I shall again be running the bar – the Whistleblower’s Arms – at the Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival from 22 to 24 August at Cardross, Port of Menteith.
I find this festival, which is very much a lifestyle event and features mostly new talent, an extremely life-affirming experience. Last year it brought me back from a very dark place. Some of this blogs most active commenters and helpers have been among the volunteers over the last couple of years, keeping the event going. Personally for me the festival is necessarily centred around Williams Bros and Thistly Cross, but there is a tremendous variety of music:
The event is very family friendly, and also an amazing place to meet new friends. It does not have any specific political orientation, but I might fairly say that the vibe is very much in line with the kind of unconstrained intellectual space promoted on this blog. On top of which Cardross is an extraordinarily beautiful place. The variety of local food on site, ranging from vegan to game, is one of the things I really enjoyed. It is a not for profit event and nobody gets a salary.
Tickets are not expensive by festival standards, and certainly cheaper than a weekend break in a hotel. But there is also the alternative of working your passage – the festival still needs plenty of volunteers.
I am genuinely looking forward to it enormously. Hope to see you there.
BTW; Whatever one-sided agreement we had is no longer valid.
I have examined this entire thread.
RD has made 2 comments, neither of them to you.
You have made two comments involving RD, one of them addressed to him about frustration (7 Jul, 2014 – 9:28 pm), and the other to Mary about him (7 Jul, 2014 – 9:50 pm). Therefore if you believe you were having a conversation with RD, it must have been the one involving frustration.
You have accused me of interfering with the thread of that conversation. I did not. I did not refer to anything you said, and I did not refer to anything RD said which you were responding to. Furthermore I would not have interfered in that [literally] one-sided conversation. Your comment was puerile and pointless, why would I want to get involved with it? Let’s examine it:
You were referring to a question RD asked Mary, not you, so I’ve quoted your entire ‘conversation’. And you think I want to interfere with that? Not with a 10 foot bargepole. What I did do was take issue with the substance of RD’s comment – I engaged in rational debate with him. I shan’t explain what those words mean, suffice it to say it’s what the grown ups do.
Thank you for graphically illustrating my claim about your confused thought processes. I tried to be polite, but your rudeness and hostility in response is all for the best. It means I am justified in ignoring you from now on.
Starting ….. NOW.
Good cop bad cop routine.
Spotted long time.
The Canadian B’Nai Brith need a serious reining in for producing this filth.
‘How On Earth Can Israel Tolerate This Filth From B’nai Brith Canada?
Four million Canadians carrying the anti-Semitic ‘disease’? We’ve heard this kind of despicable propaganda before.
By Robert Fisk
July 01, 2014 “ICH” – “The Independent” – – Not long ago, I was handed the most outrageous, vile, dishonest and slanderous calumny uttered against the people of Canada. It was contained in a full-page advertisement in the National Post (founder, Conrad Black), a newspaper handed out – free, I’m happy to say – on my Air France flight out of Toronto. Here is the headline: “Almost 4 million Canadians are afflicted by this disease.”
Beneath this title is a half-page, very blurred and uncaptioned colour photo of a large crowd – they could be football supporters, rush-hour commuters in Vancouver, you name it; they are mostly white males but include women and with at least one dark-skinned man close to the camera. Beneath the picture, this incredible ad continues: “Left unchecked, it [the disease] can result in violence tendencies. Many times, those infected haven’t been diagnosed and may pass it on to their children, grandchildren, colleagues or friends. Please help stop the spread of this disease before it contaminates your community.”
This is frightening stuff, of course. Could this refer to some of the six million Canadians who may be living with HIV/Aids? Or the 4.5 million Canadians affected by arthritis? Or the 2.5 million Canadians believed to have diabetes? Or even some of the estimated 7.8 million Canadians treated for depression each year? Nope. This is far more serious. For the “disease” afflicting “almost 4 million Canadians” is “anti-Semitism” and this disgusting advertisement – published without comment by one of Canada’s leading right-wing newspapers – was produced by B’nai Brith Canada and the “Jewish Christian Alliance”.’
/..
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38955.htm
Robert Fisk went on to compare this outpouring to that produced by the Nazis.
