I have a guilty political secret. I do not detest Gordon Brown. That is such an unfashionable opinion that I don’t really expect any comments at all to agree with it. And yes, I do realise that he went along with the Iraq War and all the other horrors of the Blair era. Interestingly, I don’t remember the question of what Gordon Brown really thought about Iraq ever being discussed; he deserves condemnation for having not tried to stop it, and perhaps he was indeed an enthusiast. And I am well aware that the Private Finance Initiative is a terrible disaster, and that he oversaw creeping privatisation in the health services, and – worst of all – the introduction of tuition fees.
And yet I cannot dislike him. Probably because I just know too many people who have known him through decades, who are themselves good people, and who like him. Around Edinburgh and Fife you will find it hard to find people who actually know him who share the hatred and contempt he seems to arouse among the political and media classes of London.
As a general rule I do not like or dislike people according to their politics, but rather according to the sincerity of their political beliefs and the goodwill with which they hold them. I am sure Anders Breivik is sincere in his political beliefs, but those are lacking in goodwill. Sincerity is not enough – humanity and inclusiveness are also important.
There are one nation Tories who seem to me perfectly decent people, genuinely trying to do good. I don’t hate them because their political conclusions on the best way to do good are different to mine. Gordon Brown I put rather in the same category – I feel he was trying to do good for ordinary people, he just got it wrong.
Blair is in a whole different category again – insincere, absolutely focused on attaining personal power, and with a Messianic belief that what is good for him must be good for the World. The Guardian is publishing some emails around the Blair Brown rivalry this week. I don’t care and won’t read them. But while I see Blair as quite properly damned for eternity to the seventh pit of hell, I don’t think Brown deserves anything worse than North Queensferry.
I have been in Ghana the last 20 days living in a house with no internet connection and working (extremely hard) in an office with virtually no internet connection – not enough to load WordPress. I hope to get more chance to blog shortly.
@ Oddie,
Thanks for the links. Appreciated.
@ Daniel Rich 23 Sep, 2013 – 11:39 pm
“@ NR, I’m a bit of a pluperfect digital invariant fan myself, as are some others here, no doubt…”
That took some research. I knew of refs to Fermat’s theorem, etc., but not that one, which led to: The Futurama theorem is a real-life mathematical theorem invented by Futurama writer Ken Keeler, who holds a PhD in applied mathematics, purely for use in the Season 6 episode “The Prisoner of Benda”
http://theinfosphere.org/Futurama_theorem and on to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime a real number which is illegal in the United States of America, allegedly the land of the free. Later found this by accident:
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/sep/22/the-simpsons-secret-formula-maths-simon-singh
Your, “Fail safe, animal friendly and bio-degradable test to see who’s up to speed: GTAV, 1B, 3D, bye, bye COD.”
I get Grand Theft Auto 5 and 1 bullet, and bye, bye Call of Duty, but am stumped by the 3D.
GTA5 led to: “GTA 5: Mehr als eine Milliarde US-Dollar Umsatz im ersten Monat erwartet”. So the Germans use Milliarde to specify American billions = 1,000,000,000 which was the subject of an earlier discussion with Mary.
Questions Plague UN Report on Syria
Mon, 2013-09-23 15:57-
By Sharmine Narwani and Radwan Mortada
A senior United Nations official who deals directly with Syrian affairs has told Al-Akhbar that the Syrian government had no involvement in the alleged Ghouta chemical weapons attack: “Of course not, he (President Bashar al-Assad) would be committing suicide.”
When asked who he believed was responsible for the use of chemical munitions in Ghouta, the UN official, who would not permit disclosure of his identity, said: “Saudi intelligence was behind the attacks and unfortunately nobody will dare say that.” The official claims that this information was provided by rebels in Ghouta.
A report by the UN Mission to investigate use of chemical weapons (CW) in Ghouta, Syria was released last Monday, but per its mandate, did not assign blame to either the Syrian government or opposition rebels.
