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3,629 thoughts on “Amnesty International Conference on Torture

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  • Clark

    Herbie, do you think that what you’ve just described justifies the distortion of facts such as to favour, as you put it, Putin?

  • John Goss

    Clark I try and help you until you start looking silly. The question is silly. My views are the views I express. They are mine. They are not the Russian government’s views, they are not the Kremlin’s views, as far as I know. I am trying to save poor young men going to their deaths. You don’t seem to care. You are more interested in point-scoring. Ask me if I am trying to oppose US intervention all over the world, something I can get my teeth into. But to be honest on Ukraine you’ve really opened my eyes. I consider over recent days that you have shown colours you probably always had.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    Well, I Reckon we are slowly turning it…

    Its a strategy..originally developed in The Trenches in World War One…Well My Grandfather Was an Officer and a Gentleman..and My Grandmother Realised What Was Going On…

    You See. Yes We all Understood He Was Doing His Duty Herding All The Kids From Accrington, Blackburn and Oldham..Into The Trenches..To Shoot and Kill Germans…

    But we don’t want To Shoot Germans,,- we want to play football with them..

    After 4 Years of This Slaughter Even My Grand Dad..Thought For Fxsk Sake..I Can’t Take Any More Blood..and Walked Off The Job…

    He Survived WORLD WAR 1..just.. and brought his youngest up as a Peaseant Girl in France…His Wife..Her Mum had already fcked off..to Africa..Your Kids..You Psycho..Why are You Doing This…

    He Never Came Back To England (Scottish Actually)

    But His Daughter Did…

    And After World War 2..

    She Gave Birth To Me…

    How Many Wars Do You CnTs Want…????

    Haven’t You Had Enough Yet??

    Is that How You Get Your Kicks??

    You are Mad.

    Tony

  • Clark

    John Goss, what “colours” is it that you think I am showing?

    Tony_Opmoc, I’d still like to come to one of these gigs and meet you and your friends and family. You keep telling me how lovely you all are. Who is it you describe as mad, and wanting wars?

  • Herbie

    “Herbie, do you think that what you’ve just described justifies the distortion of facts such as to favour, as you put it, Putin?”

    I’m not sure what you mean here. If you mean making things up to make the West worse than it is or Putin better than he is, then I think that isn’t necessary.

    You see, it’s the West that has the agenda, the programme, the objective.

    Western mainstream media supports that objective and that’s why there’s so much anti-Putin propaganda.

    That’s where we begin, and we’ve seen it before, time and time again.

    The West has no problem even with the nastiest of dictators. It installs most of them.

    So, when you see a campaign like this you know not to believe it.

    Same with muslims. There’s a massive media campaign against muslims, based on the usual lies, distortions and exaggerations.

    The West has a purpose and lies to achieve it. All you have to do is point out where they’re lying.

  • Clark

    I’ll tell you all a bit about myself. I think that honesty and facing facts is one of the most important values there is. I’ll call it a “logical” value, for want of a better term. Truth.

    There are also, for want of a better term, “emotional” values, and the most important one of these is more difficult to name, probably because these have to do with feelings, and feeligs can’t be properly encapsulated in words. It might be called “love”, though that word covers many things that aren’t what I’m referring to – for instance, two men may fight because they “love” the same woman, and some people “love” chocolate biscuits. “Respect” is another word for it, but doesn’t really seem powerful enough. Likewise “good” and “virtue”. Maybe “God” or what Persig refers to as “Quality”. Persig makes the important point – we can’t define it, but we all know what it is.

    What is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good?
    Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

  • Clark

    Herbie, OK, it’s clear to me that I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. The video showed a meeting of heads of states. They do this stuff; I don’t really know why. It doesn’t mean that they will each give orders to, for instance, reduce carbon emissions to safe levels or shut down nuclear power stations or stop the Fukushima NPP from contaminating the oceans. I suppose you could call that event a fraud, though “fraud” has a legal definition. I’d just call it a show of some sort. Yes, it has much dishonesty about it. But I don’t know what you mean by “the whole thing”.

    I also don’t understand the

    “the West that has THE agenda, THE programme, THE objective” [my emphasis]

    Now I don’t know what “the West” is. And all those THEs; that doesn’t seem clear enough to stand any chance of being accurate. There isn’t just one of any of them. Even just myself, just one single person, has many agendas, many objectives, and probably not enough programs to achieve the first two.

    And the Russian government has all of these too. And so do all other governments. And so do corporations, and so does my village’s flower-arranging club.

    But this doesn’t get us anywhere. To make the future GOOD, humanity has to achieve a number of things. We need to stop polluting out planet so badly for a start. And we need to stop fighting and having wars because these things do so much damage and waste so much time and effort.

  • Herbie

    US power in the world is predicated on the petrodollar. The petrodollar system is held together by military power.

    The US wants Russia to deal with them in the way Yeltsin did. They want Putin to act like their other dictators, allow the resources to be plundered cheaply and acquiesce in the creation of a new financial system which will benefit the US.

    Putin doesn’t want to do this.

    So, Putin must go and be replaced by someone more amenable to US interests.

    That’s what the propaganda is aimed at. This is the stick.