‘But what, we have to ask, possesses Israel’s “friends” to publish this pernicious material about 4 million “diseased” Canadians? Does B’nai Brith Canada not realise that these very same despicable lies were used by the Nazis in their hate propaganda against the Jews of Europe? In Hitler’s Germany, Jews were described as microbes. Jews, according to Julius Streicher, were “the carriers of disease and vermin among men”. In August 1941, Goebbels called Jews “the carriers of infectious diseases” and two weeks later referred to Jews as “parasites”. By November, he was calling them “lice”.’
~~
‘B’nai B’rith International (English pronunciation: /bəˌneɪ ˈbrɪθ/, from Hebrew: בני ברית b’né brit, “Children of the Covenant”),[1] is the oldest Jewish service organization in the world. B’nai B’rith states that it is committed to the security and continuity of the Jewish people and the State of Israel and combating antisemitism and bigotry. Its mission is to unite persons of the Jewish faith and to enhance Jewish identity through strengthening Jewish family life, to provide broad-based services for the benefit of senior citizens, and to facilitate advocacy and action on behalf of Jews throughout the world.
Although the organization’s historic roots stem from a system of fraternal lodges[2] and units in the late 20th century,[3] as fraternal organizations declined throughout the United States, the organization evolved into a dual system of both lodges and units. The membership pattern became more common to other contemporary organizations of members affiliated by contribution in addition to formal dues paying members. In recent years, the organization reported more than 200,000 members and supporters in more than 50 countries and a budget of $14,000,000. Nearly 95% of the membership is in the United States.
B’nai B’rith International is affiliated with the World Jewish Congress.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B'nai_B'rith
Phil
“The most bizarre is crowd funding war. Really. You can apparently pay for bullets to be fired in Ukraine.”
________________
Please tell me more, at first sight I find this a laudable initiative and may wish to contribute. Thanks.
Waiting to see Who Falls for it ..Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !
On the slideshow, the UK section have had a meeting at the FCO and a tour of the BBC. That fits.
http://bnaibrithuk.org/
To be accurate, it was the grandly titled BBLBIA who had a meeting at the FCO.
http://bnaibrithuk.org/about-us/political-advocacy/
B’nai B’rith London Bureau of International Affairs (BBLBIA)
Monday, July 7, 2014
Exclusive: Democracy Now! Goes Inside Embassy Refuge, Talks w/ Julian Assange About WikiLeaks, Snowden
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/7/exclusive_inside_embassy_refuge_julian_assange
Video 48 mins
Part 2 on Wednesday
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE. RESTORE HIS HUMAN RIGHTS. LET HIM BREATHE FRESH AIR AND FEEL THE WARMTH OF THE SUN ON HIS BACK. HIS INCARCERATION IS AN ABOMINATION.
Is David Irving doing a reading at the Festival?
If so ask him why he tried to use the UK law of libel to limit Deborah Lipstadt’s freedom of speech.
An interesting snippet of info from the Democracy Now transcript.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re right across from Harrods, the famous department store.
JULIAN ASSANGE: There is, under the Freedom of—under, actually, the Data Protection Act, we filed a act against Harrods and got information out showing how Harrods were in fact assisting the police surveillance operation.
AMY GOODMAN: How?
JULIAN ASSANGE: By permitting the police to use various buildings and facilities that Harrods has, not just the formal building, but they have a number of buildings which face onto the embassy. Additionally, it might be something of interest that Harrods was bought out by the Qatar sovereign fund a while ago, so it is ultimately Qatar that is supporting the surveillance operation of this embassy through its collaboration with the British government.
BOYCOTT QATARI OWNED HARRODS NOW.
Fall guy for the FIFA crooks has collar felt.
7 July 2014
Fifa partner CEO Ray Whelan arrested over ticket scam
Ray Whelan is escorted to a police station in Rio de Janeiro. Photo: 7 July 2014 Ray Whelan was arrested at Rio’s luxurious Copacabana Palace Hotel
Fifa linked to Brazil ticket gang
Police arrest World Cup ‘tout gang’
Warning to fans over World Cup scams
Brazilian police have arrested the chief executive of a Fifa partner company as part of investigations into the illegal sale of World Cup tickets.
Ray Whelan from Match Hospitality was held at the Rio de Janeiro hotel where officials from the world’s football governing body were also staying.