Media commentators and officials from several western countries, however, have strongly suggested that the Syrian government is the likely perpetrator of CW attacks in Ghouta and other locations.
/..
http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/sandbox/questions-plague-un-report-syria
@ Glenn, AlcAnon, Fred, All: It’s not only Craig Murray’s blog that has problems.
For middle-class Americans the dream has turned into a nightmare. They suffer like never before. While the rich get richer pretending to be helping the poor. This is what Tony Blair does too with his so-called charities. And what Atlantic Bridge was all about. They are bogus charities.
“Charity for profit
As for the nominal Number One: his fortune seems to defy all physical laws, having grown from $9.35 billion in 1994, when he became a philanthropist, to $72 billion today. Unlike Gates, “Number Two” only recently jumped on the bandwagon of tropical-disease eradication. His fortune has merely stayed the same despite his various donations; but being the world’s “most successful investor,” profits will surely flow to Buffet from his pledge to give away his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. True, it is difficult not to make money when one is a billionaire, given the power and access that money buys. But is this all that has grown the Gates fortune at such a phenomenal rate? How could one fail to make a profit from bogus philanthropy projects to eradicate tropical diseases when one is able to support the development of vaccines, invest in the companies that manufacture them, pressure governments throughout the world into adopting them into their vaccination programs, and control all publicity about them? After all, one of the most valuable things money buys is the control of language and information.”
Dady Chery
– See more at: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2013/09/23/the-united-states-obscene-wealth-inequality/#sthash.AF6qutU9.dpuf
Sorry the above article was co-written by Dady Chery and Gilbert Mercier.
@NR,
Totally off topic:
Thank you for those links, Sir/Ma’am. I will digest them later [tonight] when I have ample time to do so. This reply is to make sure that ‘stump’ doesn’t turn into a permanent mental bump [I was about to say pothole, but for some reason didn’t find it appropriate]
GTA5 = Grand Theft Auto 5
1B = $ 1,000,000,000
3D = 3 Days [bit mean, that’s true]
Bye, bye = bye, bye
COD = Call of Duty which held the previous record of reaching $ 1 billion in 1 month
‘Actually, I’m a billionaire many times over’ [this is easy to disprove]
I’m impressed. Well done [both cases].
Ciao!
Nevermind the whitewidow have a look at the bbc homepage we have the
TERRORPHANT.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
9 million iPhones sold in 3 days.
Local supermarkets here have signs up saying that Grand Theft Auto is sold out. I don’t know anything about computer games but I gather this one is good training material for violence and killing,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/23/game_theory_grand_theft_auto_5/
What is going on? Are the empires in terminal decline?
Parents & Teachers:
The Impact of Video Games
http://www.pamf.org/parenting-teens/general/media-web/videogames.html
Some links from Margo on Medialens. I believe she lives in SA.
Understanding Kenya
Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire, gives context to Westgate atrocity:
http://libya360.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/us-hidden-hand-in-kenya-somalia-crisis-nairobi-attack-related-to-white-house-funding-of-mogadishu-occupation/
Two more articles that provide context lacking from BBC/CNN/Guardian/NYT:
Reaping the ‘benefits’ of US-AFRICOM collaboration
http://libya360.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/kenyan-bloodbath-reaping-the-benefits-of-us-africom-collaboration/
US-Israeli interests in Somalia hinder stabilisation of the region
http://libya360.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/us-israeli-interests-in-somalia-hinders-stabilization-of-the-region/
{http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1380008615.html}
“Rusbridger said the NSA stories were “clearly” not a story about totalitarianism, but that an infrastructure had been created that could be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.”
“”Obama is a nice guy. David Cameron is a nice social Democrat. About three hours from London in Greece there are some very nasty political parties. What there is is the infrastructure for total surveillance. In history, all the precedents are unhappy…””
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/23/orwell-nsa-surveillance-alan-rusbridger
Given that we have now had that Pearl Harbour was a US “White flag” could someone please provide a similar explanation for the Molotov Ribbentrop pact and the invasion of Poland. We wouldn’t want to see any loose ends untied.
