The Labour Party is being remarkably coy about releasing the actual result of its Scottish accounting unit leadership election, giving only a percentage. The entirely complacent unionist media is complicit in what amounts to a deception. The stunning truth is that in a one person, one vote election among the entire membership of the Labour Party in Scotland plus trades union supporters, Dugdale won with 5,217 votes (out of a claimed electorate of 21,000, many of whom do not exist or could not be arsed to choose between two right wing numpties).
UPDATE: A second Labour figure just rang me to assure me my information – which was from a good source – is wrong. She would not give the actual figure and only said it was “higher”. I offered to take down the post and publish an accurate figure if she would give it, but this was declined.
“Corbyn’s proposal for dealing with “ISIS”, that we identify the sources of its funding and military supplies then cut them off, is such an obvious strategy that you have to wonder why no-one seems to have thought of it before.”
Will doubtless please the far-left who have convinced themselves that ISIS is run by our friends in the gulf states, Israel or wherever else, but terribly immature from someone with ambitions to be a statesman. He might as well have said he intends to do nothing at all.
Because ISIS’ funding, such as it is, derives from what they can loot from the territories they have taken, taxation, and looting and sale of antiquities. A lot of their military supplies were simply taken from Iraqi and Syrian armed forces, after they were either killed or fled, depots and arms dumps.
So what exactly is Corby proposing to cut off?
“Our Rabbie would approve.”
Hopefully, he would were he still alive. 🙂 When I was in Minsk (1982) students there were studying Burns. I wondered then how they managed with their understanding of poems like ‘To a mouse’ when those of us south of the border sometimes struggle.
Harvey Proctor To Respond To Child Abuse Claims
Harvey Proctor will address the media later to reject suggestions he was involved in a child abuse network.
10:38, UK,
25 August 2015
http://news.sky.com/story/1541324/harvey-proctor-to-respond-to-child-abuse-claims
Anon1 pleads, “What’s the oil price doing, Fred?”
Here you go, Anon1:
http://www.oil-price.net/
And another:
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy
Now you can leave Fred to his saintly duties, and can stop asking damned-fool questions for information you could find perfectly easily yourself.
‘But as a serious thought I don’t think my offence was sufficient to justify 4,000 people marching on the BBC’s headquarters, so that young men and women who are new to journalism have, like they do in Putin’s Russia, to fight their way through crowds of protesters, frightened as to how they do their jobs.’ Nick Robinson August 2015.
מילא \ מִלֵּא (So be it) Slowly a dismembered public body consolidates and shifts to the median of direct/indirect democracy at one with the champion. That is progression – – the school-yard Commons, the huge rewards for fly specks, the cooked-up expenses, the war-mongering, the enmity towards the disabled, the destitute, the student – are all destined to obscurity in my mind and imaginably yours.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/25/labour-leadership-jeremy-corbyn-infiltration-fears-nonsense
actually Russia Today confuses me, as does Putin, over ISIS (and its spores). They speak the same language as the west.
On that, as so much else. Only the names are changed. A plague on both their houses. But there need be no confusion regarding IS. It’s a genuine entity, and it has, in its fundamentalist soul, no affinity with either the West or Russia. It despises the decadence of both as well as of all other versions of Islam. Pace those who would like us to call it something else, it is a de facto state, if not by most definitions an Islamic one. It holds territory and it enforces its own mediaeval laws. While it has most certainly been created, and flourishes, as a result of monumental strategic ineptitude by the West, you’d have to be on hallucinogens to see how that might have been intentional.
Putin’s actually boxing a little cleverer than our own dear Cameron here. While his PR for domestic consumption portrays him as a friend to (‘moderate’) Russian Muslims -for all I know he might be – IS is as much a threat to stability in Russia’s sphere-of-influence as it is in the West’s, and I don’t think he’ll show it much mercy as and when it appears there.
I said that IS held territory. The reason it appears to be making progress – if that is not the wrong word entirely – is that so far there is no prospect of taking back the ground it holds. Which would need soldiers on the ground. Bombing and droning is all very well, but they don’t take or hold ground. Neither of the two principal opponents, Assad (+Hizb’ullah) or the Kurds, are capable of doing any more than hold the line. Iraq is dependent on Shi’a forces, the tendency being for Sunnis to identify with IS, and in any case Iraq’s army islargely incompetent.
Field Marshal Ba’al has long advocated giving Assad a break (we’ve cheerfully dealt with states far worse than prewar Syria), without ruling out Russian help to its old ally, too. This would permit some effective assaulting to happen and the restoration of a coherent Syrian border. Syria, or most of it would return to Assad’s control. We could then consolidate the Kurdish state in N. Iraq, giving extensive assurances to Turkey. IS would then be between several rocks and a hard place, which would be a good primary objective.
