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.
“This is my last comment for the year – oh, how important you are!
the guests of an Ambassador in Paris – oh, how important you are!
being nasty to Craig Murray – oh, how you write about yourself in the 3rd person!
My parting thought – oh, how it’s all about you!”
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Meg
Are you Katie Hopkins in disguise?
my entire life – ditto
1066 And all That –
With the ascension of Charles I to the throne we come at last to the Central Period of English History (not to be confused with the Middle Ages, of course), consisting in the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right and Repulsive).
Charles I was a Cavalier King and therefore had a small pointed beard, long flowing curls, a large, flat, flowing hat, and gay attire. The Roundheads, on the other hand, were clean-shaven and wore tall, conical hats, white ties, and sombre garments. Under these circumstances a Civil War was inevitable.
Thanks Tony M for your explanation of this fury Meg, she is probably just following orders from Murphy, or, after all those years lick spittling, she gets some masochistic pleasure from hurting others.
Baroness Butler-Sloss, who stood down earlier this year as the head of the public inquiry into historical child abuse, has said that victims should not have too much influence over who runs the proceedings.
The retired High Court judge warned that the inquiry could run into “real problems” if victims become involved in deciding who is the chair.
Her comments come after Fiona Woolf resigned as the chair of the inquiry over her social connections with Lord Brittan – leaving the process without a head.
Prior to Woolf’s resignation, Butler-Sloss stepped down, saying she was “not the right person” for the job as MPs and victims were concerned that her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, was attorney general in the 1980s – a period which will be probed.
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I think we all have a fair idea why Lady Butler Sloss doesn’t want to much input from the victims.
Such input my actually show the establishment for what it really is, god forbid.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/dame-butlersloss-abuse-inquiry-should-not-be-run-by-victims-9951977.html
@Republicofscotland
1 Jan, 2015 – 2:54 pm
I reckon mysterious Meg is even worse than that .. It’s Jim Intolerant, Dictatorial, Murderous Murphy himself in drag！
“Our own Popular Front however have yet to gain control through the limited illusory democracy permitted,”
Perhaps that is due to the purists inability to make compromises and coalitions with those who they are not 100% in agreement – a factor in the ultimate failure of the Spanish and other Popular Fronts.
Dying of cancer is the “best death” and we should “stop wasting billions trying to cure” it, a leading doctor has said.
Dr Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, said that cancer allowed people to say goodbye and prepare for death and was therefore preferable to sudden death, death from organ failure or “the long, slow death from dementia”.
Referring to the writings of surrealist Luis Buñuel, Dr Smith said that cancer was the closest thing to the filmmaker’s professed wish for “a slower death”.
“You can say goodbye, reflect on your life, leave last messages, perhaps visit special places for a last time, listen to favourite pieces of music, read loved poems, and prepare, according to your beliefs, to meet your maker or enjoy eternal oblivion,” Dr Smith wrote in a blog published for the BMJ, a journal he edited until 2004.
“This is, I recognise, a romantic view of dying, but it is achievable with love, morphine, and whisky. But stay away from overambitious oncologists, and let’s stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer, potentially leaving us to die a much more horrible death.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cancer-is-best-death-so-dont-try-to-cure-it-says-doctor-9952361.html
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This from a former editor of the British Medical Journal, I wonder how he’d feel, if one of his family were diagnosed with cancer, would he be so complacent then, I think not.
“Charles I was a Cavalier King and therefore had a small pointed beard, long flowing curls, a large, flat, flowing hat, and gay attire. The Roundheads, on the other hand, were clean-shaven and wore tall, conical hats, white ties, and sombre garments. Under these circumstances a Civil War was inevitable.”
Interesting that Anonymous chose Guy Fawkes as their embodiment.
@Republicofscotland
1 Jan, 2015 – 2:54 pm
“I reckon mysterious Meg is even worse than that .. It’s Jim Intolerant, Dictatorial, Murderous Murphy himself in drag！”
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Mochyna69.