Mary:
“It was the tabloids (Mail, Express and Mirror) putting that story out yesterday about the ‘White Widow’. The usual nonsense”
The qualities are at it now:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/kenya-shopping-mall-attack-was-british-white-widow-samantha-lewthwaite-among-militants-killed-in-siege-8835806.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/10329613/Was-July-7-bomber-widow-Samantha-Lewthwaite-among-Kenya-attackers.html
The witch is not dead. She has joined the Twitterati.
Note the opening spiel and compare to that of Samantha Power’s below.
Grateful American Czech immigrant, mother & grandmother, fmr SecState, passionate democrat, author, prof, bizwoman, pin collector, & occasional drummer
Washington, DC · facebook.com/MadeleineKAlbr…
Madeleine Albright @madeleine 13h
Thanks @HillaryClinton! I loved playing w/Chris Botti at the @kencen (twice no less!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVZgjxFnhXs …
Madeleine Albright @madeleine 20h
First of 3 female SecState’s – last to join Twitter. Better late than never! pic.twitter.com/gDQZUvebnR
~~~
Introduced by the witch in waiting.
@AmbassadorPower
United States Ambassador to the United Nations, mother, human rights defender, teacher, writer and member of @RedSox Nation.
New York, NY · usun.state.gov
Samantha Power @AmbassadorPower 8h
.@Madeleine Albright is a consummate diplomat, as graceful as she is tough. Looking forward to seeing that translate to 140 characters.
~~~
Albright’s ‘ “We think the price is worth it.” will go down in history like ‘We came, we saw, he died’ à la Clinton, another Cruella de Vil.
pearl Harbour a loose end? There are so many of them and the shredders in the late 1940’s must have run hot with disposing of so much evidence.
http://www.whale.to/b/bacque1.html
@ Mary: “What is going on? Are the empires in terminal decline?”
GTA5 has the new feature of allowing you to torture your adversaries rather than killing them outright.
Since it cost $170,000,000 to make — par with major movies — and made more than any movie in only 3 days, there will be no criticism of violent video games in the MSM.
Admittedly it’s fun in a satirical over-the-top way of a Tarantino movie, and unlikely to drive the average player to violence, but what effect do such games or movies have on the already unbalanced who play hour after hour?
Comments on The Register review you linked above:
MJ Agree. Sky News and BBC too. This is the Kenyan Foreign Minister who put out the WW info. She seems to have been adept in locating herself in strategic organisations throughout her career.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amina_Mohamed
She is not even in Kenya at the moment! She is in NY at a UN gathering!!
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/americans-briton-among-kenya-mall-attackers-foreign-minister-amina-mohamed/articleshow/22977852.cms
~~~
Each day we are told that the Kenyan ‘authorities’ have control of the building. Then we are told that there has been more extensive gunfire and loud explosions. The corporate media make it up as they go along as most of us have always known.
Anonatozoa worries;
Come on there is a very easy solution;
1- Draw/paint/impress a Palestinian flag on each egg.
2- Teach eggs to talk with an Arabic twang.
3- Dress the eggs up in traditional Arab garb.
The little wrigglers need some motivation to get on with occupying and shooting and settling, that is all. Healthy mind healthy body concept applying of course.
“I said Lamont was the Leader of the British National Socialists, ie Labour.”
She is leader of the Scottish Labour Party, you made the rest of it up.
If you want a sensible debate you will have to stop making things up.
This is beyond the pale, to find a corporate media spinning utter bilge;
Evidently children are never born, average, and ordinary, they are born with terroristic tendency right from the start. Or is the story to denote that how easy it is for anyone to fall under the spell of the “speaking Sharia”?
In any case, whilst the Kenyans are too busy trying to stop a four day shoot out in the middle of their capital, which proves how in control of the affairs they are indeed. However from this misfortune there could be an opportunity created;
Bash the Muslim population in the UK, and West some more, and bolster the budgets for the SIS, and pass even more laws criminalising all and sundry in the way of protecting them from themselves.