I realise this is probably likely to kill people, but would argue that it will kill fewer people than any other approach, including doing nothing.
I think RD meant to link to Scriptonite, Kerry-anne’s blog, where she writes eminently sensible pieces which I read regularly. Her views on how the NHS is being destroyed are a must.
From her latest –
‘This piece comes amid a wider effort by the supposed liberal press in the UK to discredit the social democratic ideas of Jeremy Corbyn, while smearing him and his supporters as lunatics, anti-semites or ‘infiltrators.’ This provides yet more evidence of the need not only for a new politics (the kind embodied by Corbyn), but a new media too.’
http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2015/08/24/to-the-new-statesman-writer-who-called-my-jewish-family-anti-semitic-for-questioning-israel/
RD’s attempt to discredit her by association has failed.
She has a Facebook page too.
https://www.facebook.com/ScriptoniteDaily
Cheers Glenn. Has it gone down again?
What happened to the “_UK” by the way?
Don’t say you’ve gone all Welsh Nats on us.
Just be sure not to peg your independence aspirations to the price of lamb.
“Because ISIS’ funding, such as it is, derives from what they can loot from the territories they have taken, taxation, and looting and sale of antiquities. A lot of their military supplies were simply taken from Iraqi and Syrian armed forces, after they were either killed or fled, depots and arms dumps”
Evidence? Sounds like Mickey Mouse economics to me. If it is true we have nothing to worry about. Its supply network is too precarious and will collapse. There’s a limit to how much ammo you can nick from Syria and Iraq before those sources dry up. Identify and cut off the source of the new weapons and ammo it requires and “ISIS” is history.
The US has switched off its Patriot missile batteries, including those of its NATO cohort Germany, in Turkey wef today. For whatever reasons, but my advice to habba is – stop ogling the boys at muscle beach in Tel Aviv and hurry home to Wolvery now, the beach is no longer safe from Putin or Khamenei if they decide to avenge the false flag ehud brog is about to unleash. The Americans have a way of knowing these things its squeaky bum time,Prophet Amos !
You’re forgetting one thing, MJ:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/18/business/al-khatteeb-isis-oil-iraq/
Not that that affects the perception that Corbyn’s comments are naive. The income sources are well known, but restricting the transit of the goods needs boots on the ground (see above)
I like Corbyn, but he really needs a savvy Shadow Foreign Secretary if he gets in.
German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung argued recently that the real reason behind Germany’s decision on Patriots is Turkey’s different views on Syria from Germany and the US. Another German daily, Frankfurther Rundschau, stressed that the withdrawal of Patriots was actually a “political message” to Turkey to point out these differences over Syria. The paper argued that even from the beginning it was questionable that Turkey was under threat by Syrian missiles, but NATO nevertheless decided to send Patriot missiles in order to prevent Turkey from “further destabilizing the region.”
Germany and the US’s decision points out that the US-led coalition’s priority is the threat of ISIL in Syria and Turkey should be an active part of that fight, rather than obsessing over the removal of the Assad regime from power.
http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_patriot-removals-from-turkey-underscore-differences-over-syria-among-allies_397211.html
The Spanish Patriots remain for now.
“A plaque on both their houses.” 🙂
‘Scuse the slight edit Ba’al. We haven’t even got one on Tolkien’s house here! 🙂
“restricting the transit of the goods needs boots on the ground”
Accurate intelligence and drones should make a sufficient dent in supply networks to see them off. Intelligence will require boots on the ground, in the form of infiltrators who join “ISIS”. There really is no need to be all fingers and thumbs over this matter.
John Goss.
You were forced to study Shakespear.
Do you know the Russians built a Statue to our Rabbie in Red Square? They understood what he was saying, so do the English hierarchy. That is why you do not get to read his works. It might make you unmanageable.
“man’s inhumanity to man”. Get it?
Some beautiful love songs too.
My love is like a red red rose newly sprung in June.
MJ
The Russians supplied Syria with vast quantities of ammunition, as did America to Iraq. Just in terms of captured American Humvees, ISIS is reported to have 2,300.
But in a sample study of spent ammunition recovered from Northern Iraq, 73% was determined to have originated from China. Some of it dated to 1945 and only 10% was manufactured after 2010. ISIS has stocks to last some time yet.
