I just saw the British Prime Minister do something, so appallingly tasteless I could not believe it was happening. BBC News just showed a dawn raid by immigration officers on a well-kept home. So far, so tasteless.
Astonishingly, once the evil foreigners had been herded up and taken off to detention camps, where they risk being beaten up or raped, Teresa May and David Cameron arrived, and posed in the victims’ kitchen for trophy pictures.
I thought that what Blair has done since leaving Downing Street had debased the office of Prime Minister to an astonishing degree. But, posing for a stunt in the neat and clean kitchen of some poor immigrant, David Cameron had plumbed levels of tastelessness that again make me realise that the UK has become a country whose values I no longer recognise. The disgusting complicity of the BBC in filming this stunt is equally astonishing.
Are there really so few people left who have the slightest idea of what constitutes decent human behaviour?
I’ve just read in the Guardian that Philip Hammond refused this morning to say whether he thought Israel’s actions in Gaza were disproportionate – despite being asked 5 times on the Today programme.
No wonder Israelis have lost any sense of decent-mindedness when they have sycophants like that to appease them.
je, 10:46 am; I think there are serious reasons to doubt that 4% figure:
http://tabithatroughton.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/standing-with-the-israelis/
Media companies have their own agendas that rarely include peace, which sells little daily media, thus attracting few eyes to corporate adverts, just for starters. There are ways to warp opinion polls – how the sample is selected (ask yourself what could be done with all that telephone metadata. In Israel!), the timing with regard to other events including the media’s own reporting, and what exact wording is used. Maybe psychologists / PR experts are asked to frame the questions such as to provoke a specific response. Compare the response to the Iraq poll in the UK, for instance. Please don’t let the corporate media marginalise those whose voices are calling for peace, and such calls from within Israel are particularly valuable to the peace argument.
@ Peacewisher – “It wasn’t always thus, GF. For example, at the turn of the century, the EU was very much against US/UK plans for surveillance of electronic traffic.”
Good old times, eh?
10.50-BBC,EU,racist propaganda suggesting that working “Native” British all lazy,drug ridden,wife beating,benefit dependent and living off the state.
Luckily the working class don’t watch the BBC!
It’s divide and conquer from the corporate media. Convince us peace supporters that we hardly any support in this country or that, or anywhere. Beat the drums for war, just as Herman Hesse said pre-WWII, but now with modern technology. Just don’t buy it. Literally.
Mark – that’s old news. Since then he’s been to Vietnam, China, the US and the UAE, without a chirp out of him about Gaza since the 16th, when his Netanyahu-dictated ceasefire proposal was given the reception it deserved.
Details may be found on previous comments pages.
This would be in line with the growing picture of the Quartet as a cabal of globalists intent on diluting the UN’s influence and eventually exploiting the cheap labour market to be offered by the Palestinians in their Bantustans. If so, he’ll be staying in the job. He’s doing fine.
Clark – Thanks for the link. I hope for their sake, as well as the Palestinians, that that figure isn’t accurate.
Geoffrey, 11:30 am; thanks; that demonstrates my point nicely. The corporate media is above us plebs; we’re all filth – in the EU, the States, and even Israel. Bomb, bomb, bomb humanity. Bomb each other. You all hate each other anyway, don’t you? You hate each other, and love our papers and TV programmes that tell you others are inferior to you. Buy us! Betray each other!
Next up, there’s a really exciting and violent war film, where everyone dies except the young beautiful people who save each other and have sex happily ever after.
That’s Right Folks Don’t Touch That Dial!
“There are several groups opposing payment of our TV licences on Facebook.”
To say nothing of Sky and Rupert Murdoch’s empire – of course some socialists believe that some things are better provided by collective provision rather than relying on the free markets for everything. If you think the BBC is bad try Fox News.
We know you all hate each other because we know what films you buy – war, crime, death, guts, blood, and horror. We know exactly which scenes moved you most. We monitored your heart rate and breathing in the cinema. The cameras in our Intel set-top boxes captured the expressions on your faces as you saw the scenes unfolding before your eyes…
They really are the bloodiest of bastards. When will their lust for blood be quenched?
