This year’s Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival will be at the Cardross Estate near Port of Menteith again from 21-3 August. As our long-term readers know, while there is no formal link between this blog and Doune the Rabbit Hole, and the festival has no political view, the general tone, tenor and atmosphere of the event is one likely to appeal to people who enjoy this blog, and I shall as ever be running the bars.
I can’t quite describe what makes this little festival more appealing than others. It has an extraordinary sense of community and idealism, and I always find it seriously refreshing and uplifting, with confidence in my fellow human beings restored. The bands are very eclectic, and a reminder that great live music is made all over Scotland by people that largely you have never heard of. A particular selling point is that it is very family friendly, and it is not just that there are one or two examples that enable you to say the age range is 9 weeks to 90, it really is like that.
To say that it is a not for profit event is an understatement. We need people to buy tickets, and you can do so here. If you can afford it, you really will have fun. For those short of cash or free to enjoy hard graft (and it is quite tough), readers of and commenters on this blog make up a high proportion of the volunteers who are needed to make it happen at all.
I do hope many of you will come again this year, either as guests or volunteers. Lifelong friendships are forged, and it is great for me to meet you in real life rather than virtually, though I am more free to pull you a pint than engage in profound discussion. The bar – the Whistleblower’s Arms – will have an even wider range of superb local ales and ciders. I can taste it already.
I am happy to tell you that a month’s consultancy work has mended my personal finances, and I shall be back from Africa next week. We shall therefore avoid the need for a donate button to keep the blog going after all, rather to my relief. I should have been at Julian Assange’s birthday party in the Ecuador Embassy today, and am sorry to miss it. Happy Birthday, Julian. There is a good exposition of the state of his case here, for those interested in fact rather than derogatory mainstream media slogans. Julian, Chelsea and Edward have done so much to improve human understanding and resist the powers of the corporate state, and each has had a normal life denied them.
Nevermind,
Just keep throwing in the occasional reference along the lines of ‘I’m looking forward to tonight. I’m stopping in to polish me medal’ type of thing
I’ve seen this one run and run in real life in a workplace. It acts like an itchy scab that never gets better.
Ba’al @ 10.33am…That was great – kind of Floyd, Neu, Caravan and Can rolled into one. But not derivative.
I’m still recovering from Bastille Day.
Gueule de bois.
Good news for all who wish Greece well. From Kathimerini.
_________________________
“The EU approved a short-term loan of 7.16 billion euros ($7.8 billion) to Greece allowing it to meet a huge payment to the ECB and repay the IMF while a new bailout is still being ratified, the EUs top official for the euro said Friday.
“We have an agreement on bridge financing…. This agreement is backed by the 28 member states,” Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters.
Greece must pay the European Central Bank a huge debt payment of 4.2 billion euros as early as Monday, and is in arrears to the IMF.
The bridging loan allows Greece to clear its debt to the IMF and to repay the ECB while the modalities of a fresh bailout, agreed in principal by European leaders on Monday, is still under negotiation.
“It will allow Greece to clear its arrears with the IMF and the Bank of Greece and to repay the ECB, until Greece would start receiving financing under a new programme from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM),” the European Council, which represents the bloc’s 28 member states, said in a statement referring to the EUs bailout fund.
The loan will be given through the EFSM, a rescue fund set up at the time of Greeces first bailout in 2010 but that involves the whole of the 28-nation EU, not just the 19 eurozone members.
The loan will officially be for three months, but only provide enough cash to hold Greece over until August 20, when the country owes the ECB another huge debt payment.
Britain on Thursday dropped its opposition to the emergency EU loan to Greece after reaching a deal that would, it said, protect it and other non-euro countries against potential losses.”
This is for Mary, if she’s tuning in: last year, following the attack on Gaza, Senator David Norris stood up in the Irish parliament and made an impassioned speech about Israel and Palestine…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7sSQFpyJu8
You often see stuff in the Irish parliaments (republic and the north) that you’ll rarely see anywhere else in the West. In 2013 the G8 summit was held in the Republic of Ireland. Clare Daly made a quite brilliant, witty and acerbic speech in the Irish parliament that absolutely tore President Obama apart. You don’t see the likes of this very often in western parliaments…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfefMFk19xw
“That the OSCE, Organisation for Security in Central Europe”
LOL – Perhaps Nevermind should learn the organisation’s name before he starts to lecture us on what it should do and who its members should be. And once he has done that he might wish to look at the US’s historical record in European wars.
