I was called by a journalist yesterday who told me that in Dewsbury six years ago I shared a platform with Baroness Warsi’s now husband at a meeting against the persecution of Muslims. Sadly I couldn’t really help him as at the time I was doing hundreds such events and have only the dimmest of recollections of that one.
It is not merely amusing that Cameron refers Warsi for investigation for allegedly pocketing a couple of thousand quid while protecting Hunt who tried so hard to shepherd the Murdoch BSkyB bid past the winning post, while pretending to referee the event.
Nor is the lesson just that a Muslim woman will always be expendable while a fully paid up member of the ruling class will be less so.
The truth is that to trip up an MP over a little cash does not threaten the system. To tackle the massive institutional corruption by which corporate interests control the British state is a different question altogether.
Hunt is of course not the only case not to be referred. Nor was the Adam Werritty debacle, where rather than the proper investigative procedures Cameron organised a tidy little stitch-up by Gus O’Donnell which omitted almost all the key facts and particularly did not say what the entire scheme was about – the promotion of the interests of Israel. The Murdoch Empite, the Israeli lobby, these are amongst the interests that actually run the exploited citizenry of this poor wracked old country. Every now and then glimpses of truth emerge.
But must not be pursued.
I think it was Clark who linked to the Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak on hunger strike. Good news on this link:
.
JTA and Haaretz distort Alice Walker’s position on boycott of Israeli publisher
Norway’s pension fund divests from Israel’s largest real estate firm
Palestinians in Lebanon rise up in protest at military murder of young refugee
Israel uses Jenin murder probe as pretext to arrest, harass Freedom Theatre staff
Israel to free footballer Mahmoud Sarsak after epic 3-month hunger strike, lawyer says
.
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=70effeb5f63e84ab0c0730984&id=a8e177a6f1&e=b031c546a9
Clark Are you charging this James Farrel of kingscrossmedia.com for the free advert via spambot?
Jonathan Marcus and Frank Gardner have resorted to the tried and tested hype on Syria’s chemical weapons.
.
Fears grow for fate of Syria’s chemical weapons
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18483788
.
and
.
Frank Gardner (@FrankRGardner)
19/06/2012 13:29
#Syria opp cleric warns of risk ‘that Assad regime will use its chemical weapons on its own people’.
.
They seem to have missed out the bit about a 45 minute warning.
How about a weekly portion of ice cream for the best spammer Mr. Farrell?
This minute of silence, remembering the 40th. anniversarry of the sabnra and Shatila massacre this year, should ideally be held holding hands all around the olympic site, just to give it that authentic feeling of being incarcerated, which could be the result of such action.
Mary, James Farrel was charged, convicted and deleted.
Read Consumer Record on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walgreens to see how this outfit Walgreens operate. They have today acquired 45% of Boots for $6.7 billion from the private equity outfit KKR. The Sky business reporter said that those in KKR will be ‘licking their lips’ in anticipation of the profits from this deal. Walgreens have an option to acquire the remaining 55% in 2015.
.
KKR Kohlberg Kravis Roberts set up their 2007 acquisition of Alliance Boots in a vehicle based in Zug Switzerland presumably for tax advantages. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Boots}
.
Old Jesse Boot will be spinning in his grave at all these smash and grab antics.
Breaking News BBC website
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is seeking political asylum from Ecuador at its London embassy, the country’s foreign minister says.
.
Excellent although it should not have been necessary.
Paul Lashmar just said on RT television that, to get asylum, Assange would have to leave the Ecuadorian embassy and go to some airport in Britain, which Britain — he said — would never allow. But didn’t Cardinal Mindszenty live in the U.S. embassy in Budapest for 15 years?
Off topic – Is this Cold War 11?
With the US/British/NATO military assault on the axis-of-oil-bearing nations in the Middle East, is it any wonder that one of the super-powers finally said enough is enough?
It seems we are back to a “balance of power” situation.
