I was called a traitor by a Conservative MEP in a committee meeting of the European Parliament to which I was giving eyewitness evidence on the UK’s complicity in torture and extraordinary rendition. Doubtless that is recorded in the minutes of the meeting, which means I am marked down on a forest of European Parliament paper as a traitor in each of the European Union’s 24 official languages.
Nobody turned a hair, least of all me. There were some giggles as the Tory MEP immediately walked out of the meeting, which was viewed as childish. But nobody thought of it as way outside the normal levels of political discourse. Indeed it was quite mild by European parliamentary standards. It is, of course, perfectly true that I used to represent the United Kingdom and now it is my dearest wish to destroy it as an institution. It is therefore arguable that I am technically a traitor. I am not scared of names.
My Scottish readers will have realised that this disquisition on treachery is a reference to the Labour Party’s published dossier of evil cybernats. The majority of those cited qualified as evil because of use of the word traitor. I am devastated I did not get included. I am unsure that my ego will ever recover.
It seems to me that, in an argument which revolves around what constitutes a nation, the idea of treachery to the nation is one that logically is bound to intrude, on all sides. Indeed it can be shown to intrude into the entire discourse around unionism and nationalism over centuries. I have used the term myself.
It seems to me context is important. There is a legitimate discourse on whether treachery to either the United Kingdom or to Scotland is involved in the independence conundrum. To make plain that some consider a position or act as traitorous has a place in robust political debate. I deplore the idea that politics must be reduced to genteel commonplaces over tiny areas of disagreement. Passion is important. But to imply violent retribution is different, and comes under bullying and threat.
“Traitor” should not be shunned like a racist epithet. It carries a meaning which is important.
RobG, your take on the Middle East is interesting. I’ve a couple of questions;
Is Daesh different from ISIS? Some commenters seemed to interchange the terms.
Is ISIS not well armed and trained? I thought they took possession of a lot of US weapons and received US funding in the billions-of-dollars range through some of the Gulf Monarchies, and I thought many of their members had received Western training when being used as proxies in Libya, Syria etc.
You are fundamentally inconsistent. Clark. I’ve lost any desire to carry it further.
ISIS, ISIL, IS or any other name, surely reflects a great many groups and interests which shift around the leadership of this very diverse group. AQ was amorphous enough, IS seems even more so.
It’s not only a bit of local training. Besides defectors from current armed forces it also, if I recall, comprises former Iraqi military who were sacked during the wise reign of Dubbya, because they belonged to the same political party as the dictator of their country.
They included personnel up to the rank of General, who might be somewhat disgruntled to find themselves unemployed and called ingrates by the “Coalition of the willing” that has also destroyed their country for no very good reason.
It’s safe to conclude they know how to fire a gun, at the very least.
As for the arms – since entire brigades ran away leaving their weapons behind, and when Iraqi’s army was sacked they were ordered to take all their weapons with them (“don’t you dare leave them laying around here on your way out!”), we might also surmise that some sophisticated weaponry is in the hands of people who know how to use them, and how to organise themselves in a fight.
“But would it actually make sense to retain all that personal data on a magnetic strip on a mobile? It must be pretty awkward for spooks to sneak everyone’s mobile off them, examine that little strip, then sneak it back again without the owner noticing.”
It seems likely that any stored data is retrievable using the phone’s own signal. In the absence of the self-proclaimed techies not being able to help I have tried to find out something myself. Firstly, all cellphone providers have a range of models all of which are different with many different batteries. Phones, computers, aeroplanes and cars using li-ion batteries can burst into flames through overheating caused by a short circuit. Following is a range of phone manufacturers with details of how to take the phone apart and showing the difference in batteries.
http://repair4mobilephone.org/cell_phone.html
This is a wikipedia article which explains the history and problems with lithium-ion batteries. It seems unlikely that the magnetic strip removed in the video has anything to do with battery safety. Does anybody know? Some part of the phone is storing data, as with computers and printers, possibly on some kind of data-storage chip.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
Finally, if following that video is likely to cause fires it is very irresponsible to have put it on Facebook. Having said that there are sites showing you how to take a cellphone lithium battery apart (the casing is not needed says one) and running your laptop from this battery. It does say you should not leave the room while charging it. 🙂
The British definition of treason is precise and consistent: threats to impunity. Mr. Murray’s denunciation of acquiescence to torture was a threat to the impunity of US command structures and their UK W.O.G.s.
Amnesty International also offers aid and comfort to the juridical enemy,
“We have good reason to believe that the British government is interested in our work. Over the past few years we have investigated possible war crimes by U.K. and U.S. forces in Iraq, Western government involvement in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, and the callous killing of civilians by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. It was recently revealed that GCHQ may have provided assistance for U.S. drone attacks.”
