Theresa May announced the security services have foiled forty major terrorist plots in the last decade. They also successfully prevented Rotherham FC from winning the Champions League and the sky from turning into plasticine.
We have had, on average, a major “anti-terrorism act” curtailing vital liberties every 20 months in that period, to the point where it is illegal for me to give a talk in Westminster (see last post). We have security theatre of the absurd, everywhere. Air travel is a misery due to the war on toothpaste, but I can carry two litres of extremely flammable duty free 50% spirit on board a plane. At Waverley Station in Edinburgh a taxi can no longer enter due to “terrorism”, but they can drop me outside and I can take my 60 kg of plastic explosive in two suitcases down the elevator.
The disaster of universities today is corporatism and managerialism. It is not an excess of freedom of speech. Academics dare say very little – they spend their entire time wracking their brains as to how to produce research that will attract finance, and thus meet cash targets and not lead to redundancies and departmental closures. Universities see themselves overwhelmingly as businesses, not as self governing academic communities and centres of intellectual inquiry. In Scotland, every University Principal is on over 300,000 a year and every University Secretary on over 200,000. There are no poets or philosophers on University Courts – bean counting is the only discipline deemed relevant to university governance. A tiny number of eccentric academics are devoted to their teaching, but there is no income stream of any kind dependent on teaching quality.
Now Theresa May is going to make doubly sure no student ever hears anything interesting or inspirational, by giving University administrations – who want nothing but a profitable business – a “duty to protect” students from extremist thought. This idea is so illiberal it makes me physically vomit. The net result will be a cumbersome system of vetting for every external speaker, having to submit texts for approval in advance, to be seen by the University administration. The result will be a firm intention to discourage external speakers from appearing at all, in order to avoid the cost of this bureaucracy.
I speak frequently in universities and certainly am not going to submit my talks for pre-vetting (I always speak off the cuff anyway). In fact, if this legislation goes through, I am going to undertake spontaneous guerrilla lectures in universities, just popping up and starting talking, with no prior approval at all. I hope others may join me. We need a flying squad to preserve the very notion of academic intercourse without political constraint.
One of the murderers of Lee Rigby had been discussing his desire to kill a soldier five months earlier on Facebook, and The UK government are complaining that Facebook hadn’t told them about it. But Snowden’s leaks tell us that GCHQ and NSA spend billions, much of which is spend monitoring communication on social media such as Facebook. The BBC has so far failed to ask if those conversations were already recorded in the NSA and GCHQ systems.
Mass surveillance fails again, despite the incredibly generous funding.
Zionist activists have urged British MPs to implement new legislation that police could use to stop non-violent, pro-BDS protests.
Manchester-based group North-West Friends of Israel have urged politicians to give police more power to stop boycotts of businesses by pro-Palestine solidarity activists.
As cited in a report by The Jewish Chronicle, the group’s co-chair Anthony Dennison wants the Public Order Act amended “to allow police to halt non-violent protests.
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(BDS) Boycott Divestment and Sanction, seems to be pushing all the right buttons.
I wonder if sympathetic UK politicians will have the chutzpah, to amend the Public Order Act, in favour of you know who.
This is interesting Hmm.
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In a U.N. vote, on November 21st, only three countries — the United States, Ukraine, and Canada — voted against a resolution to condemn racist facsism, or “nazism,” and to condemn denial of Germany’s World War II Holocaust primarily against Jews.
This measure passed the General Assembly, on a vote of 115 in favor, 3 against, and 55 abstentions (the abstentions were in order not to offend U.S. President Obama, who was opposed to the resolution).
http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-among-three-countries-at-u-n-officially-backing-nazism-and-holocaust-denial-israel-parts-company-from-them-germany-abstains/5415939
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Here is a complete rundown of who voted YES, NO or Abstained.
http://www.un.org/en/ga/third/69/docs/voting_sheets/L56.Rev1.pdf
I’m pretty sure a certain country, will be miffed with the US and Canada.
Average seems to be about £200,000 before pension and benefits in kind.
Highest seems to be £303,000.
That’s from 18 months ago, so probably increased since then.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/scottish-universities-criticised-on-pay/2003205.article
It’s terribly important to pay decision making communicators exceptionally well. Keeps them contemptuously distant, distinct and different from their audience, and ensures they’ll do as they’re asked should morals and mortgage ever cross paths.
The BBC could never have become what it is today without very very high pay.
From Republicofscotland:
“An interesting look at big donors ( Of a particular persuasion, you know who I mean) who control Ed Miliband and Co.”
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Actually, RoS, I don’t know whom you mean. Would you be bold enough to elaborate, including what you mean by “of a particular persuasion”?
