One of my oldest and dearest friends has gone public on his support for Scottish Independence. I am greatly cheered by this. More thoughts later.
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Anon, yes, I think it is an emotional thing, you’re right. There was leeway in the decision and the decision was taken against human – compassionate and sensible – considerations.
Ferd; “is, in fact, what everybody in the world gets when they put [email protected] into the email box. Even habbakuk knows this, for chrissakes.”
As I have too much self-respect to lower myself in engaging in sock-puppeting, the mechanics of which I know very little, I bow to your & Habbakuk’s expertise in this field; you still haven’t confirmed who you were previously, as your comment here reveals;
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/03/andy-myles/comment-page-3/#comment-450383
Just who were you “last time” ?
Mary
“68% to Farage 27% to Cleggover. You Gov poll on the debate tonight. Labour and LD voters are moving to Farage, Peter Kellner of You Gov said earlier. He is married to the EU’s Ashton.”
___________________
Well well well! You sound rather pleased about that. I had no idea you have a soft spot for Nigel and UKIP. But I am rather surprised.
*****************
La vita è bella, life is good!
I would be quite surprised too.
Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s surprised.
Seriously though, should I throw a “John Goss” and, after going out for the evening, vow never to talk to Mary again on the grounds that she’s a fan of Nigel and UKIP?
Farage said he was against bombing Libya and Syria and that the British people were sick and tired of endless foreign wars, so there’s at least some common ground there.
Er, no. I said ‘ would be’. Just because someone feels honest revulsion at the policies which the Lib Dem executive has helped implement, does not mean they would support Ukip. Even if they did, of course one shouldn’t ostracise someone solely for that reason – wouldn’t you agree?
If, however, that person started, say, actively attacking the vulnerable in the name of Ukip (or even in the name of ‘Conservative’, or ‘Labour’) then one would feel impelled to oppose them. Don’t you think?
An interesting exchange. I look forward to your thoughts.
Questions aside, that’s what I think, anyway. Semi-selfish; that ‘vulnerable’ person could be me. Or my grandmother.
“Seriously though, should I throw a “John Goss” and, after going out for the evening, vow never to talk to Mary again on the grounds that she’s a fan of Nigel and UKIP?”
There’s a big difference between supporting a political viewpoint and supporting torture, imprisonment and death in Guantanamo and Bagram.
Clegg represents the interests of the neocons, as does neo Labour. That’s the globalist agenda.
Farage represents UK resistance to that agenda, in favour of smaller competing fiefdoms.
That debate is ongoing, all over Europe, and beyond.
I’m not sure it adds to the debate to personalise it. Were it not Farage it would be someone else.
Ultimately it’s all just oligarchs fighting for turf.
This time though, it seems they’ve got a philosophical dispute. That’s never good. It’s always best when they’re busy doing stuff. When they start thinking, you worry.
You see, some of them think that it’s best to have a one world system and others prefer their own little fiefdoms.
They may well fight it out over this doctrinal dispute.
testing …. testing … 1,2,3
It’s a tale of Two posts at Ten mins past Varied Hours…
Firstly .. Herbie i second DoNNy’s post @ 8;46 am 2nd.. Re Libya
Thanks for the link at 11;10 pm 1st April…and here is some From that…
” The bombing and killing went on all night and for the next three nights. Next shiploads of Al Qaeda rebels flowed into the Tripoli port from Benghazi and unloaded on the roads around Tripoli. All of the people were bearded and carried AK-47’s. As they rode around Tripoli in their caravans they began to set up check points every 500 yards or so. They looted every store and every home they could get into, they broke into every vehicle and stole everything that they wanted. They took over hotels and set up torture centers. The Russian Ambassador had called and offered to put our name on a list on a rescue ship that was being sent from the Prime Minister of Malta. We were approached by a couple other westerners and asked how we planned to get out of Libya. We said we were trying to get on the rescue ship sent by Malta, they asked if they could join us and we said we would ask that their names be put on the list. The FIFA soccer coach for Libya from Germany joined us, the sister of the President of Mauritania, a Baharani Prince, a man from Texas that we did not know before and a Filipino lady who had been working at the hotel.
They took all of our belongings and our passports. They interrogated us and filmed it using a British film crew. We could hear the men being tortured but we could do nothing. Finally after many hours and it was now day light, they said we were going to be allowed to go. Right before that a big fat Sheik with a long beard came in and look down his nose and said something in Arabic at us. The driver to our van had been changed to a man we knew from the hotel and we said we wanted to go to the rescue ship now, he said this van is going back to the hotel, we argued with him but he pulled us aside and said “What you did not understand that Sheik say was: “When they go to the rescue ship, kill them, chop them up and burn the bodies and blame in on Ghadafi”. We decided to go back to the hotel. We had to pay all of our last money to the mercenaries so that they would let us go, they were paid $2500 for each person they killed and $1000 to burn the bodies. That took all of our money.
