This is my last comment for the year as we are off to spend Hogmanay as the guests of an Ambassador in Paris. Out of deference to my family, who have had the brunt of it these last few days, I am definitely not taking the laptop, so I will no longer be able to take part in the popular new bloodsport of proving your loyalty to the SNP by being nasty to Craig Murray.
My parting thought is that, as every year of my entire life, it has been a disastrous one for the Palestinians. Yet more land occupied, settlements built, homes destroyed, olive trees uprooted, shipping vessels sunk and yet another murderous onslaught on Gaza.
I warmly recommend this rare public appearance by Col. Larry Wilkerson, ex-Chief of Staff to Colin Powell and a fellow recipient of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity. His brief musings here on Israel and Syria come from a deep store of knowledge and a razor-sharp intellect.
Do have a wonderful celebration. The future will be good. We are closer to a transformational change in society than you may realise.
Herbie: Gustav Gilbert,the psychologist who interviewed the Nuremberg trial defendants, concluded, after interviewing Hoess, who admitted to being responsible for the deaths of more than two and a half million Jews, that “one gets the general impression of a man who is intellectually normal but with a schizoid apathy, insensitivity, and lack of empathy that could hardly be more extreme in a frank psychotic.”
This extreme ‘lack of empathy’ was a feature in all his interviewees. We are all capable of cutting off empathy, or most of us would be unable to eat factory-farmed meat. But few of us are able to cut it off to those – psychotic – extremes.
Hannah Arendt did indeed argue that the chief Nazis were not psychopaths, but “ordinary men, who made a series of terrible decisions with horrific consequences.” I would argue that an ability to appear ‘normal’ while performing terrible acts is sociopathic, in fact. I would also say that the consequences of these decisions would include an intense and vicious mental reaction, which would then have to be suppressed: leading to further a-morality and withdrawal from reality.
Arendt’s view was that the Nazi chiefs’ greatest error was delegating the process of thinking and decision-making to their higher ups. You could say the same for the people participating in Milgram. However, despite these isolated experiments, it is far more telling that the majority of the German people did not support Hitler.
You pick up a grain of sand Anon and use it to slay a demon. What is the point. Stoning and indeed putting to death is littered in the Bible? It has been forgotten and a Moses Law ameliorated.
They say let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone! Expectedly When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/10089270/Iran-amends-law-on-stoning-for-adultery.html
What punishment shall the torturers, child molesters and preemptive parricide for the so called ‘greater good of humanity’ or in more perfect terms, the justification of slaughter and genocide. Think Iraq and Syria.
From Mary:
Imperialism – diverting public money to a few private pockets, while diverting the electorate’s energy and attention. Craig has been drawing attention to it since 2007:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/08/j_a_hobson_impe/
Quoting J A Hobson:
Also:
There’s Good Money in Death
@Ishmael2: Wonderful Yoga sequence following Blake’s H&H on youtube! Now I have real optimism for 2015.
A woman who claims that an American investment banker loaned her to rich and powerful friends as an underage “sex slave” has alleged in a US court document that she was repeatedly forced to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew.
The accusation against the Duke of York is contained in a motion filed in a Florida court this week in connection with a long-running lawsuit brought by women who say they were exploited by Jeffrey Epstein, a multi-millionaire convicted of soliciting sex with an underage girl after a plea deal.
The woman, who filed the motion anonymously, alleges that between 1999 and 2002 she was repeatedly sexually abused by Epstein who, she also alleges, loaned her out to rich and influential men around the world.
The document – a motion to expand an ongoing lawsuit relating to prosecutors’ handling of Epstein’s case with two new plaintiffs – alleges that the woman “was forced to have sexual relations with this prince when she was a minor” in London, New York and on a private Caribbean island owned by Epstein.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/02/prince-andrew-named-us-lawsuit-underage-sex-allegations
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Prince Andrew! surely not as we all know Prince Andrew is a bastion of righteousness and above reproach.
Although its only an allegation at this moment in time, how could anyone in their right mind, for one minute accuse pious Prince Andrew of any sort of infidelity, its just unthinkable.
