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.
“Spain’s public debt already exceeds target for full year”
http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/09/13/inenglish/1379077566_847944.html
“I might be tempted to add the UN to infiltrated organisations such as the AI and HRW”
Infiltrated or compromised, the result is the same;
“n July 2009, a confidential cable[1] originating from the United States Department of State, and under US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name, ordered US diplomats to spy on Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and other top UN officials.[2] The intelligence information the diplomats were ordered to gather included biometric information (which apparently included DNA, fingerprints, and iris scans), passwords, and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.[2][3] It also included Internet and intranet usernames, e-mail addresses, web site URLs useful for identification, credit card numbers, frequent flier account numbers, and work schedules” (Wiki)
Correction: Bibi isn’t off to barrack Obama until the end of the month. He’ll be wanting to know why the US wants to talk to Iran (if that is indeed the case) rather than threaten it.
Barrack Obama. I’m proud of that.
@ Nevermind,
I want to glow in the dark 2!
@ Komodo/Sofia
Q: Can’t wait to see it ferry him to the Hague… ….lashed to the roof.
R: Or…, welded to the underbelly of the Beast…, as flexible landing gear…
In other news: “While other nations struggle to receive American taxpayer dollars, Israel rarely faces resistance. Strong support in the administration and Congress, coupled with favorable public opinion and a strong lobby advocating for the cause, has made sustaining and increasing military aid to Israel an easy sell. This time around should be no different, officials and experts knowledgeable about the process say, despite the changed environment.” LINK
Oh, and has the Hasbara Brigade left the building in unison?
Agreed Macky.
I can’t understand this world at the best of times.
Off topic.
I bet you didn’t know this (!)but today they released Grand theft auto 5 game. I have nothing against gaming and completely understand the need to escape this god awful fake reality we in the 99% must experience.
But spare a thought for the tens of thousands of amazon, supermarket and delivery workers who had to work through the night on shitty pay and poor conditions. Plus the thousands who have worked on this game for years – most of which in a horrible industry with suicidal work hours for low pay…
All for a game.
I really hope in the future that there will be some way of politicising and activating the estimated 250 million players worldwide so they would be able to enjoy there own real life enmasse GTA against the elite.
This I would pay good money for.
“Oh, and has the Hasbara Brigade left the building in unison?”
Careful Daniel ! Are you trying to jinks us ? At this rate we may get Mary back, and maybe even Cryptonym !
Although I do feel for poor Sofia, left all alone now that her kid brother has apparently run off after the recent demise of the father.
2,000 MRAPS being dismantled in Afghanistan because the shipping cost is so high. AT $1million each that’s 2 billion dollahs.
That’s why they bought 2700 new ones for Homeland Security. No air freight.
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20130305-dhs-acquires-2-700-mraps
I like your DHS link Ben, especially the heading “U.S. still has 3,100 tons of chemical weapons to be destroyed” a little above the heading for an article on “Syria’s chemical program, inventory”, which guesstimates that Syria might have as much as 1,000 tons of CWs !
Macky; The deadline for signatories to complete destruction was April 2012. At last count, the US is still at 10% of original stores (Russia has 43) Both countries have renewed DL (2025).
Sorry Ben, but just to clarify, do you mean 10% has been destroyed, or 90%, leaving a remaining 10% ?
There seems to be no limit for ingenuity to devise ways of killing our own species, imagine if the same ingenuity (plus no expense spared research as in weapons development,etc) were to be applied to the problems of hunger, poverty, global warming, etc
I guess the 3100 tons you cite is the remaining 10%, Macky. A couple of weeks ago I spent some time finding the UN link that supplied that. Can’t find it now.
Isn’t it a mystery why so many other countries see the USG as hypocritical and disingenuous in it’s putative role of leader of the free world.
If we give Assad less time than the US has been graced for completion, do you think anyone will call US out?
@Phil Vuvuzelas are only a fiver….:) agreed on the arms demo, whoever gets the point across deserves credit.
The differences over the perspectives, how Russia is seen, thrown up by Mark and Mike are important, because they are at the base of the mis/information, a kind of attitude that is ankered, the unmovable object.
These vast rifts are also the brake to globalisation and cultural exchanges, they prevent us to love and see each other, work with each other and see how each other lives their lifes.
They prevent true globalisation and the moving of cultural extremes towards one spirit, one hub, that of humanities commonalities.
Thanks for the link Daniel, Daichi Tepco, Hakubun Shimomura and Shinzo Abe are not doing themselves any justice, if they carry on like this they will not be able to save their faces.
the right thing to do is to ask global expertise into Japan to help with the solutions
as well as to save Japan money and embarrassment by talking to South Korea and negotiate a sharing of what’s hoisted as Olympic honour.
