Of This I Am Proud 321


I am proud of the company I was in of fellow Sam Adams winners; but also because in the circumstances I think this was the best speech I have ever made. If you listen from 15 minutes, the enthusiastic and sustained interruption of applause I received from the Oxford Union for my attack on those demonstrating against Julian Assange is remarkable.

It particularly explodes the appalling lies of the Guardian’s shrill hate campaign against Julian Assange, which you will recall covered this event under the headline Julian Assange finds no allies and tough queries in Oxford University talk . It has taken the Oxford Union two months to post this video, and then unlike other newly posted videos it does not appear on the front page of their youtube site.

The students no longer have any autonomy in the the Oxford Union where speakers and videos have to be approved in advance by a solidly and uniformly right wing board of trustees which includes William Hague and Louise Mensch.

It is, however, even at this belated time, a great pleasure to be able again to state and to demonstrate what a vicious little liar Amelia Hill is.

After my point on the Assange demonstration, you could have heard a pin drop for the rest of my talk and I was unsure how the audience were reacting. Unfortunately the video cuts off the peroration, so you will have to take my word for it that the applause was very big and after resuming my seat I had to half stand and acknowledge again. But I had concluded by introducing Julian Assange, so that may have been for him not me – I would be just as pleased.

Let me post this one again so you have the pair of me on consecutive nights in very different moods.


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321 thoughts on “Of This I Am Proud

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  • Noor-e-Hira

    I cannot watch it because youtube is banned here in Pakistan. 🙁 I will be grateful if anybody could provide it in any other way.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Conflict

    “Amnesty International has warned that Syrian rebels have increasingly resorted to torture and the summary execution of soldiers, suspected informants, pro-government militias and captured or kidnapped civilians.

    “[Rebel fighters] are summarily killing people with a chilling sense of impunity, and the death toll continues to rise as more towns and villages come under the control of armed opposition groups,” Amnesty said.”

    http://rt.com/news/syria-anniversary-conflict-intensify-316/

    95% of ‘Syrian rebels’ not Syrians _ Daoud Khairallah

    http://blogdogcicle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/95-of-syrian-rebels-not-syrians-daoud.html

  • The CE

    Hello A Node,

    I do not think that the Assad regime was always as brutally repressive as it is now, it was probably relatively(for the ME) benign whilst its populace was behaving as instructed. However when faced with a peaceful(yes, I know it’s hard to remember that’s how it started) uprising they were most likely faced with a stark choice, become a brutal dictatorship or relinquish power. I think we can see which way they chose.

    Our government may be bad, but thankfully it is not in the habit of shooting peaceful protesters or involved in widespread, systemic, internal repression, so yes, I thank we should be able to tell countries with abhorrent human rights records, be they Bahrain, Uzbekistan, Iran, Russia, China, or even Syria, that we have concerns over their human rights abuses.

    On the more specific question of the Syrian conflict, do I think we should go in all guns blazing? Of course not, do I think we should be providing arms to the rebels? Probably not, I can only see that being counter-productive, and the rebels are seemingly getting large quantities of weapons from the Gulf States irrespective of our actions . Do I think we should be providing some form of help to a struggling people, fighting against a vile regime, that itself is propped up financially and militarily by both Moscow and Tehran? Quite possibly yes.

    I don’t think there any easy answers, but the Syrian people are the ones caught in the middle of this unimaginable situation and I cannot truly say what is the best way forward to ease their suffering as quickly as possible, but I firmly believe it is nowhere near the simple black and white issue that Mark Golding and Mary would have us believe.

  • November

    … let’s suppose that President Assad really is the brutal dictator you describe, and we just hadn’t noticed how bad he was until last year.