Open letter by Sahra Wagenknecht (Member of the German Bundestag) to Angela Merkel, published in BILD on 10 July 2015:
“Madam Chancellor,
Europe is in a bad condition. All over Europe it is the hard-working people with ordinary wages who pay most taxes while the rich people duck away. Many wage-earners are not able to live off their job income. Also in Germany. After a life of hard work, often enough, a miserable pension looms. The wealth of millionaires, however, has reached new peaks. In all of Europe the states are highly indebted because they have taken over the losses of irresponsible bankers and speculators. Greece´s debt is particularly high. Here, a corrupt political class together with Greek oligarchs and the international banks has shamelessly accumulated wealth for years and years. Since the introduction of the Euro especially, the party was on. Many small and medium-sized enterprises on the other hand were swept from the market by the new currency which was way too hard for Greece.
In the year 2010 Greece was bankrupt. It was clear already then that it would not be able to repay its debt. Yet despite that, Madam Chancellor, in 2010 you set the course for Germany and the other Euro countries to accept the liability for the Greek debt. By so doing you protected banks and hedge funds from losses in the billions. For the European tax payer who was never asked, however, this decision was a fatal error. It was clear from the beginning that a high amount of our money would be lost. Together with other parliamentarians of the Left I pointed this out to you in the Bundestag. You would not listen to it…”
Cont.
http://www.sahra-wagenknecht.de/en/article/2163.madam-chancellor-change-your-policy-before-it-is-too-late.html
OSCE = Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Nevermind makes a thoughtful and informative comment with an unimportant error in it.
Resident Dissident mocks the error but doesn’t offer the correct information.
Who has made the better post?
Rob G,
Just a heads up.
Gollum et al don’t reside in the reality based community.
Thanks Dave, I really enjoyed your piece at 3.59pm.
I suppose many people who read the comments here might wonder why Gollum & Co rarely, if ever, give links to back-up what they’re saying…
(I would guess it’s mostly because if they give a URL link it makes it a helluva lot easier to find out their IP address, and an awful lot more)
Node
You of course avoid the point about the US’s involvement in European Wars – including the 2 World Wars that originated in Europe.
Julian, Chelsea and Edward have done so much to improve human understanding and resist the powers of the corporate state, and each has had a normal life denied them.
The powers of the corporate state are augmented; reinforced even in the last 24 hrs with lies that British pilots are bombing ISIS in Syria.
British RAF pilots are bombing Syrian government forces and killing women and children to boot according to a serving logistics specialist.
Agent Cameron must answer to this blatant apathy towards public conscience. The excuse our pilots are operating with US forces is just reprehensible, vile and shameless.
Screw you Cameron!
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/17/david-cameron-knew-uk-pilots-were-bombing-isis-in-syria
Hope the Festival goes well – it sounds fun. Just sorry circumstances do not permit me to attend etc etc…but have passed this on to our son and family who will be holidaying in Scotland at the time – so perhaps I will be represented (kind of)
Are the Ink Spots appearing by any chance?
Resident Dissident : “You of course avoid the point about the US’s involvement in European Wars – including the 2 World Wars that originated in Europe.”
Yes I did. It wasn’t the point I wanted to make. I preferred to point out that Nevermind’s post contributed to the blog and yours detracted from it.
Cameron has to sing in tune…
http://levantreport.com/2015/05/19/2012-defense-intelligence-agency-document-west-will-facilitate-rise-of-islamic-state-in-order-to-isolate-the-syrian-regime/
ISIS anticipated in 8/D/1 of this:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-287-293-291-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812-2/
Rob G,
The inverse of what you describe also operates.
Those like yourself, among others, are used to providing links and references as per standard scientific practice.
The problem is that it matters not one jot who or how many people or papers you reference, the standard response of the cognitive dissonance crowd is to at all costs find some obscure way, no matter how trivial or stupid, to reject that individual et al. Not for any reasonable or valid rational reason but because it challenges their comfort blanket faith.
