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.
B.Liar’s shill weighs in to the Scottish referendum debate.
Andrew Marr ‘very worried’ by tone of Scottish independence debate
Broadcaster talks ‘toxic’ anglophobia at Edinburgh international book festival, in first public appearance since stroke
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/aug/16/andrew-marr-scottish-independence-edinburgh-book-festival
Actually he’s flogging a book, The Battle of Scotland.
I think we can see what side he’s on ….’The ramifications for the whole of the UK if a yes vote was carried could be vast, he said. “[The vote] is going to be closer than we think but people in England haven’t really come to terms with what it would mean,” he said. “It would mean the loss of Trident … and because of the loss of population and of Trident, the rest of the UK would lose its permanent seat on the security council in the UN and its voting power inside the EU would be radically slashed.”‘
my thinking is that these megastars have a voice, that the rest of us don’t have, and the means, such as above Rodger Waters video
Talking Etymology.
Warfare!
What is fair.
An even and just society fo all.
“Jon, my quick glance at this thread suggests that things are a lot nicer here at present, and maybe my suggestion to close comments was a reflection of my own negativity.” Clark.
Clark, this may partly have been due to your own much-valued exhortation, earlier, and partly to our fascinating, dislocative discussion about the derivation and usage of the word, ‘bollocks’. Jim Morrison, King of the Lizards and his sad-eyed acolytes may have played a part with their ghost-dancing.
No doubt like any good moon, it will wax and wane.
[Wrt primary care in the NHS in England and Wales]:
“The profession is now at breaking point and we do not have the capacity to take on any more work without extra funding and resources to back it up.” Flaming June.
And of course, that – “breaking” – precisely is the aim. Unless people get revolutionary, nothing will be saved.
Btw, Flaming June, thanks so much for the great links you’ve provided overnight – God’s sake, woman, don’t you get any bleedin’ sleep, now you’ve retired? 🙂
Ben Franklin, that article by Adam Curtis, shows a century of the ineptitude of the intelligence services proving the old adage “There is no intelligence in intelligence”. But there is a lot of disinformation as this comment shows. There is no intelligence either in twenty-first century surveillance either in the UK or US (joint-intelligence) as the wrongful and racist/religionist imprisonment of Muslims in UK and US prisons demonstrates.
The Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office are badly delaying answering some straightforward questions I have asked of them in the cases of Abu Qatada and Syed Talha Ahsan. By law they should have responded to both these FOI requests above a month ago, and even though in the case of the Home Office request an internal review has been completed into it, I have still not been informed of the findings of this review.
I’m dropping the bollocks and entertaining you with the Buggers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSIUf2hD6Io
Thanks for Pink Floyd Brian and the Buggers John.
Also for your concern about my sleep habits Suhayl! I went to bed early last night feeling rather ill and got up at about 3 with a sore throat, bad chest and difficulty swallowing. I need a Doc but you are too far away! After I got back to bed and to sleep, the blessed dog barked to be let out so there I was going round the garden in the dawn with her on a lead in case she barked and woke the neighbours. There was heavy dew on the grass, the rowan berries are turning colour and the spiders’ webs are showing. A touch of approaching Autumn.
I have just read these two of Robert Fisk’s harrowing accounts of what he saw in Cairo earlier. He is a very talented writer. Just a terrible subject.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/cairo-massacre-the-muslim-brotherhoods-silent-martyrs-lie-soaked-in-blood-8764361.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-police-keep-firing-the-bodies-pile-up-in-cairo-bloodbaths-are-now-a-daily-occurrence-8771529.html
Suhayl, thanks for clearing that up last evening. Good weekend!
It sounds like a nightmare night, Flaming June! Hope you’re able to get some R and R today.
Thanks, Villager.
Now, at the risk of disturbing the morning slumber of the clerical fascists among us, here is a good piece from the CPGB (from early July 2013) centred around the situation in Egypt and more widely as well. In short, as the title states, the Army Coup is not the ‘next stage of the revolution’. It also critiques the lack of effectiveness of Islamism as a political and economic ideology.
“The demonstrations in Cairo and Istanbul and the abysmal failure of conservative Islamists in the recent presidential elections in Iran are all reactions to the same phenomenon: Islamist populists in power become corrupt capitalists, presiding over increasing inequality, unemployment and spiralling prices.” [from the article]
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/969/egypt-not-the-next-stage-of-the-revolution
Attention is drawn to FJ’s alleged word crime and John Goss’s “racism” the obscene destruction of Palestinian olive groves continues unnoticed. La vita isn’t so bloody bela for some, is it?
