The BBC believes that Kate Middleton’s tits are a more important story than western diplomats in danger of their lives all over the Middle East. Says it all about today’s BBC, really.
Killing people is not the solution to the World’s problems. Killing diplomats is particularly heinous as they are guests in a country, and are charged with keeping open the lines of peaceful communication between nations. Almost certainly Ambassador Stevens and his staff deplored the making and distribution of hate videos, and absolutely certainly they had nothing to do with it. Nor do the diplomats under seige today in Yemen, Sudan and Egypt.
Oliver Miles, the extremely sensible former British Ambassador to Libya, while deploring attacks on Embassies and their staff, made the obvious point on Sky News yesterday that America’s unflinching support for an expansionist Israel was the root cause of hostile attitudes to the USA acroos the Middle East. His interview was instantly terminated.
Miles’ observation is true, as it is true that direct and killing intervention by the US in Libya and Yemen has caused the situations that are now blowing back – often with US supplied or at least encouraged weaponry. But yet again, none of that justifies the racist attacks on westerners. Just as all Muslims were not responsible for Islamic terrorists, so all westerners are not responsible for the far right purveyors of anti-Muslim hatred.
All decent people must despair at the prospect of yet another cycle of violence. Powerful interests both in the West and in the Middle East are not amongst those decent people.
Of all the signals the West could send out to try to end the horrors wrought by the promoters of the “Clash of civilisations”, the most powerful would be to arraign Bush and Blair for war crimes. This is not a deluded hope of idealists; it is an essential step if the world is ever to heal.
Here we go again. The defenders of religion or a particular religion peddling the same inverted logic as the gun lobby in the US – “Religion doesn’t kill people, people kill people.”
It’s interesting to note that belief systems, whether they are political, social, industrial or scientific, are given all sorts of credit, or criticism, but when it comes to religion – we are bullied into silence. For some strange reason, religion is not supposed to have any bearing on the propensity of human beings to do harm. The one exception, I believe, might be the Catholic Church. The media and especially Hollywood, is keen to exploit the stupidity or perversity of priests and the sinister machinations of the church.
One poster here claimed that Islam contributed to science, art and literature. I don’t think so. Scientists and artists don’t need religion to inspire their genius. Did Christianity land a man on the moon? No. You might just as well have said that the Nazi’s got there belatedly, although one’s not supposed to say that either.
When you look at a map of the world and contemplate the conquests of various religions, you will see that domination, and attendant conflict and violence, is an inherent characteristic of their being. It’s only natural.
Chris Jones: ..??? What,so you mean all these holocausts don’t matter? If i’m reading you right you’re saying that the Jewish holocaust in Germany and Poland is somehow ‘more valid’ than all other holocausts?
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I never said anything remotely similar to that. FedUP was the one who injected the word “Holocaust” into the discussion saying that You Tube would never tolerate particular videos about it. It is clear he was talking about the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis and not the genocide of the Armenians or of the Ukrainians
Sean Rayment at the Tele today, basically saying the West and its allies are ready to take on Iran! not take on Israel, of course.
Armada of British naval power massing in the Gulf as Israel prepares an Iran strike
In preparation for any pre-emptive or retaliatory action by Iran, warships from more than 25 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, will today begin an annual 12-day exercise…
Mr Panetta said that the United States was “fully prepared for all contingencies” and added: “We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that the Iranian attempt to close down shipping in the Gulf is something that we are going to be able to defeat if they make that decision.”
That announcement was supported by Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, who added: “We are determined to work as part of the international community effort to ensure freedom of passage in the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz.”…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9545597/Armada-of-British-naval-power-massing-in-the-Gulf-as-Israel-prepares-an-Iran-strike.html
in the comments, someone wrote:
“WHAT NONSENSE IS THIS “INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY”? When 120 nations out of a total of 190 members of the United Nations members met up in Iran recently to have a party, and not even one member even bothered to go Israel, what on earth is “International Community”?”
16 sept: daily mail:
Defence Minister: Clegg axed me because I won’t support attack on Iran
Former Armed Forces Minister Sir Nick Harvey told friends that he was fired in the reshuffle to allow Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to sign Britain up to an Israeli-US preventive strike to take out Iran’s nuclear installations…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2203892/Nick-Harvey-axed-supporting-Iran-attack.html
so utterly depressing. am starting to believe people who have said once the banks got a new bailout – which they did this week – we can expect war.