“Here is a brief look at some of the weapons systems Russia has recently shipped to Syria or pledged to deliver in the future, according to official statements and Russian media reports. Russian government officials have remained secretive about the arms trade, so a complete list of Russian weapons and other military gear sent to Syria is unavailable:”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31628.htm
Russian Navy Preparing to Defend Base in Syria
By The Moscow Times
18 June, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — Russia is preparing to send Marines to defend its naval base in Syria amid continued unrest in the Arab state, Interfax reported Monday, citing a Navy source.
The information confirms reports in Russian and Western media Friday.
Two large troop transport vessels and a rescue tugboat will defend Russian citizens and infrastructure in the port city of Tartus and also evacuate equipment if necessary, the source said.
Tartus is home to Russia’s only naval base outside the former Soviet Union.
The report did not say when the ships would arrive or how many Marines would accompany them.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused Russia of sending attack helicopters to Syria, warning that the shipment “will escalate the conflict quite dramatically.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejected Clinton’s claim, saying that Russia is only shipping air defense systems under previously signed contracts.
Some experts alleged that the helicopters Clinton said were en route to Syria could be old ones that underwent maintenance in Russia.
Russia has shipped billions of dollars worth of missiles, combat jets, tanks, artillery and other military gear to Syria over more than four decades. Moscow says that it’s currently providing Assad with weapons intended to protect Syria from a foreign invasion and that it is not delivering the kinds of weapons needed to fight lightly armed insurgents in cities.
Here is a brief look at some of the weapons systems Russia has recently shipped to Syria or pledged to deliver in the future, according to official statements and Russian media reports. Russian government officials have remained secretive about the arms trade, so a complete list of Russian weapons and other military gear sent to Syria is unavailable:
•Pantsyr-S1 air defense system. The truck-mounted short- and medium-range system combines air-defense missiles and anti-aircraft artillery with sophisticated radar to hit aerial targets with deadly precision at ranges of up to 20 kilometers and an altitude of 15 kilometers. It has further strengthened Syria’s air defense system, which has been developed with Moscow’s help since the Cold War.
Igor Sevastyanov, a deputy head of the Rosoboronexport state arms trader, said last week that the Pantsyr contract is still being implemented. Sevastyanov didn’t offer specifics, but Russian media reports have said that the contract envisaged the delivery of 36 such units, which include a truck mounted with guns and missiles together with a radar.
•Buk-M2 air defense system. The medium-range missile system is capable of hitting enemy aircraft and cruise missiles at ranges of up to 50 kilometers and an altitude of up to 25 kilometers. It is a sophisticated weapon that is capable of inflicting heavy losses to enemy aircraft if Syria comes under attack.
•Bastion anti-ship missile system. Armed with supersonic Yakhont cruise missiles that have a range of up to 300 kilometers, it provides a strong deterrent against an attack from the sea. Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said last fall that Moscow would fully honour the Bastion contract. Russian media reports said that Russia has already fulfilled the Bastion deal, which was worth $300 million and included the delivery of more than 70 Yakhont missiles.
•Yak-130 combat jets. Russian media reports said early this year that Syria had ordered a batch of 36 Yak-130 combat jets worth $550 million. Officials wouldn’t confirm or deny the deal, which would significantly bolster the Syrian air force’s capabilities. The Yak-130 is a combat training jet that can also carry modern weapons for ground attack missions.
The Kremlin insists that the continuing Russian arms sales don’t violate international agreements, and it has scoffed at Western demands to halt the trade.
A Russian ship carrying a load of weapons arrived in Syria just a few weeks ago amid international anger over Assad’s refusal to honour a UN-sponsored peace plan.
The new Russian weapons supplies add to Syria’s massive arsenal of hundreds of Soviet-built combat jets, attack helicopters and missiles and thousands of tanks, other armored vehicles and artillery systems. Russia said it also has military advisers in Syria training the Syrians to use the Russian weapons, and it has helped repair and maintain Syrian weapons.