Let me invite the finger-pointers to discuss what is genuinely offensive. Here’s what principled Jewish writers are saying. What do you think Villager/Dad?
…
@ Jon. Thanks for putting me right and correcting my italics balls-up……(oops!)……I mean error.
[Mod: links fixed]
A somewhat different view (early July 2013) from the Egyptian Communist Party, interviewed here by the Iranian Communist Party. Hmn. Is he not being dreadfully naive wrt the role of the Army?
http://21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/egypt-crisis-analysis-from-the-egyptian-communist-party/
“What do you think Villager/Dad?” Sofia Kibo Noh.
Sofia Kibo Noh, is Hamlet your father? Hamlet’s father was a ghost. Or are you just using the word, ‘dad’ in its general or beatnik sense, as in ‘daddy-o’? Or is this a subtle, cosmic reference to Davy Graham’s DADGAD tuning?
Sofia Kibo Noh, neither of your links work for me. Would be interested to know what they say.
Suhayl, Sofia Kibo Noh was originally Sofia Habbabkuk (or some bastardisation of the name) and wrote some very witty responses to Habbabkuk posing as his daughter, before she outed hersef. Hence the Dad.
From early July 2013:
http://internationalsocialistnetwork.org/index.php/ideas-and-arguments/organisation/swp-crisis/international/166-hannah-elsisi-interview-on-the-fall-of-morsi-live-from-cairo
Now we see horrendous massacres on the streets, Christian churches being torched…
“At the moment, nobody knows who represents whom. The workers in Mahalla are a force that could lead the movement, but up till now none of the political parties have been able to organize it. The real socialist parties are very far from power; while social-democrats, already active in the previous regime, have been co-opted within the new government. This means they have become party to a nationalist ideology that for years has categorically rebuffed the workers’ requests.” [from interview, linked to, below]:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/joel-beinin-giuseppe-acconcia/egypt%E2%80%99s-new-interim-government-is-not-leftist-coalition
Samih Naguib, of the Revolutionary Socialists in Egypt:
“Well, the 30th June was a very complicated day. It confuses everybody all over the world; in Egypt and outside of Egypt, because what you have is two processes happening at the same time. You have on the one hand what is clearly a revolutionary wave involving millions and millions of the Egyptian people. On the other hand, the army and the old regime have used that unprecedented upsurge to get themselves back in the saddle and to get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/understanding-egyptian-politics/
@John Goss.
Thanks for letting me know the links don’t work. Here they are.
Images of destroyed olive groves:
http://www.palestinianphotos.org/gallery/olive-destruction.html
Jews for Justice for Parestinians. What a wonderful bunch of people!
http://jfjfp.com/
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@ Suhayl.
Habba’s been my dad since April. It’s tough enough being a fake 13.5yr old daughter even before you realise the most eminent grown-ups haven’t noticed you!
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@Murrayistas. Thanks for all the links and food for thought.
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@Haifa Public Diplomacy cellars.
I’m on strike. You can get some other fecker to top up that Dolmio jar!
Here are Sofia’s link;
Olive tree destruction
The sad fact that ziofuckwits give no quarters even to the trees is an indication of their hatred to the very essence of life itself.
John Goss
16 Aug, 2013 – 6:31 pm
“V at 4.20 pm. It’s quite a novelty for someone who’s fought against racism much of his adult life to be accused of being a racist. I’ve just watched Mo Farah add the 5,000 metres to the 10,000 metres he won last week. What an athlete. Well done Mo Farah! You have done Britain proud. Theresa May is racist. If she had her way he’d be running for Somalia.
Habbakuk, of course was an old testament prophet. Just where would you expect him to worship? But I suggest you get out a dictionary and check the meaning of racist. I think you will find that Theresa May fits the description.”
Poor attempt Mr Goss of deflecting my sharp observation onto Ms May.
Fact is you cannot know where Habbabkuk worships or even if he does at all. Fact also is that you don’t like Habby and reactively decided that he was to be found in a synagogue. You plainly, mockingly, made it obvious you don’t like Jews. Its alright that would fit the ‘normal’ flow and thrust around here and your need for approval.
