I am in Tbilisi at the moment, where I spent this early morning drinking tea with some of the 2,000 strong Yazidi community. They see their religion as much more closely descended from Zoroastrianism than appears in most accounts I have read.
I very much enjoyed a visit to Tsinandali which was most useful for gaining a Russian perspective of the Great Game. I don’t have my books with me and am suffering a mental block as to whether it was Connoly, Abbott or Malcolm who visited Tsinandali. I had not realised that Griboyedov was married to a daughter of the house, Nina Chavchavadze. The murder of Griboyedov, Russian Ambassador in Tehran, by a mob rates little more than a footnote in British accounts of the Great Game, even though the British had bribed the religious authority to stir up the riots. What revisionist history there has been, has come from the Iranian side and falsely tried to obscure the fact that the refugees Griboyedov was sheltering were runaway slaves from harems.
This is a neglected recurring theme. When Shuja agreed the treaty already negotiated between Macnaghten and Ranjit Singh, the main stipulation he sought to add was that the British would return to him any runaway slave girls. The immediate motive for the ringleader of the attack on Alexander Burnes was that Burnes had refused to intervene to return a runaway slave girl who had sought the protection of another British officer. My fellow anti-imperialist historians have in general been guilty of emphasising rapaciousness by the British in these incidents and overlooking or excusing the slave status of the girls. Both aspects need to be faced squarely to write honestly the full facts of history. Tellingly, it is generally impossible to recover names of the girls involved.
Griboyedov deserves to be remembered for much more than his murder. An accomplished playwright and poet, he was a friend of Pushkin and had links to the dissident groups who attempted revolution in 1825. His murder left Nina a widow at either 17 or 19 by different accounts, and pregnant. She lost the child on hearing of her husband’s death, and never remarried. It is a tragic story which came alive to me in visiting the family home.
Griboyedov had fought Napoleon in the 1812 campaign, but had helped those Napoleonic adventurers Allard and Ventura evade a British blockade and go into service with Ranjit Singh. Griboyedov’s successor as Russian Ambassador to Tehran, Simonicz, had actually fought on the Napoleonic side against Russia, presumably in the Polish Legion. Nina’s sister was to marry a Murad nephew of Napoleon. The political elites of Europe melded quickly after the convulsion.
With which clumsy segue I shall note that the battle against the entrenched political elites of the UK appears to be going extremely well without me. I cannot express without a welling up of real emotion how happy I am that all I have been saying about the stultifying neo-liberal consensus and exclusion of dissent, and appalling burgeoning wealth gap between rich and poor, has found such massive traction between Jeremy Corbyn in England and the SNP in Scotland. I may have gone AWOL for a few days, but the cause of social justice appears in extremely safe hands.
You must accept that there is life and thought outside the neo-liberal paper bag.
Governments can pass statutes that sidestep pesky legal action. In the long run pensioners will be best served by a service whose profits are being returned to the public purse – over 50% of welfare spending is on pensions.
Jon
“You’ve been recycling a tired canard about giving the electorate a “free choice” a lot in this thread,..”
_________________
Excuse me?
If you look at this threads and previous ones carefully, I think you’ll find that it has been mainly others (including Craig himself)who have bemoaned the lack of a true left alternative to the Conservatives (“all parties are part of the neo-liberal consensus”, etc…) and who have therefore hailed a Corbyn victory as a way of re-offering the electorate a real right-left choice at the next election.
All I have done is to agree that a Corbynite Labour party would indeed offer voters a clearer choice than they have at present and to suggest that fced with such a choice the Conservatives would win big time.
Hence your question(s), if any, should be addressed to those other commenters.
“In the long run pensioners will be best served by a service whose profits are being returned to the public purse”
_________________
On the assumption that the above is an oblique reference to a renationalised railway service:
could someone tell me if the nationalised British Rail was ever profitable?
My impression is that this was not the case, but as always I stand ready to be corrected.
The usual lack of self-awareness from the poster at 6.57pm.
Someone has changed IP addresses today. A common occurrence of course.
