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.
I saw a news piece this morning on a couple who were part of the joint action in the High Court against the housing benefit cuts aka the ‘bedroom tax’. Lord Justice Laws has thrown it out but Richard Stein of Leigh, Day & Co Solicitors says that there will be an appeal.
This is them speaking post the High Court decision.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23503095
The wife has spina bifida and sleeps in one small bedroom in a special hospital type bed with a special mattress. The other bedroom, also small, accommodates her husband, who is her full time carer, and all the equipment needed for her care. The couple are having £14 a week taken away from them on the basis that they have a spare room.
The judge in the case was Lord Justice Laws. Shame on him.
He is a ‘Visitor’ *whatever that means) at Cumberland Lodge, another Establishment nest of preciousness located in Windsor Great Park, Patron HM Queen. The bedrooms there are massive and one of them could accommodate a dozen spina bifida victims.
http://www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/
The mob in charge http://www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/aboutus/People/trustees
The accommodation http://www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/venue/Accommodation+New
We are now living under a very cruel system.
I, too, am glad you have spared us your diatribe On Life, the Universe and Everything, Komodo, not least because it would have turned into On Jews, Israel and Zionism from about page 2 onwards.
Putting aside your idiotic comparison with Mein Kampf for a moment, do share with us some of those “obvious truths” contained within it. Is it the bit where he finds out who’s responsible for all the problems afflicting Germany?
Kaczynski’s manifesto is not a rant. You may disagree with it, as I do with much of it concerning de-industrialization, but he has the modern left bang to rights, which is, of course, why you dismiss it as a rant!
Jemand –
Clue for us here:
Ostensibly, the manifesto is a strong critique of contemporary techno-capitalist society. However, if you took a knife to the text, divided it into little passages, you would discover that half of them bend far leftward and could be read aloud without protest in Harvard yard, while the other half bend far rightward and could only be read aloud without protest at Hillsdale College.
So, you have passages such as this one, which would send heads nodding in every humanities department in America:
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world.
But then comes this curveball:
One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.
Like many on the Left, Kaczynski blames technology and ‘the system’ for the sad state of the earth and its inhabitants, yet he suggests that the contemporary Left (the “oversocialized” Left, as Ted puts it) is in fact the system’s most malformed, though logical outgrowth.
At first, I couldn’t recognize the motive behind the manifesto. Its politics seemed too conflicted. Then I noticed a brief mention in Kaczynski’s Wikipedia article that ties him to the anarcho-primitive tradition, and suddenly the text became more philosophically cohesive.
More:
http://technaverbascripta.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/text-network-and-corpus-analysis-of-the-unabomber-manifesto/
Sarah Colborne of the PSC on ‘G4S must be halted in its tracks’
With the BBC currently considering bids for an £80 million security contract, pressure is growing on the broadcaster not to award the deal to G4S.
G4S is seen as a key international target for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement due to its involvement in Israeli prison services and other contracts.
/..
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/135957
“Absolutely everything he writes on it could be applied here to the Murrayistas, whether they be talking of the Gaza ‘concentration camp’, signing petitions to stop birds having their wings clipped, going to protests dressed in orange jumpsuits, or Mary bemoaning various “poor souls”. It could have been written about John Goss, for one!” — Anon
Clearly Anon believes that compassion is a bad thing. We must work to get rid of it.
There seems to have been no clarity on the very first question: Is propaganda a means or an end?
It is a means and must therefore be judged with regard to its end. It must consequently take a form calculated to support the aim which it serves. It is also obvious that its aim can vary in importance from the standpoint of general need, and that the inner value of the propaganda will vary accordingly. The aim for which we were fighting the War was the loftiest, the most overpowering, that man can conceive: it was the freedom and independence of our nation, the security of our future food supply, and-our national honor; a thing which, despite all contrary opinions prevailing today, nevertheless exists, or rather should exist, since peoples without honor have sooner or later lost their freedom and independence, which in turn is only the result of a higher justice, since generations of rabble without honor deserve no freedom. Any man who wants to be a cowardly slave can have no honor) or honor itself would soon fall into general contempt.
Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf, VI, ‘War Propaganda’
Don’t think you’ll have to try too hard to agree with that, Anon….
And no, I doubt if my rants would even mention Israel. I focus on it here to annoy and counter the likes of you.
US Incarceration Rates in Decline –
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/us/us-prison-populations-decline-reflecting-new-approach-to-crime.html
Go figure …
“He is a ‘Visitor’ *whatever that means) at Cumberland Lodge, another Establishment nest of preciousness located in Windsor Great Park, Patron HM Queen. The bedrooms there are massive and one of them could accommodate a dozen spina bifida victims.”
Yes, Mary, and your bedroom could sleep two homeless people. Your car could be used as an ambulance to convey injured persons to hospital. Why, your house could even be knocked down and a surgery built in place of it. Now I’ve told the follwers of the Craig Murray blog about this terrible injustice, I feel so much better about myself.
https://twitter.com/dbbandit/status/361272301276233728
@Komodo. 12 06am
Re Kackinsky
“…torrent of kack.”
