The number of people still prepared to defend the Iraq War in public is tiny. The interesting thing is the very strong correlation between those people, and those prepared to pretend to give credence to the farcical sexual allegations about Julian Assange. Zoe Williams Guardian piece about what a jolly good chap Blair is I find breathtaking. War crimes like Blair’s result in terrible anguish for millions. I am prepared for purposes of argument to believe that Williams’ anguish for female victims of crime is genuine; why she can’t extend that to the tens of thousands of women who were raped because of Blair’s Iraq War, or had the still worse agony of seeing their children killed and mutilated I don’t know. Nick Cohen is just very, very sad. I just hold up these two in the hope that those deceived by feminist political correctness into following their lead against Assange will see to what they are subscribing.
Rather a side issue, but even if we accept Zoe Williams view that dead Iraqi children don’t matter, she appears not to have noticed that Blair introduced tuition fees, academies, kick-started NHS privatization, allowed the banksters’ bonanza leading to worldwide economic crash and oversaw the greatest widening of the gap between rich and poor in British history.
Kempe
12 Apr, 2014 – 6:19 pm
“…Gaddafi’s overthrow, allegedly engineered by the west…”
Allegedly ???
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !
12 Apr, 2014 – 6:37 pm
“I am opposed to FGM and am neutral on the question of male circumcision. This view is based on what I understand medical opinion to be, namely that FGM causes (and is probably practised because) loss of sexual pleasure during intercourse when the girl has grown up, whereas male circumcision doesn’t.”
It does if the boy’s glans is cut off accidentally Habbakuk, as has happened or when a boy dies during the procedure.
“All babies deserve genital integrity and autonomy over their bodies. No one has the right to make a decision for a child to alter his body for non-medical reasons, including religion.”
“Religious Freedom does not give one the right to mutilate someone else’s body, even if that person is their child.”
http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/
Doug scorgie; “Allegedly ???
Surely you know that the “Contarians” live in a counter-factual reality from the rest of us.
I know that it’s hard to resist fighting the good fight, as a fellow sufferer of the same temptation, I wonder if at least you would agree with me that of all the “Contarians”, it has to be the one with the least to offer as a worthwhile challenge, who is also the most vocal, namely Habbabkuk ?
Is it all beginning to unravel?
“13:57 GMT:
Donetsk special forces have supported the anti-Maidan activists, RIA Novosti reported. “We won’t use force against peaceful protesters and we won’t obey Kiev authorities because we don’t know who is legitimate there,” said a member of the special forces who arrived at the Donetsk administration building blocked by anti-Maidan protesters.”
More Ukraine Turmoil Live Updates,
http://rt.com/news/kiev-clashes-rioters-police-571/
Yes, I know there’ll be howls about this link, but I don’t see claims made here that later get refuted, like pictures of Russian tanks moved in time and space into Ukraine (Some bloody invasion!) and all the other inventions on our dear corporate media.
I know the narrative we are supposed to accept is about AGGRESSION by Putin (Prince of Darkness).
But
Let’s give a bit of credit to the masses of people in Ukraine who are conscious enough to know that fascists have been through Europe and Russia before* and are willing to assert their right to self determination?
If Svoboda-like gangs controlled the Houses of Parliament would our conformity enforcers insiting on obedience to their dictats and bad-mouthing the citizens of Birmingham and Liverpool when they peacefully take control of their own city halls and demand a referendum?
…
*Even our official school history acknowledges that the last batch of fascists got to be a bit unpopular.
Once again the facts have become distorted. What the UN was going to do was create a human rights award in Gaddafi’s name which is akin to a Nigel Farrage award for European of the Year.
http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2011/10/20/un-should-apologize-for-legitimizing-gaddafi-with-key-posts/
Amnesty International’s 2010 report on Libya; the usual story of detention without trial, torture, disappearances and oppression we’ve come to expect from despotic regimes.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE19/007/2010/en/65e2d9ca-3b76-4ea8-968f-5d76e1591b9c/mde190072010en.pdf
Sadly things don’t appear to have improved very much but then they’ve not collapsed from the near-utopian state sometimes claimed. it’s also interesting to see the how perceived opinion of the Arab Spring has been manipulated from it being a grass roots uprising, a force for good that even St Julian once tried to claim credit for, to an evil CIA/NWO plot but I suppose as soon as idols of the looney left such as Gaddafi started to fall that was going to be inevitable.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/27/julian-assange-obama-arab-spring
Anode,
Human nature can be malignant,contrived for gain weak willed,stubborn or the preferred infinitely stupid.
