I am delighted that a new canpaign has started today against the state enforced child slavery in the uzbek cotton industry, especially as this campaign originates in Germany, where a significant portion of society appears to have finally woken up to the reality of the German government’s appalling complicity in the Nazi style regime and atrocities of Karimov.
However in the UK it remains the case that since the coalition government came to power, there has not been one single government statement on the human rights atrocities in Uzbekistan or – even more damning of our sham democracy – one single statement or question from New Labour.
“Child care costs in the UK are the highest in Europe bar Switzerland”
In other words, easily the highest given that earnings in Switzerland are much higher than in the UK and income tax is quite a bit lower.
Was just listening to BBC Radio 4’s Six pm programme and by Jesus they really went overboard on the Sunday Times apology story. There must have been at least 3 or 4 minutes on it including soundbites from various characters, in other words quite a bit longer than for significantly more important news items. Absurd!
The lobby has really got the BBC sewn up, I just wonder how they manage it.
Glenn_uk with all the respect in the world, i predict you’re wasting your time.
We are dealing with an anal personality ( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/anal+personality )–it is plainly obvious.
The plumber needs a plumber, the psychiatrist needs a psychiatrist and this incorrigible pretender of a schoolmaster needs six of the best before being seen off.
Jon should really by right have nipped this sock puppet in the bud (see below).
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Jon
7 Dec, 2012 – 10:00 am
Habbabkuk, I’ve not been “charmed”, but I’ve had more disruption and sock-puppetting coming from your computer than from Oniel’s.
—-
Btw, can we name your computer ZOOKD? You know what i’m referring to….you remember HAL?
Stay well and thank you for your contributions and for trying. I might yet be proved wrong. That would be very reassuring to know that a human being can change.
Habbakuk:
who shares Fred’s opinion that what has happened/is happening to the Palestinians can be equated with what happened to the European Jews? In other words, that we are in the presence of a new holocaust?
This was the quote which so offended you Habbakuk:
He doesn’t say “we did the same to”, it says “we treat” as in — treat like dirt, with the same denigration. We see people, robbed from and bulldozed and bombed, and denied political voice, denied their history and everything that can be taken from them, seems taken from them as much as possible. If Israel had Nazi Germany’s autonomy and mobilization, it seems possible from their treament of the Palestinians that the Israeli forces could carry out an accelerated extermination of the Palestinians.
Ultimately no thing can be equated to any other thing, everything is unique, that does not mean statements like Avraham’s are insensible.
@ Doug Scorgie : good to hear you again, Doug! I suspect you owe me a couple of answers, but I’ve forgotten about what exactly so I shan’t press you any longer.
Well, thanks for the insults (or did you mean them as compliments? We never know with you!). I’m glad you describe them as only opinions – if they were deeply held beliefs, let’s say similar to religious convictions, then I’d be afraid to deny them lest the shock should prove fatal to you.
But since they’re not, I’m not.
You are wrong on all counts.
Zionist : far from it.
Troll : guilty if by troll you mean someone who dares answer back or otherwise go against the “community’s received wisdom. Otherwise : not guilty.
Homophobe : same position as vis-à-vis redhaired people or women wearing trousers, ie, not fussed.
Misogynist : your biggest misapprehension of all! 🙂 I’ll say no more.
**********
Have you been appointed the Gauleiter of this particular blog that you should demand my views on the Israel/Palestine question?
Nowithstanding, I’m willing to oblige you. Provided you first obtain public undertakings (ie, on this blog) from various others posting here (and especially those most vociferous on the issue) that they will subsequently do the same, politely, in readable English and of roughly similar length.
Over to you!
@ Nevermind: My money is in garlic bulbs, you can’t eat tulips either.
@ Hababbuk: There is an urgent need to make the comparision. My own view I’ve made clear.
Cryptonym; Do you grow garlic? Tips?
Habbabkuk
What is your stance on the so called “apartheid wall” in Israel/Palestine?
PS. Have you worked out what a misogynist is yet?
Well said That Crab. Vilnai promised the Palestinians ‘a greater shoah’ (holocaust) and a IDF General referred to them as ‘cockroaches in a bottle’. The latter might have been ‘drugged cockroaches in a bottle’.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/02/world/fg-holocaust2
It was drugged. http://open.salon.com/blog/markinjapan/2010/10/22/like_drugged_cockroaches_in_a_bottle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Eitan
Harper is closely following the Cameron script!
