Honoured to give the keynote speech at Amnesty’s conference on torture in London yesterday. Then dashed back to Edinburgh for a very romantic evening with Nadira – and Cameron!
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@DavidH: I can’t believe that you think such thinking is so much in the minority.
The US’s postwar record speaks for itself. Blair chose (I think – who knows?) to align with US and will go down in history according to what he consequently did in Yugoslavia and, especially, Iraq, and what he fervently supported in Afghanistan. Cameron followed on… in Libya. To his credit PM Brown, although corrupt, wasn’t involved in any wars. If you take Grosny out of the equation, which he inherited, Putin is just a typically corrupt politician.
Please study facts, not western propaganda, before you make such bold assertions.
@Clark: I thought there was something fishy about all those Polish people making a rush for the UK in 2004/5, without any apparent restrictions at all.
Craig’s interview on RT was edited, something seems to have been removed. Listen carefully to the sound, which was cut immediately after Craig said the following and the picture switched back to the presenter, at 25:42. You can hear that the ambience of the room suddenly stops:
Presumably Craig said something RT didn’t want heard. Craig had started criticising Russia. After the cut the interviewer is again talking about the UK government.
I think there was also an edit earlier, at 21:01.
Macky, 1:13 am; straw man, and not even wrong!
But Novaya Gazeta does not make this false claim. Look:
Novaya Gazeta makes the same claim as in the article you linked to at Liveleak, that the document was brought to the Kremlin. Actually, the Liveleak article is exposing that someone called Goble falsified Muratov’s claims, and it confirms the Novaya Gazeta article.
You seem to be making the same mistake with Resident Dissident as you made with me. When I warned Mary that a video she had linked to was making false claims, you wrongly identified me as an enemy and attacked me, whereas I was protecting Mary from being discredited.
You do this over and over again. First you decide who you like, and then you prejudge the evidence they present on the basis of whether you like them or not. This time you’ve said “Resident Dissident is wrong to say X. Actually it’s X”, presumably because of your prejudice against Resident Dissident.
Macky you’re a total nuisance. You waste masses of my time on checking out your wild goose chases, and your thoughtless support convinces John Goss that he’s right when he’s actually wrong. You claim to be logical, but your rational mind is actually slave to your emotions, making up justifications for what you wish to believe.
Dear God protect us from impulsive fools!
Resident Dissident, it is imperative that you stop being sarcastic and start making your points directly. Your acerbic language winds Macky up and causes her to contradict you, even when she agrees with you!
Can anyone tell me anything about the site kasparov.ru please?
“No RD, it seems it is you that doesn’t get it; it’s as good as a fake ! The plan was never drafted in the Kremlin, as falsely claimed, but was written by an oligarch’s private group, and may never even have been seen by the Kremlin;”
The words of Mandy Rice Davies spring to mind – but at least Macky has hit the nail on the head about policy formation in Putin’s Russia.
DavidH: “Just because he stands against something you hate, doesn’t make him a saviour.”
You are just making the strawman argument so beloved by those with a hatred of Putin; people who are criticising the lies & propaganda over the Ukraine, are not motivated by an love for Putin, but for a respect for the truth, and the not inconsequential factor that all this hysterical demonizing & pro-war propaganda, could very easily lead us into another War World.
I do believe that this smear of being Putin lovers is a sort of a psychological reverse projection, in where those with a visceral hatred of Putin, transpose the reverse of their own feelings to people who don’t share their hatred.
A new video uploaded to the Banksy web site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e2dShY8jIo
Clark; “But Novaya Gazeta does not make this false claim”
Yes it does not, but RD did;
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/02/amnesty-international-conference-on-torture/comment-page-8/#comment-511261
As did the Independent that broke the “scoop”, with their “Vladimir Putin’s office reportedly compiled a detailed roadmap of how a “pro-Russian drift” could allow it to seize Crimea and some eastern provinces”, only there’s a little “could not be independently verified” added in later. I recommend that you read the comments under the Independent, but as you probably won’t bother, here just one;
“This report is a fake, pure and simple.
First, it has no date, no author, no original is provided – and journalistic “integrity” Novaya Gazeta has shown in the past does not allow us to simply trust them. Then the article says the report COULD HAVE BEEN delivered to the Kremlin POSSIBLY on Feb 12th. So, was it, or wasn’t it? Or maybe it was written by the journalist himself? How is this worth reporting?
Second, the report mentions events that have occurred AFTER its purported “date”, for example the “large numbers of people” killed in the revolution, whereas by Feb 12th, 2014, the number of victims could be counted on one hand.
Third, it is written in a non-formal and conspiracy theory-laden language, saying that Russia is controlled by oligarchs and bureaucrats (while true, this is NOT something to write in an official report to the Kremlin), somehow blames the Polish and British special services for controlling Maidan (without mentioning Americans?), and says completely informal stuff like “Putin 2.0 give us Peryaslav Rada 2.0!”