Also if you have been to Pakistan you will perhaps have seen entire towns and villages devoted to copying the designs of and manufacturing modern weaponry. I have personally handled some of the most sophisticated American designs, put together by children. This cottage industry held the US down in Afghanistan.
So I’m afraid Corby is full of shit. He wants to peddle the idea that it’s all the fault of the West and then bury his head in the sand.
Field Marshal Ba’al has long advocated giving Assad a break – Thanks Ba’al for looking after the kings horses…
President Putin is somewhat phased with radical Islam in Chechnya, nonetheless I note Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said just before his meeting with delegation leader Khaled al-Khoah, head of the opposition Syrian Naional Coalition:
‘We are sincerely interested in helping all Syrians unite around the pivotal task of preserving their country to maintain stability in the Syrian Arab Republic, and prevent its transformation into something resembling a seedbed of terrorism and suchlike threats . . .
Everyone has an interest in putting up a barrier to terrorism, everyone has an interest in the speediest political resolution of the crisis in Syria on the basis of the Geneva communique, and most importantly now, to transform this into practical, coordinated actions .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9AaFpAZc5Y
Mark Golding (Admiral of the Fleet) 🙂
John Lol..yes the Edit button.. cheers.
here be a Brilliant piece from Medialens –
But the public was able to compare Robinson’s highly selective editing of Salmond’s press conference with what had actually taken place. The episode sparked huge discussion across social media. It even led to public protests outside the BBC headquarters in Glasgow. Some called for Robinson to resign.The protests involved thousands of pro-independence campaigners, although Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond’s then deputy and now leader of the SNP, distanced her party from the demonstration outside the BBC when she ’emphasised it was not organised by the official Yes Scotland campaign’. The Glasgow protest was but one episode in a bigger picture of considerable public dissent against BBC News; indeed, against corporate news bias generally.
The outcome of the September 2014 referendum, following frantic propaganda campaigns to block Scottish independence by the main political parties, big business and corporate media – akin to what we are seeing today with the establishment targetting Jeremy Corbyn – was 55 per cent ‘No’ and 45 per cent ‘Yes’.
Now Robinson, promoting his latest book ‘Election Diary’, has spoken out about what happened when his reporting was exposed for what it was:
‘Alex Salmond was using me to change the subject. Alex Salmond was using me as a symbol. A symbol of the wicked, metropolitan, Westminster classes sent from England, sent from London, in order to tell the Scots what they ought to do.
‘As it happens I fell for it. I shouldn’t have had the row with him which I did, and I chose a particular phrase [“He didn’t answer, but he did attack the reporting.”] we might explore badly in terms of my reporting and that is genuinely a sense of regret.’
So Robinson’s distorted reporting, caught and exposed in public, led merely to ‘a sense of regret’ which ‘we might explore badly’.
He then launched a bizarre attack on the public:
‘But as a serious thought I don’t think my offence was sufficient to justify 4,000 people marching on the BBC’s headquarters, so that young men and women who are new to journalism have, like they do in Putin’s Russia, to fight their way through crowds of protesters, frightened as to how they do their jobs.’
The hyperbole continued:
‘We should not live with journalists who are intimidated, or bullied, or fearful in any way.’
And yet, in June, Robinson had played down the alleged bullying as ineffectual:
‘In reality I never felt under threat at all’.
Given that the protest was triggered by Robinson’s propaganda, one wonders to what extent the ‘young men and women who are new to journalism’ at the BBC were ‘intimidated, or bullied, or fearful’, or whether this was more tragicomic bias from Robinson. Needless to say, Robinson was silent about how the corporate media routinely acts as an echo chamber for government propaganda, scaremongering the public about foreign ‘enemies’ and security ‘threats’.
A couple of days later, Salmond responded to Robinson. He told the Dundee-based Courier newspaper:
‘The BBC’s coverage of the Scottish referendum was a disgrace.
‘It can be shown to be so, as was Nick’s own reporting of which he should be both embarrassed and ashamed.’
Salmond continued:
‘To compare, as Nick did last week, 4000 Scots peacefully protesting outside BBC Scotland as something akin to Putin’s Russia is as ludicrous as it is insulting.
‘It is also heavily ironic given that the most commonly used comparison with the BBC London treatment of the Scottish referendum story was with Pravda, the propaganda news agency in the old Soviet Union.’
The Guardian then gave ample space to Robinson to respond to Salmond with an ill-posed defence of the BBC’s slanted coverage of the independence debate. This was amplified by a news piece by Jane Martinson, head of media at the Guardian, about the ‘row’ between the two.