I have left Hakubun a message on his FB website and I hope that he will realise that time is not on his side and the sooner he sees the sense the better for all, for Japan.
Japans handling of this disaster has been like an advert for the application of a massive roll of sticky plaster’s, one after the other, none working. Their lack of responsibility for international concerns during the last year and a half, the pollution of their food chains and the environment is bordering on the antisocial.
early night, schlaf gut.
Sept 17
Obama waives ban on arming terrorists to allow aid to Syrian opposition
http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-waives-ban-on-arming-terrorists-to-allow-aid-to-syrian-opposition/article/2535885?custom_click=rss
Macky. 10 04pm
“…I do feel for poor Sofia, left all alone now that her kid brother has apparently run off after the recent demise of the father.
I appreciate your concern.
Has no one seen him?
I’ve scoured cyberspace and this is the only clue I can find.
I never shop at Selfridges, and others should boycott the shit hole too. They have suspended a shop assistant for refusing to serve the racist fuckwit criminal Tommy Robinson Aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, part time woman beater and full-time yob.
It is fucking disgusting when most pubs, clubs casinos refuse the presence of this fuckwit on their premises, Selfridges have bent over backward to cater for it.
Selfridges assistant suspended for refusing to serve EDL leader’s friend
Fucking disgusting outfit!
Man refuses to serve Tommy Robinson in Selfridges
Note the racist fuckwit getting hoisted by his own petard; “you won’t serve me, you won’t serve me, you won’t serve me, because…” Then the fuckwit changes his tac; “you won’t serve my friend”
Someone tell this piece of shit his vile racist actions have consequences.
The Muslims may have just stumbled upon their Rosa Park!
Read the vile racist comments in the link for the video, and notice how openly the threats of execution of all Muslims are filling the thread. Needless to point out that if instead of Muslims the target of hate and scorn was _ews, soon there would have been an outcry to find the psychopaths who were threatening the said group, and hang them with their scrotums. As it stands, the matter will go unnoticed.
How far removed have these “civilised” chimps become from the 1930s political imperatives of hate?
“I’ve scoured cyberspace and this is the only clue I can find.”
Haven’t you lot stopped picking over the bones yet?
Up until the point he overstepped the mark I was very much of the opinion you deserved all you got and I was hoping you’d prove me wrong.
Let’s keep the personal jibes out of the forum, especially against those not able to reply.
How would this work?
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24113175/brazil-wants-its-own-internet-after-nsa-controversy
I agree Fred. It’s unseemly to derogate the dead.
“I’ve scoured cyberspace and this is the only clue I can find.”
LOL ! Just as I pictured him, running after the big boys & longing to be accepted, but not realising that he just not equipped correctly !
From Fedup’s link;
“By way of apology, the store laid on a three-course meal for Robinson and his friend in its Hix restaurant, champagne and caviar bar, which included £25 portions of char-grilled sirloin steak and chips, and chocolate cake and ice-cream.”
Imagine the spread they would have laid on if it had been blood-soaked war criminal Tony Blair.
“Let’s keep the personal jibes out of the forum, especially against those not able to reply.”
You obviously cannot tell the Father from the Son. Amen.
@ Emmpey,
Q: the alternative view I suppose is that they are simply Jew hating anti-Semites like Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, John F Kennedy, etc. etc. and all their ilk.
R: When I interviewed a Polish nun who’d survived one of Auschwitz’s satellite camps, where she shared her cramped living space with many other women and said she’d survived ‘the holocaust’ she was immediately corrected. She survived ‘The Camp,’ not the ‘holocaust.’ Unfortunately, that’s something you can’t talk about now.
When I interviewed various other camp survivors [they had tattoos too, so I could verify they’d actually been inmates and not fed by wolves], they mentioned how fearful they were of the ‘KaPo.’ It took a while to realize that the ‘Kampf Polizei [Camp Police] – KaPo’ weren’t the feared German SS-ers or the dreaded Gestapo, no, in most cases they were fellow Jews. Unfortunately, that’s something you can’t talk about now.
When I interviewed several Wehrmacht officers about their role in the Warsaw uprising, I was told that, in the beginning, they used to negotiate directly with the ‘Warsaw Judenrat’ and Adam Czerniaków, head of said Judenrat in the ghetto. The Germans gave him quotas of the number of hapless and unfortunate individuals they wanted handed over, without firing a single shot. Unfortunately, that’s something you can’t talk about now.