Accordingly, the UK used secret administrative law to impose illegal surveillance of AI rights defenders, suspending victims’ rights and actions in a separate war crime under Rome Statute Article 8.2.b.xiv and corresponding universal-jurisdiction law. During war crimes investigations of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, the UK also spied on Malysian civil society in breach of ICCPR Article 17. The UK suppressed evidence relating to traitor David Kelly for 30 to 70 years, in compliance with the US precedents from JFK’s alleged treason and execution.
The UK’s arbitrary interference and attacks are a throwback to the early modern view of lèse-majesté as treason under discredited doctrines of absolute sovereignty. Under current universal-jurisdiction law, when civil resistance to UK state crime is treason, the Nuremberg Principles make treason a legal imperative for every high official of Scottish, English, Manx, Cornish, and Welsh nationality, and a moral duty for every UK person holding a position of trust. Those who were on the ground to see the USSR collapse know that the catalyst for collapse was widespread acceptance of treason in the interest of superordinate values. The UK’s impending disintegration is simply the other shoe dropping.
“Habbabkuk, have you read of the retroactive deletion of Orwell’s 1984 from Amazon Kindles? Delicious irony!”
Indeed. But vastly more sinister is the fact that an e-book on your Kindle could be changed since you last read it.
You might want to refresh your memory of the details of a point, whip out the Kindle, and find it’s not there any more – at least, not the way you remembered. And indeed it might not be, because the Kindle’s contents can be updated every time it is synced (whether you like it or not).
Does anything more epitomise the spirit of Orwell’s 1984 than your own copy of reference material updating itself, even though it never apparently left your possession?
Clark, I would say that it’s just re-branding. Al-Qaeda became toxic after too many stories emerged about western funding and support, and so we were pushed towards ISIS. Now we have all this Daesh nonsense.
Here’s a recent report by Nafeez Ahmed (who was kicked off the Guardian for being too outspoken):
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092
Lysias
it was just the name caught my eye…thank you for highlighting the site .
RobG @12.55
I wouldn’t describe the differences as strictly a simple case of re-branding. The former is a wahabbi group and the latter a salafist group. As far as I can gather, their differences are both nuanced and in dispute among scholars.
RobG: “If you don’t want to buy it on Amazon, chances are you’ll find the title somewhere else.”
No worries there, Rob – I haven’t bought a book on Amazon yet.
No, my point was more about the Kindle, and what a horror it truly is.
Think of prized books you own, perhaps even some owned by your Grandparents. Its binding, the style and language it which it presents itself, the very feel of it – the history of that physical artifact which can still be used – that is a thing to treasure, to pass on. There must be books which you’re proud to be able to reach to, to read passages from again, and get a personal re-grounding – you remember where you were at times in your life, when you first held it, and what it meant to you at the time.
You’re going to pass nothing of the like along, when you finally kick off, if it’s all of some wretched Kindle. And nothing like that to admire and cherish in the meantime either.
Books have as near a spiritual quality as anything else we might possess, a memory as much an any other artifact, but which can be immersed into once again to just the same extent as when we first found it. Or any other occasion in between.
Am I alone in this? Upon re-reading a book, with that same physical book in my hands, I find myself in the same mindset as the first occasion, and many recollections appear from that time.
I wonder if Suhayl has any thoughts on this, if he’s around?
So the situation seems to be – Al Qaeda, ISIS, ISIL, IS, Daesh – we don’t really know, but if they seem to be making the right noises we give them money and arms. Great. RobG, thanks for the link.
John Goss, if you apply a bit of logic – if the ‘phone’s signal can encode information onto that metal strip, it can encode it onto any bit of metal, so you’d best not use zip-fasteners or carry any change in your pocket… But don’t worry, it can’t, which is why you’ve found no such information.
‘Phones store data on internal flash memory, the same technology as USB sticks and SD memory cards. You personally are identified by the SIM card (which also includes flash memory and stores your contact list). SIM stands for Subscriber Identification Module and you can remove it, rendering the ‘phone unusable. In short, you can’t remove your personal data from a ‘phone and continue to use the network. If you could, you could avoid paying bills.
The start of Isis’ story, main character in Whit – or – Isis Amongst the Unsaved by Iain Banks, set just half a mile up the Forth river from the site of the Doune the Rabbit Hole festival. Glenn, if you haven’t read it, you would love this book.
John Goss, in the batteries I’ve seen the purpose of the metal strip seems to be to conduct heat from the body of the cells to the heat sensing component which is attached to the charge regulating circuit. It serves no magnetic function that I can think of. Without it, the cells could heat up without heating the temperature sensor, so don’t mess with it.
