The Tony Blair House Journal (editor Alan Rusbridger) reports on Kanye West’s disgusting private performance for the Kazakh dictator and his family, and takes a sideswipe at David Cameron for visiting that country.
But peculiarly they fail to mention that Tony Blair receives US $4 million a year as a consultant to the worker murdering Kazakh dictator, and that Alistair Campbell and Jonathon Powell as well as Blair visit to give this support – which has included a behind the scenes campaign to help Nazarbaev win the Nobel Peace Prize, fortunately with no result to date.
I think it was in one of the letters from the Syrian Speaker of their Parliament to the US Congress.
“The U.N. inquiry will only try to establish whether chemical weapons were used, not who used them. Sellstrom’s team is made up of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the World Health Organization.” [quote from link below].
The Syrian Govt seemed to be claiming that it was the USA who circumscribed the previous inquiry in this specific way. If so, that would seem an odd thing on to insist (unless, of course, you knew something that would be likely to incriminate your won ‘side’). Whether or not that’s changed now wrt this new inquiry, I don’t know.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/08/13/syria-crisis-un-chemical-idINDEE97C08220130813
The UN guys were mandated to find out if CW were used, not who used them. This was agreed by the UN, and laid down in stone by the UNSC later. All this was stated by Ban’s spokesman at a recent press conference.
Ban Ki-moon reiterated all that today, when asked. He said it was “up to others” to determine who used them. Since he said “US” instead of “UN” at one stage, and corrected himself, I wondered if he wasn’t slipping us subliminal messages.
He sounded about as authoritative as a – kitten. There must be video of it somewhere – youtube probably.
Fred that is one of the meanings which is pushed by the medjia, however anyone with a better understanding of the Arabic language would agree with me.
The stories about Mujahideen, is just a story, however the database is more likely to be called Qaeda, and the chap who chose it probably did not care much about the Arabs who would be laughing their tits off, but was more concerned with the Western English speaking audiences; “Q” is a scary letter in English.
====
Thanks Suhayl, that is a heck of an analysis.
====
Thanks expat, I miss Cryptonym too. Let us hope he is still reading this blog.
“Fred that is one of the meanings which is pushed by the medjia, however anyone with a better understanding of the Arabic language would agree with me.”
Anyone who watched the Al Jazzera interview with Bin Laden made in October 2001 wouldn’t.
Definitely read this article:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36244.htm
It’s by Robert Parry, who broek some of the Iran-Contra material back in the 1980s.
“One intelligence source following the Syrian conflict told me that some U.S. analysts believe that the Syrian rebels do possess chemical weapons, possibly obtained with the help of Saudi intelligence which has been providing much of the military equipment and money for the rebels, including some of the most radical Islamist elements.
Given these various accounts – and the Syrian government’s acceptance of Russian demands that it surrender its chemical weapons – the United States may want to make a similar demand of the rebels. At least, the Obama administration might clarify what its own intelligence files contain about rebel possession of chemical weapons.” [from the article by Robert parry]
This fits in with Mark Golding’s info.
Is Prince Bandar, the Saudi ‘Chemical Ali’? Can we christen him, ‘Chemical Saudi’, or, ‘Prince Sarin’? Where is he, I wonder? Does anyone have his number?
Correction – he said it was for “others to decide whether to pursue this matter further” (regarding who used CW)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWL_xzDy1cA
‘In his autobiography Soldier, Anthony Herbert told how he reported for duty in 1965 in Saigon at the joint CIA-military Specials Operations Group. The spooks asked him to join a secret psywar program. “What they wanted me to do was to take charge of execution teams that wiped out entire families and tried to make it look as though the VC themselves had done the killing. The rationale was that other Vietnamese would see that the VC had killed another VC and would be frightened away from becoming VC themselves. Of course, the villagers would then be inclined to some sort of allegiance to our side.” ‘ [quote from article linked to below, by Doug Valentine]
Sound familiar? The Contras…? CIA-trained/designed paramilitary death squads.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36241.htm
@ Exexpat 16 Sep, 2013 – 8:56 pm
“Anger spreads faster and more broadly than joy, say computer scientists who have analysed sentiment on the Chinese Twitter-like service Weibo.”
It’s a pleasure to read Weibo — English translation — and a few similar Chinese, Korean and Japanese discussions in machine translation.
They all engage in frank discussion, ignoring exquisite political correctness, trading “a few” insults (“You are an ignorant peasant from the provinces who still believes in ghosts”) some racial, xenophobic and homophobic remarks and a good amount of humour, without getting bogged down in pages of argument over real or perceived slurs.