We knew that we were on their list and we knew why, a US attorney, double spy working for Hezbollah had put all of our names on a list and sent it to them. The next miracle was a friend of the sister of the President of Mauritania had a friend that was in charge of the IOM (Immigration) ship. They were able to sneak us on that ship to Benghazi the next day. That saved our lives because we know that the Al Qaeda mercenaries were looking for us so that they could get paid again. The ship ride was the ride from hell. It took 2 days in massive heat, no a/c, windows all around the seated area, no food except hot water, moldy bread and outdated juice cartons that caused everyone to use the bathroom. There were probably 300 to 400 refugees on the ship and there was 2 bathrooms. Our friend from the IOM took charge of us in Benghazi and took us to a hotel. Lucky for us the list with our name had not reached Benghazi because the communications were down.
After NATO handed Libya over to Al Qaeda, many Libyans were imprisoned, tortured and killed. Many of them left so that they could survive. There are now 2 million in exile. We are very close to the Tribes of Libya, we speak with the tribal leaders in exile now almost every day. They have appointed us as their official spokespersons. We have been attempting to make it known to our congress that they were completely wrong footed in Libya and that we basically had handed Libya, a peaceful Muslim country, over to Al Qaeda. No one was interested. The tribal leaders began to pass intelligence regarding the internal movement of Al Qaeda inside Libya, we started passing this information to Dr. Jerome Corsi who was more than willing to report the truth. We were then contacted by US intelligence (4 different divisions).
We have had 3 different divisions of the US intelligence in our home, getting intelligence from our tribal leaders. But we have discovered that they have no intention of doing anything with the information and the intel was being used to warn Al Qaeda not stop it, so we stopped passing the information. One of the intelligence people was a lady; she called us after she left and told us that if we ever wanted a life we needed to shut up about Libya and that they (the government) had done a “soft” attack on us (ruined our life and finances) and that we were lucky because they could have chosen to do a “terminal” attack on us. We have been literally destroyed, but we have decided to open our mouths and not shut them. We realize the only way to protect ourselves is by getting our story out to the most people possible. We will be homeless next month as we have no more assets to sell and cannot pay our expenses. We are hoping to start giving presentations and sharing our story with paid honorariums; in that process we will hope to find good people who might like to hire two very production, intelligent and talented people.”
James and Joanne Moriarty
Sofia.. @ 1;10 pm 2nd… Cheers for the Link Re Israel’s all but Open War on Palestinian children… Cowardly Bastards
AND…
Glad to have Brightened the morning for you on the first day of April… 🙂 Cheers for the full script… what Eloquent, Poetic wisdom.
You may Have seen this Amazing speech too From October 1940, …but for those who have not… years ahead of his time was ol Charlie Chaplin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FMNFvKEy4c
Mary quoted, 68% to Farage 27% to Cleggover. You Gov poll on the debate tonight. Labour and LD voters are moving to Farage..
On 24 August 2012 the spectator reported
One of the solutions Tory MPs are mulling over now the boundary reforms are dead in the water is some sort of partnership with UKIP to boost the party’s chances in 2015. As many as 60 per cent of Conservative activists are reported to favour such a pact.
In hindsight we deduce will a little insight, from the actions of Nick-I’m sorry-Clegg, that Farage is a proven stooge of the elite?!
Anon, 2 Apr, 9:59 pm: it isn’t a party-political issue. The previous Labour government deported lots of people too, and various contributors here objected. And it is perfectly normal to care about a stranger who is suffering some crisis or injustice; most people will wince if someone they don’t know or otherwise care about cuts themselves while chopping vegetables, for instance. Most people find themselves moved even by fictional events that occur to fictional characters in the films they watch. Maybe you need to look a bit deeper to find the real roots of your cynicism.
Perfect Brian at 12:37 – Cheers – in summary the sign of the times and I believe fair warning:
The collapse of social programs, IMF engineered global poverty and UKISIS lead wars, UK supported al-Qaeda ‘freedom fighters’ and neo-Nazi government sway in Ukraine: NS combative and aggressive EXECUTIVE orders to NATO commanders and their experts in Kiev, suggests we are at a dangerous cross-roads, an impending world-wide crisis.
Mmmm -where is my BID 150 clone? “one nine for a copy…”
Habbabkuk,
Piss of will ya-and all your alter-ego shite.
You’re always a fake,always.