Or it could be a certain lady from Wings, whom Craig created a thread for, then deleted it.
I’m pretty sure there was an academic study back in the 60s/70s linking UK Voting behaviour to areas where there was support for the Roundheads/Royalists but I haven’t been able to find a reference through Googling around. I seem to remember that areas with large working class Tory votes were linked to the area having supported the Royalists.
“Perhaps that is due to the purists inability to make compromises and coalitions with those who they are not 100% in agreement”
Not inability, duty, a concept you are wholly unable as a troll to comprehend.
Ed Miliband’s inner circle think people with northern accents are stupid, a Labour MP has claimed.
In a discussion of the Labour Party’s fortunes, Ian Lavery said he was “frightened” by a ruling “elite” in Westminster that has never held a manual job and looks down on working class people.
It came as Labour MPs embarked on fresh infighting over the direction of the party, after Tony Blair, its most electorally successful leader, warned Mr Miliband is leading it to defeat.
Mr Lavery, the MP for Wansbeck in Northumberland, is a former president of the National Union of Mineworkers, taking part in the 1984-85 strike. He was elected in 2010.
The remarks were made during a fringe event at a conference organised by CLASS, a left-wing think tank funded by the trade unions. He was speaking during a discussion on Labour’s welfare policy, in which he said the Labour Party is “in the wrong place” on the issue.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11319420/Labour-elite-thinks-Northerners-are-stupid-MP-complains.html
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Labour now are just a semblance of the party they once were, they’re in disarray north of the border, whilst their leader Ed Miliband’s popularity has never been lower.
Now they squabble over petty details such as accents, pathetic.
The lines weren’t so clear-cut. Samuel Pepys was prominently a ‘great Roundhead’ as a student at Cambridge, a fact he tried to have removed from college records and accounts of his contemporaries, but recorded his attempts and fear of its disclosure (in code) in his own diary! He was by then an arch-royalist and courtier. An early example of the neo-con phenomenon.
“Under these circumstances a Civil War was inevitable.”
That makes it sound like differing tastes in headgear alone resulted in (un)civil war.
Ken O’keefe, telling it like it really is, as Washington spokesman looks dumbstruck.
It really is worth a 9 minute watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYX4WeqQfRo#t=251
“That makes it sound like differing tastes in headgear alone resulted in (un)civil war.”
I read 1066 and all that when I was at school, I expect for anyone who hasn’t read it yet it’s still a worthwhile read if you can find it on the internet anywhere.
This is a day to highlight events in the coming year. Here are two to energize readers of Craig’s blog during this month:
6 and 7 January the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill 2014-2015 has its report stage and third reading. The relevant documents can be accessed from:
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2014-15/counterterrorismandsecurity.html
Those with concerns about this bill may wish to look at the supporting documentation
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/counter-terrorism-and-security-bill-factsheets and at issues raised in a Guardian article on 24 Nov 2014:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/24/counter-terrorism-security-bill-proposals-pitfalls A Times Higher Educational Supplement article focuses on academic freedom of speech concerns:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/academics-label-proposed-counter-terrorism-and-security-bill-censorship/2017351.article
Apart from writing to your own MP, consider writing to Dr Hywel Francis, Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. My MP (Dame Tessa)has forwarded to me a letter of 11 December from Dr Francis (which in turn responds to one signed by several readers of this website). The key paragraph is:
“The matter of whether or not current and new powers which the Government might use in future will actually result in more prosecutions, and prosecutions which are also more likely to succeed, is likely to be borne in mind when members consider the draft Report on this Bill in January 2015, especially in the light of the concerns we raised about the Moazzem Begg case just two months ago.”
Sat 24 Jan at 13.00 – the WRAP UP TRIDENT mass demo “JOIN the PEACE SCARF round Parliament and he MOD, followed by a RALLY with speakers and music in Parliament Square” (see http://www.actionawe.org , http://www.cnduk.org
and http://www.woolagainstweapons.co.uk
Up to nine Cabinet ministers are said to be threatening to split the party unless allowed to campaign for Britain to leave.