No idea of their moderation policies, if any. ChinaSlam (English) advises article contributors to avoid political stories, but their comment sections robustly joke about Communist Party corruption in general. It’s apparently OK provided you don’t name officials or specific instances.
I am sure you were listening to him talk in Arabic without any translations then Fred?
“I am sure you were listening to him talk in Arabic without any translations then Fred?”
I am sure there will be a surplus of videos of the interview on youtube complete with translations for anyone including yourself who doesn’t want to take my word for it.
This has been modus operandi of the CIA. I remember watching a package on TV years ago, in which the CIA spook was recanting about the poisoning of the milk in the milk tanker that was delivering milk to the Schools in Havana. Evidently killing Cuban toddlers and infants with botulism, was supposed to encourage their parents to rise up and topple Castro and his communist “regime”.
It is evident that extra judicial killing is a part and parcel of the US policies, clandestine or otherwise.
Very interesting, Suhayl. What leapt out at me was the word ‘confiscated’. The US ‘confiscated’ sarin from the heart-eating crazies.
How, exactly, did the US do this? The word has connotations of a teacher taking chewing gum from naughty kids. It also implies a fair degree of oversight, if not control.
It’s amazing how the dominant NARRATIVE (a word worth shouting!) is unraveling.
We have never been at war with Eastasia.
Perhaps fracking will release the US from their dysfunctional co-dependency on/with Saudi Arabia. Discuss.
“Perhaps fracking will release the US from their dysfunctional co-dependency on/with Saudi Arabia. Discuss.” 11:19pm, today.
Yes, I mean the USA (and even more so, the UK) need to free them/ourselves from this toxic ‘relationship’ with the Al Saud dynasty and its unholy alliance with the clerics and paramilitary death squad factories of a land that actually was not always in the thrall of nutjobs.
I’d recommend senior Reuters journalist, Andrew Hammond’s excellent book on Saudi Arabia, entitle, ‘The Islamic Utopia’ (2012, Pluto Press).
We also need to free ourselves from the toxic relationship b/w our political cadres and with Israel.
Bin Laden ? Who remembers when he was a pin-up boy for the West;
http://arbroath.blogspot.fr/2012/09/how-things-changed.html
““It is evident that extra judicial killing is a part and parcel of the US policies, clandestine or otherwise”
I thought that might make one of the “YOU HATE THE WEST” loonies pop up, but we got the Evil Dead instead !
And don’t bother with Troll 2 as it was even a worst movie than Troll 1.
Without getting too involved, we must agree to disagree.
Fact is Bin Laden was a CIA stooge that :
Also the following obituary/article in the al-Wafd, Wednesday, December 26, 2001 Vol 15 No 4633 (an Egyptian paper) published the News of Bin Laden’s Death and Funeral 10 days ago
Spaniard Bin Laden
There are stories and then there is the truth. It depends which you wish to accept, that is a choice you have to make, and no one can deny you that.
Interesting article. I do not share the writer’s optimism. Nonetheless…
‘Likud ministers finally understood that the stalemate with the Palestinians poses strategic threat to Israel’
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/diplomania/.premium-1.538474#
The U.S. has some bloody gall to think they can sit in judgement on the rest of the world, after what they did in Fallujah
Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=225_1298143681
WP and MK77
Fracking is not going to solve anything. The problem is much more pernicious than the friendship of a bunch of pederasts and the shagnasty fucking plutocrats in US. Fact that what is the oil is being traded in? It is an awfully stupid situation in which the resources that are to be found in Saudi, Iraq, Libya, …. are in fact only precursors to the fucking Fungibility of the dollar. This is further made acceptable through sheer fire power and the US force projection.
It is not that the al Saud pederasts are in fact of any consequence, they are just good boys doing anything they are told. With a view to hang onto their princely life styles and the seat of the power in that benighted land of Hijaz.
All too often the relationship between the master and servant US to al Saud errand boys is passed as a symbiotic relationship, it fucking is not! As set out in the PANC, US is engaged in fluid “alliances” with various regional actors, at this time Qatari, Saudi, Kuwaiti, Bahraini actors are the errand boys and they are aware of Saddam’s faith and Qaddaffi’s demise. These latter used to be friends of US too.
It is not the dash for the resources for the benefit of the US internal consumption, it is the dash for domination of the resources to stop the competition from easy access to these resources, which determines the growth index of the other competitors as set in the Washington DC.
Macky.8 35pm.