~~~~~
I was thinking about Robert Crawford and hope his recovery is progressing very well.
~~~~~
Headline in the Times tomorrow.
‘New poll has Corbyn on course for huge victory’.
What a lovely thought to take away for the night.
“In the long run pensioners will be best served by a service whose profits are being returned to the public purse – over 50% of welfare spending is on pensions.”
I think if you look at the history of the Post Service you will find that in the long run it didn’t generate much in the way of profits for the public purse – and neither should it – it is part of the infrastructure of an efficient economy, similarly with other forms of collective provision e.g. health. railways and the BBC they are best not run for a profit but to support the economy and public well being as a whole. Running a nationalised service to generate a surplus sounds to me like very neo-liberal thinking to be honest.
As for depriving pensioners for the long run – I think you will find that is one sector of the population that has more difficulty in accepting that argument than others.
“Someone has changed IP addresses today. A common occurrence of course.”
Mary – most people change their IP addresses nowadays every time they turn their broadband connection on and off – the avatars here change when you change the email address.
Habbabkuk, thanks for the reply – you’ve misunderstood, though. Yes, Corbyn would indeed represent a genuine Left choice. We are agreed that he is part of the Left, and also that having a wide range of choice across the political spectrum is a good thing.
However if you read the post I pointed you to, I said that the media is substantially biased to the Right, and offering a wide range of choice is not sufficient if the media are going to endorse one side more than another (or castigate one side more than another). I don’t think it is much of a stretch to assert that despite the popularity of Corbyn’s policies, he will have a harder time getting elected than any of the other Labour candidates. Equally, if Corbyn wins the leadership, the media will be substantially more critical of him than any other party leader.
You’ve asserted many times – here and on other threads – that you believe Corbyn v Cameron is a fair fight between Left and Right, and that the Left will be roundly rejected by the electorate. You’ve repeated this point just now, at 10:26 pm. My point is try to encourage you to see this in the context of the media that reports on them.
The great Luke Kelly with “The Sun is Burning”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsgvRmfDCVs
I came to it via http://stopwar.org.uk/. Rather poignant given the 70th anniversary we have just had (I wrote ‘celebrated’ and then changed my mind.)
RIP Luke
“I think if you look at the history of the Post Service you will find that in the long run it didn’t generate much in the way of profits for the public purse”
The PO was highly profitable for decades, a nice little earner that successive governments exploited to the hilt. What a shame that such a valuable and productive asset has been offloaded for pennies in the pound.
Dear Mary,
Thanks for your kind thoughts.
Everything seems to be going to hell including my computer. One system has gone awawl after they loaded updates. I can’t access the browser and their instructions are not working for me. So, I am using another system to reply to you.
My health is playing up. I have had another Ultra Sound Scan, which was clear, in as much as no new cancer.
The big test comes in October with anothen CAT scan to determine if the white spots aren old, or, growing.
I was researching kidney cancer to-day. I wish I had not!!!.
I could not sleep to-night so I thought I would have a look at what you all were talking about. That was when I saw your kind thoughts. They are much appreciated Mary, thank you very much, your heart is in the right place. How are you?
A pity I can’t say that about your tormentor. What is wrong with that poor soul?.
I think something was left out in the beginning, or, something crazy was added later. I guess there is no cure?
I am going to get professional help with this computer to-morrow. If it is going to cost more than it is worth I will bin it. I can’t abide things or people who don’t do the job required and paid for. I find buying a new one might be unwise at the moment.
I am trying to stay possitive, with difficulty!
I find it difficult to focus on anything long enough to get a result.
Keep up your own good work. I see others appreciate your informative links.
Well done and lots of love.
Robert.
Jeremy Corbyn may be a very good chap but ‘putting the means of production in the hands of the workers’ is a bit steep when the UK doesn’t have any production. He would have to sit in Taiwan, India or China and make sure the unions look after the workers properly there.