This this article was first published at The Moscow Times
© Copyright 1992-2012. The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
“GEAB N°66 is available! Red alert”
.
http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-66-is-available-Red-alert-Global-systemic-crisis-September-October-2012-When-the-trumpets-of-Jericho-ring-out_a11079.html
So political Islam is used by NATO to destroy Gaddafi in exchange for real political power. It sacrifices Libyan oil to Ziobanker greed on the basis that it will be re-nationalised with Chinese armaments when Western power and influence has been expunged from the country through civil war.
.
Neat
.
And the neat’s foot, William Hague, still thinks he has a purposeful role in Syria?
.
Political Islam persecutes ordinary Muslims by spying and lying, in order to convince war Criminals like Hague that they share a common hatred for the truth, justice and morality of ordinary Islam?
.
Well.
Guano,
Speaking of Syria – do remember the relationship with Iran:-
Deep-Sixing the China Option
How the Obama Administration Is Stalling Its Way to War with Iran
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
June 19, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — Since talks with Iran over its nuclear development started up again in April, U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that Tehran will not be allowed to “play for time” in the negotiations. In fact, it is the Obama administration that is playing for time.
Some suggest that President Obama is trying to use diplomacy to manage the nuclear issue and forestall an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear targets through the U.S. presidential election. In reality, his administration is “buying time” for a more pernicious agenda: time for covert action to sabotage Tehran’s nuclear program; time for sanctions to set the stage for regime change in Iran; and time for the United States, its European and Sunni Arab partners, and Turkey to weaken the Islamic Republic by overthrowing the Assad government in Syria.
Vice President Biden’s national security adviser, Antony J. Blinken, hinted at this in February, explaining that the administration’s Iran policy is aimed at “buying time and continuing to move this problem into the future, and if you can do that — strange things can happen in the interim.” Former Pentagon official Michèle Flournoy — now out of government and advising Obama’s reelection campaign — told an Israeli audience this month that, in the administration’s view, it is also important to go through the diplomatic motions before attacking Iran so as not to “undermine the legitimacy of the action.”
New York Times’ journalist David Sanger recently reported that, “from his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons” — even though he knew this “could enable other countries, terrorists, or hackers to justify” cyberattacks against the United States. Israel — which U.S. intelligence officials say is sponsoring assassinations of Iranian scientists and other terrorist attacks in Iran — has been intimately involved in the program.
Classified State Department cables published by WikiLeaks show that, from the beginning of the Obama presidency, he and his team saw diplomacy primarily as a tool to build international support for tougher sanctions, including severe restrictions on Iranian oil exports. And what is the aim of such sanctions? Earlier this year, administration officials told the Washington Post that their purpose was to turn the Iranian people against their government. If this persuades Tehran to accept U.S. demands to curtail its nuclear activities, fine; if the anger were to result in the Islamic Republic’s overthrow, many in the administration would welcome that.
Since shortly after unrest broke out in Syria, the Obama team has been calling for President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster, expressing outrage over what they routinely describe as the deaths of thousands of innocent people at the hands of Syrian security forces. But, for more than a year, they have been focused on another aspect of the Syrian situation, calculating that Assad’s fall or removal would be a sharp blow to Tehran’s regional position — and might even spark the Islamic Republic’s demise. That’s the real impetus behind Washington’s decision to provide “non-lethal” support to Syrian rebels attacking government forces, while refusing to back proposals for mediating the country’s internal conflicts which might save lives, but do not stipulate Assad’s departure upfront.
Meeting with Iranian oppositionists last month, State Department officials aptly summarized Obama’s Iran policy priorities this way: the “nuclear program, its impact on the security of Israel, and avenues for regime change.” With such goals, how could his team do anything but play for time in the nuclear talks? Two former State Department officials who worked on Iran in the early months of Obama’s presidency are on record confirming that the administration “never believed that diplomacy could succeed” — and was “never serious” about it either.
