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430 thoughts on “Baghdad Conference Photos”

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  • Jives

    Hallucinogenics were introduced/created by the spooks FFS!

    Wise up y’all.

    The jaded mantra of “drop your ego” was the perfect sublimated excuse to control and manipulate.

  • Mary

    Why is an archbishop of the church of england concerning himself with the ‘strength’ of the country’s defences? I thought these church people were supposed to concern themselves with theology and with giving some moral leadership as none of the latter comes from the political classes.

    Sentamu warns defence cuts would ‘risk safety of nation’
    The Archbishop said he does not believe reservists can form the ‘backbone’ of the British armed forces.

    Cuts to the number of full-time military personnel would “risk the safety of the nation”, Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu has warned

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20822188

  • Mary

    Another bigmouth Ann Clywd is telling us all how she has rejected a present from Bahrain, a Fortnum and Mason hamper. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/20/bahrain-ambassador-christmas-hampers?INTCMP=SRCH

    She is so saintly now. She is one who carried the lie about Saddam’s ‘people shredder’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein%27s_alleged_shredder

    We are not so sure about Mr Conor Burns MP Bournemouth W (mentioned in the Guardian piece) returning the same gift though.

    From his register of interests.
    Name of donor: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bahrain Address of donor: c/o The Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain, 30 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8QB Amount of donation (or estimate of the probable value): £3,279 Destination of visit: Bahrain Date of visit: 21-25 October 2010 Purpose of visit: in my capacity as Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Bahrain I was invited to visit to country to met with Government Ministers and others and to observe the Parliamentary elections that were taking place during the visit. (Registered 16 November 2010)
    http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=24780

    He also declares £10k a quarter for 10 hours work a month with Trant Construction. Southampton.

    The Catholic church is also paying him £4000pafor an intern plus accomodation ???

  • Arbed

    AFAIK the UK is still on course to scrap the European Arrest Warrant at the end of this month.

    A good thing, for reasons obvious to anyone who has followed the courtroom farce that was the Assange extradition appeal. What they should really do is go the whole hog and scrap the 2003 Extradition Act in its entirety – it’s so woefully lacking in proper safeguards against the kind of miscarriages of justice we’ve seen in the Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan cases:

    http://www.extraditionfilm.com (duration: 27 mins)

    I bumped into Talha’s brother at the Ecuador embassy speech and promised I’d do what I could to bring a bit more attention to this documentary.

  • Kempe

    “AFAIK the UK is still on course to scrap the European Arrest Warrant at the end of this month.”

    Difficult as parliament has already risen for the Christmas recess. Actually the situation is more complicated and the UK has until May 2014 to opt out of 140 measures and a transfer of control of EU laws from national governments to the ECJ.

  • Habbabkuk

    “You gotta have it; if you haven’t, you’ve had it”

    That could – just – be a kind of clue for the following Brain of Britain-type question to the team :

    ‘What is the connection between former minister Jack Straw (Law, Leeds University”) and the list of Labour and Tory luminaries mentioned in Habbabkuk’s question of 18 December (6.16pm)?

    Merry Christmas and great good luck to all!

  • guano

    Maybe Sentanu is jealous of the success with which AlQaida and UK special forces are chewing up and spitting out the dictators while regular forces and regular priests join or bury the dead and wounded with no perceivable benefit or gain.

    In Islam the jihad against dictators is compulsory, a bit difficult for those who were responsible for giving them power. Our politicians seem to have tapped into a bit of genuine glory for a change, leaving the Bishops to wash the dirty linen.

    Like chess, you sometimes have to sacrifice a bishop for a cheeky, threatening, advancing pawn. Even more disconcerting for Sentanu is that the combined jihadi and UK special forces are openly attacking Shi’a deviancy from Islam in Syria, while the stale rhetoric of the War on Terror cassette is still on. Will the UK establishment licence a jihad on the false teachings of the Church of England.

