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3,629 thoughts on “Amnesty International Conference on Torture

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  • Peacewisher

    Thank you, N_ Thank goodness someone is doing something! No hope of it happening, but it may focus a few minds. Once the drums of war start to beat it rapidly escalates beyond debate. Do you have a URL for this?

  • Mary

    Peacewisher I turned Marr off so did not see or hear Hague.

    I thought it interesting that three out of four of Marr’s guests are either war criminals or warmongers. I include Hague as one both as an avowed Zionist and as Cameron’s foreign secretary throughout 2010-14.

    This is Amanpour an Iranian Briton married to a rabid Zionist

    So out of 4 ‘guests’ two are war criminals who are yet to be indicted. One other is an Iranian/’Briton’ married to a rabid Zionist.

    Amanpour – worth reading about this she-devil/vixen in sheep’s clothing.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_Amanpour

    ‘During the height of the Syrian crisis, in mid to late 2013, Amanpour started a push for the case of war with Syria. She traveled to UK and appeared on several news programs not as a journalist but as an “expert” on middle east and pushed the Obama administration line for war in Syria. Her appearance on BBC One’s “This Week” with host Andrew Neil on September 19, 2013 was immediately blocked for viewing in the US, although other BBC programs and episodes are readily available.[19] Her advocacy for US military intervention in Syria was criticised by Michael S. Lofgren in the Huffington Post.’

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLzKXhbumL8
    ‘Back to the Beginning’: Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity
    ABC News Part 1: Christiane Amanpour’s journey through Biblical legends begins with familiar Christmas tale.

    Only a cigarette paper between Judaism and ‘Christianity’.
    She is unofficial adviser to Shillary.

    I bet she is an asset.

    Danny Alexander – I consider him to be a quisling and collaborator in the cruel ConDem administration 2010-to date but not for much longer, praise be.

  • Resident Dissident

    Peacewisher

    Are you saying that it is Stalin rather than the people of the USSR deserve credit for resisting and defeating Hitler? Perhaps you forget the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact, the damage done to the leadership of the armed forces under the Great Terror to say nothing of the Gulag and Holodomor.

  • Resident Dissident

    N_ – you are living cloud cuckoo land. I could well see some promise of Ukraine being neutral and not allowed into Nato in return for the existing treaties re its independence being respected by Russia – but the UK leaving NATo just isn’t going to happen.

  • Resident Dissident

    “According to Ba’al, important issues for Russia entail the availability of an ice-free port, presumably both military and commercial, and a land corridor for access.”

    The Russian naval base on the Crimea was already guaranteed and there was never any serious suggestion of it not being honoured. If the Russians needed a land corridor they could have built a bridge from their own territory.

  • Clark

    RD, you’re still doing it:

    “Are you saying that it is Stalin rather than the people of the USSR deserve credit for resisting and defeating Hitler?”

    “Perhaps you forget…”

    Please, please, state your opinions directly rather than by reference to what you assume about other people’s thoughts! Interpreting such a comment entails mental gymnastics – first I have to put myself in your mind, so I can work out what you think of Peacewisher’s mind. Then I have to put myself into that construction, so I can work out what you originally meant.

  • Clark

    Resident Dissident, 12:49 pm

    “The Russian naval base on the Crimea was already guaranteed and there was never any serious suggestion of it not being honoured. If the Russians needed a land corridor they could have built a bridge from their own territory.”

    I think this could have been unacceptable to senior Russian military advisers. A bridge would be very vulnerable. Possibly a solution commercially, though.

    Regarding sanctions on Russian’s money in the “West”; how about a threshold? Plucking a figure from the air, £100,000.

  • Resident Dissident

    “so I can work out what you think of Peacewisher’s mind”

    I am not a mind reader – that is why I asked the question. As for my mind – I haven’t invited you in. I’m not a fan of amateur psychiatry.

  • Resident Dissident

    Clark

    There is already a figure for money laundering when the banks are meant to verify the source of funds – £10,000 from memory. I can see no reason why the law should be any different for Russian funds.