This anthem too Suhayl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNNfAuMq-M0 Gimme Hope Joanna.
Sadly the people including the striking miners at Marikana are still under attack by the ANC’s police force. A betrayal.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2012/09/15/marikana-residents-injured-by-police-rubber-bullets
Relatives of both Zuma and Mandela have financial interests in Lonmin btw.
No tits on show here but a silly piece of Israel propaganda from Matthew Kalman in the Independent yesterday.
‘We’d do anything for Israel, but we don’t do that,’ say Mossad’s female secret weapons
For the first time in Israeli history, five agents have been allowed to give interviews
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/wed-do-anything-for-israel-but-we-dont-do-that-say-mossads-female-secret-weapons-8139975.html
I assume that the magazine referred to, Lady Globes, is part of this set up. Israel is not only racist is seems, but aexist too in that the women are referred to as ‘ladies’ (which reminded me of Little Britain!) and that they have to have a separate publication.
{http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=577208&fid=1629}
On LinkedIn I noticed that one Israel Martinez is on their advisory board. His current CV –
Current International Advisory Board at Globes
Sr. Managing Partner at Axon Global, LLC
U.S. NCSC -Private Sector: Board Member at U.S. National Cyber Security Council
Nice.
Sorry for the post what usually follows bullshit is sad truths.
BREAKING NEWS:Four Nato soldiers killed by rogue police in southern Afghanistan were members of special forces, Afghan officials say
and to illustrate how Canada and the US are correctly perceived as one, Canada are closing their outposts in these countries.
BREAKING NEWS:The Canadian government announced on Sunday it was closing its embassies in Sudan, Libya and Egypt as a precautionary measure.
Thanks, Nevermind (really glad it brought back good memories!) and Technicolour, very much appreciated.
I would seriously suggest that people explore the links I provided at 11:56pm on Sat, 15th Sept 2012. Btw, a typo – it’s ‘Mona’ Siddiqi (not ‘Monica’).
I find it interesting to note the manner in which sometimes, through their words, often typed from behind the niqaab of a pseudonym, people reveal more about themselves than about the object of their discussion. And so, paradoxically, we learn more about their real selves than if they had been using their own name.
back on topic: Naked tits model is an anagram of Kate Middleton
read it in the Sunday papers.
Had no idea of the size of Camp bastion. It’s name sounds like a caravan site surrounded by barbed wire.
It’s huge. It is currently Britains 5th largest airport handling more flights than Edinburgh or Birmingham.It houses a bottled water factory employing 300 people.
When did we say we were leaving Afghanistan ?
“Where are MI5 when we really need them?” ….. Michael, 15 Sep, 2012 – 6:52 pm
One trusts they are casting off their pathetic inhibitions and engaging in smarter virtual intelligence programs which generate media following lead/mass perception management/global brainwashing. It is a waste of their time and any and all resources, and everyone else’s time and resources, to imagine that anything else is worthwhile and effective in fields of security and global administration.
And thanks for sharing the rest of your view and opinions on such matters, Michael. They appear to be all too viable and therefore most probably more correct than anything else which might wish to counter them.
It may be the case though, that MI5 need a new head ….. or another head in a special department who/which is more enabling in what may be simply too complex a field for the old dogs of war who may be time served type holders of high IC office, rather than being able to render extraordinarily rendered service in/for/with novel intelligence source/raw metadatabase.
They do say, don’t they, that you can’t teach an old dog, new tricks.
Yes Thank you Suhayl, very fitting to the debate,I reciprocated with
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWPynScqgw&feature=related, also very apt and for me the best Funk singer that walked the earth.
Worked with Hendrix, miles Davis and sly and family stone, never got much attention, she was too naughty for 1970’s America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mld7eSaydI&playnext=1&list=PLC09811DF457D39C6&feature=results_main
The cocky little s**t Liam Fox is being given airtime on Sky News. He is being addressed as ‘Dr Fox’. I should imagine he never laid healing hands on anybody. He wants us out of Europe. He says he is not at all in the doldrums having no collective responsibility now. Also that the concentration on personalities in politics is totally wrong.
btw Where is Werritty Dr Fox?