When I try to read that stuff I realise that, like poetry, it needs to vocalised. Plain reading it misses so much, but you wouldn’t want to do that voice for too long. You’d scare yourself.
As Hitler said, Dreoilin:
…where the destiny and existence of a people are at stake, all obligation toward beauty ceases…And since these criteria of humanitarianism and beauty must be eliminated from the struggle, they are also inapplicable to propaganda.. (ibid)
I’m sure Anon agrees.
Thanks, Sofia. Bit like the Qu’ran, maybe? No, maybe not.
Not the title of a film but a story about two worlds. One – abject poverty and slum dwelling and the other – greed, corruption, theft, exploitation and rich living.
The tycoon, the dictator’s wife and the $2.5bn Guinea mining deal
[..]
In years past, during the dying days of Lansana Conté, the army general who ruled Guinea with an iron grip for almost all of his quarter-century tenure, an Israeli-French billionaire could be spotted similarly holding court at Conakry’s once popular Novotel. Beny Steinmetz, one of the wealthiest men in the world, came here, sources say, with a clear mission. “Beny Steinmetz wanted to make sure he was the closest white man to President Conté,” said one former presidential aide of the president.
The tycoon also wanted, and successfully obtained, the rights to mine Simandou – a mountain range in Guinea’s remote south-east containing millions of tonnes of iron ore of the highest grade. According to some estimates, the ore from Simandou could generate around $140bn over the next 25 years, more than doubling the country’s GDP.
[..]
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/30/africa-guinea-mining-bsgr-steinmetz
I hope the FBI hang the Israeli-French Beny out to dry.
Ian Cobain is a brilliant journalist.
Komodo, those parts you quote don’t appear to be contradictory unless you hold firm Left or Right political sentiments. The fact that TK didn’t, and you acknowledge that in your closing comment, indicates that he did indeed hold a coherent view of how he saw humanity’s predicament.
While I have a degree in science and am an enthusiastic user and advocate of technological solutions, I hold the consumer-industrial paradigm of the Western lifestyle in utter contempt for what it has become and fails to address in terms of human destiny and purpose.
Say, you don’t know where I can pick up a few hundred kilos of nitrogen fertiliser, do you? Anyone?
@ Jemand.
I despise loathe is a much more suitable term of utterance.
Soryy to be a piss ant.
Jemand, I’d say he held, like most of us, a confused picture of the human predicament. The comment isn’t mine, but from the link. It’s a POV…and just as guilty of categorising K, as K is of categorising, for the convenience of his preconceptions, people he doesn’t agree with. Labels.
Who said this?
What, for example, would we say about a poster that was supposed to advertise a new soap and that described other soaps as ‘good’?
We would only shake our heads.
Exactly the same applies to political advertising.
Clue: [ibid]
He’s a mine of information on the topic. Should be required reading in yeshivas.
“Clearly Anon believes that compassion is a bad thing. We must work to get rid of it.”
For all her dislike of Mary, Dreoilin is in fact far more similar to her than she would like to think, as the absurd statement above illustrates.
Needless to say, Dreoilin, questioning what motivates the particular brand of compassion you choose to display on these boards does not mean I think compassion is a bad thing, or want to get rid of it, but it does allow you to promote yourself as the compassionate one and feel better about yourself.
Let’s see what Kaczynski has to say about this:
“Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals.”
Back to the comparison with Mary, her textbook response to my reply to her above would be something along the lines of “Clearly Anon wants to get rid of disabled people”.
Nothing wrong with holding apparently contradictory views. Mark of an intelligent person, someone once said. Uncompromising supporters of Israel/Palestine take note.
Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own,
Anything wrong with that? Left adopts mainstream position, yes? Accepts consensus, no?
and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle.
Bit missing here: should add “when it violates that principle”, I think. There’s not much point even for a comic stereotype lefty (they tend to be intellectuals, you know, and think about things, lefties) in accusing the RSPCA of intentional cruelty to animals, is there?
Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals.”
With which, as a mainstream member of mainstream society, you have already admitted you agree.
You’re floundering.
What Dreoilin linked.
“questioning what motivates the particular brand of compassion you choose to display on these boards does not mean …”
How many “brands” of compassion are there?
Could you enumerate them please?
And I don’t “dislike” Mary. I think she could “unbend” a little, now and then. Which is completely different from “disliking”.
” I focus on it [Israel] here to annoy and counter the likes of you.”
So there we have it, ladies and gents. Komodo’s obsession with Israel is all a show, to annoy me (it doesn’t, though it probably annoys lurkers) and counter me (I’ve never expressed any support one way or the other).
Flaming June
30 Jul, 2013 – 12:29 pm
http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/2013/06/14/scandal-of-greater-manchesters-hidden-homeless-forced-to-seek-shelter-in-caves/#comment-52464
Don’t respond to him/her Dreoilin. He/she and others are only here to disrupt and divide.
I think that it is some kind of badge of honour to be picked out by name by one of these trolls.
…only here to disrupt and divide.