Either way we are messing up.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/libyas-water-wars-and-gaddafis-great-man-made-river-project/5334868
Mr Scorgie
““I am opposed to FGM and am neutral on the question of male circumcision. This view is based on what I understand medical opinion to be, namely that FGM causes (and is probably practised because) loss of sexual pleasure during intercourse when the girl has grown up, whereas male circumcision doesn’t.”
It does if the boy’s glans is cut off accidentally Habbakuk, as has happened or when a boy dies during the procedure.”
_________________
Obviously.
But I think we have got rather a long way away from the original point of this sub-thread, which was about child marriage (Iraq). Moreover there’s little point in replicating an exchange on male circumcision which took place on this blog a few months ago, if memory serves.
Here’s a video of Right Sector’s Dmitry Yarosh commanding “…all arms of the Right Sector to fully mobilize and get ready to take decisive steps to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“I call upon the Ukrainian security forces not only to refrain from counteracting the Right Sector, but also help [the party members] to bring legal order to the Ukrainian land…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIBsLnR4BNk
I wonder how Ukriane’s police and military are going to answer.
And here’s how another US coup unravelled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id–ZFtjR5c
This 2002 documentary about the April 2002 US sponsored coup which briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
A television crew from Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ happened to be recording a documentary about Chávez during the events of April 11, 2002. Shifting focus, they followed the events as they occurred. During their filming, the crew recorded images of the events that they say contradict explanations given by Chávez’s opposition, the private media, the US State Department, and then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.
The documentary says that the coup was the result of a conspiracy between various old guard and anti-Chávez factions within Venezuela and the United States.
All the usual ingredients are here including snipers. It all falls apart when the Venezualan army refuses to obey orders from the coup leaders. Worth watching for the body language alone.
Whether it is Venezuela, or Ukraine, or Libya, the vast resources of the Western Democrats seek to undermine social progress out of a jealous and and disingenuous plea for reforms that reach the low-bar of democratic republics of the western world.
http://cuslar.org/2014/03/13/us-role-in-2014-venezuela-uprisings/
“Furthering the chasm between the two governments were allegations of U.S. involvement in the 2002 coup d’état that ousted Chávez for two days. While certain details remain sketchy, according to the U.S. State Department’s Office of Inspector General it was “clear that U.S. assistance programs provided training, institution building, and other support to individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster of the Chávez government.” Furthermore, the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of the coup but then denied that knowledge when it occurred, claiming it was not a coup at all. Though Chávez regained power, the trend of the United States distributing democratic aid to those who have opposed the governments of Chávez and Maduro has continued into the Obama administration. This year alone, Obama earmarked over 5 million dollars to support political competition building efforts in the Bolivarian state. A Wikileaks cable has revealed that organizations such as USAID spent over $450,000 a year to provide opposition political parties information on how to design, plan and execute of electoral campaigns.”
Conjunction
“Your suggestion, Habbabkuk, about local selection committees reminds me of Plato’s arguments about the ideal government in which candidates were weeded out as children and carefully nurtured, educated etc.
I only mention these points because debate about ideal forms of government is not something I have noticed much on this blog. Its important to notice the faults and deficiencies of the system but I sometimes find myself wondering where people think the kind of change they want is going to come from.”
_______________________
I’ve just remembered that I wanted to make two points in relation to what you wrote (excerpt above).
1/. Re local selection committees. I wonder, actually, whether a good way forward for selecting a candidate MP might not be some variant on the American system of primaries. Such a system if cleverly thought out, might just be conducive to removing selection power from both the central party organization and the local selection committees and might give local voters greater possibilities for not accepting the foisting onto them of a candidate such as the young Blair.
2/. There has been some discussion of ideal forms of govt (with specific reference to the UK) on this blog, but as you note, not much. I suspect this is because any such discussion is unsustainable, with most of the regular posters soon reverting to their pet themes which tend to focus on foreign policy. In the same way as it’s said that govts facing difficult internal problems will attempt to switch attention to events taking place overseas, so most of the regular posters here hasten to abandon discusssion of events within the UK for the greater attraction of events overseas (Middle East, Venezuela, latterly Ukraine/Russia). This is so because it is intellectually easier to have a good rant about things one doesn’t really know very much about, over which one has no influence at all and on which any challenge from others of a different opinion can be more easily brushed aside, than to discuss seriously and in detail events at home (including systems of governing) where opinions expressed and solutions proposed can be more easily and more rigorously tested and indeed contested.