See how the t—l deliberately misconstrues things. I report the results of a poll and he makes an incorrect inference that I support the winner.
I suggest that he is still channelling me.
Mike. 10 37 pm
…As if I’d ever dream of deserting you!
…
Technicolour.
Thanks for your revealing review of my contribution here. Too bad it doesn’t meet your high standards.
Can you offer your wisdom regarding Dad’s long-term occupation of these threads.
What do you believe he contributes?
Do you think it is possible to truly discuss anything with him?
What do you think motivates him?
If you think you have any relevant info that might help, please toddle off down to Surbiton where the siege goes on and a team of psychiatrists is working hard to restore the sanity of a third negotiator.
Thanks also for mentioning the “a dollop of fact” that I offer.
Here’s one, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hasbara
Do you think that Dad could tell us a lot more about this?
“In hindsight we deduce with a little insight, from the actions of Nick-I’m sorry-Clegg, that Farage is a proven stooge of the elite?!”
Exactly Mark. Some things he has said in the past (I did not watch the debate) appeal to most people but he started on the right of the Conservative Party. His politics are extreme right. He has become the ‘human face’ of racism. Theresa May runs him close.
The last comment should have looked like this (he hopes) 🙂 .
“The [Hasbara] manual goes on to describe seven propaganda techniques:
1 Name calling: through the careful use of words, then name calling technique links a person or an idea to a negative symbol.
2 Glittering generality: Simply put, glittering generality is name calling in reverse. Instead of trying to attach negative meanings to ideas or people, glittering generalities use positive phrases, which the audience are attached to, in order to lend positive image to things. Words such as “freedom”, “civilization”,…
3 Transfer: Transfer involves taking some of the prestige and authority of one concept and applying it to another. For example, a speaker might decide to speak in front of a United Nations flag, in an attempt to gain legitimacy for himself or his idea.
4 Testimonial: Testimonial means enlisting the support of somebody admired or famous to endorse and ideal or campaign.
5 Plain folks: The plain folks technique attempts to convince the listener that the speaker is a ‘regular guy’, who is trust-worthy because the are like ‘you or me’.
6 Fear: Stressing that ignoring the message will likely lead to war, terrorism.
7 Bandwagon: Suggest that the stated position is mainstream and use polls to suggest this.”
Thanks for posting the link to how Hasbara operates in practice. Although we see it every day on this blog (at least I see item 1 every day) I did not realise they worked from a manual. Interesting. Thanks.
“Anti-Semitism is a term coined in 19C Europe to describe hatred of Jews. Nothing to do with Arabs whatsoever. That is what it means in our language and only an entry-level Jew-obsessive would feel all clever about pointing out that Arabs are Semitic too. 6th Form stuff, Komrade, and I would have expected better from a veteran such as yourself.”
Does this semantic point really matter so much to you? OK. Let’s look at it.
If precision was the intention, why isn’t it called anti-Judaism? I will tell you. It is because the coinage coincided with the rise of an erroneous racial theory, the precursor of Nazism, in which “Semite” was taken as synonymous with “Jewish” – while other Semites were quietly ignored, as not – then – presenting an (alleged) existential threat to what we still call Caucasian (or, formerly, at risk of raising your outbursts to high doh, Aryan) nations. The usage to which you refer conforms, therefore to an outdated and despicable ideology, as well as to a current and equally despicable one, Zionism.
While you are singing from the Zionist hymnsheet, I am something of a lover of my own language, and try to use it with some precision. The Zionist philosophy is, I insist, as antisemitic – in the strictest sense – as the Nazi one, or as the Salafist one for that matter.
You might also take cognisance of the notion that the vast majority of settlers in Israel are not semitic in any racial sense at all – they’re Caucasians and Slavs by current criteria -, and that any claim they make in regard to being the victims of antisemitism is utterly void. What they mean is antijudaism,(and it is hard to see how, living in a country run exclusively for their benefit, they can make any such claim in the first place).
But it is not in their interest to make the distinction. “Antisemitism” (wide sense), inspired by a racist philosophy, is far preferable; it appears to include religions other than Judaism without in practice doing so; and they will be glad to see to see that apologists for militant Zionism, such as yourself, clearly understand this.
Pity you didn’t make it to the 6th form, I’d say.
In a land-grab by developers, in coalition with the Haitian government, the people of Ile a Vache, a paradise island, islanders are being dispossessed, one of two island policemen has been imprisoned on the mainland, military police have taken over, and the islanders have not been consulted in this land-grab.
http://www.dadychery.org/2014/04/03/jean-maltunes-lamy-haitis-peasants-built-ile-a-vache-part-i/
Testing…
Many, many thanks, Afrend.