    A very pertinent thought experiment. Considering that the same bunch of liberators pulled off the rug from under Qaddafi, after having extorted the billions of dollars out of him, for the Pan Am jet crash in Lockerbie. That is post a very dubious trial (dog and pony show) that took the testimony of a known liar (four trials have collapsed/convictions over turned due to the testimony of the same cretin). In addition to the bonus prize of parading the unopened boxes parked in the Libyan warehouses on the TV, along with the carrier bag of the Pakistani Shirt maker that held the plans for an atomic warhead as supplied by A Q Khan, and paraded as the dividend of the “Bush Doctrine” (shoot first and ask questions later, Texas style conflict resolution).

    Libyans are enjoying their liberation, as are Iraqis, Afghans, and currently Syrians are in the process of getting liberated. The Syrian liberators are consisting of a well known local cigarette smuggler who is often referred to as the “rich businessman”, and Eric Prince hired mercenaries who are paraded as the Syrian Army Defectors, and a bunch of doped up Arab looking mercenaries pulled in from various countries all helping the Syrians to free themselves from the Assad regime!!

    Incidentally anyone recollect the Assads visits to No Ten and the photo ops with the world famous liar Blair? Clearly those days Assad was the paragon of democracy and upholder of mom’s apple-pie order, hence the rendered prisoners flown there by the CIA airways. Further anyone recollect the Assad speech rejecting the ambitions of “those setting themselves up as the power brokers”? (that is when he was getting shaken down)

    However, sadly sometimes tribalism trumps logic and reason, and anyone on the shitlist of those in zionistan are copied onto the shitlist of those “commenting” here, too. Hence the almost comical repetition of the news headlines as “opinions and well thought out wisdom”! Isn’t it sad?

  • Mary

    A comment

    Agent Cameron has been in Brussels speaking up for arming the rabble rebels, along with his mate François Hollande. They salivate and lust for war and never learn any lessons.
    ~~~
    A link

    CE I expect you already know about this.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/23/us-syria-crisis-saudi-idUSBRE85M07820120623

    and

    Can Free Syrian Army Defeat Assad:

    By early 2013, various rebel groups scored significant gains against retreating government troops in northern and eastern Syria, overrunning military bases, taking over border crossings with Turkey, and capturing roughly half of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital.

    However, many of these successes have been the work of Islamist militias, including Al Qaeda-linked groups such as the infamous Al Nusra Front. The FSA itself has largely faltered as an organized insurgent force.

    In fact, a report commissioned by the US State Department in late 2012 painted a bleak picture of the chaotic situation in rebel-held areas of Syria’s north. “There are hundreds of small groups (10-20 fighters) spread all over the area of Aleppo,” says the report, noting that the “rebel violations are becoming a normal daily phenomenon, especially against civilians, including looting public and private factories, storage places, houses and cars.”

    The FSA formal command seems ill-equipped to prevent radical Islamists from stepping into the vacuum left behind by a collapsing regime and a divided Syrian opposition.

    http://middleeast.about.com/od/syria/p/Syrias-Armed-Opposition-Free-Syrian-Army.htm

    etc etc

    ~~~~
    Another link

    From Hurriyet, the Turkish newspaper.

    Syrian rebels: Too fragmented, unruly

    ISTANBUL / ALEPPO

    The opposition militants battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are a fragmented rabble that refuses to follow orders, according to activists

    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/syrian-rebels-too-fragmented-unruly.aspx?pageID=238&nid=29158

    Sept 2012

    ~~~

    This place gets more like a court of law.

    I have made NO ‘blithe, nasty, throw away quips’.

  • nevermind

    So we now have three of them ganging up against Mary, what fine fettle this blog is in.
    Any videos of the Islamophobia conference?

  • Mark Golding - Children of Conflict

    Asked what he would say if President Assad said he wanted a safe exit, Mr Cameron replied: “Done.”

    “Anything, anything to get that man out of the country and to have a safe transition in Syria.”

    “Of course, I would favour him facing the full force of international law and justice for what he’s done.”

    Mr Cameron, who was preparing for talks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Jeddah, made clear Britain would not offer any such haven.