    Global Thatcher Capitalism not content with re-establishing Feudalism seeks to take over the Royal Head of Church domain. I like it. Greed fused with Truth. What a wonderful new religion for neo-neo-cons to aspire to… money and morality … proxy, patriotic Puritanism. A religion for Financial Services personnel whose foreheads are never dirtied by grime, manual work or manufacturing.

    Not like the old religions of UK Christianity and Islam, the where poverty and dreaming of the reward in heaven went hand in hand; William Blake’s Sunflower:

    Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
    Who countest the steps of the sun;
    Seeking after that sweet golden clime
    Where the traveller’s journey is done;

    Where the Youth pined away with desire,
    And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
    Arise from their graves, and aspire
    Where my Sunflower wishes to go!

    Is there a heaven for CEOs and politicians who manage to remain squeakier than clean, by lying, spying and ruthless determination? Or is the neo-neo-con con its own reward?

  • Habbabkuk

    Mary – re. your post about MP Ann Clywd returning the Christmas hamper from the Bahraini ambassador : the tone of your post makes it unclear what your position on this is; do you approve of her returning the hamper, or do you feel she should have kept it.

  • Jives

    Habbabkuk,

    Your studied starry-eyed faux-naif idiot act really doesn’t wash here.

    Stop playing the prick,it’s a piss poor shameful gambit.

  • N_

    Mitchell case: three questions:

    1) who was the man in the backpack?

    2) what was Mitchell going to talk about at the Carlton Club that evening?

    3) role of the United and Cecil Club?

    Certainly spook means are being deployed to rehabilitate Mitchell. Cops who definitely were there are having their evidence sidelined and rubbished, because someone who turns out to be a DPG cop, who wasn’t there but who just happens to have Mr Usual Channels (the deputy government chief whip) as his MP, allegedly sent a fake email in an effort to amplify what they said.

    If spookery isn’t afoot, then the moon is made of rice pudding.

    Rubbish is being talked about the video footage. It doesn’t do much to support Mitchell. What it does to is debunk the idea in the fake email that hordes of ‘members of the public’ were watching, shocked, and were filming what was going on. In fact there were only a few people walking by…including one who appeared very interested – Mr Backpack.

    However, cabinet secretary had watched the video and concluded it rebutted the fake email, long before Mitchell resigned.

    Oh dear.

    Yes, spookery afoot.

    Meanwhile the Torygraph is putting out the talking-point that Cameron is being criticised as ‘sitting on’ the video footage, which Mitchell got released under the FOI. In fact, of course, this is security of government buildings we’re talking about, and there’s a blanket exemption for such matters under the FOI. And Cameron obviously doesn’t have the authority to decide to release security footage – be serious! The real question isn’t why it wasn’t released before; it’s why it has been released at all. Serious strings are being pulled to get Mitchell rehabilitated.

    At first, I thought Mr Backpack might be Mossad, kind of an echo of those two Mossad operatives caught on grain film taking photographs of Murdoch’s Wapping compound in the Vanunu operation.

    After all, Mitchell went to Gaza, and backed the ‘aid for Gaza’ thing on the BBC, and might be thought by BICOM etc. to have shown less than 100% rabid support for the Zionists, even when, as is usual for almost all western politicians, he intones support for ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’ in relation to IDF massacres.

    Foreign Office dude Derek Fatchett got murdered. Alex Allan got ‘illnessed’ in a most unusual way. Etc. etc.

    But then I looked at the United and Cecil Club. The evening at the Carlton at which Mitchell was going to be the guest speaker was in fact hosted by the UCC at CC premises. He wasn’t a memer of the CC. He isn’t now. He got blacked.

    Double-take! Aren’t all Tory prime ministers, chairmen, and government chief whips members of the Carlton, at least honorarily? Normally, yes. But they made an exception for Mitchell, who got blacked because of Plebgate.

    The Carlton Club are cut from the same cloth as the Reform Club, whose members pelted the Jarrow hunger marchers with bread rolls. They’re Tory scum. They must have loved hearing the words “fucking plebs” spread about.

