The undertow of anti-Iranian fearmongering becomes stronger. This is a tremendous bit of totally baseless fearmongering from an Obama administration official in the New York Times, positing nuclear bomb collaboration between Iran and North Korea:
The Iranians are also pursuing uranium enrichment, and one senior American official said two weeks ago that “it’s very possible that the North Koreans are testing for two countries.” Some believe that the country may have been planning two simultaneous tests, but it could take time to sort out the data.
This is on a par withthe Bush administration’s totally false claim of links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida. There is no linkage between the governments of Iran and North Korea; both regimes are highly unpleasant in many ways, but they have utterly conflicting ideologies and absolutely zero history of political collaboration. This is ludicrous scaremongering fantasy.
New CIA haed John Brennan put Iran and North Korea into the same sentence with nuclear weapons in his Senate confirmation hearing. This aspect was overlooked by the mainstream media, which focused on Brennans defence of drone killings (and ludicrous claims of absence of bystander deaths). But Ray McGovern rightfully picked up on this part of his opening statement:
“regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang remain bent on pursuing nuclear weapons”.
As Ray points out, the US intelligence services own assessment is that while Pyongyang plainly is developing nuclear weapons, the situation in Tehran is much more nuanced. There is no clear intention of Iran to develop nuclear weapons. That Brennan gives a position at variance with the actual analysis of the agency he is to head is worrying, to say the least.
We have the same seamless and completely unjustified linguistic waving together of North Korean and Iranian nuclear programmes from former Israeli Foreign Minister and Netanyahu prop Liebermann quoted here:
Former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman says North Korea’s nuclear test was an “obvious example” of diplomacy failing to curb a nuclear program. Lieberman told Army Radio on Wednesday that “anyone who thinks sanctions or negotiations will stop Iran is wrong.”
Iran remains the best justification for bloated military budgets and the next obvious target for war profiteers and hydrocarbon vultures. Expect a crescendo of this nonsense this summer/
Lieberman – he’s the guy who threatened to nuke Gaza.
He also threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam – which would kill millions of people – in response to Egyptian support for Yasser Arafat.
I know were you’ve been. No wonder our beef is contaminated, but does Habbly Bubbly not look remarkably like Berlusconi, the liar, Mafiosi and EU garbage man?
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/photo-gallery-germany-goes-crazy-at-rose-monday-parades-fotostrecke-93062-3.html
The good news. Helen Boaden Head of (Israeli) News at the BBC is moved to Head of Radio.
James Purnell has got himself the job of Head of Strategy and Digital. That will make a change from propping up Bliar and his current endeavours. They always land on their feet.
James Mark Dakin Purnell (born 2 March 1970) is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Stalybridge and Hyde from 2001 to 2010. He is currently the Chair of Trustees of the Institute for Public Policy Research [1] and a Senior Advisor in the Public Sector practice of the Boston Consulting Group.[2] He has previously served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; he resigned from the Government on 4 June 2009, criticising the leadership of Gordon Brown. He returned to the BBC in a senior management position in 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Purnell
“I take it you were referring to me”
Yep, but if you prefer Habbabkuk the Clown, but’s also fine, but note the suffix is totally valid as justified by your posting history here.
“be the people who consider Galloway to be a bit of a fraud”,
Ah yes, those who cannot offer any rational, &/or non-hypocritical, let alone, evidence based, justification for this “opinion” .
“should spend a little more of their time in the House”
Oh yes that classis smear; the facts are that GG attends the HOC almost everyday, more than most , and probably more than any other MP (yes he’s been known to spend parts of X-mas days there). This is a very snide smear as it’s based on the Parliamentary system of recording “”Attendances”, which is limited by being based only on voting in divisions;
“ An MP may have a low attendance because they have abstained, have ministerial or other duties or they are the speaker. Perhaps they consider each division carefully, and only vote when they know about the subject. Lords are appointed for life, so they may have decided to retire. Sinn Féin MPs, because they haven’t taken the oath of allegiance, are unable to vote. A full list of reasons for low attendance can be found in the Divisions section on page 11 of a House of Commons library research paper. Note also that the Public Whip does not currently record if a member spoke in the debate but did not vote.