In all Muslim countries and all Western countries, governments employ vast numbers of people to police the people. They use Salafis with long beards in Kurdistan to police the Muslims and we the ordinary people are supposed to look up to this army of well-heeled or well-bearded traitors with respect.
Freedom no longer exists. It is not capitalist landowners who have taken it. It is job’s worths on a gravy-train of governemnt obsession with controlling us. Every flashy new car owned by the gravy train class of spies living in their superior little boxes on the nice side of town is an insult to our humanity.
Every hair on the Salafi spy’s beard is a snake from the snakepit of jahannam. Three times in the Qur’an Allah forbids spying, which they deny in their interpretations, we are just checking on your moral behaviour. The thrill of sharing secret intelligence about their fellow Muslims makes them feel incredibly superior.
They will be thrown into the fire of hell, for open disobedience to the clear, written commands of Allah.
As for the UK, Corbyn should address the concerns of modern society if he wants to become leader, not just chew the pre-digested cud of faded slogans from yesteryear.
“Jeremy Corbyn set for landslide first-round victory with 53% according to YouGov poll”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-jeremy-corbyn-set-for-landslide-firstround-victory-with-53-according-to-yougov-poll-10449236.html
Burnham 21%, Cooper 18%, Kendall 8%.
A wee Warrior Robert… Stay Positive man.
And yet Bejeezus… The man is a secret Poet. Even the title for this one From Chunky Features –
No one is illegal –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jHSL3hZj7Y
Jon – Ever wondered why America is so acquiescent to the concept of Eretz Yisrael in which the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian’s is deeply implicated, is central to this.
I myself believe just two words describe this delusion viz ‘Manifest destiny’ first described in the c1845 Democratic Review as akin to America as a nation called to a special destiny by God.
Unsurprisingly Britain in a spark of imperial Machiavellian wisdom had induced a demanding sense of Providential purpose (i.e. converting the natives) transfused into the Puritans of New England which would in fact relieve the moral emotional burden of clearly a racial doctrine of white supremacy that granted no native American or non-white claims to any permanent possession of the lands on the North American continent and justified white American expropriation of Indian lands and imperial ventures farther afield.
To me this has clearly advanced a homegrown believe that America is a fundamentally good nation.. never deliberately doing anything terribly evil. If citizens also deem it a sacrilege to question the belief of American exceptionalism, then their belief has taken on a greater level of conviction and can rightly be called nationalist faith.
That American hope, expectation, conviction, what ever you want to call it, is, I believe the name, the lifeblood or not, of this terrible grand power ‘game’ we witness today.
Brian Fujisan.
Thanks Brian, your stuff like Mary’s is uplifting.
I remember you posting a link to the 7 year old Japanese girl, terrific!. That led me to Rika Usami. When I need a lift I take a look at them and other karate experts. I am a big fan of excellence. People who dedicate themselves to something they like, always impresses me. I believe you too have dedicated yourself to your speciallity. Well done, it shows in the things you write. Balance is the word for it.
Thanks again for your good wishes.
Mary’s good wishes to-night gave me a much needed boost. To-day, and recent days could have been better. In fact to-day was a tester, but hey, I am a surviver. I have a lot of tin cans to kick yet, and a few arses.
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. That research to-day upset me. I wonder if Mary felt that?
Maybe Mary will tell me to-morrow/to-day?
One of the many great things about being retired is, I eat when and what I want, go, or not go, if I want, if I don’t sleep, like now, I don’t get up until I feel rested. And I don’t care when I open my curtains, or what the neighbours think. I do it my way!
Thanks again Brian, good wishes are always beneficial.
Oh, N_, how could you forget Mum & Apple Pie? (4:12 pm).
To all blusterers & fumers, ‘The dogs may bark, but Jeremy’s caravan moves on’. Go, Jeremy, go! WE ARE WITH YOU!
How the ‘snouts in the trough’ are sweating! JC, lowest expense account in Parliament! Oddly enough, I didn’t read that in the DM/Evening Standard; perhaps they forgot! And how the paedos are sweating, with Tom Watson in sight of the Deputy Leadership! When I brought the subject of ISIOS/IS up with Tom at a hustings meeting Sunday, he said he didn’t believe the UK (PTB) supported IS; but that was before he checked the material I later passed to him.