@Jemand
16 Sep, 2012 – 3:44 am
For the first time, i’ve heard you talking sense. Keep at it.
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-video/peace-in-the-world-part-1-of-1.php
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-video/washington-talks-full-version–1-of-2.php
Religions have indeed divided man. Man has always been in conflict. Why do we have to live like this?
Peace.
Another Hendrix was on Radio 4 yesterday on Loose Ends, Nona Hendryx. 13’30″in on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01mn4ty
‘Oil on the Water’ from her album Mutatis Mutandis (“changing [only] those things which need to be changed”- Wiki)
Since leaving disco-funk trio Labelle in the late ’70s, Nona Hendryx’s career has exemplified the axiom “the road less traveled.” While her bandmate Patti LaBelle became a quiet storm superstar, Hendryx has worked with fellow eccentrics like David Byrne, Bill Laswell’s Material and Bernie Worrell. Another curveball, Mutatis Mutandis is a series of invectives against the country’s wealthiest one percent (“Mad As Hell, Pt. 1”), Rush Limbaugh and the “Tea Party,” while offering motherly advice to “Black Boys.” Hendryx sounds both didactic and impassioned on this topical funk-rock opus.
“Religions have always divided man” – yes, crazed personality cults are so much better, aren’t they? Jemand: “You might just as well have said that the Nazi’s got there belatedly, although one’s not supposed to say that either” – oooh, ‘supposed too’, like a naughty little boy sneering at horror and snickering. It gives me great pleasure to remember that where the Nazis belatedly “got” to was dead in a bunker or strung up for war crimes.
Technicolour:
I said: ““Religions have always divided man”
You reply– “yes, crazed personality cults are so much better, aren’t they?”
You’re putting words in my mouth. Go slow. I made NO OBSERVATION about personality cults.
I have not really been following the thread or its pattern(s). I was merely responding to one by Jemand that caught my eye. You really need not jump down my throat.
Carry on with whoever…i don’t wish to be drawn in.
Villager, I was making a general observation, which is why it wasn’t addressed to you! Quite understood that you were picking up on one part of a comment!
Sonia Karkar writes about the 30th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Sonia runs the excellent organisation Australians for Palestine and founded Women for Palestine.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/16/the-massacre-at-sabra-and-shatila-thirty-years-later/
The witness referred to, Dr Ang Swee Chai, founded MAP, Medical Aid for Palestinians.
{http://www.map-uk.org/about/map_history/}
Great tracks by great artists, Mary and Nevermind, thanks.
Interesting, too, about Nick Harvey.
@technicolour. Or in Latin America spreading their genes, or in the US building up NASA from scratch, or at US universities.
So many Nazi got away, Mengele nearly got caught but Mossad cocked it up, but Bormann, Rauff and heinrich Mueller were never caught either.
Jemand ist keiner, weil jemand jeder sein kann!
Tc, thank you for clarifying.
Villager, thanks! Nevermind, stimmt, wir konnen auch jemand sein – bestimmt mussen wir (ich auch)) aufpassen…
Jemand siad:One poster here claimed that Islam contributed to science, art and literature. I don’t think so.
Well that is sorted out then, because Islam did not bring the very basis of the sciences to Europe for the atheist scientists to go on do their voodoo that they do?
Algebra is an English word or is it Danish?
Talk about educatedness?
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Jemand ist keiner, weil jemand jeder sein kann!
Damn good, very droll
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Cryptonym,
You bet, that is the only way forward, fact that the rouge bastards with their phoney baloney contrived historical records and dubious claims arising thereof have come to blight the lives of the people in the area ought to be enough to put an end to the current inhuman, intolerable, and evil arrangements .
One country for all the inhabitants whom enjoy equal rights and equal access to resources and land ownership goes based on deeds and not the number of howitzers pointed at the poor deed owners.
This morning on the Sky news the ziofuckwit general hertzog actually boasted that isreal would use its nuclear weapons on Iran. That was after the sky stenographer asked “would isreal use other weapons systems too?”