Agent Cameron is spinning the smog as a naturally occurring weather event.
As usual, he is lying. The UK’s pollution is being combined with dust borne in on a southerly airstream.
London air pollution ‘worst in Europe’
Britain faces court cases and unlimited fines after dangerous levels of minute particles breach EU levels
• Comment: London, the dirty man of Europe
• Dave Hill: Where’s Boris Johnson’s air pollution study?http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/25/london-air-pollution-europe
BBC News – ‘Up to 9% of deaths in London caused by air pollution’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20664807
10 Dec 2012 – Up to 9% of deaths in the capital’s most polluted areas are down to air pollution, a new London Assembly paper has reported.
Clean up your act Dave!
On reflection, I have decided that I hate the new avatars. They are garish, disconcerting and hurt my eyes. They also serve no useful purpose.
Anon 2 Apr, 2014 – 9:59 pm
I mean, let’s face it. We don’t really give a toss about this Yashuka woman whatever her name is. She’s only going home and whichever family member was being abusive is probably well out the way by now.
No, what we really see this as is an opportunity to stick it to the Tory scum. And when this one’s passed we’ll forget all about her and find another one.
Anon 2 Apr, 2014 – 10:29 pm
It’s like this. We don’t really bother about the legal implications or complexities of the case. We don’t really care about Yashiko or the fact that she’s very safe. What’s important is that we make a great show of our compassionate credentials whilst sticking it to nasty Tory scum. That way we feel all good about ourselves and our silly delusions.
~~~
No need to display your racism twice Anon. If you were on the Just a Minute game on Radio 4, you would get the bell for ‘repetition’.
Ba’al Zevul (I Am The Egg Man)
2 Apr, 2014 – 9:08 am
Mary, n Sofia too… Re BDS….
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel in Canada
Bill C-13, A “Digital Trojan Horse for the Surveillance State”
“But what of Canada, whose Prime Minister is Mr. Netanyahu’s most faithful friend?8
This essay will argue that revisions to the Canadian Criminal Code proposed by the Harper government contain wording that is designed to enable lawfare prosecutions of human rights activists in precisely the manner desired by Mr. Netanyahu and his associates…….
1. Bill C-13 and its deceptions
Bill C-13, the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, received first reading in the House of Commons in November 2013. In a web page devoted to “Myths and Facts” about this bill, the Department of Justice rejects the “myth” that “Bill C-13 is an omnibus crime bill that deals with more than cyberbullying.”
Bill C-13 is not an omnibus crime bill. It combines a proposed new offence of non-consensual distribution of intimate images to address cyberbullying with judicially-authorized tools to help police and prosecutors investigate not only the proposed new offence, but other existing offences that are committed via the Internet or that involve electronic evidence. [….] The Bill does not contain the former Bill C-30′s controversial amendments relating to warrantless access to subscriber information and telecommunication infrastructure modification.9
However, Dr. Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has observed that Bill C-13 does indeed retain provisions that permit an increased warrantless access to personal information, far beyond what is envisioned by the current Criminal Code.10 Criminal lawyer Michael Spratt has denounced the bill as a “digital Trojan horse for the surveillance state”:
most of C-13 has little to do with protecting victims [of cyber-bullying]. This bill would recklessly expand the surveillance powers of the state. It sacrifices personal privacy. It limits or eliminates judicial oversight. It is inconsistent with recent Supreme Court jurisprudence. It’s a dangerous bill.11
The Department of Justice’s claim that “Bill C-13 is not an omnibus crime bill” is transparently false. As another critic, Terry Wilson, has remarked, despite being promoted “as legislation to prevent online bullying, the bill actually has very little to do with bullies and has sections ranging from stealing cable, hacking, surveillance, to terrorism (cyberbullying accounts for 2 out of the 50 pages in the bill) […]. The bill even includes ‘hate legislation’….”12
“This view of the intention underlying Bill C-13 is supported by Prime Minister Harper’s speech to the Israeli Knesset on January 20, 2014 (which will be discussed below). It can draw support as well from the fact that an identical change to the wording of the French penal code made in 2003 by the so-called Lellouche Law has permitted the conviction of some twenty French human rights activists for incitement of racial hatred.13
The results in France have been paradoxical. France is, like Canada, a High Contracting Party of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949—whose first article states that “The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.”14 The people convicted for incitement of racial hatred under the Lellouche Law are participants in a movement that has been consistent in its firm rejection of antisemitism and all other forms of racism.15 This movement advocates a peaceful exertion of economic pressure with the aim of persuading the Israeli state to end its multiple and systematic violations of international law, including in particular the Fourth Geneva Convention, which Israel has been repeatedly been condemned for flouting by UN committees and reports, as well as by independent agencies such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The facts of the matter are thus unambiguous: in enforcing the Lellouche Law, and redefining human rights activists as people guilty of hate crimes, the French state has simultaneously been violating its prior solemn commitment “to respect and to ensure respect for” the Fourth Geneva Convention “in all circumstances.”