How Not to Talk to Iran
Simply demanding that Iran halt its nuclear activities and ratcheting up pressure when it does not comply will not, however, achieve anything for America’s position in the Middle East. Western powers have been trying to talk Iran out of its civil nuclear program for nearly 10 years. At no point has Tehran been willing to surrender its sovereign right to indigenous fuel cycle capabilities, including uranium enrichment.
Sanctions and military threats have only reinforced its determination. Despite all the pressure exerted by Washington and Tel Aviv, the number of centrifuges operating in Iran has risen over the past five years from less than 1,000 to more than 9,000. Yet Tehran has repeatedly offered, in return for recognition of its right to enrich, to accept more intrusive monitoring of — and, perhaps, negotiated limits on — its nuclear activities.
Greater transparency for recognition of rights: this is the only possible basis for a deal between Washington and Tehran. It is precisely the approach that Iran has advanced in the current series of talks. Rejecting it only guarantees diplomatic failure — and the further erosion of America’s standing, regionally and globally.
George W. Bush’s administration refused to accept safeguarded enrichment in Iran. Indeed, it refused to talk at all until Tehran stopped its enrichment program altogether. This only encouraged Iran’s nuclear development, while polls show that, by defying American diktats, Tehran has actually won support among regional publics for its nuclear stance.
Some highly partisan analysts claim that, in contrast to Bush, Obama was indeed ready from early in his presidency to accept the principle and reality of safeguarded enrichment in Iran. And when his administration failed at every turn to act in a manner consistent with a willingness to accept safeguarded enrichment, the same analysts attributed this to congressional and Israeli pressure.
In truth, Obama and his team have never seriously considered enrichment acceptable. Instead, the president himself decided, early in his tenure, to launch unprecedented cyberattacks against Iran’s main, internationally monitored enrichment facility. His team has resisted a more realistic approach not because a deal incorporating safeguarded enrichment would be bad for American security (it wouldn’t), but because accepting it would compel a more thoroughgoing reappraisal of the U.S. posture toward the Islamic Republic and, more broadly, of America’s faltering strategy of dominating the Middle East.
The China Option
Acknowledging Iran’s right to enrich would require acknowledging the Islamic Republic as a legitimate entity with legitimate national interests, a rising regional power not likely to subordinate its foreign policy to Washington (as, for example, U.S. administrations regularly expected of Egypt under Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak). It would mean coming to terms with the Islamic Republic in much the same way that the United States came to terms with the People’s Republic of China — another rising, independent power — in the early 1970s.
America’s Iran policy remains stuck in a delusion similar to the one that warped its China policy for two decades after China’s revolutionaries took power in 1949 — that Washington could somehow isolate, strangle, and ultimately bring down a political order created through mass mobilization and dedicated to restoring national independence after a long period of Western domination. It didn’t work in the Chinese case and it’s not likely to in Iran either.
In one of the most consequential initiatives in American diplomatic history, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger finally accepted this reality and aligned Washington’s China policy with reality. Unfortunately, Washington’s Iran policy has not had its Nixonian moment yet, and so successive U.S. administrations — including Obama’s — persist in folly.
The fact is: Obama could have had a nuclear deal in May 2010, when Brazil and Turkey brokered an agreement for Iran to send most of its low-enriched uranium abroad in return for new fuel for a research reactor in Tehran. The accord met all the conditions spelled out in letters from Obama to then-Brazilian President Lula and Turkish Prime Minister ErdoÄŸan — but Obama rejected it, because it recognized Iran’s right to enrich. (That this was the main reason was affirmed by Dennis Ross, the architect of Obama’s Iran policy, earlier this year.) The Obama team has declined to reconsider its position since 2010 and, as a result, it is on its way to another diplomatic failure.