  • Clark

    Resident Dissident

    “As for my mind – I haven’t invited you in…”

    And I’d rather not need to seek entry, so please state opinions explicitly and thereby save me the trouble. Please try something like “I think the people deserve the credit rather than X”.

    OK, £10,000; that seems reasonable, maybe a bit low for these circumstances. I wish you’d mentioned it originally.

  • Clark

    RD, I think that Russians in the “West” with £10,000 probably have little influence upon Russian foreign policy. It would be unhelpful to alienate such people; unhelpful by making the policy unpopular, thus sparking resentment. At what level do you think real influence starts? My 100,000 may even be too low. A clear signal needs to be sent that ordinary working people aren’t being hit merely for being Russian. Half a million may be more reasonable, seeing as normal houses and be almost that much these days.

    This is divide and conquer, isn’t it?

  • Resident Dissident

    No Clark – you are not the only one entitled to ask questions to bring out people’s true views – look at your post of 11:58am for example.

    I have always said that existing laws on money laundering should be enforced – Russian citizens are not entitled to hold foreign bank accounts or investments without the permission of the Central Bank of Russia – so by definition much of the funds held in Western economies (why do they do that if Russia is as strong economically as Goss and others claim is of course another question) are the proceeds of crime and therefor captured by the Money laundering regulations. The banks in London and elsewhere have of course turned a blind eye to this in the past.

  • Resident Dissident

    Clark

    It is not balances of £10k – but transactions of greater than £10k that are caught – a £1m in and a £1m out of course leave a balance of nil.

  • Clark

    RD, I think freezing bank accounts pending investigation may be ineffective – most of the oligarchs funds are probably nominally legal, compare Usmanov etc. I regard many legal fortunes to be not legitimate, Russian or otherwise. Maybe explicit straightforward sanctions upon Russians with large funds would be better.

    Certainly confronting the influential seems a good approach, and much better than pouring in weapons. But it suffers from the same problem as N_’s petition to leave NATO – it’s unlikely to happen, because of vested interests in the “West”.

  • Clark

    RD, in fairness to myself, my style as seen at 11:58 differs considerably from yours. I started by explicitly stating my own position and then I requesedt yours, rather than attributing thoughts to you and then asking a question that could be taken as rhetorical. But of course, do please try to elicit other commenters’ positions.

  • Clark

    Resident Dissident, 1:24 pm:

    “Russian citizens are not entitled to hold foreign bank accounts or investments without the permission of the Central Bank of Russia – so by definition much of the funds held in Western economies are the proceeds of crime and therefore captured by the Money laundering regulations.”

    That is fascinating information. It seems that Russian policy has handed the “West” a financial weapon that can be used against Russia, though using this as a sanctioning system could be unfair to Russians who’d made money legitimately. It’s worth doing if it can reduce further Russian hostility though.

  • Dave

    @Peacewisher12:18pm “Why provoke Russia into a war that will only benefit the arms manufacturers and those who wish to rule the world?”

    Yes you are spot on. The western elite and their military industrial complex started the Get Russia
    game a few years ago.

    “Prince Andrew told her that the UK, Western Europe and the US were now “back in the thick of playing the Great Game” “More animated than ever, he stated cockily ‘and this time we aim to win’,”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11870581

  • Mochyn69

    What do people think about the unfolding London Three stories? The latest is here:

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/22/uk-counter-terror-officials-criticised-syria-bound-london-schoolgirls

    and includes the following:

    ‘British counter-terrorism officers have been accused of failing to take basic steps to prevent young women from joining Islamic State (Isis) after three London schoolgirls evaded authorities to travel to Syria.

    One of the missing girls, Shamima Begum, 15, is thought to have made online contact with a Scottish woman who left Britain to marry an Isis fighter in 2013.

    The contact with Aqsa Mahmood, whose social media use is supposedly under surveillance by counter-terror agencies, came two days before Begum slipped out of her east London home and met up with schoolfriends Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15.

    On 17 February, the three girls secretly made their way to Gatwick airport and caught a Turkish airlines flight to Istanbul, Turkey, from where they are feared to be heading towards Isis-held territory in Syria.

