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.
We don’t often hear of anyone doing the honourable thing and resigning. Remember the extended legal wrangle after the Baby P case by those attempting to keep their jobs.
Daniel Pelka protection boss Colin Green gives up Tower Hamlets post
Daniel Pelka died from a head injury in March 2012 weighing just more than a stone-and-a-half
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The man in charge of children’s services in Coventry when Daniel Pelka was murdered by his mother and stepfather has stepped down from his job protecting children in east London.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24180402#
Poor little chap. RIP Daniel.
Israeli Contractor Leaves Injured Palestinian Worker to die
A Palestinian worker working for an Israeli contractor, without work permit,
was seriously injured at a renovation site in Tel Aviv, and instead for
calling for professional medical help, the Israeli contractor dragged him
onto the ground and left him to die on the sidewalk…
Haaretz said that the man died on the sidewalk in an area south of Tel Aviv,
and that a passerby found his body in the morning. The body was then moved
to Ichilov Hospital in the city.
The deceased, was left without any help until a teacher, identified as
Nicolas Cascallar, tried to resuscitate him after he noticed that he was
alive but in a very serious condition. He told Haaretz that liquids were
coming out of the mouth of the Palestinian worker.
Talking to Haaretz, several eyewitnesses said that they saw the contractor
arriving at the construction site, and that after he saw that the man was
seriously injured, he and two other workers, dragged him to the sidewalk
where they left him for dead.
Another witness said that he shouted at the contractor and the workers after
they threw the seriously injured man onto the sidewalk, and that he even saw
the injured worker in the construction site just a few minutes before he was
injured.
He also said that anther witnesses even suggested calling for an ambulance,
tried to give them their phones to call 911, but the contractor just locked
the apartment and told his workers to run away…
http://www.imemc.org/article/66130
Gordon Brown completely failed to understand the ethical issues around the main things for which he was responsible as a representative of New Labour, finance/banking, social housing and foreign policy. No principles.
“And that was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one”
The conference season starts with Nick Clegg forgetting that he single-handedly created the opportunity for the Tories to come into power, and being offered the prospect of Nazi racism under UKIP. It doesn’t help that Gordon Brown had good intentions if he simultaneously failed to understand the purpose of socialism, to defend working people from the predations of capitalism. Borrowing money to pay benefits merely assists wage control and assists extreme corporate power. Stupid but benign?
Oddie, that’s terrible. The Good Samaritan comes to mind.
In war and peace young men die for the rich. See Oddie’s link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUzQ6Am-bbc
Oddie, the degrees of inhumanity and barbarism illustrated in your post are beyond comprehension. Is there any limit to the depths that the “master race” in that little strip of shitty land will not plumb?
Poor Palestinian chaps dependence and family, at least he died and is free of humiliations.
========
AlcAnon, Happy birthday, and many happy returns.
The Master Race Uniformed Vigilante at Work
No wonder PressTv was banned, no other outlet is airing this package. Note the target of the uniformed vigilante is the help dispatched for the Bedouin (nomads) Evidently these ancient people no longer have an rights to their way of life, and the the desert now belongs to the “Master Race” too. Also note the French diplomat knocked out and in a heap on the ground.
Passerby I agree. The military can always stop their crimes being reported. However, in fairness, in times of peace when crimes are committed they are sometimes reported and Haaretz was the first with this story.
http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.547792
In the other news, a man has cut off his own testicles with the help of a pair of scissors.
DM reports it; A man cut off his own testicles and stormed into a church shortly before a couple were due to be married.
Evidently there is a need for a security frisking of the punters before they get into churches, so far as DM is concerned!
Just to illustrate the difference in style;
Here is the Metro’s take
Here is the Mirror’s take
John Goss, sadly our corporate media is far too timid and far too muzzled to report on such events. Hence all too often certain indigenous sources tend to be more open on reporting the prevalent atrocities. You have a point there. However I was referring to the exogenous sources, and the attempts to muzzle the unyielding PressTV into the obscurity, and silence.
“I just discovered my Android Phone now3 can translate/understand spoken Latin. Thanks to Google.”
Beneficium accipere libertatem est vendere. They probably set that up so that the NSA spooks can spy on the Vatican and it’s vast financial empire. 😉
A brown sidenote.