As Middle Eastern governments become somewhat more representative of their peoples’ concerns and preferences, they are also — as in Egypt and Iraq — becoming less inclined toward strategic deference to the United States. This challenges Washington to do something at which it is badly out of practice: pursue genuine diplomacy with important regional states, based on real give and take and mutual accommodation of core interests. Above all, reversing America’s decline requires rapprochement with the Islamic Republic (just as reviving its position in the early 1970s required rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China).
Instead, three and a half years after George W. Bush left office, his successor continues to insist that Iran surrender to Washington’s diktats or face attack. By doing so, Obama is locking America into a path that is increasingly likely to result in yet another U.S.-initiated war in the Middle East during the first years of the next presidential term. And the damage that war against Iran will inflict on America’s strategic position could make the Iraq debacle look trivial by comparison.
Flynt Leverett is professor of international affairs at Penn State. Hillary Mann Leverett is senior professorial lecturer at American University. Together, they write the Race for Iran blog. Their new book, Going to Tehran: Why the United States Needs to Come to Terms With the Islamic Republic of Iran (Metropolitan Books), will be published in January 2013
“sex crimes” – the news reports on Julian’s plea for asylum.. and then i recall images of that kackling smack loving nymphalite Brand (“he fucked ya grandaughta!”) mounting a stage with the Dali Lama!
What are Julians sex crimes? Rash behaviour with an unsuitable fan? Breaking amorous promises? “this means so much…” (it may do at the time and later seem tawdry)
Brand should offer himself up to sweden as sex rat sacrifice – maybe someone could tweet him, he might be up for that.
Llama – (orgle orgle)
Mary:
“Made a bad mistake just now. I was looking for the news and landed on ITV’s Loose Women. The revolting Alastair Campbell was being introduced by Ms Vorderman. He is flogging his book on every available medium.”
I bet you watched it though.
I have heard it all now. Ms MeMeMe Self Publicist Mensch again…
.
Louise Mensch launches rival to Twitter
Menshn.com will allow users to debate a subject rather than monitor a stream of often divergent tweets
.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/19/lousie-mensch-rival-twitter?newsfeed=true
.
I thought she was supposed to be an MP.
No Mr Campbell, I definitely did not.
.
PS Are you related to that other self publicist Alastair?
The recent award of an OBE to Gary Barlow from Her Maj looks even more ridiculous in the light of this evasion of revenue to HMRC.
.
Take That stars ‘put £26million in tax shelters’
.
Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen have ‘invested in scheme designed to avoid tax’
.
Among 1,000 people who have contributed £480m to 62 partnerships, it has been claimed
.
HMRC is attempting to shut partnerships down
.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161925/Take-That-stars-26million-tax-shelters.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Yesterday in Occupied Palestine –
.
In
Zionism in practice
Israel’s Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Property
(Compiled by Leslie Bravery, Palestine Human Rights Campaign POB 56150, Dominion Rd, Auckland, New Zealand http://www.palestine.org.nz)
24 hours to 8am 19 June 2012 [Main source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group (PMG).]
.
Israeli air strikes in Gaza – 4 dead and 1 injured
Jordan Valley: Home invasions and removal of residents
Night home invasion: Israeli soldiers abduct 17-year-old youth
2:10am: Racist settler mob sets fire to mosque
Israeli forces destroy tent dwellings and farm structures
Night peace disruption and/or home invasions in
2 refugee camps and 8 towns and villages
2 air strikes – 1 attack – 20 raids including home invasions
4 dead – 1 injured
4 acts of agricultural/economic sabotage – 17 taken prisoner – 8 detained – 101 restrictions of movement
.
While Occupation and blockade are business as usual for Israel, there should be no business with Israel
Mensch again. Bah. Her partner in her new venture ( aimed at the American public, not the country some of whose citizens she allegedly represents) is Luke Bozier. Who, you may ask, he?
.
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/01/luke-bozier/
.