The Western compulsion to impose a form of godless theocracy, worshipping the Golden Calf of materialism is no different from Zionism, another discredited vision of religious fervor enabled by the masses, wholly dumb-fucked by those who should know better. God bless the terminally ignorant.
“local selection committees…”
yup. That’ll do it.
Fantastic post ANode….re Libya…Cheers… Fucking still breaks my heart what the Evil cnts did to that country…and the Means employed…evil brutality of it all…and not forgetting Cameron’s war crimes…
another video for ya…i came across this about 2 years ago
…gaddafi driving though tripoli….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XorKTwkFPDU
Time for a wee Dram.. Wee Tip.. i see Peter Gabriel is LIVE on Sky arts 1 at midnight..
‘A wee ‘dram’, Brian? I think we deserve a bit more.. 🙂
Peter Gabriel, the true genius of Genesis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g93mz_eZ5N4
So what is the US going to do, now that the Snowden revelations have shone a real light on to international relations.
Putin must have foreseen this to happen when he first set eyes on Snowdens revelations, it was obvious that the truth, after decades of cold war bollox was going to seriously stifle international relations.
Combine this with our putrid actions in eastern Europe on behalf of NATO and on behalf of Ukraine’s so called bid to join the EU, not that they wanted to agree any terms, just join, what of Germany’s interference due to its dependency on Ukraines gas network, all this will cause enough diversion and disonance to let Putin get away with it.
I do not doubt that there are some Russians who are less rabid and involved in oligarchski jet setting and robbing Russia blind than Putin, but his bishop has definately knocked out a queen.
What could be done? well our bankers/freemasons and owl worshippers would seriously consider printing more money for war if its could be done in secret, but it can’t.
So we accept that Craigs options to split the country was not a bad, but a necessarry solution, whoever is in charge….
BTW.just to verify a claim that SA is not in Europe or news for that matter, BBC, this case has got a great value for all those 107 studying mental deviants, possibly, it is not news but BS, merely another manifestation that, as a diversion, you are feeding us tabloid BS, TV and Radio, to manipulate and distort the internal political agenda.
The Beeb should loose its franchise, be broken up and investigated by, I suggest, the icelandic police, for all its cover ups and bias, they seem to get bankers into their rightfull and safe positions, i.e behind bars, reading about our police today.
If they only would give as much personal sensual attention to those who pay for their well fed and good looks, as they are giving to massaging crime figures, then this might register in communities/society and improve the crime figures some more, nudge nudge wink wink, and, wow, we have ‘ze positive feed back loop’, howzat…. meen uwe Seeler? or was that vuvuzela…..tut tut
Which brain area do you ascribe to?
“But the brain imaging also yielded surprises.
During the behavior-evaluation exercise, people with high justice sensitivity showed more activity than average participants in parts of the brain associated with higher-order cognition.
Brain areas commonly linked with emotional processing were not affected.
The conclusion was clear, Decety said: ‘Individuals who are sensitive to justice and fairness do not seem to be emotionally driven.
‘Rather, they are cognitively driven.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2601994/Do-supersense-justice-Researchers-individuals-react-far-strongly-say-using-head-relying-emotion.html#ixzz2yiJVe34y
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Ben Thank you… the man is a Huge source of Humanity…
AND lets go RICH then…
http://www.bbook.com/enjoy-a-shot-of-cognac-for-6000-squire/
Sláinte
AND GAbriel …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1IxE6z1tjo
nevernind are you still in scotland august be great to catch up again
Habbabkuk
As far as I’m concerned your points are well made.
I certainly think different kinds of issues emerge during primary campaigns than in the final runoff in the US election. Time consuming and expensive though I suppose.
For me though the biggest issue about forms of government is to do with the relationship between government and capital.
It was noted earlier in this thread by someone that many companies are more powerful than all but the two or three most powerful nations.
I think it was Gordon Brown, or possibly Blair, who described how he felt quite impotent faced with executives from BP or Shell at the time of the dispute about petrol prices a number of years ago and how the businessman treated him with contempt, not out of any political viewpoint but because he was ‘only’ a prime minister.
Despite this the business world is full of people who think that government still has too much control over the business world: these are the views of Friedman and Hayek.
I wonder if governments try to exert the wrong kind of control over the business world. Perhaps if they concentrated on promoting the rights of individuals, for instance setting maximum as well as minimum wages, and forcing businesses to cooperate with regional assemblies which highlight the differing needs of different regions, then the actual essential dynamic of the capitalist process might be less problematic.
