G., their names should be tattoed on to Bliars backside, with ablunt needle, not that one would want to put off his wife or current boyfriend.
“a renegade, an asylum seeker”
Not even UKIP or the Tories would try that conflation.
“undermine mother Russia” – ?
Ooh, and a ‘let’s call Blair a liar *and* gay” since both are as bad as each other. Tut, the masks are slipping.
Technicolour, is Uzbek in the UK not a renegade against Karimov?
that he is an asylum seeker is an assumption, agreed, he could also be working for some or other company or university, for all I care. I’m perplexed as to his Russian analysis thats all and sometimes he does not make sense.
Undermining Mother Russia is what has been going on since you and I have been born, then it was the cold war, now its the insipid undermining of a resource rich Russian state, which still has got problems with honesty, representation of the masses, just as this country, the chad-ridden juvenile US, or Israel.
Are you, technicolour, disputing that Anthony Blair is a liar?
that he is gay is an old hat, question those who have raised this issue, which was Clarissa Dickson wright in her autobiography, not me.
You have added the connotations that being gay and being a liar are as bad as each other, I could not possibly agree with you. I think everyone should be proud of his/her respective sexuality, including you and me. I’m proud to be heterosexual, are you?
Someone in the past should have explained to you that putting your words into other peoples mouth is not quiet how its done?
As for your all seeking fascist radar, its kaputt, not working here, a dead radar, just because its going round and round, does not mean its actually receiving anything.
Technicolour: “China is a corporate dictatorship which is spending more on internal security this year than on its defence budget. Its crushing of Tibet and its dissidents is well-known. Russia is effectively a totalitarian state, and what has happened to Chechnya under Putin has been documented here. And yet somehow this seems to win relative approval.”
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Railing against the BBC, or any other corporate media outlet, is not being pro-China or anti-BBC it’s about getting angry at being treated like uninformed idiots by people who should, and probably do, know better.
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Those prostitutes called journalists sell their integrity for a fat salary and nice pension, peddle government lies and disinformation and call it ‘news’. The BBC comes in for particular criticism because I am forced to pay for it and as such they have no excuses about advertisers or commercial interests to worry about.
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What the mass media is involved in is conditioning public opinion to favour the geopolitical views and aspirations of the ruling elite. They create a virtual reality for viewers, readers and listeners so that wars can be manufactured at will. Relying on months, and in some cases years, of disseminating lies, half-truths and propaganda about target nations and governments.
“It would also be interestingly to know that according to Georgians themselves in the last 8 years Georgia turned from the most corrupt former USSR state into one where corruption is least and where all 3 power branches are really working without absolute domination of executive branch (which is typical for all former soviet republics).”
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And I thought the BBC was bad. You are paraphrasin a World Bank report on Georgia, which is hardly a source of impartial facts, although I like the addition of “according to Georgians themselves” to give it some cred.
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What Saakashvili actually did was announce that corruption had penetrated to the very heart of the government and then arrested all his political opponents and jailed them. He then announced that Georgia was corruption free and everyone in the media agreed.
@Crab and others.
Any drollery was purely coincidental or a matter of interpretation.
We can wail and gnash our teeth over events all over the globe and here at home, but the situation here in this country: the UK, is a matter for us, a matter for England particularly, assuming the Scots can manage to break away cleanly and not end up with some jam tomorrow empty promises and an unending lop-sided ‘union’ with the Westminster regime.
I’m deadly serious, we need to put our own house in order, no-one else should and no-one else is going to do this for us. Forgetting the rest of the world’s woes for a time and getting all medieval with our own home-grown crooks and despots is all we can legitimately and effectively do without resort to the same might is right tactics we condemn in other’s lands. It’s an old English folk tradition of torches and pitchforks, and one that ought to be kept alive and used whenever our high and mighty defy the people so egregiously.
We cannot bemoan lack of liberty and justice abroad, till we have liberty and justice ourselves here.
Passerby: If you want to access Presstv, use another Google.
Type for example google.at into your google, then Presstv into that browser.It’ll work.
The UK seems to be censoring quite a few sites.You will find that some of the Telecom companies are blocking sites.
A proxy IP address patched into your browser will get you out of the UK virtually.