    So why didn’t they like Mitchell?

    If we posit a connection between the UCC and the Zionists – Angie Gray MP has received money from both – one possibility might be that it was Arab money that got Mitchell out, and Zionist influence which is trying to put him back again.

  • Mary

    Very interesting N_

    This U&CC outfit is very secretive. The only mention of it I ever see is in the MPs’ Register of Interests when ‘donations’ from it are noted. Who funds it and who runs it? Is is another branch of the rolled up trouser leg and funny handshake brigade?

    From http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/the-scottish-tories-battle-to-save-the-union-starts-here-a-detached-house-in-sussex.17171292

    ‘The administration of ticket and table sales is being “co-ordinated” by the U&CC, a Tory dining club formed from a merger of different organisations in 1949. The address of the club is given as “Hickmans Lane, Lindfield, Haywards Heath”. The Sussex town is over 350 miles from Scotland, while the address given in the letter is a three-bedroom detached house.

    The U&CC has around 400 members and holds events to raise party funds. According to the Electoral Commission, the organisation has donated £100,000 to the party since 2008. None of the registered donations went to Scotland.

    In November, the U&CC had to forfeit an “impermissible” £850 from a donor who was not on the UK electoral register and could not make a legal donation.’

    ~~~
    I think there is a typo in the name of the MP you referred to. She is Angie Bray, rather jolly hockey sticks type, and the MP in the constituency where Craig used to live.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie_Bray

    I see our old friend Charles Crawford is a fellow supporter of Conservative Friends of Poland where Bray is a vice president and where Thatcher is the Honorary Patron! A few friends of Israel there too like Ms Bray. http://www.cfofp.co.uk/whoweare.php

  • Mary

    Mitchell supported this company when it received criticism for its dealings in Ghana.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armajaro

    ‘Allegations of lobbying on behalf of donors

    An article in The Sunday Times on 30 October 2010, quoted by The Guardian the following day, claimed that Mitchell had pressured the Foreign Office and colleagues to lobby Ghana (successfully) for the lifting of a trading ban on a cocoa company, Armajaro, which had been a repeated donor to Mitchell’s parliamentary office and also a donor to the Conservative Party. Ghana had imposed the ban as the company was believed to have been smuggling cocoa out of the country. However, when questioned by ITV News on 2 November about his role in the case, Mitchell said that he had a duty as a member of the government to respond to the company’s requests, as it was registered as a British company, and that the government had a responsibility to promote British trade. He argued that he had seen no evidence that the Ghanaian government’s suspicions about the company in question had been substantiated, and that the claim that he had acted improperly on behalf of a party donor was unreasonable, as the company had ceased to donate to both the Conservative Party and his parliamentary office several years earlier.’
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Mitchell

    Any views Craig?

  • Habbabkuk

    @ Jives at 1.44am

    The post from Mary which attracted my question started as follows:

    “Another bigmouth Ann Clywd is telling us all how she has rejected a present from Bahrain, a Fortnum and Mason hamper (link to Guardian website follows).

    She is so saintly now. She is the one who carried the lie about Saddam’s ‘people shredder’ (link to Wikipedia follows).”

    I think the general tone makes it clear that Mary doesn’t think much of Ann Clywd, but does appear ambiguous as to whether she approves or diapproves of Clywd sending back the hamper. So I believe my question was justified.

    Now, Mary is free to respond or not. Even you, Jives, are free to respond in lieu. But if you feel you have to, then please try to do so in a slightly more intelligent and measured manner; foul-mouthed abuse is no substitute for reasoned argument and certainly not for a coherent reply to a reasonable question.

    Do you have self-control or anger management issues?

  • N_

    @Mary – just a quick post before I go offline for Christmas and the New Year. Thanks for the correction regarding Angie Bray – the B and G are adjacent on my keyboard!

    So the U&CC were formed by merger in 1949. Merger of what, I wonder. I also wonder when they started channelling money to MPs.

    According to the National Archives, they go back to at least 1881.