[..]
Canadian special forces are on the ground in Mali to protect Canadian assets such as the Canadian Embassy in the capital Bamako, Evan Solomon, host of CBC News Network’s Power & Politics, reported Monday.
The forces are not related to Canadian Forces crews who have been piloting and supporting a Canadian C-17 transport plane in support of French troops since Jan. 18. That mission was extended last week until Feb. 15.
The special forces are not there to train Malian troops — and they are not involved in any combat role, as the government has repeatedly stressed and Prime Minister Stephen Harper repeated again Monday in the House of Commons.
[..]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/01/29/pol-mali-aid.html
@ ThatCrab
Nothing to do with the quotation from Avram Shalom, ThatCrab. Directors of Shin Bet are not stupid people and of course he wouldn’t have equated what happened/is happening to the Palestinians with what happened to the Jews. Because it can’t be.
But people on this blog have said this, either in so many words or then in a more roundabout (or perhaps merely more inarticulate) way – the latest example being Fred, who in fact considers the Palestinian ‘genocide’ ‘worse’ than the holocaust.
@ Doug : thanks for that quick reply, Doug!
1/. Would you like me to make “I’ll say no more” into a separate para? I agree it would be clearer.
2/. Position on the separation wall? Against separation walls in general and in particular. If the Israelis want one for security reasons, then it should be built on the Israeli side of the 1967 frontier. What’s your position?
3/ Now that I’ve answered your latest question, would you like to take me up on my offer on your previous one?
“Fred, have you understood the difference between 30 per mille and 30 per cent yet?”
I understand that either one adds up to one hell of a large number of needless deaths of Palestinian children over the years due to conditions imposed on them by Israel and that either one illustrates the point I was making.
I don’t see that anything else matters.
@ Mary : I don’t doubt that there are some maniacs in Israel who would love to carry out a holocaust-type solution for the Palestinians. Even some Israelis in high positions. But the point is that there hasn’t been.
Mark Golding, thanks for creating this petition which everybody should consider signing. It is asking for the Chilcot Inquiry to release papers and name names forthwith. It is worth a minute of everybody’s time to aim for justice for children.
http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/chilcot-inquiry
@ Doug Scorgie
Count me in.
Craig, a great fan of Rusbridger, NOT, will find this funny.
January 21st, 2013
Staff Comment is Not Free
Over the Guardian/Observer Weekend this comment kept disappearing from their website, for some reason:
”Afternoon Alan – I’m a member of Guardian staff, posting anonymously.
As you know, it’s a tough time for your journalists at the moment – especially for those of us way down the food chain: the production grunts, the desk-bound, the ones who actually produce the content.
We’re working harder and harder (because we love the papers), coping with dwindling resources and morale, we’re badly mismanaged, and trying to cope with the life-changing threat of compulsory redundancies – all a result of the company’s long-term financial illiteracy and lavish excess at the top.
So I just want to say thanks for the series of articles – three now, isn’t it? – about learning to play your Fazioli piano. They’re brilliantly timed, and I know they’ll lift spirits. We always wondered how you filled your days, how you spent your fortune. Now we know.”
Concerned staff members were sure to send it over to Media Guido though…
http://order-order.com/2013/01/21/staff-comment-is-not-free/
One of the comments:
the stench of hypocrisy says:
January 21, 2013 at 12:03 pm
Loved the piece in the article I read about Rubbishers efforts describing how he had TWO grand pianos and a special music room built in his Gloucestershire second home.
Up the workers.
~~~~
I looked up the cost of Fazioli pianos and one was approx6 £130,000. They only make 100 a year.
“the latest example being Fred, who in fact considers the Palestinian ‘genocide’ ‘worse’ than the holocaust.”
You know I keep seeing you talking about me rather than to me, and talking your usual load of bullshit.
What a snivelling little shit you are. A poor excuse for a human being suffering from delusions of adequacy.
@ Fred
“I understand that either one adds up to one hell of a number of needless deaths..”
True, but the 30 per cent, the figure you erroneously gave, results in 10 times more needless deaths than the true figure of 30 per mille.