Even more Tory MPs are urging the Prime Minister to bring forward an in-or-out referendum to 2016 – a year earlier than he plans.
They say voters deserve the chance to decide on the issue as soon as possible after the general election in May.
Mr Cameron has vowed to hold a vote in 2017 after a renegotiation of the terms of the UK’s membership.
But senior ministers fear that it would mean that if Mr Cameron wins the next election the Tories would have to spend two years focusing on the EU instead of on important domestic issues.
A promise to hold a referendum in 2016 could also win back eurosceptic voters who may be considering backing Ukip next year.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/549494/David-Cameron-under-pressure-to-hold-EU-referendum
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David Cameron may well bring the EU in out referendum forward, to 2016 using it a campaign tool, to win voters back, and if the Tories do win the GE and are returned to government, and Cameron keeps his word.
It may trigger, a debate north of the border as to whether Scotland should follow suit or not, but its to early to say just yet.
“Not inability, duty, a concept you are wholly unable as a troll to comprehend.”
Guano’s “duty” not to compromise very clearly illustrates why religion and other ideologies are responsible for much of the misery in this world both past and present and I daresay in the future.
US Special Envoy Russ Feingold today demanded that the United Nations and African nations launch a war against Rwandan Hutu rebels in eastern Congo, insisting that any delay of the war would lead to human rights abuses.
The group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (DFLR), is facing a demand to unconditionally surrender by January 2. Feingold says that on that day, military action needs to be launched without delay.
The DFLR says it intends to comply with the demands, and notes it has moved a number of fighters and their families into the “disarmament camps,” but that the sheer number of people to move meant they couldn’t meet the deadline.
Feingold insisted granting them more time to surrender was unacceptable, and that “a purely voluntary surrender process will not work,” insisting only a military offensive could force the group’s disarmament.
http://news.antiwar.com/2014/12/30/us-urges-war-against-rwandan-militia-in-east-congo/
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When the US are desperate to get military forces in there, even though the Hutu’s are laying down their arms, there must be something in it for the US.
Its certainly nothing to do with human rights that’s for sure.
When the current Libyan government was hand-picked by the Washington-London-Paris axis in 2012-2013, anyone who was actually paying attention knew that it would eventually end in tears, and so it has.
From its onset in 2011, NATO’s regime change operation in Libya has been one long unbridled disaster. This week the violence has escalated – with car bombs in Tobruk, Coptic Christians being killed, and the government launching airstrikes against its own cities. The broken nation of Libya has officially descended into a full-blown Civil War.
The west’s hand-picked regime in Libya has extended beyond the pale – finally launching airstrikes against its own people (see article below)…
NATO’s proxy rebel army is also responsible for the persecution, lynching and ethnic cleansing of black Africans in Libya.
https://www.intellihub.com/libya-3-0-natos-failed-vichy-govt-now-waging-war/
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Looks like Libya will remain in turmoil for some time to come.
Dear Caustic Meg.
Ive bn teribly PLAGUED by acne dis lst few yrs, evry1 calls ME spotty n IL nvr gt bf or gf @ dis r8, shd I wear a ppr bag ovr my hed or drown Mself n d canal. What’s n d stars 4 me?
yrs trly
Spotty JIM
Caustic Meg Replies:
Hi Spotty
You’ve probably caught it through reading the blog of that lah-di-dah Craig Murray I suggest thickly smearing some lotion from the chemists onto the pages of a unionist newpaper and covering your crusty visage with that, removing it only to eat or drink or out of respect if members of the royal family are on TV.
Meg.
ROS; “Looks like Libya will remain in turmoil for some time to come”
What’s French for “Chutzpah”;
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/france-says-world-must/1561506.html
Mary
“RD and Anon must be worn out. Isn’t Habbabkuk ready to come on as the sub?”
________________
Not yet, dear.
Still sitting on the touchline, watching the play, doing a spot of warming up.