At another level you were arguing vociferously, albeit idiotically, that I were the same as Habby. So is my name also from the Old Testament so that you could be so sure? Can a Christian person not have a name from the Old Testament?
I reiterate your slip-up was perhaps too subtle for yourself to see your own ‘pet’ racial preferences. Perhaps you prefer Muslims to Jews? I could care less of your claim that you have spent ‘much’ (not all) of your adult life ‘fighting’ against racism. Maybe you have other content in your subconscious you are not aware of. Often that stuff comes out unwittingly, as when you were blurting away y’day melding away our respective names, devoid even of humour which i’m given to at anytime. You are a confused man — ‘normal’ and confused — i see that with clarity.
We’ll give you some more time to see if you plough your own furrow, as one commenter put it eloquently, or if you are a member of the Eminences.
Sofia: “@Murrayistas. Thanks for all the links and food for thought.”
A lemming out in the open! Wonderful job by the Eminences of brainwashing this 13 year old. Who’s next?
“Habba’s been my dad since April. It’s tough enough being a fake 13.5yr old daughter even before you realise the most eminent grown-ups haven’t noticed you!” Sofia Kibo Noh.
Perhaps, then, Electra, a DNA test? 🙂
The way Villager writes (9:51am, today), one would be forgiven for assuming that Villager and Habbabkuk are one and the same person. Either that, or lovers, or identical twin sisters. If that is the case, might it not be best just to be open about it, and say so? Some people seem to adopt multiple personas here. ‘Sofia’ is one such example. I guess that’s part of the fun of cyberspace and permits different sides of a person to emerge and be cultivated. Yes, I understand that. Life’s complicated enough, I find. So, I just write what I think under my own name and wham bam thank you mam! Each to their own.
But if they are identical twin sisters, who is Cinderella and will they to go to the ball?
John Goss
17 Aug, 2013 – 9:18 am
“Suhayl, Sofia Kibo Noh was originally Sofia Habbabkuk (or some bastardisation of the name) and wrote some very witty responses to Habbabkuk posing as his daughter, before she outed hersef. Hence the Dad.”
Duh! You haven’t been following this thread have you, obvious since you didn’t get the Hamlet reference.
And get your chronology right and ask Sofia if *she* outed herself or, someone else?
She’s too-clever-by-half; you, i’m not sure about.
@Villager
John Goss is probably the most gentle and approachable man here. He acts upon his convictions. He doesn’t hide behind a made up name.
Whereas you are a patronising, whining, cowardly little avatar.
@Villager.
Don’t we already know your low opinion of others who post here and of your, so deep, insights into our faults?
But let’s for once have your take on the on-going attack on the Palestinian people in the name of a Jewish state, and your opinions of those brave Jewish people who still take a stand for human rights. Please give us some links to examine an discuss.
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@Craig.
I hope you are recovering well and will soon give us another thread. This one’s turned into a bit of a circus. Yes, I confess, I’m one of the clowns.
@ Suhayl
“The way Villager writes (9:51am, today), one would be forgiven for assuming that Villager and Habbabkuk are one and the same person.”
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Well, if the “one” was one of the NCOs (“the corporals”, as I’d call them) of this blog then he/she could be forgiven. But I’d like to think that you’re not a “corporal” ….. and so you’ll have to work harder to be forgiven :). Actually, I forgive John Goss as well – how could I not forgive someone who believes that 9/11 was a put-up job?
But I realise that words on this blog are used in a unique way :
– “troll” = someone who dares to dissent from la pensée unique
– “the same person posting under different names ” = plural of above.
Have a nice day nevertheless!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/egypts-day-of-shame-scores-killed-and-hundreds-more-injured-as-government-declares-war-on-islamists-8760379.html
Baradei has resigned in protest over massacre by military.
‘One doctor at the hospital, who gave his name only as Ahmed, said that even the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2008 had not been as bad.
“I was working there as a medic during that battle,” he told The Independent. “The Jews were much more humane that what is happening today. Even in war, the rules are more respectable than this.
“In 12 days of fighting in Gaza, there were less dead than in six hours here.” ‘
Hellish.
Villager, who is Ms May? I mentioned Theresa May (the racist). She’s married and does not endorse the feminist equivalent of Mr. She is also homophobic.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sack-Theresa-May-the-homophobic-EQUALITY-minister/117049341668229
As to your ‘sharp observation’ I have yet to notice it.