Extra note, October 2008: We have found that people take the attendance in divisions too seriously, when it is really pretty meaningless. At Public Whip, we’d rather an MP actually scrutinised law and made it better, and voted well on it, rather than voted more often. Therefore we have removed attendance from the main MP table. “
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/faq.php#clarify
So note that his actual everyday attendance is to undertake real parliamentary work, as opposed to the Parliamentary defined “attendance”, which is really ”pretty meaningless”, rather a lot like most of your Posts here.
More on Purnell 11.43am above
I see the names of Netanyahu and Romney in this list!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notable_employees_of_Boston_Consulting_Group
Apart from Purnell benefitting from the second homes fiddle (see Wiki), he did quite well for himself outside Parliament. His register of interests includes three trips to Israel with Labour Friends of Israel of which he was Chair.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=11176
Hi again, Mucky Macky, good that you’re engaging.
I note what you say about the way the HoC records attendances and agree that this might well not do justice to the amount of time an MP sepnds at Parliament.
You claim that Galloway attend the House almost every day. What’s your source for that?
******
La vita è bella, life is good (even with Mucky) !
Quote: “There is no linkage between the governments of Iran and North Korea; both regimes are highly unpleasant in many ways, but they have utterly conflicting ideologies and absolutely zero history of political collaboration.”
This maybe all very true but before we continue pointing the figure at others, I thing we need take a look at our own very unpleasant regime. We need to get our own house in order first please!
Re statues Mary, this is the biggest joke for some time.
Basildon Conservatives are confident that erecting a statue to Margaret Thatcher, which only found the attention of a be-header in London, will improve the Craylands estate enormously. residents there say that they only too happy to ‘look after’ this marble statue, not. This from the Basildon echo.
echo-news.co.uk/news/local_news/basildon/9867895.We_feel_like_we_are_left_in_limbo_say_Craylands_residents/?ref=rss
Why?, because she was ultimately responsible for the hundreds of thousands of repossessions of bought council houses, ensuring that they ended up in the hands of the building societies, banks and private Rachmans, her kind of people.
She was another magicians, just as Elisha, managing to sell us what we already owned. She squandered 4 billion coal board money instead of investing it into a burgeoning alternative energy industry and making Britain number one in those engineering sectors now done by others. She condemned the miners to drug addiction and hurt, instead of using their hard working communities and already in place, established engineering facilities to build wind turbines, sea current generators, tidal power,etc. No, she gave the money to the nuclear industry, squandered it on the plutonium cycle.
I shall give the statue 48 hours, max., anywhere in Basildon and I offer my services to re-attach her head, or replace the inscription and her head with that of Marie Curie.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9862366/Basildon-offers-Margaret-Thatcher-statue-a-new-home.html
@ Mary. Just found this event advertised in my email inbox, would that be down your street? Its the first screening in Britain.
Just thought I flag it up
http://duma.eventbrite.co.uk/
Israeli tanks and bulldozers have reportedly entered the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, opening fire near farmers.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/14/288928/israeli-tanks-enter-northern-gaza/
“good that you’re engaging”
Only because your troll “questions” give me an opportunity to illustrate that these smears are exactly baseless slurs.
“You claim that Galloway attend the House almost every day. What’s your source for that?”
Well no point looking for official confirmation;
“Thank you for your request. The information about MPs’ attendance and absence is not held by the House of Commons. The dates when the House sat are available here: http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/hous… .