Last week, police held 11 people and broke up an international gang.
They are accused of illegally reselling tickets, including some originally allocated to players.
Police say the gang earned as much as $90m (£52m) per tournament and could have operated at four World Cups.
The authorities believe some of the tickets were sold to foreign tourists.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-28205082
Bit of a falling-out between A Node and California Ben above, what? Always amusing to see two Eminences having a go at each other out of wounded vanity and over-self-consciousness!
BTW, re David Irving and his “destroyed career”*, let it be noted that it was Irving who sought brought an action for libel against Deborah Lipstadt and the other way round. Like Oscar Wilde, Irving over-reached himself when trying to silence someone else.
* (Baal-type footnote)I note that Mary, who started off this exchange, hasn’t had the guts to answer Resident Dissident’s question. What an armchair warrior, she daren’t even defend her own posts!
“Please tell me more, at first sight I find this a laudable initiative and may wish to contribute. Thanks.
Waiting to see Who Falls for it ..Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !”
_________________
Yeah, sure, Fujisan, sure, it was just a trap, wasn’t it. Or not.
A little like an Eminence coming out with a bit of moral filth and then saying “I was only joking”….
Happens quite often on here.
“I have examined this entire thread….etc, etc, etc..”
_______________
And it kept you up until 3am, A Node? For God’s sake get a grip, man – have you nothing better to do with your life?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I don’t think you mean any harm, and I think we’re on the same side,…etc, etc”
______________________
You certainly are – just like Laurel and Hardy 🙂
Funny how Eminences start quarreling amoung themselves (A Node/California Ben this time) in the absence of myself, Resident Dissident and a few others.
And how, apart from that, the thread’s almost comatose until I and Resident Dissident and some others have occasion to join in the learned discussions.
Use Habbabreak and go back to sleep – you know it’s the right thing to do!
____________________
Buy jam from Israel, it’s the fruit that does it.
http://www.panarabiaenquirer.com/wordpress/qatar-to-bar-saudis-from-harrods-in-response-to-ambassador-withdrawal/
On David Irving, I do not approve of his persecution, on free speech grounds. But having actually read some of his earlier books, including his life of Rommel, I think he always appears to have had a dangerous attraction to Nazi Germany. That sympathy led him to fall below standards of academic rigour.
Whatever one thinks of present day Israel, to deny the massive scale of organised extermination of Jews (and other groups) by the Nazis is ridiculous – and almost always motivated by anti-Semitism.
Some interesting reporting in the US over the beating of the 15 year old;
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/unprecedented-palestinian-experience.html
Israelis are very very slow learners, heavy-handiness always rebounds.
Poster Formerly Known as ANode –
Thanks for the B’nai Brith ad. There is one group of people on Earth you are not even allowed to think about disliking, and their self-appointed voice makes itself, and them, as dislikeable as it possibly can. No wonder the frustration boils over from time to time.
Fascist race-hater distances self from Likud (but remains close to Likud):
http://yalibnan.com/2014/07/07/israeli-fm-lieberman-ends-union-netanyahus-likud/
Testing (removed comment):
Comparing the (unequivocal) B’nai Brith equation of antisemitism with disease, with Goebbels’ equation of Judaism with disease; does this itself constitute antisemitism in your view? I’d like to know, for future reference.
Craig
“On David Irving, I do not approve of his persecution, on free speech grounds. But having actually read some of his earlier books, including his life of Rommel, I think he always appears to have had a dangerous attraction to Nazi Germany. That sympathy led him to fall below standards of academic rigour.”
____________________
I broadly agree with that. Just three points:
1/. Not sure that he’s being “persecuted” and would welcome detail for that suggestion. It is true that he was barred from entering Germany and is barred from entering Canada and Australia, but I’m not sure if that amounts to “persecution” for a historian/writer/polemicist. The recent court case was brought by Irving in response to a book by a minor American academic which would have sold few copies (at least in the UK) and would soon have disappeared into the morass of holocaust literature, and was Irving’s own “Oscar Wilde moment”.
2/. The evidence brought by expert witnesses (including Richard Evans) at the Lipstadt trial demonstrated quite clearly that your point about Irving’s lack of academic rigour is correct. And it is not the first time: as another example, Irving’s contention (cf “Uprising-One nation’s nightmare: Hungary 1956”)that the Hungarian AVO (secret police) was largely run and staffed by Jews has been shown (cf Anne Applebaum i.a.) to be incorrect.