    He added: “I am certainly not offering him an exit plan to Britain but if wants to leave, he could leave, that could be arranged.”

    Mr Cameron ruled out the UK arming Syrian rebels.

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/bashar-al-assad-could-be-offered-safe-1420750

  • The CE

    Apologies. Next time I disagree with something Mary writes I shouldn’t mention it, lest I be accused of ganging up on someone. There really is some thin skinned people going around here for a public blog.

    I found this comment offensive, unhelpful and overly simplistic – “Agent Cameron has been in Brussels speaking up for arming the rabble rebels, along with his mate François Hollande. They salivate and lust for war and never learn any lessons.” I said so.

    I was told by Craig dissent from the majority view is welcome here.

  • Mary

    What I said about Cameron and Hollande is true. Remember Libya, the chaos that spread from it just like the chaos that spread from the occupation of Iraq and the war against Iraq, and now Mali and beyond.

    ~~

    I did not understand that remark of Cameron’s about not arming the rebels, Mark, but now see that it was what he was saying in November.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    “There really is some thin skinned people going around here for a public blog.”

    Yeah, it’s been rubbed raw. Give it some time to heal. I do recall your aligning yourself with the human rasp. Take that into consideration before hitting the submit button.

  • November

    “The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again. Before they do let us reorder this world around us.” Said the grinning war criminal (Anthony Charles Lynton Blair)

    Kick starting the absurd bums rush for the second helpings of Sykes Picot. Old habits die hard evidently. The theft of the vanquished nations assets somehow is accepted as part of going to war to help spread democracy, liberation, and free beer all around.

    What happened to the vast sums of money found in Iraq, that is apart from the frozen accounts and the UN funds etc? Same holds true for Libya, and currently Syria? Who gets to administer and hold the free money?

    Less said about the indirect embezzlement from the tax funds that various contractors and agents get engaged in. If some of these crooks cashed a cheque these would be prosecuted for fraud, however if they are later paid for the books they author or for the positions they hold, that is a legitimate business transaction.

    Freedom dunchyou love its smell?

    Anyone recollect the Iraqi actress screaming it (FREEDOM) in the Labour conference in the build up to go and disarm Saddam from Nukes and Death Stars and Anti Matter weapons systems that no one had thought of so far? Or the sleeping (whilst on the TV) fat Iraqi woman who was purportedly raped by 150 Iraqi interrogators?

    How did the song go again ……….Sixteen million pound buys lots of mansions and beers and cars mate.

  • A Node

    The CE

    You have answered several questions, thank you, but none of them were mine. I’ll try again.

    Let’s suppose that I accept everything you say about Assad’s brutality, his human rights record, when it started, the mistreatment of his people, even that our government is not “involved in widespread, systemic, internal repression”, and thus has a moral right to judge him.

    My question is, “What’s it got to do with us? By what right are we interfering? Who has appointed us world policemen?”

    If Iran judged that the UK was guilty of persecuting British Muslims, would you defend Iran’s right to support an armed uprising in the UK?

  • Villager

    Mary & A Node: Plus 1 fot your comments.

    November: “However, sadly sometimes tribalism trumps logic and reason, and anyone on the shitlist of those in zionistan are copied onto the shitlist of those “commenting” here, too. Hence the almost comical repetition of the news headlines as “opinions and well thought out wisdom”! Isn’t it sad?”

    Could you simplify that for me please. Politics is not my natural area. Thank you

  • Villager

    The CE:
    “I don’t think there any easy answers, but the Syrian people are the ones caught in the middle of this unimaginable situation and I cannot truly say what is the best way forward to ease their suffering as quickly as possible, but I firmly believe it is nowhere near the simple black and white issue that Mark Golding and Mary would have us believe.”

    Easy armchair waffle CE. You reveal your subconscious in remarks like “the Syrian people are the ones caught in the middle”.
    So if they are ‘caught’ in the ‘middle’, what/who is on the sides or at the periphery. You might answer this while you’re answering A Node. I want to understand what the foundation of your moral high ground is made of?