    A Twitter account thought to be linked to Begum shows that she contacted Mahmood, a prominent online advocate of Isis, on 15 February, saying: “follow me so i can dm you back”.

    Aamer Anwar, a lawyer for Mahmood’s family, said on Sunday they were “incredulous” that the contact could go unnoticed by Scotland Yard and other counter-terror agencies.’

    How can we understand this in the light of the furore that’s going on surrounding NSA/GCHQ eavesdropping? They only had to look at somebody’s Twitter account.

  • RobG

    Mochyn69, due to computer problems I am unable to read the Guardian article. However, this bit you posted from it made me chuckle: “On 17 February, the three girls secretly made their way to Gatwick airport…”

    ‘Secretely’?! in a country where CCTV cameras outnumber the sheep. And with regard to NSA/GCHQ eavesdropping, in a mass surveillance society the integrity of everything is open to question, including news stories that further an agenda.

  • Mary

    Was last Summer’s slaughter in Gaza too much even for Obama? Or is it the illegal settlement building? Whichever, Bibi is not wanted in Amerika.

    White House Considers Punishment for Netanyahu’s Upcoming US Speech

    Sunday February 22, 2015

    As a reaction to the highly unanticipated speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Congress, next month, the White House is reportedly planning a series of procedures in reaction to the unwelcome visit.

    http://www.imemc.org/article/70671

    PS The RH side bar of this website lists the most recent Israeli atrocities.

  • Mary

    A likely story.

    Did the Queen REALLY beg Blair not to bomb Saddam?
    As the nation awaits the Chilcot report, the truth about Iraq might be enacted nightly on a Broadway stage
    Explosive exchange is in new Broadway production of play The Audience
    Shows the Queen pleading with Tony Blair to call off planned action in Iraq
    But expert denounced scene suggesting she had negative view of invasion
    22 February 2015

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2963522/Did-Queen-REALLY-beg-Blair-not-bomb-Saddam-nation-awaits-Chilcot-report-truth-Iraq-enacted-nightly-Broadway-stage.html

  • John Goss

    “John Goss shut the fuck up you moron”

    True colours! I defended you when I thought you were going through a bad time. Now I see you are no different from Resident Dissident and the others who support the fascist coup. So get a spine instead of whingeing on about amelioration of people who do not share your fascist viewpoint over Ukraine. And buy your own beer. This is what you and he support.

    http://professorsblogg.com/2014/05/15/odessa-massacre-firebombs-thrown-by-pro-junta-actvists-burn-alive-43/

    As to anyone not being invited into Resident Dissident’s mind I don’t think anyone would want to go there. Yours neither after that comment. I’m out of here.

  • Mark Golding

    What is Islamic State? I myself suggest to you for consideration, IS/ISIS is analogous to and framed on the IRA structure, the armed wing of sinn fein and is in fact the ‘army’ of an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the British people.

    May I suggest to destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

    Most of our politicians, media heads and some ‘captains’ in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it:

    That sounds somewhat scary; we may ask, what is this ubiquitous entity protecting? Expectedly I submit it is the wealth and power of a transparent, untouchable, unaccountable, indestructible elite and their perfect pyramid scheme.

    A coup maybe, not unlike what 9/11 is to totalitarianism.

    The creation of the Bank of England intentionally deceiving the public by misrepresenting itself as an extension of the government was the ideal means by which the elite central banking cabal could ruthlessly eliminate competition from smaller banks and corporations while controlling loaning big money to government to wage proxy war.

    Our income tax is targeted to soak the middle class into funding the elite’s wars created by design to erect a formidable protective barrier restricting upward class mobility. That way, it ensured that the rich got richer and over time everyone else would get poorer in a debtor economy. The noble wealth has grown exponentially at the expense of the rest of us who increasingly struggle in this new global age of fiscal austerity. Currently the richest 1% on earth own near half the global wealth.

