The Respectability of Torture
St Mary’s University College, Thurs 1st August, 7.30pm
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, was a whistleblower who was removed from his ambassadorial post by Tony Blair for exposing the Tashkent regime‟s use of rape and systematic torture, including the boiling to death of political opponents. He has also spoken out against Central Asia‟s appalling dictatorships, regimes which are allies of the West, involved in torture and rendition, and was accused of threatening MI6‟s relationship with the CIA. Now a human rights activist, author and broadcaster, he outlines the dynamics of torture and the hypocrisy of incriminated Western governments.
My first public appearance for a while will be in Belfast on 1 August where I shall be giving a talk. Long term readers of this blog will recall that, while my focus is largely on international affairs, the domestic political achievements I most hope to see are a united Ireland and an independent Scotland.
“‘During the 1948 Palestine War, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled, and hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated and destroyed.
These refugees and their descendants number several million people today, divided between Jordan (2 million), Lebanon (427,057), Syria (477,700), the West Bank (788,108) and the Gaza Strip (1.1 million), with at least another quarter of a million internally displaced Palestinians in Israel.”
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Leaving aside the question of what is meant exactly by “internally displaced” : 700.000 to almost 5 million (I leave aside the population of Gaza, which had an indigenous population even before 1948) is a pretty impresssive reproduction rate, I must say.
@ Komodo
“Cite your sources, please.”
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Happy to do so, old chap. Which post/opinion are you referring to?
Mr Scorgie writes:
“Suhayl Saadi
12 Aug, 2013 – 11:09 pm
“…in retrospect it might’ve been better if in 1967, Israel had annexed the West Bank and Gaza Strip and given all the Palestinians living there Israeli citizenship rights…”
I’m having doubts about you Suhayl, are you for real?
Not another crypto-Zionist are you?”
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I’m a little puzzled by your reaction here. The so-called “one state solution” is still advocated by various commentators (including some Palestinians and Israeli activists – I believe, for example, that Uri Avnery has written in this vein on Counterpunch) even today and would probably have been even more feasible in 1967.
Suhayl has already demonstrated that Israeli Arabs enjoy greater civil rights than their fellows in the surrrounding Arab states, not to speak of the West Bank or Gaza.
BTW, I note that “crypto-Zionist” is becoming a popular word on here. Will it replace “troll” as the insult of choice, I wonder?
Rubbaduck:
Fertility rate (West Bank Palestinians): 3.51 births/woman
……………(West Bank Jews):…….. 5.07 births/woman
70 years is maybe three generations, I’ll leave you to do the maths. The population of Palestinian descendants is generally agreed.
Palestine refugees (per United Nations Resolution 194) originally included Arabs whose normal places of residence were in Israel and Jews who had had their homes in Mandatory Palestine, such as the those from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.[6] Their right of return was recognized in United Nations Resolution 194 of 1948.[7] Today, the term refers primarily to the patrilineal descendants of Arab refugees originating in the Mandate, as per the UNRWA definition. In 2012 the number of registered patrilineal descendants of the original Palestine refugees, based on the UNRWA registration requirements, is estimated to be 4,950,000.[2][3][4][5] The number of original Palestine refugees has declined from 711,000 in 1950[1] to approximately 30 to 50,000 in 2012. [Wiki]
You could easily have looked all this up and saved yourself the embarrassment of seeing yet more material not slanted towards the apartheid state…
Oh, and you may find this helpful in answering Scorgie’s excellent question:
“What do you see as the best chance for peace between the state of Israel and a proposed state of Palestine?”
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story574.html
Blue is Jewish (most of them in Jaffa district), Green is Palestinian.
Komodo 12.43 pm 12 Aug. Good article on Blair’s overseeing of the Quartet governing Palestine’s future (nothing achieved in ten years). Kerry is thought to be a moderate democrat. But they are all tarred with the same brush (or is that Bush?) It is not the agenda that they are keeping from the press we have to worry about. It is the hidden agenda they never tell you about.
Rubbaduck:
Sorry, two concepts in a single post is too much for you:
Rubbaduck:
(1)“What do you see as the best chance for peace between the state of Israel and a proposed state of Palestine?”
@ Jon/Mod
The post of mine you deleted (08h55) made a perfectly valid point by defending (politely)Dreoilin against a personal attack by Flaming June.
And, indeed, Dreoilin made the same point herself a few minutes later.
We seem to be moving to a situation where Flaming June is – uniquely – being treated as a protected species. Am I correct?
Rubbaduck:
(2) Please cite your sources when answering (1) above.
Rubbaduck:
And, indeed, Dreoilin made the same point herself a few minutes later.