Thank you.
Very clever trick that, whoever sponsored the UN resolution.
Someone is making the self-declared International Community look like a giant tit.
Re My comment at 4.57pm.
I’m astonished that Poland abstained, it would appear, its a case of preferring to offend one group,of who you have at least a millennium of mutual history with, but you dare not, offend President Obama, how remarkable is that.
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Actually, RoS, I don’t know whom you mean. Would you be bold enough to elaborate, including what you mean by “of a particular persuasion”?
Thank you.
Habb
Particular Persuasion, = Rich and Powerful.
What the matter not the answer you were looking for?
With respect to how the so-called USA PATRIOT Act was steamrolled though Congress, there’s a very interesting new book out: Graeme MacQueen’s The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy. It so happens that the two congressional offices to which anthrax envelopes were sent a month after 9/11 were those of the two Senators who were impeding passage of the bill: Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. After the first of those letters was opened and Senate offices were closed, the bill breezed through Congress.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has warned it would be a “grave mistake” for the French parliament to follow the suit of several other European nations in recognizing a Palestinian state in a vote scheduled early December.
“Recognition of a Palestinian state by France would be a grave mistake,” Netanyahu told reporters in Jerusalem. “Do they have nothing better to do at a time of beheadings across the Middle East, including that of a French citizen?” apparently referring to Herve Gourdel executed by Algerian jihadists in September.
http://rt.com/news/208187-israel-france-grave-mistake/
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Is that a veiled threat to France, or bravado from a man who knows, the tide may well be turning, I wonder?
If my last post offends please remove it,
Wow! Germany and Austria abstained in that UN vote on the resolution against Nazism. (Interesting that Israel voted for the resolution. Is this another instance of Israel’s at least outwardly adopting a neutral stance on the Ukraine dispute?)
Republicofscotland
So your comment could in fact have read as follows:
“An interesting look at big donors ( rich and powerful, you know who I mean) who control Ed Miliband and Co.” ?
Thank you for the explanation.
Could you now give us a few names for those big donors?
Thanks in advance.
“Could you now give us a few names for those big donors?”
____________________________
Habb
Oh I think you know perfectly well, who’s banner the donors stand under, as for naming names I think not.
What did you make of the UN vote on Nazism? Check my 2nd link at 4.57pm, a remarkable amount of abstentions, is it not.
Question.
Why have 55 countries abstained, including the UK? dare I say it are they deniers?
Blair Paterson
25 Nov, 2014 – 5:11 pm
“I never shop or buy any thing from a shop or buisiness that I know to be Jewish it,is my form of protest against their war crimes against the people of gazza”
……………………………………………………………
It is not the Jewish shops and businesses that you should boycott BP; only the shops that sell products made or grown in Israel (and the occupied territories) and imported to the UK.
The tide is certainly turning, though I think it’s much more against Netanyahoo and his particular gang than against Israel itself.
When the yahoo was last Israeli PM in the 90s he rarely got an easy ride on even the BBC.
He was given a fairer ride this time for a while but you just can’t take the yahoo out of Netanyahoo, so now he’s facing political pressure from former friends with all these successive countries now recognising Palestine in a non-binding way.
I’m sure this approach has been agreed with the Israeli opposition.
Things aren’t good in Israel, even domestically.
I mean, look at this from one month ago, at The Royal United Services Institute no less, and to a standing ovation and cheers:
Alan Duncan, former Conservative minister and oil man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYmptosR2KU
“It is not the Jewish shops and businesses that you should boycott BP; only the shops that sell products made or grown in Israel (and the occupied territories) and imported to the UK.”
Thanks for that, Doug.
“The disaster of universities today is corporatism and managerialism.”
In the 1960’s, in The Uses of Literacy, Richard Hoggart warned of this.
University administration, he said, was a time-consuming and tiresome chore that academics avoided at their peril. For the university to remain a community of scholars the administration must remain in the hands of the scholars.
At that time, that was the rule. For example, Hoggart’s colleague at Leicester University, Professor T.G. Tutin, Editor in Chief of the Flora Europaea, Co-editor of the Flora of the British Isles, etc., etc., served as a Department Head, Dean, and member of the University Board of Governors all at the same time. He also gave undergraduate lectures and attended undergraduate lab classes.
This was in keeping with an age-old tradition in academia, dating back to the time of Bishop Grosseteste, the 13th Century scientist who served as Chancellor of the University of Oxford. The tradition was staunchly upheld by Isaac Newton who, representing the University of Cambridge, defied the brutal Judge Jeffreys when James II sought to have a Benedictine monk awarded a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge in contravention of the University’s statutes and regulatons.