Nevermind: ‘renegade’ is a negative connoter: I might say I was a ‘renegade’ against the current (or previous) government but would be unlikely to do so, unless I was laughing at myself. To apply that term to Uzbek in the UK vis a vis Karimov does not make sense; nor does your assumption that they are an asylum seeker (your point noted, but I wonder why your assumption was made).
The forces that have torn Russia apart were perfectly capable of doing so without Western meddling. So you think the state ‘still has problems with honesty’: now, that is a curiously insipid way of putting it. I don’t believe that the chad scandal was Texas ‘having problems with honesty’: do you?
When you rail against the BBC, you do so in the context of Russian elections and hypocrisy. Would you rather our state broadcaster broadcast no unpleasant facts from anywhere? Should the corruption and repression in Russia be off limits merely because the BBC have largely and uncritically broadcast the drum beats for an attack on Iran? I deplore both.
As for Blair: I’m not interested in his sexuality. I’m surprised that you are and I fail to see what relevance it has in any serious comment. I accept the fact that you are not a ‘fascist’: the term I used was ‘right-wing’.
I bet this character (Conservative Friend of Israel of course) is/was known to Fox and Werrity. He declares £2000 a month from this Soufan Group. http://soufangroup.com/team/markpritchard/
See Ali Soufan ex FBI soufangroup.com/team/alisoufan
Pritchard has just thrown in the towel on Cameron. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17263317
Press TV elaborates on the baseless charges facing its reporters
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The Militia commander told reporters that his men had found official Libyan documents as well as equipment used by the Israeli military among the possessions of Jones and Johnson.
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Last year, Jones reported that he had found the materials in the compound belonging to Muammar Gaddafi’s son Mutasim after the fall of Tripoli. Jones was among the first reporters who gained access to the ravaged compound.
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Meanwhile, the militiamen have also shown footage of the two detained journalists test-firing a gun. Jones had written on his Facebook page earlier that he fired the gun for “fun” and shared the photos on his page.
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He also shared pictures of damaged tanks, downed airplanes and revolutionary fighters. The militia accuses Jones and Johnson of illegal entry, suspicious movements and taking photos. Such claims could apply to many foreign journalists who covered the Libyan conflict.
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Reporters covering the conflict routinely entered the country without going through normal border procedures, collected documents found on the battlefield, and took pictures of themselves posing with weapons to keep as mementoes
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These trumped up charges facing the two Press TV journalists, clearly show the new Libyan government’s respect for law and order!
former National Security Advisor Uzi Arad – the man who once gave Haaretz the most extremist interview ever on the nuclear issue, in which he spoke of the sexual pleasure derived from war games involving tens of millions of casualties – is now showing himself to be a comparative moderate.
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http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/netanyahu-s-conspiracy-to-drag-the-u-s-to-war-1.416523
Here we fucking go again:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/mccain-calls-u-s-lead-syria-airstrikes-obama-soft-stand-syrian-president-bashar-assad-article-1.1033480?localLinksEnabled=false
Note to scameron:
If we can’t afford to sort out our problems at home (except the poor starving bankers) we can’t afford to sort out other peoples’ woes:
JUST SAY NO.
AIPAC is in town, the orders are coming thick and fast: Attack Iran, Free Pollard, …….
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President Shimon Peres asked President Barack Obama to free convicted Israeli spy Johnathan Pollard.
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The tail is wagging the dog alright.
“From the Euphrates to the Mediterranean” project continues apace:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/229979.html
THEY are are all in IT together (for what they can get out of it by the looks of it).
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http://www.actionplanning.co.uk/fundingthefuture2012.pdf
“This year, we also have a stream
on funding public sector organisations entering the voluntary
and community sector as a result of the ‘Big Society’ agenda.”
Like the NHS, no doubt.
A very forgiving young man here. I wonder if his attackers would be so forgiving if the roles were reversed.
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London riots: Student ‘forgives Good Samaritan attackers’
Ashraf Rossli: ”I just want people to forgive them”
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A student robbed by two men who pretended to help him during last summer’s riots has said people should forgive his attackers.