And Fred wasn’t trying to trick you, he was trying to protect you. You might consider apologising.
Glenn, I couldn’t agree more with everything you said. Whether it’s books or CDs/vinyl, it’s the aesthetics of actually physically holding and having in your possession something that somebody else has created – the smells, the touch, the cover artwork and the memories they invoke – that can never be replicated by their virtual namesakes.
It’s the permanence of the former as opposed to the fleeting nature implied by the latter – whose personification is the multifaceted and technologically advanced modern era of mass communication in which we live – that is part and parcel of the ruination of much of contemporary culture.
Am I overstating my case? Possibly. Is it an age thing? Again, possibly. I just think it’s a pity that many of the younger generation have missed out on the thrill of spending an afternoon trawling record shops with the aim of buying the latest album from your favourite artist (in my case Neil Young) that had been released on that day and that you’ve saved up all week for, admiring its artwork on the bus home and waiting in eager anticipation to break the cellophane seal before gently sliding the album out from its inner sleeve and placing it on your turntable.
There are physical reasons that a physical book might evoke memories. As we turn the pages, air gets trapped between them, along with the particles that carry odor. Next time you read the book some of those particles will be released into the air, and ever so slightly, you’ll smell the same smells as when you last read those pages.
Ben, sorry, I don’t see the inconsistency you’re complaining about. The Israeli Democracy Institute sounds like a think-tank or something, which is not the same thing as a news media organisation like a newspaper or its associated website. Certainly some polls may be massaged or warped, but different institutions will probably massage their polls in different directions. A news media organisation will try to massage all the polls in the direction preferred by the editorial department. It will select some polls and ignore others on the same basis.
I alternate reading books on Kindle and in paper format. Kindle is lit up, so you can read it in darkness. Books in paper format are little harmed if you read them when there is light rainfall. So, at any given time, I am reading one book in one format and another book in the other. At the moment, I am reading both Max Blumenthal’s book on the latest Gaza war and G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s book on Christian persecutions.
Spare time to watch this inspiring and wise old man the world has just lost.
Born a Jew, later baptized at school, he has abandoned all religion. He saw the hypocrisy. Ethics his motivation.
He was asked about peace in the ME. He was pessimistic and says the dangers are greater now than they ever were. He speaks of weaponry. He gives his views on many subjects. So lucid aet 105. There was so much more to his life than what this BBC blurb contains.
HARDtalk
Sir Nicholas Winton
Stephen Sackur talks to the late Sir Nicholas Winton. When he was just 29 he helped rescue more than 600 mostly Jewish children from Nazi persecution in Czechoslovakia. He hates being labelled a hero but Sir Nicholas Winton is proof that individuals can make an extraordinary difference. What motivated him?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v35ck
It gets worse for the Palestinians. The Israelis themselves should be worried.
Is waste from Israel’s nuclear programme poisoning Palestinians?
NEWS / Posted by Friends of Al-Aqsa / Thursday, 02nd July, 2015
Israel’s nuclear programme has operated in the shadows with little international oversight. Now it appears accidents and the unsafe disposal of nuclear material could be poisoning the West Bank.
Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor may be responsible for the increase in illnesses and still-births in nearby Palestinian populations, it has emerged.
It is the one of the few nuclear facilities in the world not subject to international safety inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The reactor has already been implicated in illnesses and environmental damage among the area’s Israeli population.
/..
http://foa.org.uk/news/is-waste-from-israels-nuclear-programme-poisoning-palestinians-
@Goss
“He was a historian I never read. I preferred E.H. Carr (on Soviet Union) E. P. Thomson and Frederick Engels(on English Social History) though I picked up the other Hugh’s “Spanish Civil War” once, weighed it against Laurie Lee’s “As I walked out one Midsummer Morning” and “A Rose for Winter” which combined seemed the lighter option. Pity about Trevor Roper falling for the Hitler Diaries hoax. :)”
It was Hugh Thomas who wrote the “Spanish Civil War” you dolt. Noticeable also that as well as Laurie Lee’s excellent books you did not pick up “Homage to Catalonia” – could it be you didn’t want to read how your Stalinist friends betrayed the Republican csuse?