So your intervention was not only uncalled-for but superfluous.
Stop whining, troll.
@ Komodo
“Fertility rate (West Bank Palestinians): 3.51 births/woman
……………(West Bank Jews):…….. 5.07 births/woman”
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Interesting.
There is a high proportion of Orthodox/ultraOrthodox Jews in the West Bank and it is known that they have a high fertility rate.
What, dear Komodo, is the fertility rate for Jews in Israel proper?
@ John Goss –
You may find this interesting – why the delay in the tests on Arafat?. Looks like a good site, too. French language – sorry, but the Anglophone press doesn’t seem too interested in the story. Wonder why?
http://www.causeur.fr/yasser-arafat-empoisonnement-autopsie,23703
What, dear Komodo, is the fertility rate for Jews in Israel proper?
Look it up.
Research this while you’re at it:
“What do you see as the best chance for peace between the state of Israel and a proposed state of Palestine?”
@ Mr Scorgie (00h31)
“Jewishness is not a religion as you know Habbabkuk Islam is.”
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Oh, sorry, I was under the impression that being a Jew means that the person adheres to the Jewish religion. How about “The Judaic State of Israel” (cf “The Islamic Republic of Iran”)?
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“A Jewish state implies a state run by Jews for the benefit of Jews; that seems a bit racist to me.”
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More rascist than a state run by Moslems for the benefit of Moslems (cf “The Islamic republic of Iran”, again)?
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“In other words Habbabkuk non-Jews will be second class citizens”
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How does that follow?
@ Komodo
“What, dear Komodo, is the fertility rate for Jews in Israel proper?
Look it up.”
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I think that reply is what’s commonly called a cop-out. Which might indicate that the fertility figure for Israelis living in Israel proper is rather less than the one you lovingly quote for the Israelis living in the West Bank?
@ Komodo
“And, indeed, Dreoilin made the same point herself a few minutes later.
So your intervention was not only uncalled-for but superfluous”
______________________
I think not. Dreoilin’s post did not appear until after mine. Therefore my defence of Dreoilin cannot have been superfluous at the moment of my posting it. Think!
Rubbaduk
Israeli immigration laws will accept an application for Israeli citizenship if there is proven documentation that any grandparent—not just the maternal grandmother—was Jewish. This does not mean that person is an “ethnic Jew”, but Israeli immigration will accept that person because he or she has an ethnically Jewish connection, and because this same degree of connection was sufficient to be persecuted as a Jew by the Nazis.
Inconvenient truth: To be a Jew in Israel does not necessarily mean practising the religion.
Good to see what this week’s hasbara line is, though. Theocratic Iran is such a great example we should approve of Israel’s following it!
Dancer!
Hey Craig, it’s offtopic, but I’d love to hear your take on the recent Gibraltar news:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/gibraltar-row-cameron-eu-legal-action-spain
Therefore my defence of Dreoilin cannot have been superfluous at the moment of my posting it..
Confirming yet again that all your posts are superfluous….
Prove me wrong. Answer, with references to support your opinion:
“What do you see as the best chance for peace between the state of Israel and a proposed state of Palestine?”
Rubbaduck-
I think that reply is what’s commonly called a cop-out. Which might indicate that the fertility figure for Israelis living in Israel proper is rather less than the one you lovingly quote for the Israelis living in the West Bank?
Look it up, tell me, cite your source. (I know, incidentally). Then relate it to your earlier post expressing some unspecific but snarky criticism of some well-established figures. In the light of your conclusions, I invite you to tell us all – we are agog –
“What do you see as the best chance for peace between the state of Israel and a proposed state of Palestine?”
Supplementary question for Rubbaduck:
With the population of haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) in the West Bank at 30%, and expected to rise by 6% per annum until 2020*, how close will Israel be to being a fundamentalist theocratic state in the first half of this century?
*Saved you the trouble – demographic analysis:
http://www.columbia.edu/~yc2444/pages/Demographic%20Success%20of%20the%20West%20Bank%20Settlers.html
AlcAnon, how far north are you observing from, and what is the highest elevation you get for the ISS? Here, near Chelmsford, Essex, the highest passes are 89 degrees, essentially straight up. I have a friend in Edinburgh; that’s some 400 miles north from me, and the ISS only orbits about 250 miles above sea level, so I’d expect an elevation of about
anti-tan (250/400) = 32 degrees.
Fedup, hello, I’m OK thanks. I just underestimated the difficulty of some work I took on, and thus made myself too busy to keep up with things on this blog. I’m expecting to get mega busy again in a day or two.