Members of Parliament are not obliged by parliamentary rules to attend the House at any time. Political parties may make demands of their MPs, but that is a matter for them. Therefore no records are kept of an MP’s attendance at Parliament; however you may be able to look at an MP’s voting records to ascertain their attendance in the chamber, although this may give you a distorted picture of their attendance as they may be present in the chamber and decide not to vote (abstentions are not recorded in Hansard). Likewise, the transcript of debates in the House, known as Hansard, records only those Members who speak. This is available on the parliamentary website and is searchable by MP. http://www.parliament.uk/business/public… »
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/attendance_of_m_p_s_records
Instead we are forced to take Galloway’s frequent public statements that he does attend almost on a daily basis at face value, bearing in mind that there has been a history of attempts & dirty tricks to catch him out on anything, including even the deliberate planting of forged documents in Iraq, so I’m certain that vested interests have indeed examined this matter, and found much to their bitter disappointment that it is indeed true; but if you think there is a chance of proving that he is lying, you can claim your 15 minutes of fame, simply by loitering by the HOC entrance everyday & checking how often he goes in.
LOL about Thatcher. You are a stonemason I seem to remember.
http://www.sideshowillusions.com/the-headless-lady.html
Thanks for the heads up but going up to London is a bit of a drag now, and expensive. It used to cost under a tenner using a Railcard until recently but is now well over £20.
New lies for that crescendo:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/02/iran-buys-magnets-not-fit-for-centrifuge-production.html#more
The b***h omits mention of Cast Lead, Mavi Marmara and numerous other injustices committed by the Israelis, nor the Murdoch hacking scandal nor the BBC Savile cover up and only describes the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan as ‘conflicts’. No reference to Dr Kelly’s death either.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/feb/14/helen-boaden-memo-bbc-news
25 years in her powerful position to propagate the state’s messages. Pity it was not a total sacking. Instead she gets control of radio.
Patten is an establishment stooge as I have said before.
Thanks Mary for posting a link to the John Pilger article on Julian Assange. For those who sleep in I am re-posting it.
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/02/wikileaks-rare-truth-teller-smearing-julian-assange-shameful
I wonder what these two Saudi princes want to keep covered up? It looks big, whatever it is:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/feb/13/saudi-princes-warn-uk-relations
Galloway might attend parliament every day but he doesn’t seem to do much whilst he’s there. Four debates and 15% of votes, well below average.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/george_galloway/bradford_west
“Galloway might attend parliament every day but he doesn’t seem to do much whilst he’s there. Four debates and 15% of votes, well below average.”
Please re-read my Posts to the Habbabkuk Clown, especially the one that contains;
“We have found that people take the attendance in divisions too seriously, when it is really pretty meaningless.”
Even Habbabkuk Clown gets it, so are you really more of a troll than he is ?!
I consider myself to be the intellectually most honest commenter on this blog and also the most open-minded and least ‘politically correct’. Only fools anjd knaves would contest this.
Therefore, I have to say ‘ hang on a moment, be fair’ to Kempe re his comment about Galloway. As Macky could have pointed out (but wasn’t intelligent enough to), an MP can keep busy in many other ways in the HoC other than by attending debates and voting. It might even be argues that, in most cases, those other activities are more useful than the often sterile process of participating in votes which the government knows in advance it will not lose or of mlaking speeches in debates which will not change a single other member’s opinion or vote.
Having said that, a further question to Murky : am I reading you correctly when I think you say that the only source for the notion that Galloway attends the HoC almost every day is Galloway himself? In other words, we just have to take his word for it?
******
La vita è bella, life is good!
Thanks for the Grauniad shotgun piece on Saudi princes shooting and our Government cowering, not for the first time on this blog, Clark. Now they are atb it again.
First there was Adnan Kashogi and his Al yamani deal which spooked Thatcher and then the BAE corruption affair, going back all the way to the 1970’s, which, after threats and brow beating, was dropped byu our courts.
Some call it blackmail and just as corruption, we are partial to it.
‘Triumph of the Will’
“I consider myself to be the intellectually most honest commenter on this blog and also the most open-minded and least ‘politically correct’.”
Now your are really clowning about ! You are certainly the most immodest, but also with the most to be modest about.
“As Macky could have pointed out”
Sorry but Macky assumes that people who have enough brain cells to post messages here, also have brain cells enough to realise that MPs do other things apart from voting.
“In other words, we just have to take his word for it?”
