Russia does not have a functioning criminal justice system at all, in the sense of a trial mechanism aimed at determining innocence or guilt. Exactly as in Uzbekistan, the conviction rate in criminal trials is over 99%. If the prosecutors, who are inextricably an arm of the executive government, want to send you to jail, there is absolutely no judicial system to protect you. The judges are purely there for show.
When critics of Putin like Alexei Navalny are convicted, therefore, we have absolutely no reassurance that the motivation behind the prosecution or the assessment of guilt was genuine. Which is not to say that Navalny is innocent; I am in no position to judge. People are complex. I sacrificed my own pretty decent career to the cause of human rights, but in my personal and family life I was by no means the most moral of individuals. I see no reason for it to be impossible that all of Navalny’s excellent political work did not co-exist with a fatal weakness. But his criticisms of Putin made him a marked man, who the state was out to get, and the most probable explanation – especially as prosecutors had looked at the allegations before and decided not to proceed – is that he is suffering for his criticisms of the President rather than a genuine offence.
It fascinates me that the Western media view the previous decision by the prosecutors not to proceed as evidence the case is politically motivated against Navalny; but fail to draw the same conclusion from precisely the same circumstance in the Assange case.
David Ward MP has not been sent to jail. He has however had the Lib Dem whip removed, which under Clegg’s leadership perhaps he ought to consider an honour. It is rather a commonplace sentiment that it is a terribly sad thing, that their community having suffered dreadfully in the Holocaust, the European Jews involved in founding the state of Israel went on themselves to inflict terrible pain and devastation on the Palestinians in the Nakba. Both the Holocaust and the Nakba were horrific events of human suffering. For this not startling observation, David Ward is removed from the Liberal Democrats. He also stated that, with its ever increasing number of racially specific laws, its walls and racially restricted roads, Israel is becoming an apartheid state. That is so commonplace even Sky News’ security correspondent Sam Kiley said it a few months ago, without repercussion. In Russia you cannot say Putin is corrupt; in the UK you cannot say Israeli state policy is malign. Neither national state can claim to uphold freedom of speech. Meanwhile, of course, David Cameron announces plans to place filters on the internet access of all UK households.
In the United States, the House of Representatives failed by just 12 votes to make illegal the mass snooping by the NSA which was not widely publicised until Edward Snowden’s revelations. What Snowden said was so important that almost half the country’s legislators wished to act on his information. Yet the executive wish to pursue him and remove all his freedom for the rest of his life, as they are doing to Bradley Manning for Manning’s exposure of war crimes and extreme duplicity.
Around this complex of issues and the persons of Manning, Navalny, Snowden and Assange there is a kind of new ideological competition between the governments of Russia, the US and UK as to which is truly promoting the values of human freedom. The answer is none of them are. All these states are, largely in reaction to the liberating possibilities of the internet, promoting a concerted attack on freedom of speech and liberty of thought.
States are the enemy. We are the people.
Kempe 28 Jul, 2013 – 6:28 pm
“very different from proving that it WAS done”
True. So one journalist, possibly with dynamite, dies suspiciously. Could be coincidence.
I wonder if anyone has studied to see if ‘opposing the state’ is statistically over represented amongst unusual deaths. It would be an interesting yardstick.
My guess is that the video of Hastings’ crash has been speeded up to make it look like the car was going faster than it was.
As to deaths in crashes public figures are much more likely to die than ordinary individuals. It does need some thorough research but Hastings’ death was convenient, to say the least, for those he was investigating. Likewise Bob Cryer’s death was convenient for the US military at Menwith Hill. How dare Bob Cryer, an English MP, criticise the US for having a base on English soil without parliamentary approval?
I was wondering when you would chime-in John. Now where is Trowbridge? 🙂
Kris Kristofferson – The Circle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GosKP_HdhGo
lyrics
http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-circle-lyrics-kris-kristofferson.html
“As to deaths in crashes public figures are much more likely to die than ordinary individuals.”
What do you base that on john?
Early with the sounds, eh Villager?
Jack Bruce showing his complex bass riffs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnlCU_lzYvM
Clapton, Sheryl Crow and David Sanborn.
Make sure you don’t miss Sanborn’s solo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BSaAiWnBHY
Oh, I see you didn’t intend to entertain, Villager. Sorry.
How many times does an unlikely accident need to occur before it is accepted as having occurred in the eventuality of it actually occurring?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths
@Ben
Mississippi John Hurt, where it all began.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoFWtohnz9E
@ Kempe :
“Any evidence that Hasting’s car was actually hacked?”
__________________
Shame on you for asking for something as banal as evidence, Kempe!
Who needs evidence when you have…”counter-intuitive research skills” (cf Ben Franklin)? 🙂
@ Ben Franklin
“I could go on, and on and on….”
_______________
And on past form, you almost certainly will…..
Spare us!
This from a Medialens contributor is a e-mail which has been sent to Channel 4 News. They and Sky News have been putting out the most awful propaganda against North Korea. I have not seen any BBC Newa.
It’s probably much more important that people are prepared to believe and indeed act on their belief, that the US, its agents or familiars etc would whack someone like Hastings, than it is to prove that he was in fact whacked.