In short, another travesty of journalism on the part of mainstream media. Aren’t there decent experts around anymore?”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russias-roadmap-for-annexing-eastern-ukraine-leaked-from-vladimir-putins-office-10069203.html
Terrible stuff coming out in the inquiry reports on SaVile at Stoke Mandeville. He was empowered at the beginning by the witch who is dead, Thatcher.
May she and Savile rot in hell.
So much for Theresa and her watchers.
Jihadi John aka Mohammed Emwazi left W London for Syria in 2012.
Net long term migration to the UK has risen to 298,000, an increase from 210,000 over the previous year’s figure for the year ended September.
“I do believe that this smear of being Putin lovers is a sort of a psychological reverse projection, in where those with a visceral hatred of Putin, transpose the reverse of their own feelings to people who don’t share their hatred.”
Macky, I had it all the time with being accused of being a Stalinist (Habbabkuk ad infinitum) and now a Putinitsa (Resident Dissident, Habbabkuk et al) and it is the old ad hominem attack due to an inability to argue an alternative case. When you get this kind of attack you know you are right and that the hairy uglies will start gathering under the bridge to see if they can regroup and bring some intelligence to the proceedings. 🙂
You cannot be Stalinist (paranoid communist) and Putinist (free-marketeer) at the same time, but devoid of logical argument that is the course of action these personal attacks take. Attack the person is their policy just like they did with Derek Robinson and Arthur Scargill who were both defeated by the establishment these people support. So I ask, what happened to British Leyland? What happened to our mining industry? The smears worked. It is not as much a matter of who is right or wrong but who owns the media and their trumpeting mouthpieces.
Today we have no industrial base. We have few factories, few engineers and warmongering leaders who know that western economies are failing and only by war and stealing from other countries can the glory days of US supremacy be perpetuated. I am an engineer. Engineering in this country is all but dead. In times of war (God forbid) you need to be able to defend yourselves from aggressors. Eastern Ukraine could defend itself because it still has an industrial base. We are like Kiev. We have financial institutions, markets and banksters. When the markets collapse we have nothing. And all because MSM and its trumpeteers villified good men who tried to preserve our idustries. Carry on with the ad hominem attacks. You might even win in the short term. That will not necessarily mean you have strengthened even your own defences. Or that it is for the benefit of my beloved country.
John Goss; “Macky, I had it all the time”
We on the Left have it all the time with the constant smear, so popular here, of being “self-hating anti-Westerners”, whereas this accusation is actually a projection of the cultural/racial chauvinism of the Smearers themselves.
“I do believe that this smear of being Putin lovers is a sort of a psychological reverse projection, in where those with a visceral hatred of Putin, transpose the reverse of their own feelings to people who don’t share their hatred.”
I do have some sympathy here. When MH17 went down, there was talk on a particular Dutch message board about punishing Putin’s daughter, who happens to live there. Whatever the sins of her father, I argued, it is surely unfair to apply sanctions on this woman who clearly had nothing whatsoever to do with the downing of this aircraft.
The result? Clearly, I was a “Putin stooge”, a “Pro-Kremlin operative”, a “troll” and so on, on a website which I had frequented for years prior to receiving these charges.
It’s just the way with people. We hate this-or-that person, and anyone who looks like or reminds us of them. And we’ll hate you too if you dare to object.
Exactly Glenn, and as an integral part & parcel of this, the ability for rational reasonning is lost, as demonstrated constantly on this blog;
“When people hear things that contradict their beliefs,the logical part of their mind shuts down and their brain prepares to fight”
http://time.com/3575981/get-people-to-like-you-fbi-behavior-expert/
@John Goss: Surely the diminishment of our manufacturing and industrial base was all part of the plan? Those nasty, grubby industries were full of working class people, getting above their station in life, and actually making demands of the investor class. They expected a share of the improved productivity.
Far better to have greed motivating the system, as we see in the financial sector. They aren’t going to go on strike, when there’s money to be made, are they? So everyone wins! (At least, everyone worth considering.) The weapons industry is one part of manufacturing in the UK that continues to thrive. There’ll always be war (we’ll make sure of that), and despotic governments will spend the last of their country’s meagre funds on absurdly overblown weapons systems, which are used on their own people most of the time.
Collapse in markets is part of the plan, too. The big boys will have long divested by the time the crashes come around, and pick up for pennies on the pound when the dust settles. Take a look at this:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
By the way, why are we hearing that wretched little speech from Thatcher upon taking office (“Where there is darkness, let there be light” etc. etc.) all the time these days? I must have had that grating on my ears a dozen times in the past month or so.
Good judgement on government lies, torture and war-mongering demonstrates and exposes most high officeholders eventually morph into gorillas in the statecraft jungle; Putin, Bush, Straw, Riftkin, Brittan etc are all gorillas period. Therefore the argument of respect for truth and genuineness to avoid conflict and death holds water and attempts to vilify individuals emotions which are promotive to and a source of that intention can only be described as, well, gorilla’ish.