So here we have a bunch of congenitally crazy, mad, and out of control lunatics, who are going to use nuclear weapons on a none nuclear nation of Iran that is not in their immediate neighbourhood of isreal, and no one seems to be outraged or even care?
The same bunch of ziofuckwits have been plotting away to oust Obama, this is unbelievable that the shitty strip of land has come to verily believe it is the imperial top dog, and the empire itself and not some fucking land based aircraft carrier for the empire.
The release of the movie is to bring about the same situation as that of the carter years to thwart the re-election of Obama, this blatant interference of the shitty little strip of land that only exists because of the hand outs of the Yanks. Fact that it has now turned on its masters and is playing hard ball with its benefactor, somewha is not being even hinted at. Furthermore the lack of any reprisals to this impudence has only emboldened other opportunist carpet baggers such as Clegg et al to join in the affray for their own ends.
It is time this cancer was removed form the heart of the mid east and people of the area were afforded their basic human rights; the right to live in peace.
‘Sir Nick confirmed to the Mail on Sunday that he had originally considered his sacking to be linked to the growing speculation about an Israeli attack on Iran and the belief that British forces would be drawn into any conflict – but then claimed he had now changed his mind.
“I have cast my mind over the issues that might have led the party leader to this decision,” he said. “But having toyed with that one, I have decided it could not have played any part in it.” [Nick Harvey, ex-Defence Minister, UK Govt and suddenly, a Knight of the Realm!]
‘Changed his mind’? Yeah, sure. Horse’s head in your bed, Nick? Don’t want to end up in a (North Face) bag in Pimlico or “dead in the woods” on some pretty Oxfordshire hillside, now, do we? Remember well, the tale of Thomas a Beckett – better the sword ‘pon our shoulder than through our neck.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/09/16/the-lib-dem-minister-the-_n_1887756.html
Clearly, Muslims need a Mohandas, or an MLK, but where from? They have an exalted past but the apex of their culture was Sumeria, and that is long gone. Have you ever researched how many Arabs have won a Nobel Prize? I think it’s 3 including Yasser Arafat. When you try to separate the ME from Islam, as though it were merely a religious doctrine, as key problem, you find the two are inextricably intertwined, as in the West. But when a religious doctrine molds culture then the interpretation of those Books such hold sacred, are often needing scholarly interpretation. There’s
the problem. The Quran might stipulate proscription of such acts as occurred in Benghazi, but there is enough wiggle room for translation of ‘Jihad’ to allow such things, and if clerics do not condemn that viewpoint, it matters not. Islam is supposed to be a religion of peace, and it may well be, but look at the fruit this tree has produced.
Suhayl;
Thanks for the links. I know there are nascent orgs of progressives and other thinkers in the Muslim world community. I note one of your links has an article “Stopping Patriarchy”. Do you think this is mainstream? What percentage of the muslim community supports gays or progressivism? I admire anyone who seeks knowledge. It is the premier aspiration, when sought honestly. But usually, the exception to the rule, proves the Rule. Don’t you see that?
Yhanks for that report Mary. I wonder what will be said about these dead woman, whether we hear what their ambitions were in life, how many children they had or what they were doing with their life’s.
Why is NATO not obliged to report the personal tragedies they cause? None of these women will ever see their children again, a tragedy that is inexcusable. Collateral damage? more like shit for brains!.
Inaccurate execution, deliberately ignoring the more colourful clothing, they just opened fire suspecting they will hit some of the ‘militants’.
They are cowards, not man enough to do it in proper conduct they rely on inaccurate, top class technology dropping ordinance from the safety of great hight. What a bunch of brave cowards.
Thanks, Ben – and thanks for checking out the links, much appreciated.
It’s a start, I guess. No petrodollars behind it, though. I also think, vis a vis the rise of fundamentalist religion in Muslim countries, that the demise of the Left – as a coherent vision/working model – has been a real problem, both in the UK and more generally. It’s complex, obviously.
Technicolour “It gives me great pleasure to remember that where the Nazis belatedly “got” to was dead in a bunker or strung up for war crimes”
…far from it,a great deal ended up in South America – many more were recruited by the American government to help develop the modern weaponry that could destroy us all