This is a genuine offer. I will pay £100 to any person who can provide a convincing reason why Denis MacShane’s expense fiddling, involving his creating false invoices, was not a criminal offence. Your argument does not have to be unanswerable – merely respectable. Up to three prizes will be given, for the three first and not essentially the same convincing arguments.
This competition specifically is open to employees of the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service; we would love to know their reasoning. It baffles me. I confess I can think of no single circumstance in this case that would prevent MacShane being convicted for theft and fraud. What is the answer?
Denis MacShane is a criminal. If he wants to try his chances with a jury, the libel courts are open to him and I am here.
Technicolour; Definitely a troll. Negative attention is better than none at all.
Cue clued decent commenters saying ‘Technicolour is not a troll, they have posted here since time immemorial/their social life broke down’, Tsk, tsk, the ultimate smear – and all because I ribbed Matt Taibi (sp?) Or were you waiting for that bridge opportunity? Donuts in your direction, Ben.
I’ve had a couple of similar conversations with Americans on Twitter, Technicolour. One surprised me by saying he was going to write in Ron Paul, because he thought foreign policy was very important. (He then proceeded to ask my opinion. I was nearly dumbstruck. I read too many right-wing blogs/sites in the USA where they claim they don’t give a sh*t what any of us think or say about anything … Europeans are ‘communist/socialist/Marxist/Muslim-overrun scum’.)
I haven’t given much thought to who I’d vote for, simply because I can’t. But if the USA continues to interfere so imperiously around the world, I’ll start a campaign on Twitter demanding a vote. 🙂
[Apparently you *can* write in Ron Paul and there is a list here of the states in which the votes will be counted:
http://www.ronpaul.com/ ]
Ben, don’t be an idiot.
It’s not a n isolated incident, troll. I have been watching you for a while now. This is my last comment to you. (life is too short to waste it on arseholes)
Dreolin; mind yer own bloody bizness.
“We twice emailed Glenn Greenwald asking for his thoughts on your criticism – we received no reply.”
That’s unusual, Glenn and Medialens seem to interact quite a bit on Twitter.
I like this:
“Jonathan Cook emailed us two weeks ago to discuss just this issue. He wrote:
‘I’ve always loved the metaphor you have in Newspeak [our 2009 book] of the great shoals of fish that move and turn in absolute synchronicity, even though it is impossible to identify a leader or a hand directing them. That is exactly how it felt when I was at the Guardian. We all knew precisely what was expected of each of us and yet one couldn’t identify a single person, not even the Editor, who was guiding or directing us. We simply knew what we should do. If we gave it a label, it was the “ethos” of the place. That’s why you were at the Guardian, after all. You either accepted it willingly as your own ethos or left. It’s another way of understanding Chomsky’s filters: the reason senior journalists always say no one ever told them what to write etc. No, we didn’t need to be told. We were Guardian worker bees or drones: we had the Guardian “ethos”. Those who didn’t were picked off, like a straggler fish caught by a shark.’ (Jonathan Cook, email to Media Lens, October 25, 2012)”
Dreoilin: yes, it was rather fine to be around the majority of the US who are peaceful and purposeful with it. After spending so much time on issues and reports about the minority of people who aren’t it can feel like a disconnect. But, while those people (like anyone) need to be questioned and engaged with, the fact remains that we are not alone or strange; in fact, we are just normal. Smiley icon. I suspect you know that!
It appears to me that many people who knew or met Jimmy Savile are jumping on a bandwagon set up by the press similar to the “check-book journalism” of the bad old days. When I read some of the “stories” coming out of the right-wing media about Savile, I wonder if they are becoming more confident that the Leveson inquiry will come to nothing as regards proper ethical standards or regulation. We must remember that David Cameron will have the last word and can overrule any recommendations that Leveson may make.
LMAO @ Ben!
They can bomb and drone kill to their hearts’ content but can they run the proverbial whelk stall? Apparently not.
Makeshift polling booths and four hour queues: US election beset by glitches
Voting across many American states was thrown into turmoil on Tuesday as electors found themselves confronted by makeshift polling booths, four-hour queues, malfunctioning machines and even the prospect of having to e-mail their ballots.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9659688/Makeshift-polling-booths-and-four-hour-queues-US-election-beset-by-glitches.html
“I have been watching you for a while now” – well, I hope you’re getting paid for it 🙂 Night Ben.
Ben stay off colour unless you want a red card. It may be your election night but kindly stop being so excitable.
Btw, I read the comments here so your nastiness becomes my business.
A red card? Fuck yer football.
and on that happy note (and excepting Spurs and Wolves and a few others for whom I have a soft spot) night all…
It is worrying that so many truth seekers are seemingly cut out of the net. Is this a precursor cyber campaign to annul certain 24/7 watchmen? will other websites be blocked and taken off circulation, or is wikileaks something we thought it is not?