But today’s academics have no balls. Britain’s entire educated class have no balls. Their all twats reading the Gruniard and the Economist. Britain is Hell bent for a fascist tyranny in which the universities and schools play a central role in brainwashing and subordinating the more intelligent half of the population.
The same is true throughout the US-CIA-NATO controlled West, a world of bent jounalists, academic castrati and extremely well rewarded Blairite puppets.
Republicofscotland
““Could you now give us a few names for those big donors?”
____________________________
Habb
Oh I think you know perfectly well, who’s banner the donors stand under, as for naming names I think not.”
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You’re wrong, I don’t know which people or organisations you have in mind, so why not name a few of those big donors?
Are you by by any chance worried lest naming a few of those big donors might give a clue as to what you meant by the “people of a certain persuasion” controlling Ed Miliband?
You’re not wandering again into the sort of territory which impelled Craig to delete an entire two threads not so long ago, are you?
The ISC report published today states:
#149 Michael Oluwatobi Adebowale came to MI5’s attention as a result of his interest in online extremist material. He was investigated by MI5 under two different low priority operations, from 2011 up until the [Lee Rigby] attack.
However Adebowale was linked to the ‘Woolwich Boys’ gangs in South London.
Michael ‘Toby’ Adebowale & Ahmed Ahmed were stabbed during an incident at Verona House on the Larner Road estate in Erith, southeast London, on January 5 2008, which resulted in the murder of Faridon Alizada, of Bexley. Adebowale & Ahmed were reported to be with Faridon Alizada when Lee James came in at 3am claiming to want to buy drugs.
Lee James was found guilty by a jury & convicted of the murder of Faridon Alizada, at Southwark Crown Court on 19 December 2008. Michael Harwood was found not guilty.
Court reports stated that ‘the 17 year-old [Michael Adebowale] who was stabbed when Faridon Alizada was murdered was sentenced to four months detention and training…‘
The incident is linked with the ‘Woolwich Boys’ stuff of 2008. From the Lee James trial in December 2008, James, who also used the last names Peacock and Cantwell, told people ‘he had robbed, murdered and stabbed the occupants of the flat’.
‘He [Lee James] told others he believed that the men in the flat were supporters of Al Qaeda and that they had offered him money to act as a suicide bomber to blow up the nearby Bluewater Shopping Centre,’ said prosecutor Tony Leonard.’
Funny how this report is published the day after Theresa May states that more surveillance powers are required. Also funny how Mi5 had tabs on one of the suspects [Adebolajo] for over 6 years…..
A letter was sent by Ibrahim Hassan to Malcolm Rifkind (& copied to all other members of the ISC), on 27th May 2013.
In the letter Ibrahim Hassan (also known as Abu Nusaybah & he who was arrested after appearing on Newsnight stating that Mi5 had tried to recruit Michael Adebolajo) alleges that his friend Michael Adebolajo was subjected to “systematic torture and sexual abuse … by Kenyan troops, which he believed was at the behest of British intelligence.
There is more to this Lee Rigby shenanigans than we are being told!!
I just heard on the news that The PM is to give £130 Million extra funds to Mi5……….
The great white libdem hope in Israhell.
“The Jerusalem Post reported that Warren met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
The senator’s Middle East trip, first reported by the Boston Globe, is her first trip abroad as a senator. And given the importance of U.S.-Israeli relations, it was bound to stoke speculation about a potential 2016 presidential bid. The liberal favorite has insisted that she is not running for president, but progressive activists are making a push to persuade her to run as an alternative to the likely Democratic front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/elizabeth-warren-israel-113141.html#ixzz3K6ozJ7rI
http://chrisspivey.org/court-in-the-act/
http://chrisspivey.org/taking-the-micks/
http://chrisspivey.org/mugged-off-just-sayin-2/
http://chrisspivey.org/fallen-angels/
http://chrisspivey.org/the-drummer-man/
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BERT
Of course their is Bert much more than you could imagine, above is a comprehensive look at the Rigby fiasco, start with Drummer Man.
Republicofscotland 25 Nov, 2014 – 4:57 pm
“In a U.N. vote, on November 21st, only three countries — the United States, Ukraine, and Canada — voted against a resolution to condemn racist facsism, or “nazism,” and to condemn denial of Germany’s World War II Holocaust primarily against Jews.
[snip]
I’m pretty sure a certain country, will be miffed with the US and Canada.”
I think you’re missing something, RoS.
It was Russia that sponsored the resolution “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” They wanted to draw attention to the far-right extremist groups aligned with Ukrainian nationalists and the Kiev government.
Ukraine obviously wasn’t going to support it, the US couldn’t either since they are funding those groups, and Canada was probably bullied/bribed to go along so as not to leave the US isolated.