Glen_UK
I sympathise with everything you say about Kindle, but there is another quite compelling side to the story. Books are or can be lovely artefacts, some of the most delightful things it is possible to own. But not all are, or not automatically. An awful lot of them turn out to be junk that has to be pulped or sold off for pennies. There is a distinction, I think, between books to be kept and treasured and ones simply to be consumed. I don’t own a Kindle, but I have the Kindle app on my iPad and I use it a lot. I fully agree with you about the negatives—(can they really change the text of a work?)—but there are occasions, where for example I need to consult a lot of books for research where I can acquire them instantly, and take a load of them off somewhere on an iPad to research. The note-taking possibilities are awesome. You just highlight passages with your finger and later export all the notes to a word file. I tell you, if you have to take a lot of notes from a book, this is really pretty wonderful. And when you are done you don’t have a load of dead trees clogging up your life. And let’s not forget the truly awesome fact that—through Project Gutenberg and similar— you can download virtually everything ever written that is out of copyright for free. I mean, seriously! Shakespeare, Milton, Sophocles…what an amazing resource! I have no doubt that real physical books as lovely desirable artefacts will continue to co-exist alongside the digital versions. It’s good to be sentimental about them but not too sentimental. as someone once said, books are the bodies not the souls of literature. It goes without saying, of course, that this screed is an endorsement of e-reading not of Amazon itself.
John Goss –
Sorry mate, I’m away this weekend, in that hotbed of marxist revolutionaries er….Marlow. Enjoy the play!
Given the past correspondence and my uncertainty about the blog’s leader, I think the time has come to go. I’ve said as much as I usefully can, and even invited the Mods to remove anything that might be potentially harmful.
If by some chance this blog is part of a conspiracy, part of a clash of world views (“civiisations” sounds exaggerated to me) between the Western and the Islamist (I do not say “Islamic” since many of the latter may in fact be part of the West, and not Islamist at all) then I am on the side of Western civilisation and democracy, and possibly the left wing in Israel, i.e. wishing its attainment of greater justice and democracy (including for Palestinians) – but not its destruction.
To the genuine human rights activists (not just bellyachers), good luck. This is Abe Rene signing off, for good.
Resident Dissident
To be fair to Mr Goss, he did say “the other Hugh”, which means he was not talking about Hugh Trevor-Roper but Hugh Thomas.
Question to self : why am I being fair to Mr Goss? 🙂
Anyway, I’m out of here.
Until later, that is 🙂
Top British Naval commanders are fully aware a cruise missile strike on Iran will progress when President Obama and the US walk away from the nuclear talks. The talks will necessarily break down on Iran’s red line on their military establishment inspections.
The plan to disrupt Iranian society cohesion is set in stone. ISIS and other terrorist groups will deliver further violence and confusion into the aftermath with emphasis on devastating energy supply to China and elsewhere.
Iran is the remaining citadel on the neo-con blueprint. Without protection from a nuclear state, Iran will join Syria, Libya, Iraq and others into abeyance.
The RAF are on alert for a strike on Syria in readiness for the final episode.
Thank you Habby at 8:50 am. Resident Dissident nearly always gets the wrong end of the stick. He never misses an opportunity to try and discredit me. It nearly always backfires on him. But to be fair to him, as we’re on a ‘be fair’ day, being a working man he probably never had time to read the previous comments, and therefore I accept the apology which will not be forthcoming. 🙂
And as we’re on a ‘be fair’ day, thank you Clark at 2:38 am and 2:48 am for trying to explain something without trying to antagonise. While you might be right about the magnetic metallic strip I am not sure you are. Comments though like those are among your better comments mostly because they are not trying to point score. 🙂 Have a good day.
“Fred are not among them. That does not mean on this occasion you might prove to be right. But Fred is a troll as you know. It is his duty to prevent people from stopping the authorities from spying on them. ”
John Goss is a retard. Thick as fucking pig shit.
This is no joke, I’ve seen what lithium batteries can do, don’t listen to this creep he is trying to harm you. There has been a spate of lithium battery fires lately due to the increasing popularity of e-cigarets which don’t have the same safety features as mobile phone batteries.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/e-cigarette-dangers-fire-chiefs-warning-2949094
Unfortunately there are some very sick people in this world who would get a great deal of pleasure from knowing they caused someone to burn to death, do not listen to them.
Fred, look you chump, I did not post that video. I also said if it is wrong it was irresponsible to post it on Facebook. It had more than 2 million views before I saw it. How many people have followed the advice I do not know. But you were in there very quickly and quite frankly I don’t trust you. Past experience I’m afraid. You should know that I would never try to endanger life. That is what warmongers and hawks do so the aspersions are a nonsense.
As to the ad hominem, not allowed under the new guidelines, retard seems to be a favourite word of yours and makes me wonder why it is so cherished by you. I can only deduce that someone hurt you with the word at some stage in your existence and you want to hurt others because of the hurt. But I’m not a psychologist. 🙂
“Fred, look you chump, I did not post that video.”
You posted a link to it here.
I’m just trying to prevent people coming to harm and you call me a troll.
Now you call me a chump.
Now fuck off and die retard if you call me names I call you names understand?