The dreadfully stultified pageantry of the British state has been on full display the last couple of days, all mouldy ermine, fraying gold braid and musty velvet. But forms which evolved as a vibrant display of Imperial might have transmuted into rituals of obeisance, as the nonogenerian Prince Philip stumbles behind the Chinese President along lines of men wearing decaying bears on their heads. The sickness of Britain’s monarchical system was never more bluntly revealed than by the rictus grins of the aristocratic clowns balancing their tiaras at the state banquet.
The Chinese are the imperial masters now. Cameron begs them to build a nuclear power station for which the British state guarantees it will pay double the market price for electricity produced, for twenty years. And a government which has just announced the extension of thought crime to the expression of non-violent or anti-violent thought deemed “extreme”, has no locus to talk about human rights, a concept at least as alien to Teresa May as it is to the Chinese Communist Party. Britain has its own war criminals like Blair and Straw running around, immune and very wealthy.
The British state is an immoral entity which I view with disgust. That is what drives for me the imperative to early Scottish Independence to be rid of it. Every day as a British citizen is like bathing in sewage.
RoS Our friend has a strange taste in literature, or else his version of Spellcheck is as dodgy as him.
‘The Rewarde of Wickednesse – Page 139 – Google Books Result
https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=094762385X
Richard Robinson, Allyna E. Ward – 2009 – Literary Criticism
At this filthye acte the Gods were offended, And sente mee to Pluto, his Judgement to trye: Out of all the Heavens I was then suspended, And heare am adlotted …………
!!
But the word does exist in a Belarussian-English dictionary.
adlot [m.] – take off, start (of airplane)
http://www.belarusguide.com/dictionaries/engblr/be_dict.html
Habbabkuk
‘If you seriously believe that human rights are better protected in modern China than in modern Britain then there is little hope for you.’
_________________
Of course I don’t which is why I never made such a claim. You invented it, presumably because you couldn’t rebut the point I did make so you made one up that was less taxing for you. My point was that it was grotesquely hypocritical for leaders of the West, such as Cameron, to berate the Chinese for their human rights record when in recent years we had unleashed a war in Iraq that killed many hundreds of thousands whereas the Chinese execute a handful of thousands each year.
Mary
“High levels of troll activity on here today.”
__________________
It’s true you’ve been posting quite a bit today.
How are you doing percentage-wise over the whole thread so far?
KOWN
You have a peculiar idea of what constitutes human rights if you limit yourself to talking about the existence of the death penalty in China.
BTW, your exclusive concentration on the number of death sentences carried out in China every year is one of the reasons I wrote the sentence you object to so much.
*******************
Habbabkuk’s tip for KOWN : do not write fiction about facts and keep fantasy for your fiction.
Mary
Cheers fro the Links..sickening what that monster gets away with…And not forgetting the support he gets –
” Ban is an imperial stooge, a mouthpiece for wealth and power, installed by Washington, serving its interests, supporting its wars of aggression, mindless of how many millions die and suffer grievously.
He thanked Netanyahu “for the warm welcome,” instead of demanding his arrest for high crimes against peace. His vacuous and insulting remarks including saying:
These are difficult times for Israelis and Palestinians. I…hope that we can work together to end the violence…
I want to offer, first of all, my sympathy for the loss and injury of innocent (Israeli, not Palestinian) victims. Allow me to express my condolences to you and the people of Israel for the killing of your citizens.
…I plan to meet with some of the families of the victims… I understand the fear and the anger felt by many Israelis in the current environment, as well as the duty that weighs on you, Mr. Prime Minister, to ensure that your citizens can enjoy safety and security.
The rest of his comments were all one-sided – ignoring Netanyahu’s well-planned, premeditated state-sponsored terrorism, outrageously praising Israel as “a democratic state,” a shocking disregard for reality, ignoring nearly 70 years of ruthlessly persecuting and brutalizing an entire population, then deplorably arguing against the right to resist, Guaranteed Under International Law.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ban-ki-moons-visit-to-israel-un-secretary-general-supports-netanyahu-war-crimes/5483594
Yes The Orionid’s are on, they are made up of remnants of Halley’s Comet, Imagine this was our night sky –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r3C7AbCTAs
Dunc
Thank you for your response. I shall try to navigate my way around the link you offered because I’m interested in annual total generation figures.