By chance I did some (semi-skilled manual) work for the labour party in the 2005 election campaign. I was amazed how some people talk as if others don’t exist. I believe those in the service industries hear stuff all the time. I once watched 2 jags talked at for half an hour by alastair campbell in a way I would not talk to a dog that shat on my food. Really, the power centre was unambiguous. But that is another story.
So in 2005 the hot gossip was all about debt. How the country was headed to a shit storm of debt. I never heard a politician discuss it but I heard numerous whispers amongst their minions. Specifically brown’s minions. This was a recurring conversation to the extent it was a talking point amongst us non-party plebs. At the time I thought little of it beyond bar talk in shitty hotels on the campaign trail. Of course it took on a whole different significance several years later.
Is this in mcprickfaces money-making memoirs? Brown and others were privately discussing a looming financial crash in 2005.
Passerby, Yes I understood that. And of course you are right about MSM. The media is getting worse in selective and unbalanced reporting. Press TV and Russia Today help redress the balance even though they have their agendas too, as we do at News Junkie Post.
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2013/09/18/a-tale-of-two-concentration-camps-guantanamo-and-ruhleben/
This is the kind of Jihad that probably will not be opposed in the West. At this rate EDL will be voting to bring in “speaking Sharia” pronto.
Tunisian Girls Return Pregnant After Practicing Sexual Jihad in Syria
Evidently waiting for the “seventy two virgins” is not a mandatory and “jihad” can begin here and not necessarily hereafter!
Tunisian women leaving for Syria on “sexual jihad”
Sorry perhaps my memory plays tricks I think my anecdote must have been from a previous election.
John Goss you said;
Of course they do have their own agenda! However, as you would agree we are all grown ups and we can discern the truth from the chaff so to speak. As opposed to being treated as inane imbeciles and given the Mushroom Treatment* that is so prevalent in our supine corporate media.
* Kept in the dark and thrown crap at!
“i go back to the chapter in Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot ( The Triumph of Voyager ) every now n then, amazing stuff”
Synchronicity, Brian.
I posted this recently, from Carl Sagan:
“preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
A very humbling picture (at the link)
———————————
And Jon Snow tweets
‘reading news of Labour’s sickening email traffic wars as British soldiers died in a foreign field of their making’
I have just rung the fella who got me the work and I seem to have confused two election campaigns. I worked extensively for the 2001 campaign but on the edges of the 2005. Sorry to not be clear.
Mary @ 8.21
“Ditto John Reid 9 August 2006,
Terror ‘may force freedom curbs’
John Reid addressing think tank Demos
The UK might have to modify its freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their “misuse and abuse” by terrorists, John Reid has said.
He conceded that was never an easy request, but it was up to everyone to ask: “What price our security, at what cost can we preserve our freedoms?””
That’s a long short-tern if you ask me. Seven years too long, but John and his mates have done very well marshalling, frisking and scanning us all like the sheep that we all are. It must generate a good source of funds for them all, so I can’t see it ending anytime soon.
I’ve never understood how our freedom can be preserved by being removed, but I’m not invested in searching innocent travellers.
@Dreoilin, I’ve posted on the other thread.
John thanks for the link there. However as an added point, if you recollect Haliburton was building a chicken coup (6 x 8 feet wire meshed containment area with a concrete floor)in Gitmo at $46000 a pop.
Also if you recollect in the months before the ixxi Haliburton directors were forced to pony up out of their own personal accounts about $170 million to pay the staff salaries and keep the company afloat.
There are huge profits to be made out of oppression and mass murder.
There are huge profits to be made from murder and torture Passerby and GTMO is no exception. Have you got a link to the Haliburton story?
Meanwhile Hilarious Clinton has a new image. But the media don’t want you to see it. So the Daily Dose and Miami News have obliged.
http://gopthedailydose.com/2013/09/20/man-takes-picture-hillary-clinton-security-takes-phone/
“There are huge profits to be made out of oppression and mass murder.”
Look how even the US prison system has been corrupted by money, with cases of Judges giving unwarranted custodial sentences, simply because they were receiving kick-backs from the private firms running the prisons.
Macky, give me the link please regarding US prison kickbacks. I’m giving a talk soon about Talha Ahsan who has been in prison (UK and US) for more than seven years and has still not been brought to trial. The foreign Office will not tell me what he has supposed to have done.