Mark, I think you are giving gorillas a bad press. I remember David Attenborough amid a tribe of these super-strong vegetarians. Yes they could have killed him quite easily. The people you mention would kill without conscience. I think you mean sharks, or hawks. 🙂
The Prayer of St Francis, Macky, is neither by St Francis nor is it Thatcher’s. It was written by Norman in the First World War. The words are poignant, but spoken by Thatcher the intended meaning is reduced to irony.
https://franciscan-archive.org/patriarcha/peace.html
The Thatcher version.
Lord make me an instrument of your wars,
Where there is love,,
Let me sow hatred;
Where there is pardon, injury;
Where there is truth, error;
Where there is faith, doubt;
Where there is hope, despair;
Where there is light, darkness;
And where there is Joy, sadness.
O Satanic Master grant that I may not so much seek to console
As to be consoled;
To understand, as to be understood;
To love, as to be loved.
For it is in receiving that we gain,
It is in condemning that we are pardoned,
And it is in living that we bring eternal death.
Mrs Macky Of Comments Page 162
“We on the Left have it all the time with the constant smear, so popular here”
You poor victimized lefty! The burden of truth speaking is yours alone!
You are no wind bag! Proud of you comrade!
Ah the White Knight Goss, the only true anti fascist, regales us with poetry. More crap not to read.
Has anyone posted the letter in The Herald by Andrew Beck about Jack Straw yet?
“GIVEN that Jack Straw has been suspended from his parliamentary party after being secretly filmed offering his services to a private company for cash, then surely his morals and principles now have to be placed under the microscope (“Parties rocked again by cash for access claims as election looms”, The Herald, February 24, and Letters, February 25).
In light of this recent revelation I would hope that his decision in December 2014 to repeatedly refuse to answer questions about any role he played in extraordinary rendition should be scrutinised afresh. This is the man who sacked and attempted to destroy the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, for trying to highlight to the world that the UK was complicit in the use of torture during the so-called war on terror. This is the man who, being questioned on his knowledge and role in rendition operations, repeatedly responded “At all times I was scrupulous in seeking to carry out my duties in accordance with the law.” How can we now trust anything he said?
It is interesting that the other former Foreign Secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, caught in the same situation offering his personal services for financial recompense, like some grotesque strumpet, also used the same argument that he had done nothing “legally” wrong. Two peas in the same pod. Labour and Conservatives working alongside to show what Better Together really means.
The positions that both these politicians held should transcend law, these positions require, no, demand morality and principles. These qualities have been sadly lacking in both and I would now hope that the press turns their full attention on them and shows more of what is rotten in the Westminster establishment and why so many of us want a real change in direction towards grassroots engagement in politics.”
Thanks John – no not the ‘animal’ gorilla- animal-like or ‘adversary’ or loosely speaking a ‘bandit’ or a villain.
Did I spot Phil ejaculating into what I consider to have been a rational and sustained conversation with more of his ad hominems?
For whatever reason there was a discussion about Thatcher’s religious beliefs at the end of WATO today with Edward Stourton. Apparently before she entered politics, she did some preaching at the Methodist church where her father was a lay preacher. Later she became a member of the CoE.
They had Baldry MP on (he is the CoE’s Church Commissioner representing the CoE in the HoC) and and an academic who has researched Thatcher’s religious background. The latter has written ‘God and Mrs Thatcher’.
We were told that Thatcher was disappointed because her ‘tax cutting’ WTF? had not led to a ‘giving society’. Also, that to her, Christianity meant Liberty and not Love.
Laugh? Haven’t laughed so much for a long time.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053bsft 39mins in.
The book – https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/god-and-mrs-thatcher
So Jihadi John grew up in west London, no surprise their then, as Jihadi John, in my opinion is a western asset.
Mohammed Emwazi, if that’s his real name, was supposedly born in Kuwait, and like Bin laden, comes from a wealthy family.
It probably the case than the security services realise, that people, don’t believe the official narrative, something had to be done to reinforce Jihadi Johns murderous credentials, unmasking him adds some credence to the matter, whilst buying, the security services more time.
Time to create a new Jihadi John.
Meanwhile bald Willie, also know as Prince William, is touring Japan, probably at the taxpayers expense, Bald Willie the oldest parasite of Prince Dobby, himself, the oldest parasite, of HRH queen droopy chops aka Lizzie.
Truth in Media: Origin of ISIS
Ben Swann
25 Feb 2015
In this episode of Truth in Media, Ben Swann explores the origin of ISIS that has already been long forgotten by American media. Swann takes on the central issue of whether or not ISIS was created by “inaction” by the United States government or by “direct” action.
12mins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6kdi1UXxhY#t=37
Ben Swann spent 14 years working as a journalist in broadcast news. In 2010, he became a prime time anchor with WXIX and there became the producer/writer/anchor of a segment called “Reality Check”. While covering the 2012 Republican Presidential primary he began to confront the problems in the American electoral process, the stranglehold of America’s two party system and the suppression of voters’ choices by the corporate media.
http://benswann.com/