A hackers view would be much appreciated here.
all possibilities are valid options, but it stinks to high heaven, somebody seems to have called off the elections and rung the war bell.
Clark’s view on this is very much missed. Did email him, had no answer, hope he’s ok.
“the fact remains that we are not alone or strange; in fact, we are just normal. Smiley icon. I suspect you know that!”
I do indeed, Technicolour.
Goodnight, sleep well
Surprised there’s no post from Craig in the last couple of days, these being relatively important times in world politics an’ all..
Arsenal played alright on the night too, TC. Night night…
Hehe, trans atlantic misfire. No tech is definitely not a troll or even trollup, just a bit of nip sometimes in some directions, but knows how to get a knot out or two.
No reply from Clark yet either.
Night all.
Nov 5 re Nov 1 meeting –
FCO: UK hosts fourth UK-Israel strategic dialogue
Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary and Head of the Diplomatic Service Simon Fraser led a team of UK officials from across government while the Israeli delegation was headed by his counterpart, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General Rafi Barak…
FraserP “Today we focused on regional questions, including how to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and how to bring an end to the bloodshed in Syria. We also looked at bilateral cooperation, agreeing numerous steps to bolster our already-strong relations in areas like science and technology. And we discussed the Middle East Peace Process, where our governments agree on the goal of a peace based on the two state solution and on the security of Israel, but where we disagree on issues like settlements and restrictions on Gaza.
“The Dialogue shows clearly that Britain and Israel are – as the Foreign Secretary has said – strategic partners, working together on many issues of shared concern, and talking constructively on the areas of difference.”
http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=831279882
“Clark’s view on this is very much missed.”
Yes, Nevermind. And I was going to post something about nuclear recently when I suddenly thought, “Oh, Clark’s not there”. I know there are others here who are more than capable of discussing it, but it was a particular interest of his.
@Mark (if you’re reading)
I’m so sorry for leaving you out of my ‘thank yous’ recently, for your very thoughtful comments. It was an oversight. Mea culpa.
G’night all
and Clark is OK! Just talked to him. Sends his best. So, whatever worries we have, that sensitive, exploratory person is not currently one of them.
Thank you all, and really, good night (and up the Gooners)
T
Slightly O/T..but not really…;.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUE43503bb4
@Ben Franklin(NSA,CIA,FBI,MFI,NBA,FA,CID,MI5,MI6,Masonicist,Zionist,Chief Shape-Shifting Lizard(Komodo excepted of course)Presidential Handler etc etc…
I thought brown was heroin?
Shows you the sheltered life i’ve led eh?…:>)
Between all the fixes, I thought we might get a complete crazy in. That was worrying. Calling it for Obama… it could have been a lot worse.
@Technicolour
Tags – sarcasm, false comparison, juvenile mocking, ridicule, antilogic, divisive
Reading your comments is like watching a camp pantomime. Your ‘arguments’ drip with sarcasm in mock replay, building little strawmen by distortion of the salient points and as you knock them down with all the effort of an amateur magician, you point someone out in the crowd to create division. You never really have anything of substance to share here, do you?
So, quite clearly then, you have absolutely nothing to say about personal responsibility in the equation of crime and misfortune, except to repudiate it – but instead, you express a curious sympathy for criminals. Now don’t go and make any more dishonest claims (by sarcastic implication – your specialty here) that I don’t support understanding the causes and effects of crime, or that I am proposing that people withdraw into seclusion and avoid going out into the world to enjoy life. My view is that we do need to understand crime and, in the first place, how to avoid and prevent it as the most effective way of bringing it under control.
– – –
Back on topic ..
It must be possible to bring MacShane to justice. Public demonstrations? Continued embarrassment of the police over their unexplained inaction? Setting up a blog devoted exclusively to this issue?
I suppose this means that the world is stuck with the killing by drone policies and that La Clinton stays in position. The Senate has a Democratic majority and the House of Representatives’ is Republican.
More rhetoric from Obama to follow. The best is yet to come etc…..
In 2008, the BBC refused a FoI request for details of how many of their employees were in the US for the election and the costs incurred.
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/3950/response/9763/attach/html/2/RFI20081201%20final%20response.pdf.html
This year, the number and the costs will be even greater. I listened to some of the output on the World Service and Radio 4 this morning. There were dozens of them at it.
PS Obama has been droning on for 25 minutes and has just finished. Much empty rhetoric.
Cameron is now in Jordan and has announced that the UK will officially be ‘talking’ to the Syrian opposition. Well there’s a surprise. A confirmation, if it was needed, that they are ‘all in it together’. That same phrase kept dropping from Obama’s lips during his campaign I noticed.
Obama Re-elected – The Fightback Begins
by Billy Wharton / November 6th, 2012
Tonight, Barack Obama was declared the winner of the U.S. Presidential election. Obama ran a centrist, lackluster campaign that was fueled by an avalanche of campaign donations from corporate America. The losers were poor and working class people all over the country. Although Mitt Romney was the other corporate funded candidate in the race, it will be regular Americans who will have to live with repercussions of a second Obama presidency. Over the next four years, the administration will continue to extend the damage it has initiated since 2008.