No, re-read my last Post; you can personally monitor his attendance, or you can take the rational view that because he keeps stating that he does, he would be a very quickly found-out fool, if he was lying; with so many trying to trip him up, he would be taking a career ending suicidal risk in blatantly lying for something that can be verifield by those so inclined with the time & means.
You are beggining to bore me now with your fake troll stupidity.
@ Macky : so, behind all your bluster, insults and obfuscation, you are in fact confirming we must take his word for it. Fine, it’s a point of view, but you must, always, try to be……honest.
Ps – distorting my handle in schoolboy manner is, I’ve come to realise, your way of showing me affection. I should of course like to reciprocate, so please advise me whether you’d prefer “Mucky” or “Murky”.
******
La vita è bella, life’s good (even when murky or mucky)!
@ Macky (again) :
I was most certainly not clowning about. The things I have to be modest about (there might be one or two) are not relevant to my activities on this blog. And while it may be true that I am immodest, this is a small price to pay for my many virtues (still in terms of commenting on this blog).
No, I do feel that my intellectual firepower, fearlessness and refusal to submit to received wisdom has already brought about a certain qualitative improvement in the discourse on this blog. But of course there’s still a way to go and I look forward to contributing further to further improvement.
**********
La vita è bella, life is good (this is lesson n° 1)!
Jesus,Habacake-reading down these posts simply reveals your stand-out contributions as repetitive and boring. Were you in Germany for the Britten Centenary or the Wagner Bicentenary? Or just a common or biergarten carnival.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)
14 Feb, 2013 – 10:44 am
“Unlike you and some others, I can exist for a few days away from this blog. You should try it sometime. The real world’s very good for you, you know.”
“Re Galloway, another category, which you missed out, might be the people who consider Galloway to be a bit of a fraud.”
Habbabkuk, why do you think Galloway is a bit of a fraud? Please elaborate.
“And yet another category is the people who think that MPs should spend a little more of their time in the House.”
Perhaps he spends more time within his constituency “the real world’s very good for you, you know.”
@ Doug Scorgie :
there are several reasons why some people (note that I said “some people”, I didn’t say “I” – you really must develop your close reading skills!)find him a bit of a fraud.
If I were one of those people, the reason I would offer you – the simplest reason, and therefore the one that you would have the most chance of understanding – would be : “because people like you and the other Eminences support him”.
Re spending time in the HoC or not, I think that Macky has already assured us that George attends the House almost every day (close reading skills, again!); on George’s say so, of course.
*****
La vita è bella, life is good (even if you hate to admit it) !
Habbabkuk
“I consider myself to be the intellectually most honest commenter on this blog and also the most open-minded and least ‘politically correct’. Only fools anjd knaves would contest this.”
I contest that, so I must be a fool or a knave.
Where are the links to those biographies and diaries you mentioned a while back to back up your assertion that political parties have been using behavioural psychologists to promote their agendas for the last 20 years?
You cannot furnish me with the information because you made it up.
You are not “[the] most honest commenter on this blog…”
You are a liar and possibly the most narrow-minded commenter here.
But then, you have an agenda don’t you?
@ Doug :
close reading required – again!
My original post said “Only fools and knaves would contest this”
Not “fools or knaves”.
So if – as you say – you contest my claim, you are a fool AND a knave.
******
You’re very keen on claiming I have an “agenda”. An easy slur to chuck around and it sounds suitably dastardly, doesn’t it. What’s my agenda, Dougie?
Habitual Babbler Kuku,
” I consider myself to be the intellectually most honest commenter on this blog and also the most open-minded and least ‘politically correct’. Only fools anjd knaves would contest this.”
We did a little survey here while you were away:
The bad news: You are perceived as a megalomaniac across the board. Reconfirmed by your “I consider myself to be the intellectually most honest commenter on this blog” and earlier claims of “intellectual firepower”, “quality control”, etc.
The good news: Yes we all agree life is good, even for an empty vessel making a lot of noise!
The consensus: “The real world’s very good for you, you know” and that you should be given an immediate and indefinite sabbatical from this blog.
Sorry, that should read “tactless” megalomaniac. Very important nuance. Good night!