‘The BBC’, declaimed Robinson, ‘must resist Alex Salmond’s attempt to control its coverage’. In fact, Salmond had rightly pointed out that the BBC’s broadcasting had been biased and ‘a disgrace’; a view held by many people in Scotland and beyond. Robinson’s pompous response was that, all too often, politicians ‘simply do not understand why the nation’s broadcaster doesn’t see the world exactly as they do.’ Case dismissed.
The BBC political editor then fell back on the old canard that complaints from both sides implied that reporting had been balanced:
‘There were many complaints about our coverage of the Scottish referendum – although interestingly just as many came from the No side as the Yes.’
Deploying this fallacious argument means that the strong evidence of bias against ‘Yes’ need not be examined (see, for example, this book and short film by Professor John Robertson of the University of the West of Scotland). In its place, Robinson paints a heroic picture of himself and the BBC rejecting demands from ‘politicians’ to ‘control’ news reporting. Robinson declared his unshakeable confidence in:
‘the BBC’s high journalistic standards, which are recognised around the world’.
This is precisely the attitude one would expect from someone who is rewarded handsomely for thinking the right thoughts about their employer.
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2015/799-bullying-bbc-political-editor-s-bizarre-term-for-the-public-resisting-the-establishment.html
That’s all terribly simple, MJ. Let’s see how it pans out. My money is on protracted, bloody and with plentiful civilian deaths. Wonder why we havn’t blown up their captured wells yet? Shouldn’t need spooks in beards reporting by carrier pigeon* at all for that.
Cryptic clue:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/13/new-genel-energy-boss-was-fined-by-fsa-for-market-abuse
*As ISIS if it has any sense at all will be monitoring anything vaguely electronic
“I like Corbyn, but he really needs a savvy Shadow Foreign Secretary if he gets in.”
Exactly, but we all know that foreign affairs under Corbyn would consist almost entirely of droning on about Israel. You might as well nominate a Secretary for the Palestinians.
Ahh Sorry Dreoilin
I went over the thread as i normally do to check if anyone has already posted an item, but did not go onto your link.
i like this – ” (The picture at the top is enough to set my teeth on edge)
Same here.. been outside bbC in Glasgow a few times.. Horrific Machinery
“My love is like a red red rose newly sprung in June.”
And of course the unforgettable Auld Lang Syne. Yes, there are similarities in pronunciation which make it a lot easier for native Scots to speak Russian than we Sassenachs. There were some poems appeared in the Gentleman Magazine under the initials RB and a few tried to make out that they were Robert Burns. Robert Bage, English novelist and papermaker, and the subject of my thesis, also wrote poetry in his youth. It was impossible to make a case for either. They seemed to English to be Burns but the poems were quite good I thought, better than most. 🙂
Wasn’t forced to learn Shakespeare but could have done with something a little more often performed than Coriolanus for ‘A’ level.
I think RD meant to link to Scriptonite,
No – I linked to the right place – she was speaking at a Left Unity meeting 2 days before the General Election – with canvassing on behalf of the Labour Party’s opponents being encouraged beforehand.
“too English”
You might as well nominate a Secretary for the Palestinians.
Which would (a) offer slightly more understanding of the ME in general than we are seeing at the moment and (b) give the Pals some much-needed international representation. It’s a thought.
Still and all, nice to see Hammond agrees with me at the moment.
https://www.rt.com/uk/313216-uk-russia-iran-syria/
“Exactly, but we all know that foreign affairs under Corbyn would consist almost entirely of droning on about Israel.”
No we don’t. And no he won’t, Anon1.
“Wonder why we havn’t blown up their captured wells yet? Shouldn’t need spooks in beards reporting by carrier pigeon* at all for that”
Agreed. Wonder too why “ISIS” hasn’t headed south and helped itself to the major oilfields owned by western multinationals.
“ISIS has stocks to last some time yet”
Righto, thanks for that. Should you ever wish to reveal your sources for this info don’t let me hold you back.
If true I guess one plan might be to identify where its ammo dumps are and destroy them. I thought our armed forces were trained to do this sort of thing. Perhaps you just can’t get the staff these days.
I find it rather disturbing that no-one on this site sees that Islamic State is a USUKIS creation.
Are we only able to digest anti-Zionist information and somehow too precious to process anti-Political Islam information?
Surely there cannot be two evils simultaneously working together in the world at one and the same time, political zionism and political Islam.
Is it too complicated for the British that two political entities might combine against normal human beings, viz nasty Western capitalism AND nasty political Islam..
Sorry my english fuse has blown again. 2 what happening at the same time?
And for one of the biggest criminals of them all there are less than 18,000 votes to go.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/105446
If this works we can start one for Blair.