    Who knows what might come out of the woodwork if someone scratches at the Haywards Heath address? Do you know the street number or house name? Several companies have addresses on that road, including at a house called West Greenbank, where one of the companies is Remote Technologies Ltd. There is stuff about a Peter Bird, but for all I know, that might not even be the right address.

    I’ve done some scratching at another U&CC address, namely 18 Thorney Lane North, Iver, Bucks, SL0 9JY. House sold for £670,000 in 1999, although Land Registry data gives the legal owner and there’s no registry of beneficial owners of houses or any other assets.

    The Iver address is also given as the address of company director Christopher Mark Fenwick, octogenarian. Hello the chain of Fenwick department stores. There’s a store in Bond Street, and there is or was another one in Canterbury. They seem to be well in with the Torygraph, to judge from this article.

    Fenwick is also mentioned here in the Independent as one of many guests at a do organised by one of the ‘new’ Carlton-Club-linked Tory “power brokers”.

    Is there a link to Fenwick and West, the Israeli-linked law firm? (“In recent years, we have completed more than $200 billion worth of transactions, including many cross-border transactions involving Israeli companies.“) I merely ask!

    Anyway – Happy Christmas, and I hope to come back here in the New Year!

  • Mary

    Exactly Doug Scorgie.

    Some Christmas reading for us in the form of over 2,000 words from the Torygraph on the al-Hilli killings which leave us none the wiser.

    Alps murder: Truth about Saad al-Hilli’s’family feud’
    The Iraqi family of Saad al-Hilli, the Briton murdered in the French village of Chevaline, tell Colin Freeman that their relative was not a money-launderer for Saddam Hussein.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/9762604/Alps-murder-Truth-about-Saad-al-Hillisfamily-feud.html

  • Mary

    Another BBC hypocrite, Caroline Hawley, has been embedded over the years with the coalition in their ‘scenes of theatre’ in Iraq and Afghanistan and has carried the propaganda for war like Olga Guerin, Lyse Doucet and Caroline Wyatt. What is the matter with these women?

    Now she is in Jordan seeing how attempts are being made to repair the faces and bodies of those injured in the region’s ‘conflicts’.

    Wrong Ms Hawley. They are not conflicts, they are offensive wars carried out by the West on people with a different skin colour.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01k6kxp. Our World: Abdullah is Beautiful. 6 days left to watch. 30 mins. Some horrific images.

  • Seb

    Hope Craig is alright, just a word would reassure. All that immaculate inhuman polished stone looked pretty creepy to me when all we here makes Iraq sound like a war zone. I’ve come to believe that killing people there is routine, a very dangerous place to go; among other possible hazards are poisons.

  • mark golding

    Agreed Seb.

    Between October 1994 and October 1995, the number of birth defects per 1,000 live births in Al Basrah Maternity Hospital was 1.37. In 2003, the number of birth defects in Al Basrah Maternity Hospital was 23 per 1,000 live births. Within less than a decade, the occurrence of congenital birth defects increased by an astonishing 17-fold in the same hospital.

    A yearly account of the occurrence and types of birth defects, between 2003 and 2011, in Al Basrah Maternity Hospital, was reported. Metal levels in hair, toenail, and tooth samples of residents of Al Basrah were also provided. The enamel portion of the deciduous tooth from a child with birth defects from Al Basrah (4.19 μg/g) had nearly three times higher lead than the whole teeth of children living in unimpacted areas. Lead was 1.4 times higher in the tooth enamel of parents of children with birth defects (2,497 ± 1,400 μg/g, mean ± SD) compared to parents of normal children (1,826 ± 1,819 μg/g).

    source: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Al Basrah Maternity Hospital, Al Basrah Medical School, P.O. Box 1633, Basrah, Iraq.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    Yes, Mark. But I’m sure the rational scientists will deduct that the genuine culprit will be connected to hunger since all there was to eat was paint chips, and the horrific defects in Fallujah have no scientific link to white phosphorus, at least none they are willing to look for.

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