“…of Palestinian children over the years due to conditions imposed on them by Israel..”
As I’ve shown, the IMR figures for the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia are also worse than the Israeli figure. Is this also because of conditions imposed by Israel? The figure for Jordan is almost as bad as the one for the Palestinians. Is tis too because of conditions imposed by Israel?
********
Back to the main point, though : do you stand by your statement that was has been done to the Palestinians is worse than what the Nazis did to the European Jews?
@ A Node : excellent. Now, what about the rest of you?
(actually, shouldn’t it be Gauleiter Scorgie’s job to rustle up the guys? Never mind….)
@ John Goss : was it not Gerald Scarfe who, many many years ago, did that wonderful cartoon on the cover of Private Eye of Harold Wilson kissing the bare arse of Lyndon Johnson? (Well, it actually looked more like Wilson putting his tongue up….no, I can’t bring myself to say it)
“True, but the 30 per cent, the figure you erroneously gave, results in 10 times more needless deaths than the true figure of 30 per mille.”
Look I don’t come on here arguing that the Germans only killed one million Jews not six million. That would be callous and irrelevant. It’s the fact that the Germans killed a lot of Jews and why that is all that matters.
Same applies with Palestinian infants.
“Just as a matter of interest : who shares Fred’s opinion that what has happened/is happening to the Palestinians can be equated with what happened to the European Jews? In other words, that we are in the presence of a new holocaust?”
A parable:
This little kid goes up to the Chief of the tribe and asks him, “Chief, how do you decide what to name the babies in the tribe?”, as it is the chief’s prerogative.
The Chief replies, “Its very simple son, the minute news reaches me of a baby born to the tribe, i rush out of my wigwam and the first thing i see is the name of the baby. So if i see a Big Bull Charging or a Golden Eagle Flying, then that is the name of the baby. But, tell me Two Dogs Fucking, why are you so interested?”
____________________________
Confucius says “Yes, in the present moment, the barbarities being afflicted daily in the here and now, upon the Palestinians IS worse, because those afflicting it haven’t learnt a thing, despite their suffering and despite the present given to them of the State of Israel.”
(All knowledge is limited. Wisdom is a different thing. Many people here have it. One amplified one has certainly shown his impoverishment. He should go to Palestine and ask the villagers what they are going through in the presence. It appears his empathy towards the Palestinians is completely insincere and disingenuous.)
Here you go, Doug:
I am not prejudiced. My opinion of Israel is the same as it would be for any other country that deliberately killed children by, for example, forcing women and children into a building then shelling it, that ordered its soldiers to fire at children’s heads, that used weapons on civilians banned by the Geneva Convention, and fired tank rounds, rockets, and bombs indiscriminately into the most densely populated area on earth, that is committing slow motion genocide.
My feelings for Palestine are those any decent person would feel for a people made to endure such treatment.
Got to go out now, got plenty more of that later if you need it.
Albert Einstein > Quote
“It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionists (Jews) do to Palestinian Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews.”
― Albert Einstein
For the record. I consider that what the British government did to the people of Iraq in denying them parts or supplies for their water treatment plants knowing it would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to be comparable to both.
@ Habbabkuk
‘Misogynist : your biggest misapprehension of all! I’ll say no more.’
Ah! Habbabkuk are you a woman?
Habbakuk “Fred, who in fact considers the Palestinian ‘genocide’ ‘worse’ than the holocaust.”
YOU started bandying “the holocaust” around.
You are the one with the concept of a “worse holocaust”, challenging people to deny such a thing in haste.
I puzzle sometimes whether you are intentionally chaotic or not, you write things occasionally that are quite odd for an intentional botherer to write, on the other hand you happen to produce as much twisting hot air as anyone could hope to impose.
Hi Thatcrab, what you will never see is our Habitual Babbler Kuku reconcile those events to Einstein’s apprehension above. I wonder how many are aware that Einstein was formally offered the Presidency of Israel in 1952 but turned it down because it was against his conscience, apart from the fact of course that he wasn’t a politician. More on that later.
Another quote from Einstein to lighten up (pun intended):
” “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
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Btw did anybody get that bit about naming Glenn’s computer ZOOKD? (Just for some dramatic relief.)
Cryptonym; The garlic question was a serious one. Shall I post as Habbakuk ? 🙂