If you consider the former Greek Finance Ministers point, in the recent New Statesman interview, about many of their opposite numbers from the Eurozone in the negotiations agreeing with their analysis that, which the leaked IMF paper (which makes interesting reading) supported, the Eurozone position was completely impractical and unworkable and about as far away from the real world as it possible to be but that they were going to screw the Greeks anyway simply because they had the power to do it and they wanted to do it anyway, you see one level of the cognitive dissonance.
The scale of that choice to reject reality can be seen in the fact that so many outside of that elite circle and their hangers on are literally willing to die in a ditch to reject any intrusion of reality into the popular discourse.
“(I would guess it’s mostly because if they give a URL link it makes it a helluva lot easier to find out their IP address, and an awful lot more)”
That’s very interesting, please do tell us more about the mechanisms by which posting a link makes it easier to find their IP addresses and exactly how much more.
Always willing to learn from the reality based community.
Well, that’s one less reason for Fred not to support his assertions. (Like the FOI Act (2000) not applying to Scotland.) Another being, that he very often can’t, knows it, and is simply wasting everyone’s time. Not that I personally grudge mine when putting the old chap right.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
“Well, that’s one less reason for Fred not to support his assertions. (Like the FOI Act (2000) not applying to Scotland.) Another being, that he very often can’t, knows it, and is simply wasting everyone’s time. Not that I personally grudge mine when putting the old chap right.”
I do know ho much you enjoy trawling through google.
From your link ^ Dave. The aide referred to is Dubya advisor Karl Rove. What an economical description of how the world is managed.
And they are still dancing around stark bollock naked convinced in their own heads that they are fully clothed.
The most expensive fairy story in living history.
“OSCE = Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Nevermind makes a thoughtful and informative comment with an unimportant error in it.
Resident Dissident mocks the error but doesn’t offer the correct information.
Who has made the better post?”
____________________
Well, I’d dispute both the claim that the error was unimportant (after ll, if you’re slagging off something you might as well get its name right – that’d be a good start, wouldn’t it) and the description of Nevermind’s post as thoughtful and informative (it was anything but, and Nevermind was lucky that Craig didn’t intervene to tick him off as he did Mr Goss).
The answer to your question is therefore as follows: Resident Dissident’s post was (far) better.
Hope that helps.
I do know ho much you enjoy trawling through google.
Amd in that ‘kmowledge’ (Google being simply a means to an end: the enjoyment is confined to what it turns up), you continue to make unsupported, wrong, assertions.
But there’s an interesting assumption here, and I’ve noticed it before. And that is that information one has had to look for is in some way inferior to off-the-top-of-Fred’s-head opinions. Now I’m guessing here, and of course I can’t support this, but are you originally from Yorkshire*? It’s that combination of bloody rude (or ‘forthright’) and ‘I’m always right’ that does it. I think you’d be more at home in Leeds than Caithness, personally.
*No offence to Yorkshire in general. I have roots there myself. But at least I offer links…
RobG-
DON’T TELL HIM, PIKE!!!….too late.
“But don’t worry, if you’ve got nothing to hide than you have nothing to fear…”
I’m not so sure about that. I knew that Craig would know my IP address I’m accessing his server but I had no Idea that if I posted a link others could find out my IP address, this is serious.
What is this kind of a window it opens up? What sort of a window is it? What will it tell them about me? I think we should know.
“Now I’m guessing here, and of course I can’t support this, but are you originally from Yorkshire*? It’s that combination of bloody rude (or ‘forthright’) and ‘I’m always right’ that does it. I think you’d be more at home in Leeds than Caithness, personally.”
And I’m thinking you should fuck off and die retard.
I’ve tried holding a civil discussion with you but you are not capable of debate without making personal attacks. So I’m back to flaming and if the moderator doesn’t like it he can fuck off and die as well.
Ba’al Zevul
17 Jul, 2015 – 8:59 pm respect fella – much appreciated wisdom.
Fred
You should know by now that Baal’s Zeus-like loftiness is fragile ad tends to disappear when he is challenged too persistently or when he feels his dicta are not treated with sufficient respect.
It’s probably Baal-Zeus’ tendency to roll around in the gutter when under pressure that got Komodo cashiered.
Can’t take it, Fred?
Right now on R4 news, an impartial assessment of Corbyn’s chances, with Lance Price (a Blair SPAD) and Matthew Parris (ex-Tory MP)
Speaking truth unto nation, or kowtowing to Cameron’s plans for the Beeb?