I’m sure old Droopy Chops HRH, will be very distressed indeed, I mean its not as if the Royals are, inbred degenerates, with the morals of a river rat.
My apologises to any river rats who may be reading this comment, no slight was intended.
RoS, this came out some time ago:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363444/Jeffrey-Epstein-Robert-Maxwells-daughter-Ghislaine-hired-girls-paedophile.html
Scouse Billy, the results don’t seem unrealistic because if the country I live in, the UK, was attacked and then occupied by foreign military forces with much destruction and death, I’d entirely expect a majority of Britons to support attacks upon the invading forces.
However, if that majority was then used to depict Britons as exceptionally warlike, that would be an obvious misrepresentation.
So I don’t need to critique the individual opinion polls because an obvious misrepresentation is much closer to hand. But you are free to deconstruct Pew Research’s work if you can spare sufficient time.
Lol, Clark you read me well – no, I don’t have time right now.
Also I wasn’t having a go at you personally – my point really was how do any of us know what is real or realistic? My thesis is for the most part from the MSM which is the most egregious form of perception management ever devised – the polls are of course conducted on behalf of the self same agents of management perception.
Clark. (depict Britons as exceptionally war like).
Who wiped out the people of Canada and America? Who enslaved the people of Afria and took their countries off them, as well their mineral assets, in perpetuity?. Who took Australia and New Zealand off their people? Et Al?
Jeffrey Edward Epstein (born January 20, 1953) is an American financier and sex offender. He worked at Bear Stearns early in his career and subsequently formed his own firm.
[..]He is also an old friend of Prince Andrew, Duke of York—they have stayed at each other’s palatial homes, and have vacationed together in Thailand. The prince was a guest in Epstein’s New York residence for several days in December 2010, shortly after Epstein completed his Florida sentence for soliciting an underage girl. His dinner with Andrew at the mansion was also attended by (among others) Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, Charlie Rose, and Woody Allen.[7] The 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2) 9-story mansion is just off Fifth Avenue and overlooks the Frick Collection. It is reported to be the largest private residence in Manhattan, having originally been built as the Birch Wathen School.
Epstein also owns a villa in Palm Beach, Florida, an apartment in Paris, France, and a 10,000-acre ranch including a 26,700-square-foot hilltop mansion in Stanley, New Mexico, south of Santa Fe.[8][9][10] He also owns a mansion with guest houses on his private island called Little Saint James near St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
ex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein
Is one judged by the company one keeps?
Robert Crawford, imperialists did those things. Some of them used English, Irish and Scottish forces to do them. South Africa was taken by predominantly Dutch forces, and French forces took various places, too. In South America it was mostly Spanish forces. And on and on and on – Rome, the Pharaohs, the Grecian empire, various Chinese dynasties…
Ordinary people would rather till the land and raise buildings, working with their families, than go off to foreign lands to subjugate those who live there. The common theme is that the powerful deprive ordinary people of resources and thereby economically force their men to go off and fight, against their will and better judgement.
Tech
It’s much too easy and comfortable to argue that such horrors are produced by individual psychopathy and I’m afraid that that is the dominant assumption.
That hasn’t helped us much and it certainly doesn’t explain why so many ordinary normal people become complicit in the machinery of such crimes.
The research produces a much more challenging analysis and indeed one that explains much of what is still ongoing today.
Whether in the work of Arrendt, of Milgram or the Stanford prison experiment or the earlier fears of Weber, we still need to explain the ordinary the everyday the mundane complicity in great crimes, which as I say are still ongoing today.
This is a reasonable statement of Bauman’s position on this specific issue:
“the Holocaust should be seen as deeply connected to modernity and its order-making efforts. Procedural rationality, the division of labour into smaller and smaller tasks, the taxonomic categorisation of different species, and the tendency to view rule-following as morally good all played their role in the Holocaust coming to pass. And he argued that for this reason modern societies have not fully taken on board the lessons of the Holocaust; it is generally viewed—to use Bauman’s metaphor—like a picture hanging on a wall, offering few lessons.”
In short. Those who simply ensure the trains run on time do not consider themselves responsible for the uses to which those trains are subsequently put.