I must confess that the 25,3% share for renewables surprised me and would not rule out some sort of sleight of hand there in the govt’s presentation (bearing in mind its EU obligations and overall commitments wrt greenhouse gases emissions.
That notwithstanding, am I correct in thinking that electricity suppliers are not free to buy their electricity from whatspever source they choose but are obliged by the govt. to buy a certain (and perhaps increasing) amount from the renewable generators (with the higher cost of renewable energy simply being passed onto the final consumer)?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Finally, and to go back to where this mini-discussion started – I wonder whether you would agree that the chappie who suggested putting solar panels onto the roof of every house in the UK as a way of solving future energy needs was barking up the wrong tree? Not to say barking.
Habbabkuk
I simply used executions as a convenient yardstick since killing someone strikes me as a pretty severe example of violating their human rights, and Britain and the US have killed vastly more innocent people in the past few years than China. I note you avoid challenging that particular point, because how could you?
However there are plenty of other areas in which the West equals or outstrips China in this respect. Here are a few:
Tibet V Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan etc.
Judicial execution V Summary execution through drone strikes
Torture V Extraordinary rendition
Imprisonment without trial V Guantanamo
Forced evictions V Chagos Islanders
Repression V Illegal mass surveillance
I could go on but there is no point. It is plain that you are cognitively incapable of assimilating evidence that contradicts the myth you have been fed all your life about what a wonderful country this is. It is as if evidence of Western crimes are square bricks and your mind only has round holes.
Characteristic histrionic ignorance by Habbakkukk today, over his head as usual, this time while trying to talk human rights. He uses the standard formula of brainwashed lumpen, “So-and-so country’s human rights record, ha!” then flouncing off in subjective triumph. So let’s help Habbakuk be a little bit less of an ignoramus when in the future he is posturing for attention and poignant pseudonymous recognition.
In terms of core human rights, China has submitted to international review by treaty body experts with the following instruments:
Ratified:
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
Convention against Torture (CAT)
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
Signed:
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
Broadly comparable to the UK, but the UK is ahead by this criterion until China ratifies the ICCPR. China has issued no standing invitations to special procedures, putting it in the cellar with the USA. But to make an informed comparison of compliance our obsessive little noodge would need to do some actual work and compare the documented performance of UK and China as detailed by civil society and treaty bodies for HRC review ( http://www.upr-info.org/database/ ), and by the individual treaty bodies’ expert panels ( http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf )
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/countries/AsiaRegion/Pages/CNIndex.aspx
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/countries/ENACARegion/Pages/GBIndex.aspx
Habbakukk will of course not do this, as he’s too lazy and intellectually mediocre, getting by on a sort of Baron Corvo Edwardian gentleman act with fey little witticisms for vapid oneupmanship.
Fuji-san
“The rest of his comments were all one-sided – ignoring Netanyahu’s well-planned, premeditated state-sponsored terrorism, outrageously praising Israel as “a democratic state…etc, etc, etc…”
_______________________
There is nothing one-sided about calling the State of Israel a democratic state – for the simple reason that it is a democratic state.
I would even venture to say that it is the only democratic state in the region.
That is one of the reasons why there seems to be no great eagerness on the part of Arab Israelis* to leave and seek greater happiness elsewhere in the region.
______________________
* Palestinian Israelis as some of you prefer, I believe.
Black is White, Down is Up, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.
The trolls go into paroxysms whenever ‘Fukushima’ is mentioned, so this one’s for Habba…
Dana Durnford: “The Pacific Is In Terminal Decline. The Fukushima Legacy Is Terrifying!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNboPs7k_Nk
The reality, of course, is that Israel’s Palestinian citizens do not enjoy equal rights to the same degree or extent as Israel’s Jewish population.
In a background document entitled, “History of the Palestinians in Israel”, published by Adalah: The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the authors state:
Israel never sought to assimilate or integrate the Palestinian population, treating them as second-class citizens and excluding them from public life and the public sphere.
The state practiced systematic and institutionalised discrimination in all areas, such as land dispossession and allocation, education, language, economics, culture, and political participation.