Flaming June, you have my respect and admiration for your tenacity in resisting the concerted criticism of you and continuing to post informative links.
Habbabkuk, congratulations on finding the dark glasses; they’re highly appropriate because you reveal so little of what you think.
I apologise to all whose e-mails I have left unanswered while I was busy. I’ll try to catch up.
Habbabkuk, at 9:21am: Indeed. This is what some Palestinians also are saying: ‘Give us full citizenship rights as Israelis, or else give us a sovereign state of our own’. Of course, the demographics alone now make the former option one that Israel simply will not choose. It’s really a last-ditch attempt by the Palestinians.
I’m very pessimistic, actually, about this subject. Many Arab states use the Palestinian issue as an excuse to continue to enforce secret police authoritarianism on their own populations and to direct discontent away from themselves and towards ‘the Zionist entity’. In this, theyt are in cahoots with the Islamists. Nonetheless, as I said earlier, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia did lead a two-state peace treaty offer that was summarily rejected by Israel. Israel seems to want all of Mandate Palestine and will get it in a sort of ‘death by a thousand cuts’. The USA has it in the their power to resolve this but they won’t. And the rest will be history.
Flaming June, you were asking about Krishnamurti. He was “discovered” by the Theosophists while he was still adolescent, and intensively groomed to be some “World Teacher” they believed would arise. Quite a cranky story, really; an unlikely happenstance of Western woo-woo and Indian religious diversity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti
“Flaming June, you have my respect and admiration for your tenacity in resisting the concerted criticism of you and continuing to post informative links.”
Including this, Clark, which she herself introduces as “nonsense”?
Frankly, I’d prefer to read Krishnamurti.
Suhayl Saadi, 10:36 am:
The Cold War never ended, because it was never about ideology in the first place; all the “communism vs. capitalism” rhetoric was merely rationalisation on an enormous scale. It’s just two enormous military powers manoeuvring over the primary military necessity – fuel (soldier’s lives are a renewable resource).
After WWII, it was already known that the prime hydrocarbon reserves were under the Middle East. Russia had the advantages of its satellite states, experience at taking and holding power over predominantly Muslim countries, and simply being much closer to the oil than the US. Faced with the prospect of increasing stability in the Middle East under Russian influence, the West responded with the only aggressive option available to it; destabilisation and fragmentation – which shows that the ideology was only ever an excuse, as truly capitalist governments would surely have chosen trade rather than war.
Israel has turned out to be particularly useful to the Western agenda of destabilisation and fragmentation, and that is why the US supports it.
Speaking of which, Clark, perhaps we all should become gurus!
Krishnamurti, Sri Chinmoy, the Bagwan and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi… were they all they presented themselves as? There are many questions. Here’s another:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdalqadir_as-Sufi
Guitarist Richard Thompson and other talented musicians were part of Mr Dallas’s organisation for many years.
The complexity of their gurus’ motivations and alleged actions need not entirely negate everything they said, wrote or did. Nor the often wonderful (sometimes silly) art produced as a consequence by their disciples. Think of ‘Devadip’ Carlos Santana and ‘Mahavishnu’ John McLaughlin, of The Beatles, or Mighty Baby/the Habbibiya (once a London Mod group called, ‘The Action’). The Incredible String band became Scientologists, though arguably their best, most revolutionary material was produced before then.
Cults, and a ‘leader’, the cult of personality, is often about control and subordination. They must possess some personal magetism.
Now for my fascistic mantra for the day… [intoned solemnly, in an Indian accent and with consideraable sibilance]
“The essence of being is wthin
The essence of being is… thin”
Perhaps I should re-inevnt myself as a guru.
Given that the Committee haven’t the guts to take back Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, awarding this year’s to Manning would send a useful message.
“awarding this year’s to Manning would send a useful message”
And hopefully he would turn it down, which would send an even more useful message 😉
Dreoilin, it’s a difficult situation with a nasty tendency to polarise; people keep deciding whether they’re “for” or “against” Flaming June, and it degrades the quality of debate, turning many a potential discussion into black-and-white argument, or worse, a simple personal slanging-match.
My personal opinion is that Flaming June’s comments have become more polemic since she came under concentrated criticism from Habbabkuk. This is normal human nature and to be expected; most of us get uppity if we’re targeted.
No one likes everything about anyone, yet we still manage to form friendships and alliances. We tolerate that which we dislike about individuals if we sufficiently value their contributions. Flaming June’s (often off-topic) contributions have formed the basis of several of Craig’s posts, and her research on the Internet has shed light upon various topics under discussion, as has your own. You’re both valuable contributors to this blog; can you call a truce?