    And re: your no-easy-answers-cliche, may i suggest, either put-up or shut-up.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    @ A Node

    Sorry to bring this thread down to the nether regions, but I was intrigued by the story you posted about Palestinian prisoners having their sperm smuggled out of jail in order that their women folk light conceive (a story confirmed by a Palestinian doctor, you said).

    I seem to remember reading somewhere that about 99% of sperm died within a minute or so of being deposited in the vagina. If that is so, I shouldn’t have thought that the chances of any sperm surviving transport of possibly hours in glass jars and cups were very high.

    Are you sure that story’s not just…a story?

  • Kempe

    Quite obvious what happened. Wifie gets pregnant whilst hubbie is in prison, doesn’t want to get stoned to death so persuades somebody to smuggle a sample of hubbie’s jiz out of the nick. “Darling whilst the wicked Zionists were holding you in prison Allah and the miracle of artificial insemination have blessed us with a son… No, I’ve no idea why he looks so much like the milkman.”

  • crab

    Hehe, you might have something there Kempe.
    But it doesnt to take long to find out sperm can last for days in a sterile environment. hbk was just being characteristically obtuse and doubtful.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    The Milkman cometh…(sorry, couldn’t resist 🙂 )

  • A Node

    “It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionists (Jews) do to Palestinian Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews.”
    ― Albert Einstein

    “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs… Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home”
    ― Mahatma Gandhi

    “How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?”
    ― Bertrand Russell

    “To Alef, the letter
    that begins the alphabets
    of both Arabic and Hebrew-
    two Semitic languages,
    sisters for centuries.

    May we find the language
    that takes us
    to the only home there is –
    one another’s hearts.

    Alef knows
    That a thread
    Of a story
    Stitches together
    A wound.”
    ― Ibtisam Barakat, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood

  • crab

    If we dont see further inquistions on the lifespan of smuggled palestinian sperm, take it habkuk got the night off.

  • crab

    Recall Craig made these blockbusting speeches just a fortnight after passing out and spending 6 days in hospital with heart problems which aren’t even well controlled yet.

    I wouldn’t bet against that mans spunk in a cup.

  • karel

    halibabacus,

    have you ever deposited any sperms in a vagina or have you just read about it? Please tell us where you collect the snippets of you wisdom.

  • A Node

    A couple of months ago, Belgian MP Laurent Louis spoke out in Parliament about globalist resource-grabbing and false-flag terrorism. Now three brave Australian MPs have told some home truths to their parliament about the Israeli lobby. Meanwhile, here in Britain, David Ward MP has been ordered to have his words vetted by the LibDem Friends of Israel for saying the word “Jews”

    A shouting match broke out in the chambers of the New South Wales (NSW) Legislative Council chambers on Thursday during a motion debate about a ‘Study Mission to Israel’ hosted by the NSW Parliamentary Friends of Israel under the auspices of the NSW Jewish Board Of Deputies, attended by a delegation of NSW Parliamentarians last January 6-10.
    The purpose of the ‘Study Mission’ was “to build an understanding amongst the delegates of the complex and various issues impacting on Israel and other jurisdictions within the Middle East.”(pdf)
    While Legislative Council members who were part of the delegation sang the praises of Israel, Green Legislative Councillor David Shoebridge (video above), Labor Legislative Councillor’s Shaoquett Moselmane, and Lynda Voltz had a few other topics to discuss.

    Video and transcript:
    http://mondoweiss.net/2013/03/chambers-parliamentarians-criticizes.html

  • Clark

    Noor-e-Hira, 15 Mar, 7:24 pm, I have uploaded copies of the two speeches to here:

    http://www.killick1.plus.com/uploads/winners.mp4
    http://www.killick1.plus.com/uploads/us-dream.mp4

    Right-click on the link and use “Save target/link as…” to save them to your computer, and then play them in your media player; they are not like YouTube “embedded videos”, and if you save them you can play them many times. They are also lower resolution than YouTube, but they seem to work.

