I had excellent news from my cardiologist yesterday. Ready to think about other things now. I am horrified by the continuing stream of ” royal” baby hype on television. Truly pathetic – is this 1313 or 2013? Who buys into this nonsense?
I thought the Lib Dem take on Trident missiles was hilarious. This small group of islands does apparently need to retain the ability to wipe out one third of the urban population of humankind, as a defence against something undefined – possibly people we invade getting too annoyed about it – and in order to increase our “influence” in the World. As we plainly have less influence than the Germans, who don’t feel this need for the power of obliteration, I do not quite see how this works. Nor do I see Pakistan, which does have nuclear weapons, as very influential. Nor do I quite understand how our influence can be increased by possessing something under effective American control. But there you are.
Anyway, the Lib Dems have come to the intellectually scintillating conclusion that we do need this world shattering power, but we don’t need it on Wednesday or Thursday afternoons or on Saturday mornings, which will be cheaper. Brilliant, and plainly does not dodge any big ethical or practical questions at all.
ss
Now come to think of it, I should have guessed.
It was Zorro, Ben.
More bullshit:
“The [unelected] Palestinian president can tell his skeptical public that the decision to resume peace negotiations was made from a position of Palestinian strength – not weakness.”
http://www.haaretz.com/
A position of Palestinian strength? When did that happen?
Netanyahu says:
“Our negotiating partners will have to MAKE CONCSESSIONS that enable us to preserve our security and crucial national interests,”
How many more concessions are the Palestinians expected to make?
Israel, however, will not make any concessions.
Jews only outposts and settlements (apartheid) will continue to be expanded in the occupied territories while “peace talks” take place in Washington (of all places).
No wonder that violence erupts in the Muslim world over this on-going festering wound.
“It was Zorro, Ben.”
My mistake. I figured two masked guys indicated a partnership. Who’s the other one, mini-me-Zorro?
Stop this vicious misleading of the poor chap who had asked a simple question, enough of obfuscations, Zoro was at the time in Mexico city.
Be, in all probability it was spider man, who was put up to it by Catpain America, who probably could not have done it without the aiding and abetting of the Superman who uncovered the skunk-works of the Penguin and his partner the the Joker, and found the mask and handed over to LR.
(yo why did you ask the question in the first place?)
I was trying to identify our own super-heroes, Fedup.
” SMASH ! POW ! Holy bat-guano Batman, did you see that sentence ending in a preposition?”
rofl thanks for the laugh Ben
Jon to be honest. If you were honest and you said politely I don’t like Islam, or I don’t believe in Islam.
I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
If you liked Islam, and you believed in it, you would be Muslim.
What I take issue with is the hypocrisy and dishonsty of your statements.
Muslims judge by Islam.
Shariya courts are courts where Muslims judge themselves by Islam, what they believe in.
What is your problem with that?
If you don’t like it, don’t go to a shariya court for your judgements.
Simple.
It gets hypocritical when you say something like, “I am not attacking Islam, I am just attacking the rule in the Quran about how inheritance can be divided, or the divorce laws in the Quran, that part of the Quran isn’t Islam, it is Islamism.
http://quran.com/
Here is a online translation of the Quran. Read it. I am sure you will find parts of it you like, others you might not like. I don’t mind if you don’t believe in it, the fact that 1/4 of the planet does believe in it means 3/4 don’t. That is ok, I don’t demand that you say you like it all.
What I don’t like is the hypocrisy of saying, “all those bits about love, kindness are great, but only they are Islam, the other bits that talk about crime and punishments, they are Islamism, they are not part of Islam”.
That just seems like hypocrisy to me.
Muslims believe the entire Quran is the spoken word of God. don’t you think it is silly to say, “I like peaceful Muslims that only practice the parts of the book I like”, “The ones that follow the other bits that talk about things I don’t like, well they are not really Muslims, they are Islamists”.
I repeat I didn’t have any problems with you disagreeing with me. If you said what you did, without hypcrisy and dishonesty and others here did exactly that, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it.
Anyway, I think I have wasted enough of my ramadhan here. So bye all, I might be back after eid.
Meh, Fedup, I think you’re running out of things to say. There’s a whole bunch of preaching to the choir; yes, Israel’s behaviour is sometimes dreadful.