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Ashraf Rossli, 21, had been in Britain for a month when he was knocked to the ground and had his jaw broken and bicycle stolen in Barking.
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/..http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17265145
technicolour, if you want to be petulant about my calling Uzbek a renegade, fine, but do not put words in people’s mouth.
From Collins, old, but still a dictionary, renegade- 1a) a person who deserts his cause or faith for another. b a modifier, ex. a renegade priest 2. any outlaw or rebel; from the spanish renegado. from medieval latin renegare-to renounce, from latin negare-to deny.
I fail to see the negative connotations when one puts it into the context of Karimov and the Uzbek diaspora denying him support.
Uzbek in the UK does not agree with Karimov and if he objects to the term, fine, it is none of your concern.
‘The forces that have torn Russia apart’, what an expert analysis of western pressure on Yugoslavia, East Germany, Radio Liberty must have been a commercial pop station and untold cold war campaigns to undermine the warsaw block were just rethoric, they never happened did they?, but thats in the past, best not talk about it, now we are more sophisticated, we deploy you instead.
Yes I do believe that the US elections were as rigged as the Russian elections, if thats what Independent monitors say, honest liars allround.
Then you talk of ‘your state broadcaster’introducing another issue just to divert from your own words.
Do you really think that Tony Blair is not a liar technicolour?
Tell us why then, do explain why the 45 minute speech to Parliament was not a lie to MP’s and why it has not brought ‘your’ House into disrepute. The tell me why your BBC did not call it a lie?
Would I rather that…. more fishing for new bait,
I would rather that a state broadcaster is accountable to those who pay their wages, not to those who feed them the news spin and legitamise the diversion of british foreign policy that has the strange outcome that british soldiers will die for Israels foreing policy goals. Yes I would like it to report the torture that is happening under our eyes in Libya, but why are they not monitoring/interviewing/handling Yates of the Yard, busy, training the sadistic Bahrain police force, about his pay structure with NI, not to speak of the massakers being carried out behind the BBC cameramans back, against the Shia population, thats not what the BBC does now, they do not speak out against the forces protected by the house of Saud. Lackeys, thats what they are, job-dependents, hooked on a franchise from puppets on a string, vested interest jockeys, cap duffers who tell as they’re being told, who are part and parcel of the establishment.
There is not much difference to RT.
Finally you say you are not interested in Anthony Bliars sexuality, nor that he is a liar, but you still equate the two as ‘bad as each other’, shame on you, without your nasty connotation put into my mouth I would have let it rest, somebody should have told you when you were younger, it never pays.
deal with your own glitches before you piss on others, or talk to someone else.
Thanks for that mugshot, Mary, looking at his portfolio, you could well be right, he must have crawled across Werrittys lawn at some time or other.
WERE IS ADAM WERRITTY?
Technicolour
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Maybe not inadvertently wounded but somewhat surprised by your post. As an enduring and deep-rooted commentator here I was somewhat surprised by your post. I cannot agree that we have witnessed the sort who desecrate Jewish graveyards on this board.
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Israel’s people are certainly is not the enemy. It’s leader may be hated as part of a titanic struggle taking place between the forces that seek to promote democracy and equality and the forces that aim to deepen the inequality and separation between Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel. Clearly this is a perfect example of the wrong sort of leader.
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General
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Chechyna is a perfect example of the barbarity of war and of segregation or apartheid we have witnessed in South Africa, Israel and Russia. Yet the equation ”terrorism equals separatism” has festered into widespread violations of human rights sustained by a ‘war of terror’ that grew from the fetid and psychotic minds of those inculcated by the puss of ‘Operation Northwoods’ and the delusion of inviolability.
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This gross deception used as a pretext for war allowed Russia to present itself as a great power engaged alongside the West in the fight against the common enemy, international terrorism.
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Russia could claim an important international role and obtain greater tolerance, especially from the US, towards the excesses
registered in the war in Chechnya. To justify the widely documented brutality of the federal troops, the Russian authorities have resorted to arguments that are implicitly accepted today by many governments that use extreme forms of repression to deal with the terrorist threat and that includes torture.
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In the mind of Putin and in my own mind is a stark realisation of direct international terror by Europe and America directed against any ‘enemy’ that poses a threat to Western geopolitical calculations. Putin describes this as a total, cruel and full-scale war….