Plato didn’t think much of democracy. He wrote after the disaster of the war with Sparta, where an indisciplined form of democracy, which in its earlier more structured incarnations had brought enormous success to Athens, eventually led to its destruction.
In the modern world of course democracy in the west has emerged over several hundred years now and is highly structured. This brings its own problems but in general terms I still think its the way to go.
I agree with you about foreign countries. I find it very hard to make judgments especially about countries I’ve never been to.
99-year anniversary of a Great One’s death, coming up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln
Thank you Brian. Cognac is my fav, but Port is second to none. It’s like having a lap-dancer riffing on your tongue.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Port+Wine+1940&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&imgil=T175HKG7VBdC7M%253A%253Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ft1.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcTAShMl2ZcF9Wqwv17HzI7md-Lm3d_bb6iZ11vmfyHQTtETZa9WmQ%253B644%253B1085%253Bcqy9AFDOSYvX6M%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fgreatwinecapitals.com%25252Fnews%25252Fgeneral-news%25252F1371&source=iu&usg=__uosC_z4MXJbkQkgAtCONF8cAIrs%3D&sa=X&ei=-89JU9TWLoeMyAHn5IGACQ&ved=0CD8Q9QEwBA#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=T175HKG7VBdC7M%253A%3Bcqy9AFDOSYvX6M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fgreatwinecapitals.com%252Fsites%252Fdefault%252Ffiles%252Fstyles%252F644xscale%252Fpublic%252Fnews%252Fimages%252Fkopke_375_anos_garrafa_.jpg%253Fitok%253DsgZDpTvr%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fgreatwinecapitals.com%252Fnews%252Fgeneral-news%252F1371%3B644%3B1085
Large crowds of Ukrianian citizens who have surrounded and occupied police headquarters and government buildings in Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Kharkov, Donetsk, Krasny Liman, Lugansk, Slavyansk. The are illegally preventing the new government from comitting violent acts for which they have no mandate. Their unjustified actions are condemned by western leaders and coup sponsors for threatening the constitution and integrity of Ukraine, so lovingly protected by Right Sector.
Commissioner Yevgeni Lyobotomko warned that pro-referendum crowds are acting illegally and need to do as they are told before the situation gets out of control. “Only another three cities and Svoboda’s statistician will be overwhealmed. It is only legal to storm government buildings if Victoria Nuland is paying you. And anyway they’re just copying us. It’s just so unfair!”
…
Ben, Brian.
Stay inside, the Russians are coming!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXXGep9RB34
At little antidote for those such as Sofia who so willingly swallow the propaganda put out by Putin.
http://imrussia.org/en/projects/political-prisoners/709-russias-political-prisoners-denis-lutskevich
Shhh! let’s not talk about Mr Putin’s friends – we even had a little outbreak of support for Jobbik here
http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-ames-europes-far-right-is-embracing-putin-2014-4
Of course not all Russians are as easily fooled as Sofia
http://www.interpretermag.com/putins-only-option-in-ukraine-is-to-use-force-illarionov-says/
The same concerned citizens of the Crimea now appear to be turning up in Sloviansk
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/454956073502261249/photo/1
BBC journalists are also having their cameras confiscated so that the memory cards can be wiped.
For those of us who might prefer sources of information other than RT as to what is happening in Slaviansk.
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/454956073502261249/photo/1
More local militia in Krematorsk
https://twitter.com/roman_primorye/status/455143302275149824/photo/1
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E-Tn_wtGrng
Lizzie Phelan on Libya.
Global system with a less than global diplomatic discourse.
We have the ease of ability to fully communicate but what is chosen is geopolitical.
“Fuckin’. Give it here!”
Timeline. 08 44.
Commissioner Yevgeni Lyobotomko warned the Ukrainian public to avoid three men in uniform with guns. “The entire Red army has appeared in two photos. There is no knowing the full extent of their evil intentions. Authorities in a bunker in Kiev fear they will pose again. We owe this new information to the dedication of the fearless war correspondent Rhostislav Dysidinko who twice risked having his tea go cold to bring these images to the free world.”
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/454956073502261249/photo/1
Mr Branson’s giant advertorial for Virgin Money has just started on BBC 1.
So generous here
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/giving/about-us/how-we-compare.jsp
but charges the charities instead
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/giving/about-us/fees.jsp