    Other readers,

    Please do not download these videos if you can watch the embedded ones on this page or on YouTube. They are saved on the web-space provided by my ISP, which has strict download limits; if a few people download them my web-space will be blocked and Noor-e-Hira won’t be able to get them.

  • crab

    But Jives every sperm is sacred.
    MP Laurent Louis – another cup runeth over.
    Apologies.
    Well served Clark.

  • Clark

    The CE, I didn’t believe it for years, but “we”, i.e. the US, UK and assorted allies who come and go, really are “bad guys”. Not “the bad guys”, but at least as bad as “our enemies”. “We”, or “the West”, or “the international community”, or “the free world”, or whatever term you (or rather the establishment and the corporate media) wish to use; “we” attack, invade, dominate and destroy other countries for the commercial gain of private interests. All the talk of “humanitarian intervention” is just propaganda in support of those same interests.

    US general Wesley Clark, the former supreme commander of allied forces in Europe, once revealed that within weeks of the 9/11 terrorist atrocity the then secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld described how “we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

    http://www.democracynow.org/2007/3/2/gen_wesley_clark_weighs_presidential_bid

    Now read this article by Sami Ramadani:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/14/iraq-pain-2003-civil-war

    The north-western region of Iraq borders Syria and it is where General Petraeus funded the Sahwa “awakening” militias in order to crush resistance in that region. Al-Qaida-type terrorists are also active in the area. They are natural allies of the terrorist al-Nusra Front of Syria. The de facto alliance between the US, Turkey, Israel and militants that has appeared in Syria is being mirrored in Iraq, with the additional ingredient of Saddamist remnants. US pragmatism knows no bounds!

    Follow that up with this one:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/03/military-intervention-syria-disastrous-people

    But what goes unreported in relation to Syria is that democratic opposition organisations, at the receiving end of decades of regime repression and probably representing the will of majority of Syrians, strongly opposed the militarisation of the protests. They argued that militarisation weakened the growing mass movement for radical democratic change, left the door wide open for foreign intervention, threatened the social fabric of Syrian society and helped Israeli forces occupying the Syrian Golan Heights, where Israeli tanks are an hour’s drive away from Damascus. They also draw lessons from the destruction of Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees who fled Iraq’s fires to Syria after the US-led invasion.

    Yes, I know that our corporate media constantly repeat that “Assad is killing his own people”, but where is the information coming from? Back at the time of the Iraq war, al-Jazeera was a good alternative news source, but note the following section; it has since been taken over by the Qatari elite:

    However, the media here and in the Arab world, especially the influential al-Jazeera TV, owned by the Qatari ruling family, act as the cheerleaders for the pro-intervention factions of the SNC and the FSA, founded in and logistically backed by Nato member Turkey.

    So do I have any evidence to support this radically different view of Middle Eastern conflict? Well, here is a rational analysis of the conflict in Syria based upon the sex ratios of the dead:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/15/syrian-death-tolls-tell-us

    Benetech’s research nevertheless offers some useful clues about the makeup of the recorded death toll. Only 7.5% are female, making the casualties in Syria overwhelmingly male. Second, the largest segment of the 30% of victims whose ages are included in the records are between the ages of 20 and 30 – who might be classified as males of “military age”.
    […]
    According to Abdulrahman’s conservative estimates, at least two thirds of the dead are armed men – an appreciatively different take on the perception of “civilian slaughter” in Syria created by reporting of the UN’s and other unverified casualty numbers. And the UN itself points out that “the analysis was not able to differentiate clearly between combatants and noncombatants”.

    CE, it is very uncomfortable to come to terms with, but “our” side, the US, UK etc., are the aggressors. “Our” allies in the Middle East are Qatar, Bahrain, and of course Saudi Arabia, which is the country that indoctrinates and arms the extremely violent Islamists.

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