Today Israel targeted @UNRWA vehicle, and murdered Professor Bashir Al-Hajjar, 3 PhDs, and his brother Samir.
pic.twitter.com/ulrus8YyPo
https://twitter.com/PalAnonymous/status/494275591479496704/photo/1
Intel set top boxes watching viewers:
https://www.google.com/search?q=set+top+boxes+camera
What does “intel” generally denote? Is your computer “Intel Inside”? And that’s good, right? They’re taking the piss.
Good to see you back, Mary.
£3m in additional aid for Gaza from Cameron according to Sky.
I’m sure the Palestinians would rather he and the rest of the EU did something to stop the bombs falling. And that the UK hadn’t supplied things like parts for sniper rifles to Israel. The financial damage to Gaza will run into billions.
Oh, and I forgot the Quartet’s interest in the Gaza gas field, didn’t I? Looks like BP (advisor, JP Morgan, “advisor”, Tony Blair) are currently in the running for a cut. Once Gaza’s safely ungoverned again.
Not on your nelly, it is AMD all the way. Anyway the 64bit actually performs what it says in the brochure.
The need for such a pervasive surveillance regiment arises from the elite (plutocrats, banksters, and their coterie the charge hands) and their tenuous grip on power! If the standard issue blessed moron knew the extent of their power …… Well world would be in a totally different shape and format.
The misanthropy earlier referred to in this thread is to dis-empower and oppress the blessed morons who are all too busy hating their own humanity, and their own kind, through a plethora of excuses, that are amply exploited by the same carpetbaggers (elite) to keep the blessed morons in check.
In any case, Je, why does anyone other than Israel have to pay for the havoc it causes every couple of years? Why is MAP still in existence after THIRTY years of this?
MAP’s voluntary income totalled £2,789,000 in the year ending March 2013, and it spent it all, so big fucking deal, Cameron.
http://www.map-uk.org/
Another petition to sign, addressed to the pink plastic prime minister:
http://www.map-uk.org/campaign-with-us/gaza-crisis-an-open-letter-to-david-cameron
Getting it stopped would be a lot more productive than signing a cheque on the Bank of Me, Dave.
“Good to see you back, Mary.”
__________________
A matter of opinion, dear Clark.
But it’s sure that there will be 20%* more comments than over the past couple of days!
_________________
* figure based on a count of Mary’s comments over the last few weeks.
Green Party manifest…George Monbiot wrote
Rough as this proposal is, it will start to challenge the political consensus and draw people who thought they had nowhere to turn. Expect the billionaires’ boot boys to start screaming, once they absorb the implications. And take their boos and jeers as confirmation that it’s onto something. You wanted a progressive alternative? You’ve got it.
http://www.monbiot.com/2014/07/29/unmasked/
also in the Guardian today
Habbubkuk, as you well know, Mary has returned from hospital. Did you wish her to die?
Habbabkuk, I believe you are a member of the political establishment. You know Mary was in hospital because you monitor squonk.tk. Your attitude sometimes disgusts me. You are an embarrassment to the entire political class, and I look forward to the day that your identity is exposed.
One or two plus user names on this blog barely make it worthwhile to to bother with a response to certain comments being posted. Anyway ….. life sort of goes on.
Hi Mary, hope you’re well.
Hi Mary,
Good to see you back! I have missed your informative comments and links, look forward to reading more of your work.
==========
I doubt the political class membership, in reality there exists a high probability of a zealot and a pusillanimous sycophant. However I join in looking forward to the exposure of identity too, a very well deserved case for publicity and exposure.