John Goss, here are some links for you;
Former judge sentenced to prison for “kids for cash” scheme
Judge’s Kids for cash scheme causes teen suicide
Halliburton to Build New Cells at Guantanamo Base
That is roughly $46000 per cell.
There are currently around 500000 Muslim detainees, as per WaPo across the globe in black prison.
Included are the stories about an american dentist who has been in jail without any trial or conviction for about four years. This story I cannot find any sources for, it seems to have been cleaned up perhaps?
Thanks so much Passerby. Really helpful.
Don’t worry Phil. They all merged into one, 1997, 2001, 2005…..
What was B.Liar’s song?… Things can only get
betterworse!Resident Dissident thinks I have an obsession with the fact that the Rothschild family owns the world. This short video is for those who do not know the truth or care to turn a blind eye to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnB-oanHK1M
Thanks for the great and sad links, Oddie’s link is harrowing to think that the developer treated his Palestinian worker like a rotten piece of meat, an inhumane attitude resulting from decades long of racial superiority education and teaching, downright Apartheid reports in newspapers, leaders such as Golda Meir saying that ‘ there is no such thing as a Palestinian, they are all terrorists’.
Hence my position that a wider Palestine should exist, one country were its people will have to live together until humanity prevails and they live alongside each other, such as they have done for hundreds of years before Herzl.
Re: 1961 accident, the impact of a possible accident then is zilch compared to the impact Fukushima already has caused.
The desperate attempt to build and ice wall might work to stop the water seeping into the Ocean, but until the need for cooling water subsides, any water will ack up beyond the ice wall and turn the ground into swamp.
Maybe its TEPCO’s policy to slowly submerge Daichi into a newly created highly radioactive swamp.
Japan is planning, after their many successes on the site NOT, to manually pull 1400 fuel rods out of the 4th. floor cooling tank in an already destroyed reactor building.
Japan needs to ask for international expertise, it is their duty to show some concern for its own population and that of a wider international community living in and around Tokyo, not to speak of the impact they create on the international ecology of the pacific ocean, already plagued by feet deep islands of swimming plastic, square miles wide.
This is a good explanation from Charles Moore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en4XzfR0FE8
Well I do not know how plastics grinding against each other and breaking up into smaller pieces and ending up in the water column by attaching themselves to plankton and other floating particles and living organism, interact with radioactivity, but this garbage patch would be better hoovered up and taken away, then let to deteriorate and become radioactive, imho.
maybe the chemists here can tell us how plastic polymers react to Cesium and other radio nuclide’s
Can’t open this video with my linux plugs, but the other video below and the graphs speak for themselves. maybe somebody can watch it for me and report back. My guess is that radiated floating substances will find their way into the floating garbage patch.
http://www.asrltd.com/japan/plume.php
@ Rob Rotsyon
And Reid is still at his work.
UCL think tank backed by arms firm raises concern
Institute for Security and Resilience Studies is supported by Ultra Electronics, which is involved in drone technology
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/dec/25/ucl-thinktank-backed-arms-company
B.Liar gave the inaugural address.
This is the advisory board.
ISRS Advisory Board
ISRS is guided in its work by a distinguished group of international practitioners, thinkers and policy-makers in the fields of security and resilience.
Our Advisory Board comprises:
Prof Phillip Bobbitt University of Texas Columbia University
Adm the Lord Boyce KG GCB OBE DL House of Lords
Douglas Caster CBE Ultra Electronics
Hon Michael Chertoff The Chertoff Group
Sir Ronnie Flanagan GBE QPM ICC Anti-Corruption & Security Unit Abu Dhabi Police Force
Prof Malcolm Grant LLD University College London
Ian Livingston BT Group plc
Baroness Manningham-Buller DCB House of Lords
Rt Hon Marquess of Salisbury DL House of Lords
Len Tyler OBE Cassidian
Prof Pat Troop CBE
Chertoff ex US Homeland Security. Flanagan ex CC PSNI etc. Livingston now ex BT and recently ennobled by Agent Cameron.
Grant is involved in the ConDem rehash of OUR NHS. Chair of NHS England. One of the death watch beetles.
http://www.england.nhs.uk/about/whos-who/ The usual revolving doors.