Looks as if they deserve each other.
A cure for depression here-
https://twitter.com/#!/menschbozier
.
Komodo rating: ****
So as I thought they are talking to themselves. Bozier seamlessly defected to the Cons after his five minutes with Bliar, and set up a website called Municipo from his ‘tiny office’ as he puts it.
.
His 828 word resignation letter dated Jan 2012 is a hoot, esp his ‘analysis’ of Cameron. http://www.kernelmag.com/scene/969/senior-tech-advisor-sensationally-quits-labour/
.
A complete tw*t who does not know his own mind.
.
Dear Labour Party,
.
I became a member five years ago, in the final days of Tony Blair’s leadership. Back then, New Labour was still the intellectual heart of the party. A pro-business attitude and a commitment to revolutionising our creaking public services made sense to me. And it made sense to the rest of the country. I had the privilege to work alongside our most successful leader, Tony Blair, and I look back at that time fondly. But when I watch Tony’s old speeches, it makes me confused and sad about the direction the party is now taking.
.
Gordon Brown, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a terrible driver of the New Labour wagon. Most of his three years as leader and Prime Minister were spent defending his own position. As a result, we wasted the opportunity to continue Tony’s reforms and we were punished for it at the ballot box. Had somebody taken the decisive action to remove Gordon, we might still be in government today. But our Cabinet failed to stand up to him and in doing so they let both the party and the country down.
.
But if Gordon’s leadership was disastrous, the events and decisions made since May 2010 have been catastrophic.
.
Ed Miliband is a leader that Labour MPs and Labour members didn’t want. He was forced upon us by the Trade Unions and like most people, I wasn’t happy with the result. I tried for as long as I could to give Ed the benefit of the doubt. But look what it’s come to, with the party and the leader now a national laughing stock. Rarely in British history has a leader become so quickly defined by humiliating questions about his looks and personality.
.
Ed proudly declared that New Labour is dead; how tragic. With it, the passion for reform that made our party electable has gone. So too has the pro-business, pragmatic approach to wealth and enterprise. Instead there is a vision and leadership vacuum. At a time when the nation needs strong political leadership, Labour offers nothing. Labour seems to have learned nothing from the days of Brown.
.
And what of the alternatives to Ed Miliband? The Coopers, Balls and those who follow are out-of-touch careerists. Worse, they are Brownites, even more committed to the ideological left than Ed or Gordon. Balls’ u-turn on the cuts was delivered yesterday through gritted teeth. He was at the heart of Brown’s insane spending and can’t wait to abandon fiscal conservatism. Nobody believes him as a fiscal realist.
.
The reality is that student politicians have taken over the Labour Party. Simply put, Labour is institutionally unable to put aside its tribal prejudice and ideology. But it needs to in order to undertake the bold thinking needed to tackle today’s challenges. Instead Labour prefers to repeat the same negative patterns that have kept them out of office for 80 of their first 110 years of existence. Today, our education, health and welfare systems are unfit for purpose, yet at times in the Labour Party it feels almost treasonous to tell the truth about them.
.
I despair, because I love this country and I care deeply about making public services better. About dismantling the traps in our bloated welfare system. About projecting confidence on the world stage. About the deficit and debt. I no longer wish to be associated with Labour’s ludicrous attitudes to education reform or its dire mismanagement of the economy.
.
So Labour’s future looks bleak. David Cameron, sensing the intellectual and political paralysis throughout the Labour Party, has picked up New Labour’s baton of reform and is running with it. Cameron’s Conservatives have again become the party of the aspirational classes. Aspiration is what took me from a council estate in South Wales to start my own business and to political activism.
.
It’s Cameron’s Conservatives who are being fiscally responsible, doing the hard work needed to put the economy back on track. His party is taking the steps needed to improve our schools, our welfare system and to invest in new infrastructure like HS2. His party is instituting the regulatory reforms so desperately needed to allow private enterprise, the engine of the recovery, to flourish.