The IMF clerk who keys the data into the pooter doesn’t think themselves responsible for poverty in Africa.
But without them, those crimes couldn’t take place.
Between them, Scouse Billy and Clark have given valuable reminders that the more “obvious” and “objective” a poll or a series of statistics may seem to be, the more one needs to probe. First, technical issues: is the “average” being used the mean, mode or median? are costs or revenue measured at constant prices? how were the interviewees selected? Second, deliberate and accidental biases: who paid for and carried out the poll? Did they have any influence on how the results were presented and interpreted? Is the margin of error for this type of poll included in the published results?.
As Scouse Billy implies, look beneath what goes into constructing figures for “the UK’s GDP grew at x% in the last quarter/ year” and you may find that you are building your house or political argument on quicksands rather than solid rock. Reality and facts are often contestable illusions. Go through most Cameron or Miliband speeches and you will see that the Great British Tradition of conjurers at children’s parties is alive and well. Rabbits are regularly produced out of hats or cards made to disappear.
Back to a topical political controversy, next week’s consideration by the Commons of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill. A helpful member of the H of C Information Service has responded quickly to my request for the text, as follows:
“The amendment papers for the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill are available via the following link:
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2014-15/counterterrorismandsecurity/documents.html
You can also access the latest version of the Bill via this page; the Bill was reprinted as Bill 142 2014-15 following its committee stage.”
Iain Orr, what’s the the difference between a magician and a psychologist?
One pulls rabbits out of hats, the other pulls habits out of rats.
And the latter’s data is used by the former for perception management, and so we come full circle.
@Republicofscotland
2 Jan, 2015 – 3:32 pm
That sure is one hell of a can of worms!
Cap’n Bob’s daughter, Randy Andy, Jeffrey Epstein …
I’m sure you’ve heard the joke that was doing the rounds not long ago …
Margaret Thatcher dies and goes to Hell and there meets Jimmy Savile.
“Oh Jimmy, what are you doing here?”
“Now then, now then, now then, our Maggie, as it ‘ appens .. fucking minors.”
Margaret sniggers ” Me too!”
Boom, boom!
“RoS, this came out some time ago:”
———————
I’m not surprised Scouse Billy, the establishment, which includes powerful tycoons the entertainment business, royalty, politicians and several other notable, fields of public’s admiration, are riddled with dark and nefarious characters.
Clark
“From Mary:
By one estimate, U.S. taxpayers have squandered $10 trillion over four decades to protect the flow of oil on behalf of multinational corporations.”
___________________
Is there any point, I wonder, in suggesting to you that the availability of oil over the past four decades has also been of considerable benefit to the man (and woman) in the street….? Even to people like the denizens of this blog?
Herbie
“Whether in the work of Arrendt, of Milgram or the Stanford prison experiment…etc”
______________
That must be about the tenth time you’ve mentioned Hannah Arendt’s name.
If you mention it for an eleventh time, do you think you could bring yourself to spell it properly?
Clark.
That is what I descibe as a “diplomat in denial”.
Mary asks
“Is one judged by the company one keeps?”
________________
Given the tone in which Mary has on occasion referred to public figures who have Jewish friends, her own answer to the question must surely be “yes”….
welcome to a new year, don’t mind if you wade through the same old crap…
Israel apparently has used injections of Depo Provera to sterilise Ethiopian women saying that ‘pregnant women frequently suffer from illness’.
giver that its a fact that pregnant women are actually more resolute and their immune system is on top performance, such statement by doctors who should know sounds more like an excuse to carry on.
Anybody who says that these are not NAZI policies revived ought to get a health check from these chaps.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseknutsen/2013/01/28/israel-foribly-injected-african-immigrant-women-with-birth-control/
France says it will hand over the two Russian-ordered warships only if Moscow effectively contributes to the process of restoring peace and stability to eastern Ukraine.
“There needs to be … a process of ceasefire that is respected and a political roadmap that would lead to the return of peace and calm,” French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said during a radio interview on Thursday.
“I see that efforts are being made, but as long as they are neither tangible nor verifiable, we cannot make a decision,” he added.
The condition came despite France’s earlier commitment to deliver the vessels under a contract with Russia.