The surreal events unfolding include;
Newport police slavery raids prompted by man missing for 13 years
While these poor souls are fighting for the right to drive!
Human rights, that is our rights; have taken a right old knocking have they not?
IWhat do you think of her recent comments, Fred?
Is demonizing the poor (something for nothing culture), and using words like ‘virus’ to describe her own countrymen/women not more reminescent of ’30’s Germany?
How much pension does an MP get if he has served, lets say, as a parliamentary under secretary.
These new pension arrangements make it quiet hard for any normal person to find out what their fresh faced, ready to retire party politicians actually receives in pension.
Who is the accountant amongst us?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_Members_of_the_United_Kingdom_Parliament
I believe this document regulates the pension reform
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06283.pdf
Don’t know the answer to your question Nevermind. Sorry.
All I do know is that the Surrey Cons are at the trough big time. Gove, Hunt, Milton etc Note Hammond is the very model of rectitude cf Gove.
Surrey’s MPs claim £1.3m in costs and expenses http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/surrey-mps-claim-13m-costs-5932552
Grayling and Beresford claim for their wives. *unt claims for accommodation expenses.
In her first term as MP, Milton claimed £13,000 for her husband as her little Commons office helper although he was employed as Director of Public Health of a local NHS trust!
http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2008/02/anne_milton_answers/
PS If *unt sells his internet company Hotcourses, he stands to net £millions. Read this eye opening stuff about him, his British Council involvement and his cousin Virginia Bottomley, now Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone. Our Parliament is an incestuous stinking cess pit.
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/revealed-at-last-the-hunt-bottomley-link/
Methinks a little re-cap from the Malabar Front is in order.
I could probably start at Sandy Hook or Boston, but I’m not up to speed on those so I’ll go for Ghouta.
This, I would contend, is a very obvious false flag. It’s the analysis of the video evidence that I find most damning — the same kids in different places, the lack of adults.
In short, “we” have shown elements of al Qaeda how to use chemical weapons to kill civilians for “our” geopolitical ends.
Next up was the Washington Navy Yard shooting. Even the BBC noticed the most glaring anomaly with that one (credit to the Beeb for telling us)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/24153252
And now we have the Westgate Mall. But this is “real” al Qaida this time, isn’t it? With the White Widow (an excellent name for a super-villain) we even have a timely reminder of 7/7, lest we forget what the War on Terror is all about. 7/7 was “real” terrorism too, wasn’t it?
Westgate has even wiped Ed Miliband from the front pages. A nice little plus there, stealing the limelight from the man who had the temerity to stop neocon turkey shoot number 5.
Now that Syria is temporarily off the menu, the focus has shifted back to the homeland. If they can’t tighten the screws abroad, there’re always a few liberties at home that can be tidied up. Luckily, there were US and UK citizens among the Westgate attackers to justify further domestic snooping.
After a little wobble in Ghouta, the grand narrative is back on track. We are fighting the al Qaeda menace.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
One final point: The Westgate Mall is Israeli-owned and Israeli security people are on the scene:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/22/us-kenya-attack-israel-idUSBRE98L07L20130922
Hey Mike (13:35) : The ‘glaring anomaly’ on that Washington Yard shooting, is that some guy who’s freaked out with serious mental health problems is still allowed to buy himself a shooting iron. He’d shot through the ceiling at a woman in the apartment above his. He’d shot out the tyres of a car belonging to someone he had a dispute with. He had fights in bars. Absolutely nothing was done about any of this.
He was seeking help for paranoia, hearing voices, and suspected his microwave oven was spying on him. He called the police to tell them about all this, about people following him, how he had to change hotel three times, and absolutely nothing was done.
Despite being dishonourably discharged from the services for showing up drunk, having all sorts of serious problems, on and on, he was still able to buy a gun from a licensed arms dealer – all legally.
That is the problem – not some damned fool right-wing gun-nut conspiracy theory.