Real average earnings across Britain have fallen by 15 per cent over the past six years and in some parts of the country by as much as 50 per cent, according to research published today.
The study by the GMB union found average annual pay rose by £1,134 to £27,271 between 2008 and 2014.
But the cost of living rose so much over the same period that the value of average earnings has in fact fallen 15.1 per cent nationally once adjusted for inflation – and it was London boroughs that dominated the biggest falls along with northern towns and cities.
Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB, said: ‘These figures are a damning and shocking indictment of how the Tories have run the economy and who has benefited from their time in office.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2892331/Real-wages-fallen-50-six-years-parts-UK-unions-warn-not-recovery-2024.html
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Gideon Osborne, the Mr Bean of politics, has brought families to their knees with his sheer and utter incompetence, the “Chancer” of the Exchequer, hasn’t got a clue, the Tory clown will be the undoing of the Tories,and the UK economy.
Something to ponder about, it looks like Assad will become a target for the West’s ire, we will take sides with AlQuaeda/Al Nusra and effectively IS/Daesh. An interview with Obama’s new ol’ broom in the cupboard, General Allen.
“SPIEGEL: Who poses a greater threat to US interests — Assad or the IS?
Gen.Allen: Assad is a menace to the region. What he has done to Syria has been the motivating factor for the rise of Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra. So while Daesh carries its own threat to US interests, the political solution in Damascus and ultimately the departure of Assad and his ilk will be an important development for the region. That could help us return to a more stable environment in Syria. Again, if we’ve accomplished our objectives with respect to the political outcome, there will be a government that reflects the will of the Syrian people — and that will have the happy second and third order effect of assisting in the creation of stability more broadly in the region. Solving the political environment in Syria will go a long way towards eliminating or at least addressing some of the underlying causes. ”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/us-envoy-warns-no-short-term-solutions-for-stopping-islamic-state-a-1010880.html
“ROS; “Looks like Libya will remain in turmoil for some time to come”
“What’s French for “Chutzpah”;
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Macky.
Nice one.
They caused the turmoil in the first place now they’re calling on the rest of the world to clean their mess up, whilst exhibiting their innocent mask.
Inevitably it will lead to another sorte on Libya, under the guise of removing those pesky terrorists.
Ishmael
“Habbabkuk, if I got it very wrong, I apologize. Mostly when people say ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ in the context of conversations about Muslims, I read it…. badly.”
________________
No need to apologise, Ishmael. I just felt like using the expression and there was nothing sinister behind it.
Vronsky
“You’ve kicked over a hornet’s nest. Or opened a can of worms?”
_________________
I rather like the image of a hornets nest built on top of a can of worms (possibly situated in the middle of a pit of scorpions).
Head of the Census Department of the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, Abdul-Nasser Ferwana, stated that the Israeli army continues to attack and abduct Palestinian children in violation of international law, kidnapping 3755 children in the last four years, including 1266 in 2014.
Ferwana, also a researcher and a former political prisoner, said the kidnapping and imprisonment of children should push the international community and different human rights groups to act and protect them, as the escalating violations are jeopardizing their future, especially since they are subject to torture and abuse in Israeli prisons.
Ferwana stated that most of the 1266 children kidnapped in 2014 were taken prisoner in the second half of the year, after three Israeli settlers went missing on June 12, 2014, and were later found dead.
“The number of arrests in 2014 witnessed a 36% increase compared to 2013, and a 43.7% increase compared to 2012,” Ferwana said, “Statistics reveal an alarming increase in the kidnapping of children, especially in occupied Jerusalem.”
He said that the army has kidnapped nearly 700 children in Jerusalem, which represents around 55.3% of the total number of children kidnapped by the army in occupied Palestine this year.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/prisoners/8915-israel-kidnapped-3755-children-in-past-four-years-1266-in-2014-alone
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What are they doing with all those children maybe Israel is full of Lamia’s.
No doubt the UNICEF are on the case, as we can all trust the UN to do the right thing.