    Britain we know uses the vestiges of it’s mortified empire to keep offshore tax haven loopholes, like Guernsey etc in sync with financing endowment foundations and extravagant elitist think tanks(i.e. Chatham House, CFR) that are totally self-serving in supplying humongous tax breaks to the wealthy ruling elite and its transnational corporations.

    Thus these sinister anti-democratic, anti-free enterprise machinations enacted time ago were designed to kill democracy in Britain, replacing it with the oligarchy we’re currently stuck with today and the al-qaeda/IS threat to maintain and eternalize fear in our hearts and in our minds.

    Maintaining control over the media/press by disseminating lies and disinformation, and education through rewriting history and omitting certain glaring facts, the power elite for many centuries has been brainwashing generation after generation of British peeps. Taken in by the countless lies and illusions, we’ve always been taught that British democracy was to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people (lulz).

    IS will infiltrate and subvert the WWW that is threatening to destroy that aura of fear simply by dissemination of knowledge. IS/ISIS is coded to destroy our freedoms, grossly restricting liberty by blueprint that is a comprehensive array of cherry picked leaders, surveillance, laws, FEMA camps, military control and if necessary martial law to restore order from unrest and permeate a controlled society dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values, that maintains up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about every British citizen AND instantaneously retrievable.

    The LONG TERM intention may well be to manipulate the behavior and intellectual functioning of all the people through environmental and biochemical manipulation of the brain. (genetic manipulation of viruses, pandemics, water contamination to encourage dementia, personality changes and softening of the frontal lobes).

    Those that pull the strings of Blair, Agent Cameron and the like are believers in this globalist vision of the UN and world court as the closest manifestation to a one world government. The signing of UN Agenda 21 along with leaders in 178 nations was the enzyme for a globalist plan for their New World Order under the guise of sustainability

    If we do not follow the dictates of our inner moral compass and stand up for human life, then this lawlessness will threaten the peace and democracy of a free and just new world order we call to mind; this long dreamed-of vision of family loyalty we, the British public all worked toward for so long.

    All the globalists worldwide are traitors to their constitutional oaths they once swore to uphold and protect as well as traitors to the people that they also took oaths to serve. They are violating our lives, our pursuit of happiness, our security, our civil liberties because they are at war with us, the British good common people, in pursuit of a zombie class of subservient lackeys left serving the dirty, vile and rotten needs of this ruling bunch of aristocratic, gilt edge selected few.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Mr Goss

    “As to anyone not being invited into Resident Dissident’s mind I don’t think anyone would want to go there.”
    ________________

    On the contrary, Mr Goss, many people would find Resident Dissident’s mind a much cleaner, more honest and less hidebound place than your mind.

  • N_

    @ResidentDissident

    Russian citizens are not entitled to hold foreign bank accounts or investments without the permission of the Central Bank of Russia – so by definition much of the funds held in Western economies […] are the proceeds of crime

    You make three big jumps there.

    First, is it true?

    Second, if it is true, then are fictitious persons based in Russia, such as companies registered in that country, subject to the same law in this connection as citizens?

    Third, how many of the biggies do hold permission from the Central Bank anyway?

    Throughout the last 25 years there has been practically no official resistance to the filthy rich taking their money out of Russia.

    Change 25 to 35 and you get a statement that’s true about Britain. But let’s not forget that one of the ‘gifts’ of the English jurisdiction to most of the world has been the legal concept of the ‘trust’. We are talking about centuries of rich bastards hiding their money. Any lawyers in the house? Think of equity, chancery, and in the olden days, cestui que use. It’s all been the same fucking story.

    My point being that if we are in favour of stopping rich bastards hiding their money, and if we are in favour of a redistribution of at least a very large proportion of very rich bastards’ wealth (and I take it that a lot of us are), then I’m sorry but enforcing existing laws isn’t going to help much.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Mr Goss

    “I’m out of here.”
    _________________

    I hope that’s a promise; Mr Goss.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    To repeat my question of a couple of days ago in slightly modified form:

    Which is worse – a David Cameron educated at Eton and Oxford or a Vladimir Putin educated in the KGB?

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