Back in November, the French government suspended the military transaction with Russia over Moscow’s alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis.
The first warship, the Vladivostok, and the second, the Sevastopol, were due to be handed over to Moscow in November 2014 and next year, respectively.
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/01/01/391135/Paris-conditions-Russia-warship-delivery
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The USA’s lacky France will be in line for some Russian retribution, in the future I fear.
Mind you EU and western countries are virtually falling over themselves to do the USA’s dirty work.
A sad indictment of Europe, which is light years ahead of the USA, in all the arts and culture, and has been for 100’s of years.
Iain Orr, thanks; I’ve downloaded a copy of the bill.
Grief! Fifty-eight pages of legalese! I can cope with workshop manuals and integrated circuit data sheets but I’m not much good at reading this stuff. Has anyone else here downloaded this monster? I think a collaborative approach would be best for me.
My first thoughts are: is it needed at all, and what is it intended to address?
Is this about legalising the government’s recent treatment of Mozzam Begg?
That sure is one hell of a can of worms!
Cap’n Bob’s daughter, Randy Andy, Jeffrey Epstein …
I’m sure you’ve heard the joke that was doing the rounds not long ago …
Margaret Thatcher dies and goes to Hell and there meets Jimmy Savile.
“Oh Jimmy, what are you doing here?”
“Now then, now then, now then, our Maggie, as it ‘ appens .. fucking minors.”
Margaret sniggers ” Me too!”
Boom, boom!
————————-
Mochyn69.
Yes indeed Mochyn69, there was something not quite right with, whole sordid arrangement. I’ve read that Maggie and Denis Thatcher had Jimmy Savile over for Christmas dinner, on several occasions.
I’m pretty sure that MI5/6 would’ve, informed the Iron Lady of Saviles acquired tastes, such as necrophilia.
Which begs the question, why would Slaggy Maggie, associate, with such a debauched individual, unless of course “Birds of a Feather” and all that.
“If you mention it for an eleventh time, do you think you could bring yourself to spell it properly?”
Hey habby
Seeing as you’re on typo patrol this evening, how many times was it incorrectly spelt?
Givus the stats, eh. Then we can work out just how much of a prick you truly are.
You do get some points of course for staying well away from a discussion you very evidently realise is way way beyond typo patrol grade.
Habbabkuk, 4:44 pm, of course oil has been of benefit to ordinary people, but the ten trillion dollars has spent on warfare – and the oil still had to be bought from the companies that extracted it.
Habbabkuk, if we are to have this conversation, could you please start by telling me your opinion of the morality and effects of Operation Ajax in 1953, and the illegal Iraq war of 2003?
My opinion is that imperialism is not only immoral, but also yields poor value for (taxpayers) money.
Robert Crawford, 4:48 pm; sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.
A new report by the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute emphasises the need for “US security and military support” to its key allies in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly Israel, over access to recent vast discoveries of regional oil and gas.
The Army study, released earlier in December 2014, concludes that extensive US military involvement “may prove essential in managing possible future conflict” in case of “an eruption of natural resource conflict in the East Mediterranean,” due to huge gas discoveries in recent years.
Visible US engagement is also necessary to ward off the regional encroachment of “emerging powers and potential new peace brokers such as Russia – which already entertains a strong interest in East Mediterranean gas developments – and notably China.”
Fossil fuel bonanza in the Levant
Since 2000, the Levant basin – an area encompassing the offshore territories of Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon – has been estimated to hold as much as 1.7 bn barrels of oil and up to 122 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas.
As much of the region’s potential resources remain undiscovered, geologists believe this could be just a third of the total quantities of fossil fuels in the Levant.
http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/us-army-report-calls-military-support-israeli-energy-grab-57185571
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I fear there will be no respite in 2015 for the poor souls of Palestine and Syria, as the US, and its allies, prepare to push for a stronger military presence, in the region.
Of course it will all fall under the guise of giving locals freedom, democracy, aid, or ridding the area, of non-existent terrorists.
Habbabkuk, you’re good with legalese; could you help me evaluate the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill 2014-15 please?
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2014-2015/0142/15142.pdf