The puffins of St Kilda are ready to airlift you in.
CM:
This disease is well illustrated in the recent piece by by Marina Warner (and the letters that follow it) in the LRB (Why I Quit).
We are not shown any examples are we? In order to justify this in universities.
They must be over the moon about the recently discoverd Facebook discussion someone had, Like that’s not a one in a million case. But still they instantly try to get private companies (as if they they aren’t “helping” enough) to monitor peoples personal conversations more.
They pick on one minor random case where some stupid idiot talked about his plans and everyone gets hammered. While the so called security services ignore there own failings. They already have way to much power and they don’t even use it when it matters.
It’s like the so called “foreign scroungers”, iv not seen one (not one) who is not doing work or trying to work. Yet this is the narrative people embody and parrot to me.
Anyway for my money the terrorists are in office. Terrorising innocent people into conformity via mass surveillance. Complicit in violation of inalienable rights to our privacy, and free speech. They are the oppressors and guilty of massive terrorism abroad and at home, spreading lies and propaganda disproportionate to any threat, but threats they are doing all the can to increase.
They don’t give a moneys about you or your families safety, trawling through face-book is the ultimate expression of what is really concerning to them, Watching people to keep them under control and make sure they never try and hold the establishment to account for it’s many crimes. This is the reality of this country and the system we live in today. That’s obvious.
It’s basically dictatorship now. Let’s treat it like one and stop all this messing about.
Sounds like a good title for a guerrilla university lecture.
How poetic Paula Rose, thank you, Maybe the puffin will land on your island.
I’d like to second Clarks 4.41pm excellent synopsis of Ms. Mayhems lethargic troops. Further more, I refuse to acknowledge the onion state that apparently did not see what Adebowale said on Fartbook weeks before.
Nothing happened on that chat he had with Foxtrot in yemen
Was it decided that we needed a little fear to wake up the public? was Rigby sacrificed for more actions in Syria and Iraq? Did they really drop surveillance of Adebowale?
PS. Germany’s IT whizz kids think that Regin is a NSA/GCHQ collaborative effort, you know, the really clever things they do, so visa vis such information, pardone moire, I do not believe them one iota, not a centimetre, not a rods length.
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/trojaner-regin-ist-ein-werkzeug-von-nsa-und-gchq-a-1004950.html
(Above, where I said Board of governors, I should have said University Senate.)
Academics dare say very little …
That’s because they’re mostly castrati.
For the most part, today’s academic is not a scholar at all.
Daring to say very little, they are unworthy of a an academic post.
Today’s professor is in most cases a mere careerist, unqualified for one of the professions, not smart enough for the administrative civil service, but whose mediocre grades were sufficient for admission to a PhD program.
Having put in years in grad school and in insecure post-doc positions, and having been thoroughly brainwashed through years of immersion in a politically correct bureaucratic milieu they finally snag a faculty position, which means income for life however minimal their intellectual capacity or contribution.
How many of those sorts of people will dare say anything in the slightest bit controversial if it jeopardizes there prospects for advancement, assuming that they have the originality to say anything other than what the mainstream media tell them to think, which few do?
To go back to the university of the immediate post-war period, you’d have to eliminate from graduate school all those without obvious academic aptitude, i.e., about 98%. Then you’d have to cut salaries by about 80%. Then you’d have academics who were not only of some ability in their chosen field but committed to it despite the miserable financial rewards.
When I obtained a PhD, an assistant lecturer in Britain earned nine hundred pounds a year (yes, hundred, not thousand), which was of not much interest to me. Instead I took a job at twice that, and then within a year moved to a job at four times that.
We now live in a world in which nearly all those of any intellect or education, not only in the university, but also in the civil service and the corporate world, are essentially bought.
But when nobody dares think, or if they think, speak, it means we are past peak Western civilization and are heading for a Soviet style crash.
a “duty to protect” students from extremist thought…
LOL
Just about everything a liberal believes in deeply today was considered “extremist thought” 50 years ago.
Having brought about a social revolution that is both suicidal and insane, liberals of both the phony left and the phony conservative right now wish to impose extreme far-right-wing extremist limitations on the freedom of thought and expression.
Censorship is the father of invention.
Shutting up clever academics with interesting ideas will only lead to them finding ways of expressing their ideas in far more attractive and imaginative ways i.e. metaphor and symbol.
I’m not welcoming life behind a new iron curtain but hey every taoist weightlifter and physicist knows * increase yin/ resistance and yang /force will also increase.
(* I don’t actually know what taoists and physicists know but the weightlifter is obvious; with heavier weights the muscles grow).