You’ve said, essentially, that there is no such thing as anti-Jewish racism. This is nonsense unfortunately (still). I sense that you are trying to compensate for Islamophobia – which I agree is a very real phenomenon – by diminishing the wrongs committed by the oppressed or against the oppressor. Part of the tradition of the broad liberal/left is to be as even-handed as one can, such that every man, woman and child is afforded the same basic rights. That means that Israelis should get those rights too, even given the history of the region.
I think you are prescribing the wrong advice by reaching for Islamist solutions, and this is especially odd considering – at a very late stage in the debate – you reveal yourself not to be religious at all. I think if you were to familiarise yourself with various critiques of capitalism, you’d see a whole new range of potential solutions.
Jon; Have you been in contact with Clark?
Suhayl said:
You actually made me laugh out loud. I need to practice insulting people with kindness. People were suggesting collective nouns for trolls a few threads back, I would like to suggest ‘a tedium of trolls’. The faux outrage over Mary’s posts is so tedious, I’m starting to look back fondly on Apostate and co.
Jon:
Keep up the good work. I reckon being a mod around these parts has to be one of the toughest modding jobs on the internet. For a variety of reasons the mods seem to cop it from everyone on this site.
CheebaCow, thanks.
Ben Franklin – not recently, although I saw his posts a week or so ago: he was being kept busy with a spare cat and various software installations (at least one of which was playing up). Say hi to him for me if you get in touch!
Ben and Jon. Clark is not busy with any cat, the cat is now living at mine.
He’s busy with computers and himself.
Jon; He’s not answering emails. I hope he hasn’t moved on due to the current tone.
BTW; Let me add to CC’s royal salute on your efforts to keep it fair but readable.
Nevermind; Thanks. I’ve been a little worried about the old boy. Give him my regards.
Well done to Phil Mickelson. He seems a really happy man with a loving wife and children. Hope Craig has enjoyed watching it.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/68869000/jpg/_68869642_018718540-1.jpg
“Hope Craig has enjoyed watching it.”
Are you speaking to us, the gallery, or directly to Craig? I couldn’t be more endearing myself if i tried for a month full of Sundays. I’ll try harder though 😉
Such gracefulness is not consistent however, by my observations. I do wonder why?
Btw Mary i enjoyed the Newfoundland joke. There’s some objectivity for you.
And i want to give Arsalan some objectivity too if i should find the right level of inclination.
Meantime Jon thanks for pointing out that Fedup has run out of things to say. He’s one, or maybe even two, that i have very happily learnt to PassBy.
Rupert Diamond and Mark Robinson, two British men born in 1944, have been killed in a helicopter incident in the Lovozersky region of the Kola peninsula in Russia, 90 miles from Murmansk, along with their Russian interpreter, born in 1960. They were on a fishing trip.
As far as I know, the only newspaper that’s named the British men has been the Moscow News.
Perhaps you didn’t know that Craig likes golf. Try this search. Were you here in 2011?
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/?s=golf
[Mod/Jon: removed side-swipe at another poster]
Not me guv! – Dearlove on a sabbatical – getting away from “organising a few assassinations.” –
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2372119/Ex-MI6-boss-makes-sensational-threat-reveal-secrets-Iraq-dodgy-dossier.html
Dearlove quarterbacks this crap: Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Volume 23, Number 1, March 2010
When the World Trade Center in New York was attacked by terrorists, a torrent of words poured out of the Western media to explain what had motivated this act by interpreting its world historic meaning. The disaster was quickly associated with the many incidents of Palestinian suicide bombings, and experts identified tendencies in Islam, in particular its concept of ‘martyrdom’, in which dying and killing were combined and sanctified. There was an ‘Islamic culture of death’—so we were told—that spawned this uniquely horrific violence. Much has been said in the media about Islam and its history: Holy war (jihad) is central to Islamic doctrine; Muslims reject the values of liberal democracy for religious reasons—and especially the separation of ‘religion’ from ‘politics’ and a commitment to peace.
In brief, their civilization was premodern, irrational and violent. Most of these post 9/11 stories about Islamic doctrine and history were mixtures of half-truths—but then their purpose was not to enlighten but to characterize a hated enemy who had come too close for comfort, and to justify striking out at him in his home.
A poem for Helen Thomas RIP who stood up and spoke out.
For Helen
by Paul Lojeski / July 21st, 2013
Like bad news
in a war telegram
word of your
death spread.