.
Those reforms are social justice. And social justice is why I entered politics.
.
I want my two children to have a bright future in a confident United Kingdom. That requires radical, bold, innovative management and change in our public services. Some of that work will be hard, and some of it will be unpopular, but it is absolutely necessary to safeguard the prosperity and security of this country.
.
But the Labour Party – which has comfortably turned back into Old Labour – no longer speaks for this country. And it no longer speaks for me and the sort of Britain I want for my children. And that is why, today, I am joining the Conservatives.
.
Sincerely,
Luke
The guy’s a hoot. This from his blog:
.
You could be walking down the street, and the heads-up display might recommend a coffee shop which your extended social network has ‘pre-approved’ before you even know that you fancy a coffee. Feeling down? The computer already knows and has intelligently worked out who amongst your friends might be best-placed to give you a ring for a catch-up. Stressed about money? Adverts for credit cards will be beamed straight into your eye. If computers can understand what we’re thinking and feeling, and connect those thoughts to relevant information and social connections, the results will be very powerful.
.
Yup. I’m shit-terrified at the possibilities you outline, Luke. A technological dystopia in which no-one is free from their latte-swilling suit chums at any time, at any place, and where my vision is constantly obscured by adverts for credit cards beamed straight into my eyes. Or even my brain. Oh. Wait a minute. That’s not supposed to be frightening at all. Not to a heroic selfservative with proper stubble and no tie, anyway. That’s a dynamic entrepreneurial opportunity and probably a vision of enhanced choice for hard-working families. This is the scary bit. Sorry.
.
The third story, and where it turns potentially alarming, relates to plans in the UK to give governments information about every phone call, email and text message sent from or to a person in the country, either internally or across our borders…
.
Ah. That might impact rival sites to Twitter a bit, mightn’t it, Luke?
Sincere thanks to whoever sorted out the italics on/off flags above. Appreciated.
Komodo, that’s an interesting excerpt from Bozier’s blog: “The third story, and where it turns potentially alarming, relates to plans in the UK to give governments information about every phone call, email and text message…”. So Bozier sees no danger in unelected corporate interests knowing and influencing everyone’s thoughts and feelings, and sees the supposedly democratic government as a greater threat.
Just so, Clark, and symptomatic of the double standards under which so-called libertarian conservatives operate. Bozier is slightly to the right of Gove, as far as I can see, and it may be that severing his temporary and very slight connection with New Blair, with the maximum publicity was simply a preplanned move to elevate his profile with his natural friends, the Tories. Maybe he’ll get parachuted into a safe seat next time?
This looks like a likely gameplan for Syria. Note the establishment of a state, regardless of who lives there at the moment, called Kurdistan. As it will be defending Israel from the horrible, horrible Iranians, why not set it up like Israel? Look forward to the Kurdish diaspora winning the right to “return”…
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20120616&articleId=31454
Intrigued by Assange’s claim for political asylum in Ecuador. It seems a strange choice for a defender of freedom of speech-
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2012/05/ecuador-critical-radio-and-tv-stations-closed-down/
.
Doubly strange, as Ecuador and the US have just re-established diplomatic relations. Trebly, given the US record of conducting special operations in South America….
.
I am wondering if Assange is quite right in the head.
Any kind of Kurdistan will just give the Turks another reason not to talk to the Israelis.
It’s too explosive an issue. Kurdistan would need its other constituent parts from Iraq, and Iran as well as Syria and Turkey.
A united Kurdistan would have oil wealth and the power that goes with it.
It’s not going to happen !
A historian called Kate Williams, who has hair similar to Rebekkah Brooks, is doing the commentary on the carriage procession at Ascot. She is gushing about the Queen’s perceived lack of self importance and how she does not impinge on our lives!! I don’t think she has ever listened to herself. Completely unaware of her lack of irony.
.
http://www.kate-williams.com/