”…I remembered your kid brother’s problem with you using the word “narrative”, on the grounds “its not a word Craig uses much, if at all, and yet packs a punch in his statements” (!!);
It seems that he was unwittingly in the good company of two famous ‘self hating Jews’ ”
And thanks for the link.
If Chomsky and Finkelstein do indeed diss my favourite term, then I’ll have to deal with them firmly. It won’t be pretty!
As for Uncle Craig, I don’t remember him giving instructions that we could say what we like, only we’ve got to use language he’d use.
I see major.tom makes a good point and the web is so full of interesting stuff that I’ve spent the last two hours happily exploring.
Seems you can choose any level of complexity,
from,
Narrate :
to tell (a story) in writing or speech; to give an account of (happenings, etc.)
yourdictionary.com/narrate
to
…noting that legitimation narratives are an important component of state formation and maintenance. Although the earliest legitimation narratives were religious, growing skepticism and secularism gradually eroded the efficacy of religious narratives in the West. This led to the development of secular narratives and eventually to the neoliberal nationalist narrative that is predominant today. Finally, we argued that Harris’ contentions about the nature of Islam and its effects on believers are often erroneous, unempirical, and dangerous because they could potentially contribute to Western Islamophobia… (Sorry I lost the link.)
Don’t our minds understand individual facts by weaving them into a wider conceptual fabric. We might call this a mental map, theory, (thanks GG) or, my favoutite, narrative?
Doesn’t the fortune spent on “spin” show that the tiny elites who feel entitled to run the show know this? It doesn’t seem like rocket science to me.
I’m interested to know why my use of the term has provoked such a reaction.
Before we can be persuaded to send our fellows, whether soldiers or doctors, to far off places, don’t we need to feel justified by generally shared narratives? When these cease to be credible seems to me when people get awkward.
That’s why I’m so happy to see all the opinion polls this time round coming out clearly against yet another war despite wall to wall propaganda from the MSM.
In the meantime millions of human conversations continually take place as day time moves across the globe and we humans deal with experience by constructing stories and listening to the stories of others.
My notion is that these stories frame the events and actors. Ultimately they determine what meta (dare I say ontological?) narrative will dominate our thinking about these phenomena and what actions we will support, or at least tolerate.
Bingo, now you see why it bugged the shit out of your rural sibling! Also why the chief troll keeps interjecting, regardless of being as welcome as a fart in church.
“fart in church.” Didn’t someone imply it’s technical expertise would prohibit return? Economic necessity motivates a steeper learning curve.
Fucking hell a night of exchange of ideas has passed without the usual bashing the posters and the individuals and starting mini bar brawls around the thread. Peeps I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have.
Sofia you are making hell of a progress I am sure Miss Knightly will not be giving you detention any time soon, at this rate of progress!
Ben that is far too subtle for the target to understand. Had a chuckle though;Economic necessity motivates a steeper learning curve
Glad to see a lilt in your gait for a change. There is some good to enjoy in the present.
Last word tonight on “Narrative”,
“Famous paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould defined man as “the primate who tells stories”. Terry Pratchett, the English humorist and inventor of the irresistible “Discworld”, estimates that the term “homo sapiens” is an excessive promise (wisdom not being one of our more manifest characteristics!) and in reality man is more of a “pan narrans” – a storytelling monkey.”.
From, http://www.transmedialab.org/en/2009/11/16/le-narrativium-partie-1-le-propre-du-singe-conteur/
And yes indeed Fedup, what a pleasant evening, a bazaar of ideas rather than a brawl.
Thanks everyone for all the stabs at getting the story straight.
Goodnight.
Afterthought.
Fedup. 12 11am
It all depends on what stories Miss Knightly believes. Seems to me there are few crimes that generate more unpleasantness than having a different story from those in power.
Bed now or I won’t get to school tomorrow.
@ Phil/Jon,
Q: FWIW it would be terrible for craig and this blog if you resigned. Although we haven’t always seen eye to eye I cannot imagine a better mod for a place as open as this.
R: Although I’ve only recently joined this forum I’m strongly inclined to second that sentiment/statement wholeheartedly.
@ Komodo,
Bush Sr. wanted to keep Saddam Hussein in power for a reason and given what happened/happens in Iraq/Libya, the outcome of the removal of Assad isn’t a guessing game any longer…
@ Mark,
Q: The ‘rogue adventurer’ and Brown Moses blog summaries are of course totally biased against the Syrian government, so it seems the authors have an agenda.
R: I was quite stunned when I realized that Brown Moses had a tendency to focus on what the Syrian Army did or didn’t do, but the atrocities of the various rebel groups ignored/ignores.