Sure, some will argue that definitive proof of Hastings having been whacked ought to play heavily into the former project, but Chomsky and many others have been exposing the difference between state claims and actions for years, with little noticeable impact on these states.
There’s an interesting discussion of these different approaches at Medialens:
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1374994523.html
and in the original article here:
http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1365-some-bewildered-clarifications
@ Phil :
““a final figure of 47.5 percent”
Bail ins, the new bail out. The laws are being put in place:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/20/us-eu-banks-idUSBRE94J0AC20130520”
________________
So you would prefer the ordinary taxpayer to continue taking the hit in the event of any future bank bail-outs?
Interesting.
As usual our favorite advocate for the State, has nothing substantive to provide. But he is the’ best heckler ‘ known to the world of stand-up comedians.
The implication of Mr Ed Murray’s email, brought to our attention by the Frequent Poster at 20h54, would seem to be that North Korea should not be criticised by the western media because of the existence of food banks and Trident in the UK.
An interesting – but rather silly – point of view.
@ Ben Franklin
“As usual our favorite advocate for the State, has nothing substantive to provide”
_________
And what do you have to provide by way of evidence?
Oh, I know – “counter-intuitive research skills”!
redundant heckling.
Habby performs the function here of op-ed columns. Every event which might reasonably be expected to undermine states’ propaganda is twisted, turned, and sanitised until it can be squeezed back into the propaganda hole.
Don’t care if they’re square pegs, round pegs, oblong pegs, whatever. They’ll all fit the same hole.
The op-ed’s job is simply to ensure they fit the hole, no matter what!
Don’t even matter how much you have to embarrass yourself in the process. The money takes care of that.
“It’s hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it.”
“They’ll all fit the same hole.”
I see what you’re saying. ‘Sphincter says, what?’
Jemand:
“So it’s not hard to see that donations were not just to “charities” but to organisations that promote Islam and the interests of Muslims.”
The entire Taliban, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are financed by massive ‘charitable donations’ from Saudi Arabia.
In this day and age it is hardly surprising to learn that Muslims donate more than others. Can we know how much of this is going towards fighting Jihad in various conflicted areas?
In history it is probably true that Christians have killed more fellow human beings than any other religion. With the concept of Jihad (and with GWB having called for a War on Terror and turned Al Qaida from a limited organisation into a phenomenon), its now the turn of the Muslims. Moreover because of the Wahhabi/Salafist divide with those more willing to embrace secularism at least at a political level (eg Turkey), and because of the Sunni and Shia (and others) divide they are also killing each other in compounded numbers. There is undoubtedly a problem within the scriptures that lends itself to divisiveness and conflict. Christianity as a whole may have exhausted itself and even ‘matured’, its Islam’s turn now. Though i reject all so-called organised religions (you cannot organise the Truth), Asiatic religions still have a healthier attitude in the negation of killing other human beings, but they are doing it too, although not quite so spectacularly.
“The government said it would begin a pilot in November to impose visa restrictions on six Commonwealth nations, including India and Nigeria, even though David Cameron poured cold water on the scheme in June after it provoked uproar in Delhi.
Luxury goods retailers have denounced the plan as an “insulting deterrent” to wealthy tourists, which will hit sales and damage London’s reputation. They are urging the government to drop the pilot, saying the restrictions will damage their business if Commonwealth tourists – particularly Nigerians, now the sixth biggest spenders on luxury goods in the UK – are put off.”
_______________
What an egregiously silly argument, and I’m glad that the Frequent Poster, who brought it to our attention, agrees with me.
This entry deposit is unlikely to put off wealthy Nigerians from coming to London and buying luxury goods. They have the money to pay for the bond and have no intention of illegally staying on in the UK.
And even if it did put them off, surely we should not be defending the right of wealthy Nigerians to come to London to spend their ill-gotten gains, nor the right of expensive London stores to relieve those wealthy Nigerians of their ill-gotten gains?
Is there a Zionist angle to all of this?
@ Herbie:
Abuse and supposition are no substitute for argument and evidence.
A truth which some of the Eminences – including, unfortunately, you – still have to learn.
And now, stop bickering.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Improbable_things_happen
But not general agreement on this blog.
say, what?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TwYVWQsXmQ
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)
26 Jul, 2013 – 10:25 pm
“who on this blog comments on political,, social or human rights abuses in Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, North Korea, Venezuela, Ecuador, Zimbabwe, South Africa and various corrupt and despotic African countries?”
Habbabkuk, if you want to start a discussion about political, social or human rights abuses in ANY country please do so.
Perhaps there could meaningful intercourse on the subject.
The ball is in your court if you want to serve.
@ Doug Scorgie
No, Doug, not trying to start a discussion. I was just wondering why the Eminences are so vocal about human rights in the US and the west in general (and human rights abuses perpetrated by these countries elsewhere) but remain rather silent when it comes to human rights abuses perpetrated by other countries.
Have you any idea why this should be so?
My post yesterday about Agent Cameron’s intention to impose a tourist bond was purely a extract from a Financial Times article, ie a statement of fact.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/07/navalny-ward-assange-snowden-and-the-attack-on-free-speech/comment-page-2/#comment-420684
I expressed no opinion on the imposition of the bond, contrary to what the Resident Invigilator is claiming above.