I thought I was beyond optimism, but the Dynamic Duo have rekindled the light at the end of the tunnel…
@N_
“Anyone know what tie this guy Anthony Jordan is wearing?
He and his wife were “house-parents” at Haut de la Garenne and were both handed (short) jail sentences in 2011 for assaulting children.
The tie has stripes of dark and light blue on a cream background.”
Because of the dark and light blue, I was thinking maybe the Oxford and Cambridge Club, but it isn’t. That’s a club where second division foreign or international personages are lunched by Brit, ahem “Whitehall” types cultivating them for possible recruitment. The “Oxford” and “Cambridge” brands can make some of them swoon with delight as they dream of their offspring being accepted into one of those institutions. First divisioners get taken to the Athenaeum or White’s.
Funnily enough, a lot of the money paid to high-level assets is paid through the Channel Islands.
Could one of the MI6 chaps on here help us out? I mean there must be times when you need to know quickly what tie a man’s wearing. Thanks!
“The PO was highly profitable for decades, a nice little earner that successive governments exploited to the hilt. What a shame that such a valuable and productive asset has been offloaded for pennies in the pound.”
Proof please – and please include the cost of paying its workers pensions. And might I suggest a period of silence until you have concluded your research – if not afterwards when we know the facts.
Around 30 degrees C in Tel Aviv this morning and Jewish and Arab Israelis are enjoying the beach in perfect harmony (you wouldn’t have seen that in aopartheid-era South Africa!)
Jon – i’ll reply briefly later on (on a specific point), off to the beach now for some swimming, lounging, flirting with the girls ad, of course, some beach footie if I can rustle up some equally energetic souls.
Nobody claimed Cameron didn’t submit candidates for the House of Lords.
But someone was complaining about someone else submitting candidates for the House of Lords, weren’t they, Fred?
And someone was officially exonerated of undue influence, too:
http://news.stv.tv/politics/282982-inquiry-clears-salmond-of-influencing-souter-knighthood/
Let me know if you’d like me to check back on any other peers, won’t you?
Jeremy Corbyn may be a very good chap but ‘putting the means of production in the hands of the workers’ is a bit steep when the UK doesn’t have any production. He would have to sit in Taiwan, India or China and make sure the unions look after the workers properly there.
Valid point, Giyane, but he’s said he’s not proposing to restore Clause 4 in its original form. Which suggests that he is aware of practical problems like that.
But the choice is between him and the NuLabour, which shares the globalist agenda, and the view that you can subject the people to any indignity as long as money is flowing into the right coffers. Yesterday there was a Guardian piece which argued that what the government really ought to be doing is support the service sector (even more) at the expense of productive manufacturing – which the article amusingly claims to be the current priority, lol. The rationale is that this will lead to increased spending on inessentials and intangibles, which will be good for the Holy Growth. And that would be fine, if growth didn’t equate, in an economy producing nothing of value, to the skimming off of artificially generated surpluses into the pockets of the usual suspects and consequent and constant devaluation of the currency.
Certainly Corbyn will need to address this. It’s fundamental. It’s frightening to think that he’s the only one who might. Certainly a new model is urgently required. But the problem is an old, old one: the few rewarded disproportionately for the efforts of the coerced many.
“But someone was complaining about someone else submitting candidates for the House of Lords, weren’t they, Fred?”
No, someone was pointing out that claims the SNP didn’t do things like that are not true.
with every word these staunch new Labour war criminals utter, the standing of Corbyn in the polls increases.
lets look at this, because its important, they knew this would happen since Bliar’s heart transplant gaffe, and in any other election they would have stopped discharging both barrels into their feet, so why not now?
why do they think, oh forget it they are not thinking anymore, their reactions are gutless and desperate last ditch attempts, it shows that they have nothing more to offer than division and spite to Labour values.