    The visit to Buck House was the carrot.

    It’s been the same game against many countries since the collapse of the USSR.

    If the US doesn’t achieve its end in a timely fashion, then they’re finished.

  • Clark

    Herbie, I’d say that most of your 2:12 am comment could be right, though I’d change the last line a bit:

    “If the US doesn’t achieve its end in a timely fashion or adopt a completely different approach, then it is likely to decline catastrophically

    But there are different approaches that would avoid decline. And none of this has much bearing on Putin running Russia so badly. The Russian government, too, could take a completely different approach, as could all other governments, but mostly they don’t.

    A lot of the trouble seems to be humans nature. Those who get to run things do so because they are good at dominating others. So at the top of each powerful grouping (nations, corporations, etc.) there are dominant people – nearly all of them men.

    So the way they try to deal with each other is by doing what comes naturally – they try to dominate each other, with all the resources at their disposal. This leads to wars.

    If you doubt this, just ask yourself if things would be much different if the powerful of Russia could somehow be exchanged with the powerful of the US.

    To make things really change we need to achieve a paradox. The non-dominant need to become the greatest power. Democracy is a potential way of achieving this, and sometimes democracy works well for short periods, but it always becomes corrupted. The dominant people find ways of subverting it.

    But I must go to bed. Good night.

  • Herbie

    The US will decline catastrophically if it doesn’t effect regime change or otherwise subdue Russian resistance to their financial needs.

    There are no other options for the US.

    That’s the point.

    Good night.

  • Daniel

    “A must-read. The author was dismissed from the ‘Garudian’ with Freedland involvement.

    Death, drugs, and HSBC
    How fraudulent blood money makes the world go round
    By Nafeez Ahmed
    https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/death-drugs-and-hsbc-355ed9ef5316

    HSBC. Fairhead. Crookery and Trickery. Dodgy debt recovery charging. Financial Conduct Authority. All bases covered. What a journalist. He is unafraid of the powers-that-be.”

    Mary, the guys at Medialens wrote a brilliant background piece regarding Ahmed’s dismissal from the Guardian:

    http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2014/782-grievous-censorship-by-the-guardian-israel-gaza-and-the-termination-of-nafeez-ahmed-s-blog.html

    You are quite correct in attributing blame for Ahmed’s unwarranted dismissal on the paper’s Israeli propaganda mouthpiece. The nasty and deceitful way Freedland sidestepped the main thrust of Ahmed’s piece which related to the former’s censoring of Israel-Palestine, was typical Freedland.

    This is somebody who “tightly controlled” all coverage of the Israel-Palestine issue. According to Ahmed, Freedland “is, in effect, the paper’s ‘gatekeeper’ on the Middle East conflict.”

    Ahmed is an extremely rare breed of journalist in as much as that, unlike the Guardian’s token independent thinking ‘leftists’ like Owen Jones, Richard Seymour and George Monbiot, he refused to remain publicly silent over the nature of the corrupting influence advertising revenues played in distorting its output.

  • giyane

    Baa! Humbug

    Who is this person, what status does he have and why should we listen to him?

    A question often asked by readers on CM

  • glenn_uk

    “To make things really change we need to achieve a paradox. The non-dominant need to become the greatest power. Democracy is a potential way of achieving this, and sometimes democracy works well for short periods, but it always becomes corrupted. The dominant people find ways of subverting it.”

    Was’t that the whole point about the man in the shack? The one who actually did rule (against his wishes), because nobody who wanted to could possibly be allowed to do so?

    “Do you rule the universe?”

    – “I try not to.”

    (From memory.)

  • giyane

    A reminder to the senior management of Acivico, Birmingham Building Consultancy Ltd.

    2.6 Duty not to accept benefit from third parties (S176)
    A director must not accept such a benefit by reason of his being a director or his doing
    (or not doing) something as a director. For this purpose a ‘third party’ is a person other
    than the company, an associated body corporate or a person acting on behalf of a
    company or associated body corporate.
    Directors should ensure they do not receive any benefits not allowed under the
    company’s constitution. Exceptions are made for minor benefits not considered
    sufficient to cause influence but as a matter of course Nominees should consider this rule
    before accepting any benefit.

    It seems that if you have an English name and the inspector is Asian, they will use the fog of petty management rules to decide against you, and probably vice versa.

    The joys of English Parish Councils and Pakistani politics!

    After that come the joys of choosing in May between war-criminal Liam Byrne and his counterpart in the Tories William Hague. A bigger pair of losers it would be hard to find.

  • Mary

    Herbie Your YT. Of note that Her Maj was hosting Putin at a state banquet in June 2003 whilst her PM and the armed forces were a few months into the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the destruction of their country.

  • giyane

    Daniel

    What jounalist Ahmed will not tell you is that the mosques in the UK are so far stuck up the internal orifices of the Uk intelligence agencies, that they are beyond the pale of Islam.

    The purpose of this relationship is to divide and rule by leaking juicy information discreetly to third parties. The Brits spent 250 years dividing and ruling in India, so obviously they know how to do it here as well.