The powerful,
the “chosen”
you pissed
off rejoiced,
spitting vile
scorn upon
your indomitable
spirit, a spirit
that defied
their hate
and lies
for decades.
You stood
up to the nationalist
bullies and their
fake histories
and they banished
you for it. No
matter, though:
you knew the truth
of your interior life,
the morality of it.
You will be
remembered
in the history
of voices who
cannot be silenced,
recounted by the
future, where truth
shall still live.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/07/for-helen/1
Flaming Mary
“Perhaps you didn’t know that Craig likes golf.”
In that case here’s a golfer’s joke (true story):
“Johnny Carson from the Tonight show asking Barbara Nicklaus how she encourages Jack before he goes out and plays.
Barbara: ” I just kiss his balls ”
Johnny: ” Oh so that’s what keeps the putter up ”
[America being America, she sued Carson and the show and won!
———]
But, what i still want to know is how you can (appear to) be soooooo caring and sensitive on the one hand, and on the other, call-in the competence of all Koreans by alluding to an accident (the cause of which remains unknown) in which 300 souls miraculously survived, petition God to Damn 9the whole of) America (usually Amerika), and suggesting there’s ill-gotten gains in “them thar Krishnamurti hills”. Only you can help me reconcile. I am a student of life, first and last. The World is in our Minds. So please engage and help me to reconcile. It may help resolve your perception of my being ‘acidic’ — i shall examine that too.
Hi Craig
I hope you are getting better and will soon be completely recovered from your illness.
1. This is mainly to your commentators and not to yourself. Lynton Crosby and cigarette packaging is just a joke. Labour are making themselves look ridiculous on this issue. Give it a rest please. PS I am not a labour voter but favour a lib-lab pact rather than con-dem.
2. The trade unions are under heavy attack from Cameron and his party and easily swayed by this nonsense is middle England in the form of robot-brained morons who read and believe the Daily Mail etc (or so it seems to me).
Yes the unions have failed in the past but now things have gone far too far the other way. This can be seen in the way the BANKERS (rather than Len McCluskey and his ilk) WRECKED THE ECONOMY and are still holding the country to ransom. Conservatives are doing nothing about it which is hardly surprising since they are the party of rich bankers.
Could the stories of ordinary workers (and their exploitation) be told in some way, in particular the stories of those who work in “public” or “privatised” services such as health and elderly care and also those who work in retail for the highly profitable corporations? The hard work, the low pay, the exploitation, the struggle to survive, the abuse from all sides.
A journalist or skilled writer such as yourself could take on that task (if your health permits). Because these people don’t want to tell their stories openly because of fear of losing their jobs and any meagre wages they earn. But some sort of investigative journalism could do it and could sway the political climate back.
Just an idea which I hope you may consider. You have written excellent books about wrongdoing in foreign countries. Could you turn your attention to this country now?
bob
“A poem for Helen Thomas RIP who stood up and spoke out.”
Anything passes for poetry these days, as long as you shorten the lines. Give me the long lines of Kahlil Gibran anytime!
[Mod/Jon: attack on another poster, removed]
On parle toujours mal quand on n’a rien à dire.
Voltaire
Ben, i thought this might interest you:
http://somethingelsereviews.com/2013/07/17/deep-cuts-led-zeppelin-solo-projects-from-robert-plant-jimmy-page-and-john-paul-jones/
Saw Jimmy Page today, chilling out. Gonna look out for for him or Robert Plant live when i can. He said reunion concert wasn’t gonna happen. But am curious whats your view of these guys recent visit to Obama’s White House?
When i saw that pic of Dylan there with a ribbon and piece of shiny metal around his neck/chest and Obama’s arm around him, i thought Jokerman!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XSvsFgvWr0
Now i still call that fuckin’ poetry, not that dissidents voice pretentious crap.
Sweet summer’s night everyone! Summer Wine comes to mind!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OEron4rXfk
I would like to award today’s “Foul-mouth Award” to Fedup, whose post at 16h02 today contained the following:
wankers
fucked-up
little shit
shag fuckers (sic)
ziofuckwits (twice)
shag
fuck knows what
fucking
shit
fucking time.
Pourquoi est-il la bête sont si pleins de confiance, tandis que les intelligents sont pleins de doutes?