Corbyn, once his election is over, will try and calm these jitters, but I fear the combined rotten gatekeepers to this system, the MSM and the establishment will gang up against him. His own past colleagues, all those in LFoI, will stab him in the back. He will need some serious hitters to get his message across, he might even need a foreign broadcaster to get his message across without having it distorted by the systems mongers.
Thanks also for the report on the Hewett which I already had read, Ba’al, everything about this story stinks, they are after the assets, children and education do not come into it.
Thanks for you link Brian and Dreolin
“The PO was highly profitable for decades, a nice little earner that successive governments exploited to the hilt. What a shame that such a valuable and productive asset has been offloaded for pennies in the pound.”
Proof please – and please include the cost of paying its workers pensions. And might I suggest a period of silence until you have concluded your research – if not afterwards when we know the facts.
I think it is as incumbent on you to disprove an assertion of which you disagree as on the asserter. In a spirit of generous goodwill, though, you can find the details here:
http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/explore/history/statistics/
(scroll down to 14. Reported Post Office/Royal Mail Group net profits/losses, 1981-2010)
It returned to profit in 2014.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2117106/Royal-Mail-pension-nationalisation-Far-providing-windfall-turns-MPs-hypocrites-rest-debtors.html
Why was this done? Because the Post Office took a 13-year contributions holiday. Why? Because that was what everyone was doing, post-Thatcher. A pension was no longer a contractual agreement, but could be robbed for other purposes.
You might have a look at BT’s *exemplary* handling of its pension fund subsequent to privatisation, though.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c42b91ac-ad48-11e4-a5c1-00144feab7de.html
If you speak out and tell the truth you will get attacked.
“Israeli treatment of the Palestinians can be compared to the atrocities of Nazi Germany. “The parallels with what went on in the 1930s in Germany are so crushingly obvious,” he said in an American online interview last week.” Rodger Waters
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/14/pink-floyd-frontman-fury-israel-nazis?CMP=share_btn_fb
Messrs Eric Smidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page rehash the Google brand. Now Alphabet Inc and Google.
Google unveils surprise restructuring under Alphabet
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33857412
Multiplying the financial benefits? Readying for a sell out?
No, someone was pointing out that claims the SNP didn’t do things like that are not true.
Do me a favour, Fred. Read the bloody link. It says:
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie said Mr Salmond should be “wholly exonerated of any breach” of the ministerial code, which bars government ministers from interfering in the honours system…..
Lord Fraser said Mr Sheridan’s complaint was “ill-founded” and based on the assumption that ministers played a role in the Scottish Government’s nominations to the Honours Unit in London.
He said: “Mr Sheridan (the complainant -BZ) is a respected MP and not a careless populist. He was entitled to assume that when it was asserted that a nomination came from the Scottish Government that Scottish Ministers either approved the nomination or at least had some involvement in its submission.
“In fact he was wrong in that assumption. Scottish ministers, most particularly Alex Salmond, had no involvement.”
He concluded: “Given those facts checked out with the Permanent Secretary and the Honours Unit there appears to me to have been no breach of the Ministerial Code by Alex Salmond as First Minister and he should be wholly exonerated of any breach.”
To establish any lingering connection you might feel your assertion may have with something resembling the truth – if inexactly – please provide your evidence that someone in the SNP even nominated Souter. Given that Souter’s awful Stagecoach company runs half the public transport in the UK as a whole and that he would be a prime candidate for an honour from the UK government of the day.
Evidence, please. I’ll take the grumpy one-liner as read.
Brian and Fred I had no idea that the weather has been so bad in Scotland that there is no grass on which to put the cattle out to pasture and there is still snow on Glencoe! That is according to Sky News. Are they exaggerating?
Here there is a drought. The ground is cracked and the grass is brown and dead. Poor yields on the veg plot too as it is uneconomical to water with Thames Water’s exorbitant prices. I do have water butts but they are empty.
“Do me a favour, Fred. Read the bloody link. It says:”
I’d already read it, irrelevant to what i was saying.