One of the aims of Bill C-13 appears to be to place Canada in a similar situation of openly violating one of the central instruments of international law.
5. Prime Minister Harper’s January 20, 2014 address to the Israeli Knesset
In this speech the Prime Minister asked, rhetorically, what it is today that threatens societies that, like Israel, embrace “the ideals of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.” His answer was sweeping:
Those who scorn modernity, who loathe the liberty of others, and who hold the differences of peoples and cultures in contempt. Those who, often begin by hating the Jews, but, history shows us, end up hating anyone who is not them. Those forces, which have threatened the state of Israel every single day of its existence, and which, today, as 9/11 graphically showed us, threaten us all.34
Eh… and NATO are Fkn Angels too… and all whilst Palestinian infants are starving… older children taken away murdered…
Asshole Harper Screeches on –
” Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state ”
But Mr Asshole Harper…Israel IS AN APARTHEID STATE….
7. ” The debate among Jews over the morality of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians
As mentioned above, many Jewish scholars and public intellectuals, both in Israel and internationally, have placed themselves firmly in opposition to Israel’s policies of apartheid treatment of the Palestinians and of ongoing colonization of the occupied territories. The mere fact that this is so, and that in Canada and elsewhere they are joined in this by many Jewish citizen activists, amounts to a living refutation of Prime Minister Harper’s repetition of the rhetoric of the “new antisemitism.”
8. Most disgracefully of all … an apartheid state
In the concluding section of her essay, Eva Illouz remarks that Israelis fail to understand the nature of their colonization and occupation “because language has itself been colonized.” Most Israelis interpret the occupation in terms of “terrorists and enemies, and the world sees weak, dispossessed and persecuted people. The world reacts with moral outrage at Israel’s continued domination of Palestinians, and Israel ridicules such moral outrage as an expression of double standards….” Because of this “colonization” of discourse, “the debate dividing the Jewish people is more difficult than the debate about slavery, because there is no agreement even on how to properly name the vast enterprise of domination that has been created in the territories.”57
There is in fact quite widespread agreement—at least on the “universal standards of justice” side of the divide analyzed by Professor Illouz—as to an appropriate name.58
The term “apartheid” was applied with clinical accuracy by Marwan Bishara in 2001 to describe what Israel has done in the occupied territories from the early 1990s onward, “physically and demographically divid[ing] up the West Bank and Gaza into islands of poverty, or bantustans, while maintaining economic domination and direct control over Palestinian land and natural resources.”59 It was re-used by former US President Jimmy Carter in 2006—a usage validated in 2007 by Israel Prize laureate and former Minister of Education Shulamit Aloni.60 And in January 2010, Henry Siegman, the former Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress and current President of the US/Middle East Project of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote that Israel’s “relentless” construction of new settlements “seems finally to have succeeded in locking in the irreversibility of its colonial project. As a result of that ‘achievement,’ one that successive Israeli governments have long sought in order to preclude the possibility of a two-state solution, Israel has crossed the threshold from ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.”61
ANYHOO.. FOLKS… this is a Longish, full essay… Very detailed with much Re International Laws….
BY Michael Keefer @
http://www.globalresearch.ca/criminalizing-criticism-of-israel-in-canada/5376306
I actually thought when the Malaysian passenger plane went missing that the pilot had committed suicide and taken the passengers with him. However no wreckage has been found and this does not any longer fit with that theory. Also, as was pointed out yesterday, it is inconceivable that the super high-tech US base on the UK-owned island of Diego Garcia, has no record of this flight. Yesterday I got accused by one of the trolls/sock-puppets of conspiracy theory. This is always a cop-out for not being able to argue an alternative case and this sock-puppet uses the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ on a regular basis for any argument against our governments which have the worst human rights’ and bloody adventures in the history of the planet. This short 6 minute documentary presents at least 4 government theories as to what happened to the plane. You might ask who are the real conspiracy theorists. It is a must watch from which I learnt something about Osama Bin Laden and his family I did not previously know. So not to disappoint here it is.
http://www.trueactivist.com/gab_gallery/this-is-the-real-reason-flight-370-disappeared/
Blair To Save Peace Process, bwahahahahaha….
http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-04/03/content_31988705.htm
Oddly absent from UK MSM for some reason.