If H is a member of the political establishment he must be a Con FoI who argues a lot. Doesn’t narrow the field much, I’m afraid. And would the field be embarrassed? Only if the donations disappeared. Peter Oborne outlined the procedure, the last-time-but-one Israel cooked up an excuse for bombing refugees:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne-james-jones/pro-israel-lobby-in-britain-full-text
In which-
he summarises the recruitment and support by Israel of the Quartet’s Representative to the Middle East…
One of Tony Blair’s first acts on becoming an MP in 1983 was to join Labour Friends of Israel. He remained close to the group throughout his career, regularly appearing at their events. Jon Mendelsohn, a former chairman of the LFI, and now Gordon Brown’s chief election fundraiser, speaking in 2007, described Tony Blair’s achievement in transforming the Labour Party’s position on Israel. “Blair attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party. Old Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs to support, but the milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Labour Friends of Israel meetings.”
Blair succeeded in making the Labour party more attractive to donors connected with the Labour Friends of Israel. The key figure in building these relationships was, of course, Michael Levy*.
Blair met Levy in 1994 at a dinner party thrown by Gideon Meir, number two at the Israeli Embassy. Blair was just back from a trip to Israel with the LFI.
The two men quickly recognised the mutual benefits offered by the relationship. By early 1995, Blair was leader of the opposition and he dropped in on his new friend for a swim and a game of tennis almost every weekend. Levy had been collecting donations to a blind trust, known as the Labour Leader’s Office Fund, raising nearly two million pounds, a sum “previously unimaginable for a Labour leader”.14 Blair maintained that he was unaware of the sources of these donations despite being in almost constant contact with Levy and even meeting some of the donors.
We now know that the secret donors included funders of pro-Israel groups such as Trevor Chinn and Emmanuel Kaye. Levy had played a crucial role in persuading donors that Labour had changed.
Blair told Levy, “I am absolutely determined that we must not go into the next election financially dependent on the trade unions.” Instead, Blair became financially dependent on large donors, some of whom had very strong views on Israel.
*Michael Levy was one of the guests at Cherie’s 59 11/12th birthday party on the 21st. Presumably he’s got over being left holding Blair’s cash-for-honours baby…
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/may/12/cashforhonours.tonyblair
Passerby, from comments on this blog, Habbabkuk has a specialist’s knowledge of immigration legislation, treaty negotiation, internal EU structure, the meaning of honours and suchlike and what they’re awarded for; all such stuff as this. Its argument style is typical of the empty rhetoric heard every day in the House of Commons. And it follows approved Establishment lines to the letter. I’m convinced that Habbabkuk is a character run by a senior politician or someone on his staff.
Thanks for the link to MAP, Ba’al, I hope they get to 10.000 soon.
Myself:
That doesn’t mean that Habbabkuk represents any of its knowledge honestly; quite the opposite. Like most politicians, it stresses and gently exaggerates the points it wishes to make, and studiously avoids, misrepresents or creates dramatic diversions from all others.
It passes the Duck Test.
The pair of them really are nasty pieces of work.They don’t even believe in what they are doing. It’s simply to outUkip, UKIP.Cameron’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza was probably a knee jerk to public protest which the BBC can’t stuff down the memory hole.
Britain is run pretty much by corporations ( City + Lobby )Our Police have become tools of the Government.Our armed forces have become aggressive in nature.Censorship in the media is rife.Protest is still permitted but 100% controlled by the Police.Privacy has all but disappeared. I would call that fascist.
Hear hear Clark !!
And welcome back Mary.
Thanks Clark, Nevermind and Passerby for your welcomes and good wishes. I am pleased to be home and am absolutely devastated at what is still going on in Gaza. I caught glimpses of images on screens which seem to have multiplied everywhere. There is a Costa coffee shop in the hospital entrance and I noticed a TV was on showing Sky News.
A great movement of people goes through all the time inwards and outwards and it is not difficult to appreciate the demand on the NHS for treatment. Costa is located where a simple little League of Friends’ shop and drinks service used to be staffed by volunteers. They were booted out. I expect Mr ‘Unt’s NHS England now gets a cut from Costa’s takings. They are being replaced by M&S I gather.