If you wonder why I did all those interviews, tis because I wanted to write a book, but the more I uncovered, the more disgusted I became with how deep this rot actually ran. How so many people had blood on their hands, how so many people betrayed others, how so many people had actively participated in the ‘shipments to the East’ [paid for by the Nazis], how so many people had looked the other way and on and on and on. Truly sickening. Fortunately, laws now safeguard the truth <>. Unfortunately, that’s something you can’t talk about now.
A Wikipedia link about Adam in case anyone feels bad about him…
Mental health, rather than gun controls should be the focus in US. Hearing voices and numerous confrontations with law enforcement should be a clarion call. The Naval shooter slipped through the controls, just like so many others. Gunz aren’t the problem. People and their psyches are the problem.
what a “shift”, reuters! israel setting up a hospital long ago to mend rebels & get them back on the battlefield, israel bombing syria twice, or is it thrice? israel faking the intel? but hey, if u say it’s a shift, who are we not to believe u and israel, reuters?
17 Sept – Reuters: In public shift, Israel calls for Assad’s fall
Israel wants to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toppled, its ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday, in a shift from its non-committal public stance on its neighbor’s civil war.
Even Assad’s defeat by al Qaeda-aligned rebels would be preferable to Damascus’s current alliance with Israel’s arch-foe Iran, Ambassador Michael Oren said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post…
“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,” Oren said in the interview, excerpted on Tuesday before its full publication on Friday…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/17/us-syria-crisis-israel-idUSBRE98G0DR20130917?feedType=RSS&irpc=932
Symptoms of the empire going tits up:
Brazil’s president cancels US state visit over spying revelations
“A defense contract worth more than $4 billion that Boeing is seeking for the sale of 36 F-18 fighter jets to the Brazilian Air Force could be the main victim of the spying affair. Brazilian officials have said Brazil cannot buy such strategic aircraft from a country it cannot trust.”
Now THAT’s gonna get their attention. Maybe they should use that cash for their own internet, fedup.
Kerry has shifted his focus on Syria to lying about the CW negotiations because the US wants to continue its illegal threats in breach of UN Charter Article 2(4):
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/russia-western-threats-could-wreck-syria-peace-talks
Threats are all that the shaved apes at State can think of, even though Rep. Grayson jeered that the threats are pathetically hollow – Assad can see the whip counts on the internet, so he knows that Obama can’t get permission for his war.
The USG as impotent laughingstock. Just what the doctor ordered.
Very true Ben. Better still they should start building their own stuff. This cycle must stop somewhere, US gubiment is an untethered, and unhinged entity that can only be sustained on flowing blood of its victims.
“The USG as impotent laughingstock.”
The hypocrisy of USG never ends. US is currently at 90% for destruction of CW. The deadline was formerly April 2012. It would be nice if we could get all those Nations who missed the deadline, and are focusing on the stores in Syria, to destroy 100% by that self-same deadline we prescribe for Syria.
“This cycle must stop somewhere,”
The economics of weapons production would be a good place to start, fedup. If nobody can afford to continue manufacture because nobody can afford to buy, it’s a win/win.
Nice to have the blog back.
Some excellent thoughtful posts and links today,unencumbered by the wind-up/derailing merchants.Thank you.
I was getting sick of the trolls and although H would try and hide behind faux-manners i think most of us knew his/her motives here were not really in good faith.The War On Terror,Inc has thrown up many nasty forms of torture and bullying.Cyber-torture/intimidation is but one of the methods and it has disgusted me from day one.I am in no doubt the organised bullying/group-stalking in the last few months most definitely falls under the banner of psychological torture.Horrific yet subtle in its own way.Be in no doubt this was part of the horrific paradigm.Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Onwards and upwards and thanks,Jon-and others(you know who you are)-for your patience and most decent efforts here.
Hi Fred,
My higher self has to admit you have a point. And hasn’t it been good to have a couple of days without rancour here.
But, or should I say but, the individual in question has spent months avoiding genuine debate and chosen instead to pour forth a stream of invective. I invite him to show good faith, return, and engage in polite debate.
We all know what has been going on here these last few months and the sudden outbreak of good-natured posting can hardly be co-incidental.
As for “picking over the bones”, apart from that leg, there don’t seem to be many left to bother with, and they remain undisturbed under the Morpurgo’s ornamental cypress, where my scaly sweetheart left them.
The unpleasantness is now part of our shared history. Let’s allow ourselves a little fun with it’s memory now and then.
As regards the sudden absence of malign posting style these last couple of days, it is my theory (thanks GG) that, somewhere within an academic institution, new strategies are being drawn up as I write and it won’t be long before another tide of mischief engulfs us. I do hope I’m wrong.
Please note, though I disagree with much of what you write, I don’t regard your contributions as “mischief”.
Goodnight All.