Someone showed incompetence, in not allowing the SWAT team in earlier – very likely. But unless you like really bad company, I wouldn’t advise you to leap into bed with these freaks that suggest it’s all “false-flag” stuff so that Obama can come and take guns away.
About Sandy Hook – just don’t go there at all, if you have a scrap of decency or humanity.
Glenn: I tend to think that speculation is a fairly harmless pass-time. Training terrorists how to use chemical weapons on civilians, on the other hand, would certainly lead me to question the guilty party’s “humanity and decency”.
And, for the record, I’ll go wherever the fuck I like.
Mike – sure, you can go straight to hell if you like.
But dragging the bereaved families down a sewer of far-right “Obama’s coming to get your guns!” BS is not harmless speculation. On the contrary, you’re proving a useful idiot in doing the dirty work of teabaggers, the NRA, the far right, racists, gun-nuts and scum generally.
Most of us are ‘terrorists’ – the ‘war on terror’ is of course a false metaphor with no end. This ‘war on terror’ has more to do with creating a culture of fear. That scary perception has restricted our civil liberties, expanded statutory powers and spawned total information awareness or the processing massive amounts of data to identify our awareness, slant and behaviours.
The vote against a strike on Syria and the near total accord of the British public against another ‘doctored’ war, hatched a number of ‘Cobra’ type meetings of government and British secret services to formulate or win back the post 7/7 fear bubble and dust off the ‘game plan’ for rebellion.
A stage of that ‘game plan’ is revival of Lord Carter of Cole’s ‘Titan’ or super prisons (FEMA?).
These hugh prisoner warehouses will hold dissidents, protesters and rebels sine die.
ARE YOU A TERRORIST?
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/changes-to-the-prison-estate
Background:
Six years ago, amid official estimates that prison numbers could top 100,000 by 2014, Labour’s justice secretary, Jack Straw, commissioned Lord Carter of Coles to review the future needs of the prison system. In late 2007, Lord Carter reported with plans for an enhanced building programme, at the centre of which would be three super-prisons, each containing at least 2,500 prisoners, costing £2.9bn.
Mr Straw then launched a consultation on these so-called Titan prisons, which reported in 2009. Opposition to the Titan prisons turned out to be overwhelming – criticisms ranged from uncontrollable cost, safety issues, control problems, difficulty of focusing on rehabilitation, and evidence from abroad that large prisons are ineffective – and they were scrapped even before they were built.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/penal-policy-chris-grayling-titanic-distraction
Wow, that’s quite a hit-list you have there, Glenn. You obviously come from the liberal wing of the Eternal War Party (the only party in town, by the looks of it)
I threw Sandy Hook into the mix out of sheer devilment. To be honest, I don’t know much about it.
You’re well wide of the mark if you think I am right wing.
Again for the record, I do not converse with people who resort to insults.
End of.
@Anon – Yes there are plenty of proofs to back-up “Israeli connection” to the so-called “Muslim terrorism”. You just have to read Israeli historian Dr. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi’s book “The Israeli Connection”.
Shyam Chand, a former minister of Haryana state (India) and author of “Saffron Fascism” – in his article Terrorism Inc.: Nexus between CIA and Mossad, published in Mainstream Weekly, November 16, 2008 – stated: “How is that Zionist Americans and Israeli Jews are connected to so many things involving murders, single and plural? How is that the same Israeli security firm was incharge of all 9/11 airports as well as the London Tube and Madrid train station at the time of attack? Informed research points the finger of accusation to the same group of people. It turns out that the number of people murdered makes the Holocaust Industry victims bigger killers than victims……. Fone Fakers were invented by CIA and Mossad before 9/11 which was an inside job of both of them. The same Fone Fakers are used in India. Innocent people are arrested on the basis of calls made through these Fone Fakers…… Not only the nexus between the RSS and Mossad worth investigation, our defence co-operation with Israel needs reconsideration before the ominous shadow of Mossad falls on our defence forces.”
http://rehmat1.com/2009/08/10/terrorism-theirs-and-ours/