On the health care front, four more years of Obama will mean that the terms of his Obamacare legislation will be frozen into place. The possibility of re-initiating grassroots campaigning for single-payer health care will be mostly foreclosed until the causalities of this new system emerge en masse. Obama made sure to protect the pharmaceutical companies and further entrench private health insurers into the health care system. No wonder then that a major health care company such as Kaiser Permanente lavished more than $500,000 on the Obama campaign while ignoring Romney. Private health care companies were the real winners in the first Obama presidency and they will certainly consolidate these gains in the next four years. Poor and working class Americans will pay the price for this.
And the same will be true as the hysteria about the “fiscal cliff” gets ramped up. This discussion will be the pretext for bringing the kinds of harsh austerity measures currently being enacted in Europe across the Atlantic to America. The Obama administration has already begun negotiations with Republican members of Congress for what they are calling a “compromise budget.” The compromise will entail cutting social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and social security in return for slightly higher taxation on the rich. Such cuts will bring the federal government in line with state and local governments who have been engaged in harsh budget cuts for the past four years. What once were called the “third rail” programs of American politics – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – will instantly be converted into a target for an Obama administration intent on slashing the federal budget.
A second Obama term will also mean more of the same for foreign policy. Far from advancing a peace agenda, the Obama administration had intensified aspects of the military aggression in the Middle East initiated by George W. Bush and has, in some cases, accelerated the erosion of civil rights. The two symbols of this militaristic approach are the homicidal drone bombing campaign that Obama has personally overseen and Private Bradley Manning who currently sits in a military detention facility. The drones demonstrate that even if Obama slightly reduces the military budget, he will remain committed to using the military industrial complex as a tool to enforce American global interests even if this violates international human rights. Manning is Obama’s prisoner – a brave whistle blower who refused to comply with criminal military aggression. He stands as a permanent symbol of Obama’s war on civil rights and his case should be a point of struggle for left-wing activists.
Finally, both Obama and Romney have almost entirely disregarded issues related to climate change. Obama’s administration has the advantage of actually recognizing that climate change exists. Yet, this has meant little in regards to either pro-environment legislation or even a shift to renewable energy sources. Obama’s environmental bankruptcy has been on vivid display during the periodic environmental disasters. He was asleep at the wheel during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, coddling the multinational corporate offenders at BP as they foot dragged through a clean up. More recently, he was purely reactive during Hurricane Sandy, offering consoling words, but nothing in the way of a strategic plan of action to ensure safety today and environmental balance in the future. Four more years of Obama will bring us no closer to this vision that lies at the heart of Eco-socialism.
Not surprisingly, the challenge faced by regular people all over the country will be the same with a second Obama administration as it would be with a new Romney regime. We must build the capacity to fiercely resist the austerity policies that are sure to be imposed on us. No fiscal cliff, grand compromise or economic common sense should be allowed to be used as a justification for these cuts. Resist, resist, resist should be the clarion call of the next four years.
Throughout this process, democratic socialism will remain a viable alternative to the politics of austerity. Socialism’s critique of capitalism and counterposing of the global commons to American hegemony offer a vision of a different future – one in which the great wealth of the world is put to work to make life better for everyone, one in which the people of America are reconnected to the world by bonds of solidarity and one in which humanity regains equilibrium with the natural world. This is what we continue to fight for – a world based on the socialist values of solidarity, compassion and justice.’
{http://www.healthemergency.org.uk/diary.php?rn=32}
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/11/obama-re-elected-the-fightback-begins/
Note the contribution from Kaiser Permanente. That is the system that Thatcher started to inaugurate in this country.
‘Despite widespread revulsion at the US system, American models have been all the rage for almost 20 years – whether it be the notion of “managed care” which so intrigued Margaret Thatcher and still impresses New Labour ministers and NHS bosses, or the Kaiser Permanente model of integrated care of older people (which has been favourably and rather cynically touted by some advocates of greater private sector involvement in health care here, despite the evidence that the model does not work in British conditions), or the US development of “niche” and “limited service” hospitals – the prototype for New Labour’s “Independent Sector Treatment Centres” – which have recently been denounced by US hospital chiefs as a threat to local communities’ “health care safety net”.’
{http://www.healthemergency.org.uk/diary.php?rn=32}
…nice supporter, Komodo!
As I said, I’m done on this, (if you decline responsibility for your own safety there is nothing to be done with you IMO) but thanks, Jemand, for trying yet again to get the guy to see the bleeding obvious. I had this before with Tech/Dreoilin: the next move is smear. Go canny.
Somehow, I don’t think this survivalist is the same Dreoilin….
http://dreoilin.wordpress.com/
Self reliance & Personal responsibility
Learn it, know it, live it; Or die trying!
Out.