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Foreign intervention was witnessed in Ossetia, aimed at destabilising the Caucasian area and recently in Iraq, Libya and Syria as a perverted means of regime change. Just like the ‘war of terror’ there persists an indefinite continuation of asymmetric conflicts by the constant repetition of terrorist acts and repressive actions. In these conflicts the predominant
actors do not seem to be willing to make any concessions and are intent on winning at all costs while others, inferior in capabilities, are more determined than ever not to concede defeat.
Downwiththissortofthing
You are right that Yeltsin allowed the wealth of Russia to be given to organised criminals – but I think you will find that the difference with Putin is that he has cut crime by giving the wealth to a smaller number of organised criminals and he has been lucky with the price of oil. But at least he has now lost in Moscow!
Anyone else worried as to why the Red Cross hasn’t been allowed into Homs fro four days – not a good sign in any normal circles.
Strange that during the Orleans floods, the hungry and thirsty people who dared to walk into the shops to find food and water were classified as looters, and shot by the same Black Water thugs who were airlifted back into the mainland US. Any kind of disturbance anywhere in the “free world” the rioters, looters, thieving thugs are always condemned for their disregard of the laws and private property.
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In Syria the “activists” who have been shooting dead the jewellers and gold dealers to steal their wealth, somehow is never mentioned, also not mentioned is the Free Syrian Army running a kidnap and extortion racket. There again, the news from Syria is affected by the gravitational pull and distorted to the current state of absolute bollocks, with a view to lay the place flat so that Isreal can feel secure.
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Michael Scheuer: Israel owns the Congress Now even on Fox News
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/03/02/pentagon-confirms-us-troops-in-south-yemeni-city-of-aden/
US boots and CIA fighting in Aden.Interesting little map too.
Israel has bases in Eritrea, Djibouti is US, Socotra has a US airfield and thousands of troops, Somalia is currently being recolonised by the British and US, supported by Ethiopia and Kenya, Diego Garcia air base further out. Definitely looks like Jemen is being Democratised.That’ll be another Afghanistan !! Mind you might be the instability needed to knock over the Sheikdom dominoe to the North.
Good morning Craig,
I am afraid the warmongering Guardian do not get a pack on the back from me. I have written to them asking why they have not reported the word’s of Iran’s KHAMENEI’s on nuclear weapons.They have not replied and continue with their American agenda!
http://govermentterrorism.blogspot.com/2012/03/iran-irans-supreme-leader-forbids.html
Videos which show how the press is manipulating public opinion. In them we see Danny Dayem waiting to go live to CNN. See how he organises fellows off camera to start shooting when he goes on air. He is in constant communication with CNN while he waits, so they can see and hear all this.
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While he waits to go live he sits their patiently and calmly, even asking for a mattress to make him more comfortable.
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The moment he goes live he’s entire demeanor changes in a moment. Now he’s panicky and stressed because he’s now in the middle of a “Syrian massacre of civilians”. It is truly pathetic.
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http://lizzie-phelan.blogspot.com/2012/03/part-1-addounia-tv-exposes-insurgents.html
Anon, the one and only: “Anyone else worried as to why the Red Cross hasn’t been allowed into Homs fro four days – not a good sign in any normal circles.”
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Not worried because it’s not true.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17228912
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What is actually happening is that the ICRC has been reporting that they are encountering booby traps in areas previously held by the ‘insurgents’. The Western media is saying these have been placed by the Syrian Army to prevent ICRC reporting on Syrian atrocities. Utter nonsense. As usual the truth has been inverted.
Danny Abdull Dayem from Cambridge, England works for British intelligence. Incidentally the 7/7 bombers also worked for British intelligence, it is a matter of public record which the ‘official narrative’ fails to mention. Can you say Moslem ‘patsy’?
Didn’t the ICRC have a bit of bother getting into Gaza when the forces of freedom and democracy were reducing its infrastructure (what was left of it from the last time) to rubble? And killing civilians? With DIME weapons?
Funny, I don’t remember our leaders making a fuss about that.
Can you say “tinfoil hat”, Arthur?