3/. Having read some of Irving’s work, I should make a point which isn’t often made – because the argument always gravitates around question of academic rigour, or intention. That point is that he is simply not a very good writer and that his style (nothing to do with content)is not pleasing.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/07/doune-the-rabbit-hole-2/comment-page-2/#comment-465145
As the troll knows, I do not respond to interrogative questions from trolls designed only to stir up trouble.
Interesting that the ex nightclub bouncer Lieberman has broken with Netanyahu’s Likud for not being tough enough on the Hamas.
Only the other day Avigdor was calling for the killing of an Arab Israeli MK! He’s tough!
Israelis call for Arab member of Israeli parliament to be killed
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/12504-israelis-call-for-arab-member-of-israeli-parliament-to-be-killed
Elsewhere
Arafat case may prove another huge judicial blow for Israel
As Israel tries to cope with the fallout from the sadistic murder of a young Palestinian, there is an allegedly unlawful killing threatening to cause it even greater problems. France has effectively re-opened the investigation into the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, arguably the most internationally famous Palestinian of the last few decades, and a Nobel Prize winning peace maker.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/12607-arafat-case-may-prove-another-huge-judicial-blow-for-israel
Habbabkuk, 9:16 am:
More that he was being persecuted, I’d say. Irving was also imprisoned in Austria; he was sentenced to three years of which he served one.
While reading about Irving last night I found that it was he who popularised the “100,000 to 250,000 were killed by the British bombing of Dresden” legend.
I am unlike Habbabkuk (who seems to have made a deep study of Irving’s and Lipstadt’s writing) in that I have read none of their books.
~~~
Who’s have thunk it? There is nothing new under the sun.
57 Years Ago: U.S. and Britain Approved Use of Islamic Extremists to Topple Syrian Government
July 07, 2014
Have the U.S. and Its Allies Intentionally Balkanized Syria Into Smaller Regions?
BBC reports that – in 1957 – the British and American leaders approved the use of Islamic extremists and false flag attacks to topple the Syrian government:
Nearly 50 years before the war in Iraq, Britain and America sought a secretive “regime change” in another Arab country… by planning the invasion of Syria and the assassination of leading figures.
Newly discovered documents show how in 1957 [former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom] Harold Macmillan and President Dwight Eisenhower approved a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion by Syria’s pro-western neighbours, and then to “eliminate” the most influential triumvirate in Damascus.
Although historians know that intelligence services had sought to topple the Syrian regime in the autumn of 1957, this is the first time any document has been found showing that the assassination of three leading figures was at the heart of the scheme. In the document drawn up by a top secret and high-level working group that met in Washington in September 1957, Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower were left in no doubt about the need to assassinate the top men in Damascus.
Mr Macmillan ordered the plan withheld even from British chiefs of staff, because of their tendency “to chatter”.
/..
http://www.globalresearch.ca/57-years-ago-u-s-and-britain-approved-use-of-islamic-extremists-to-topple-syrian-government/5390279
Very interesting. How did the UK and the US “approve the use of Islamic extremists” when officially, there were none under their command?
As then, so now, I strongly suspect.
Mary
“I am unlike Habbabkuk (who seems to have made a deep study of Irving’s and Lipstadt’s writing) in that I have read none of their books.”
___________________
Nothing like flagging one’s ignorance with pride, eh, Mary?
And not that that ignorance stops you from posting on about matters Jewish, anti-Semotoc, “fascist”, Nazi and so on. But hey, I forgot, it’s not you saying anything is it, it’s always someone else (cf. posts passim)!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Interesting how the usual suspects, always ready to pile into everything and everyone, are keeping very quiet about David Irving….except to defend him.
“Islamic extremists” take note – if you think your orders come from God, think again.
Whenever I read of yet another Zionist finally seeing the light, I always wonder how on earth it took them so long, it’s not as if these latest killings are worst than Cast Lead or the regular turkey shoots of Lebanese civilians, etc, bloody etc;
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/06/1311721/-As-a-Jew-living-in-America-the-past-week-has-changed-me-forever#