Seems to be unifying these days, FJ. Law of unintended consequences. By lumping people together as a common enemy, you get…a common enemy. Hitler missed that point, too.
don’t know if anyone has been following this:
Zimbabwe voters’ roll ‘in hands of suspect Israeli company’
A secretive Israel-based firm – accused of manipulating past elections in
the region – is alleged to be involved in managing Zimbabwe’s voters’
roll…
Eddie Cross, a Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MP
who has proved to be well informed on security matters in the past, told the
Mail & Guardian that he had been informed by security sources that the
company, Nikuv International Projects, is working on the roll at Defence
House, the headquarters of the Zimbabwe Defence Force. The MDC also alleged
that Nikuv was a front for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, although
it offered no evidence to support the claim…
On its website Nikuv says that the company focuses on projects for
“governmental sectors” and initiated its activities in Africa in 1994 in
Nigeria. It had “since expanded its activities to Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana,
Botswana and Angola in IT and additional areas like agriculture and
security”….
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-12-00-zim-voters-roll-in-hands-of-suspect-israeli-company
Thanks Someone. Even those owning their homes or renting do not feel secure.
1 in 4 in early fifties worried about losing home
Richard Brooks \ Age UK
Published on 30 July 2013
Nearly a quarter of people in their early 50s are worried they’ll be forced to leave their homes because they won’t be able to keep up their mortgage or rent payments according to Age UK’s Economic Tracker.
The figure from a poll of 971 people aged 50 or over across the UK is a barometer of the financial confidence of a demographic group, who would traditionally be expected to be at the peak of their earning power. Instead the tracker poll shows only 38% of people aged 50 plus say the future looks good for them.
Age UK believes the results paint a worrying picture of a generation of ‘tomorrow’s pensioners’ beset with financial worries, including potentially finding themselves homeless.
Concern over staying in work
A key concern for many is keeping or finding a job. Nearly half of all unemployed men and women aged between 50 and 64 (46 per cent – 191,000 people ) have been out of work for more than a year with reducing prospects of finding a job despite being expected to work longer before they receive a State Pension.
Research shows that it is harder for someone aged 50 and over to get back into the work place than for any other age group. Studies also show that they are more likely to be made redundant when compared with workers aged between 29 and 49.
/..
http://www.ageuk.org.uk/latest-news/1-in-4-in-early-fifties-worried-about-losing-home/
Mary, I only respond to them when I’m in the mood. For my own entertainment really.
Good point by Komodo.
Look at this. It’s enough to make one throw up.
“Mock The Poor — The Conservative Media Solution To Poverty”
“As fast food workers in 7 cities walked the picket line fighting for better wages and working conditions the conservative media turned its focus towards a solution to help lift up our working men and women out of poverty — mock them.
“To respond to the day long strike, Fox trotted out Richard Berman, failing to identify him as a highly paid consultant to the food and beverage industry. He proceeded to threaten fast food workers, claiming if they demanded incomes allowing them to live above the poverty line, the only solution would be to replace them with iPads.”
More http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/07/30/mock-the-poor-the-conservative-media-solution-t/195125
13:00 GMT: “In a twist of irony, a US senator is lobbying for today to be declared ‘National Whistleblower Day’ in honor of the revolutionary-era Continentall Congress’ very first whistleblower protection law on July 30, 1778.
“Anything we can do to uphold whistle-blowers and their protection is the right thing to keep government responsible,” Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley said on Monday. “If you know laws are being violated and money’s being misspent, you have a patriotic duty to report it.”
http://rt.com/usa/manning-verdict-live-updates-770/
Verdict 17:00 GMT
Komodo, you are misunderstanding what the author is getting at. His analysis is of the psychology of modern leftism – it is not a discussion of what ought to constitute right or wrong in a society. Most of us – one would hope the vast majority of us – believe that war is wrong, helping the less fortunate is good, and so on. What the modern left does is to hijack these ideas and try to adopt them as its own, focuses its indignation selectively along political lines, and, believing it has established moral superiority, characterises dissenting views as cruel, inhumane, lacking compassion. Witness Dreoilin’s reply to me. She accuses me of wanting to “get rid of compassion”, because I dare challenge some of the phony compassion on display here (I say phony, because as has been noted it always follows selected political lines). Note, the fall-back is always on established norms – ie, compassion is a good thing, I am showing compassion, Anon challenges me, he therefore hates compassion. We see this time and again in the comments here. For example, anything not wholly critical of Israel is seen as supporting the murder of Palestinians. There is no middle-ground – you either conform to their twisted morality, or you do not, and are consequently an imperialist, racist, fascist, whatever. And I would add that this is why the modern left in general hates Christianity, because it sees the established moral code therein as a rival that must be adapted and distorted to fit leftist agendas.
Poor brave young Bradley Manning. I feel so sorry for him. I think we all know that Judge Lind will take a pound of his flesh on behalf of the evil US EmPyre.
Bradley Manning trial verdict – live coverage
LiveJudge to rule on the case of Bradley Manning, accused of ‘aiding the enemy’ by leaking military secrets to WikiLeaks
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/30/bradley-manning-trial-verdict-live