    As if politics was any relevance to the world. I see no distinction between political journalists in Israel and in the Muslim spectrum. Politics is lies and political journalism is the selective broadcasting of lies. Fleas feasting on other fleas.

  • Mary

    Squonk. 11.23pm You have my attention. 🙂

    Pondskaters however do exist on the surface tension of the water and never look down into the depths.

    RobG, Lysias, TonyM and others Thanks for the links. A terrible legacy for our descendants.

    US sailors prepare for fresh legal challenge over Fukushima radiation http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/aug/20/us-navy-sailors-legal-challenge-fukushima-radiation-tepco

    Will the hush money be of any use to them?

    Daniel Thanks. Yes I follow the two Davids. They do marvellous work.

  • Daniel

    “What jounalist Ahmed will not tell you is that the mosques in the UK are so far stuck up the internal orifices of the Uk intelligence agencies, that they are beyond the pale of Islam.

    The purpose of this relationship is to divide and rule by leaking juicy information discreetly to third parties. The Brits spent 250 years dividing and ruling in India, so obviously they know how to do it here as well.

    As if politics was any relevance to the world. I see no distinction between political journalists in Israel and in the Muslim spectrum. Politics is lies and political journalism is the selective broadcasting of lies. Fleas feasting on other fleas.”

    I’m not sure what relevance that incomprehensible obscurantist gibberish has to do with what I wrote.

  • Daniel

    “Daniel Thanks. Yes I follow the two Davids. They do marvellous work.”

    You are welcome, Mary. I have been following them since 2002. I love their work.

  • Macky

    @Daniel, re “incomprehensible obscurantist gibberish”, although Giyane’s style may not be a style you find easy, I think the points he makes are often valid, and as an example for this particular instance, there a BBC story today with an interview of a Muslim informer for MI5, in which he expresses regret for enticing somebody, who ended up in prison for a long time; he even states that his work in trying to entrap fellow Muslims became much harder after 7/7 because of the new anti-terrorism laws !;

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31700894

  • John Goss

    Ukraine’s inflation is the worst in the world. In his budget speech Yatsenyuk predicted it would rise by 13%. It has risen by 279% (or close). There is a mass protest in Kiev calling for wages which have been unpaid for the last six months to be settled, with miners banging their protective helmets on the tarmac. Is this being reported in the west?

    I support the two Russian Cmmunist MPs, Valery Rashkin and Sergey Obukhov, who have gone against Kremlin policy, which protects oligarchs, and who have called for Ukraine’s debts to Russia to be repaid in full should the ceasefire not hold. They have also called for Petro Poroshenko’s personal assets in Russia to be sequestrated in such an event but Putin’s laws do not allow for this.

    http://rt.com/politics/236789-russian-communists-ukraine-ultimatum/

    I would like to see similar impoundings take place in the west when politicians have operated outside of common decency and not paid workers’ wages.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Lysias

    “I have neither ever served in the U.S. Army nor ever claimed that I did.”
    ________________

    You have on several occasions told is you were US Navy.

    But you have also said you were for a time with the US garrison in Berlin-West.

    As far as I recall, that garrison was made up of US Army formations.

    So…….??

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    re turning down an invitation to meet for a drink:

    “@Phil, thanks for the offer, but i hope you can respect my wish to keep my real life private”
    _________________

    Could this be from the “Macky” who has roundly condemned me several times for “cowardice” in not revealing my identity on here?

    Why, I do believe it could! 🙂

  • fred

    So there seems to be a general consensus that it was nationalists that did it did it and the only disagreement seems to be over which ones.

  • Mary

    Sheen, a great actor, and a sentient and politically aware UK citizen who is not afraid to speak out.

    ‘By God, believe in something,’ Michael Sheen tells politicians
    Actor who played Tony Blair on screen accuses Labour of lacking conviction and joining the Conservatives in ‘systematically undermining’ NHS values

    watch Michael Sheen’s speech.
    2 March 2015

    The actor Michael Sheen, best known for playing Tony Blair in a series of TV dramas and the award-winning film The Queen, has delivered a passionate defence of the NHS against “bland” politicians in thrall to the market from both Conservative and Labour parties.

    Speaking at a St David’s Day march to celebrate the NHS and its founder, Aneurin Bevan, on Sunday, Sheen approvingly noted Bevan’s “burning hatred for the Tory party” and attacked Margaret Thatcher’s infamous claim there is no such thing as society.

    But his anger was also aimed at the timidity of Labour politicians and the party’s record in office.’

    /..
    http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/02/michael-sheen-defends-nhs-against-bland-politicians

    The article has been shared 12,000 times and has attracted 1,229 comments.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Mr Goss

    “I wonder why the Russian authorities have detained Nemtsov’s 23 year old Ukrainian girlfriend model? Do they think it might have been a honey-trap? No. Really?”
    __________________

    And let her return to Kiev 24 hours later.

    So much for that stupid little hypothesis, Mr Goss.

    Gamma double minus, must do better!

  • John Goss

    “So much for that stupid little hypothesis, Mr Goss.

    Gamma double minus, must do better!”

    An hypothesis is a clearly-stated proposition. What I asked were questions. Go and stand in the corner for not knowing the difference.

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