Successive Israeli governments maintained tight control over the community, attempting to suppress Palestinian/Arab identity and to divide the community within itself.
To that end, Palestinians are not defined by the state as a national minority despite UN Resolution 181 calling for such; rather they are referred to as “Israeli Arabs,” “non-Jews,” or by religious affiliation.
All of this without even considering the blatantly undemocractic nature of Israel’s military occupation of the over 3 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and West Bank (including Jerusalem).
Part two of the fallacy of democracy in Israel to follow.
Now now, RobG – you know There Is No Alternative to having nuclear power-stations, and dirty old coal-fired plants. Just ask Saint Fred who – when not telling people to FOAD for no particular reason – demonstrates that he’s a credulous statist, an Establishment stooge, indulging in endless contrarianism when it comes to anything but the status quo. On this thread, his pro-Establishment TINA line comes in the form of dismissing alternative energy in its entirety.
Israel and the democratic fallacy, part two.
For decades now the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), a non-partisan Israeli research institute founded in 1991 and based in Jerusalem, has been studying the quality of Israeli democracy and how well it functions.
The result is “The Democracy Index”, a long-term, comparative study of some thirty-one indicators measuring Israeli democracy against that of thirty-five other democracies.
The index includes a public opinion survey component reflecting how Israelis view their democracy.
The Index’s findings are described as “alarming,” the IDI asserts that Israel’s political system “has not yet acquired the characteristics of a substantive democracy”.
The Index notes that Israel does not rate high on political participation, “as opposed to what has commonly been thought: there has been a downward trend since 1996, and the country now ranks 22nd [of 31].
For nearly every indicator in the “Rights” measurement, the Index placed Israel in the lower half of the list:
“Israel’s ranking in this aspect is worrisome. For nearly every indicator, Israel places in the lower half of the list.
Protection of human rights in Israel is poor; there is serious political and economic discrimination against the Arab minority; there is much less freedom of religion than in other democracies; and the socioeconomic inequality
indicator is among the highest in the sample.”
On the “Stability and Social Cohesion” indicator:
“Here Israel ranks at the bottom of the list in all indicators, and only India ranks lower in social tensions and rifts between the various segments of society.
Well, that settles it, Q.E.double-D.!!
Unsupported assertions will do for second-rate intellects, but properly educated individuals will want more
http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CCPR/C/ISR/CO/4&Lang=En
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/countries/MENARegion/Pages/ILIndex.aspx
RoS: Waste of time. Every honest observer knows that Israel is an apartheid state, which distinguishes itself as being the only country I’m aware of that demands security assurances from the people it occupies and oppresses.
It’s also the only country that tries to pretend it’s a plucky little victim, as it bombs, invades and bullies every other country in the region (when not screaming “Anti-Semite!” at critics of its foreign policy worldwide), and stockpiles genuine WMD while screeching about the supposed ambitions of other countries that it threatens.
Did any other country demand the recognition of themselves, their “right to exist”, and hold the people who’s land it has stolen responsible for its (Israel’s) security? Not even the Americans went that far.
KOWN
I agree that there is little point going on because I think we are pursuing rather different arguments. The reason for that seems to be that we interpret the notion of the universality of human rights differently. What I would understand by the notion that certain defined human rights are universal is that all countries should guarantee those human rights in the way they organise life within their sovereign territory. According to that interpretation there can be no doubt that Britain guarantees human rights much better than China and it is otiose to make comparisons (to the detriment of the UK) between the death sentences carried out within China and the consequences in and for certain foreign countries of certain aspects of British foreign policies.
I wonder if we could agree that human rights are infinitely better protected within the UK than within China?
“Now now, RobG – you know There Is No Alternative to having nuclear power-stations, and dirty old coal-fired plants. Just ask Saint Fred who – when not telling people to FOAD for no particular reason – demonstrates that he’s a credulous statist, an Establishment stooge, indulging in endless contrarianism when it comes to anything but the status quo. On this thread, his pro-Establishment TINA line comes in the form of dismissing alternative energy in its entirety.”
Fuck off and die Jackboot Glenn.
RobG
“The trolls go into paroxysms whenever ‘Fukushima’ is mentioned, so this one’s for Habba…”
______________
Why for me? I don’t think I’ve ever commented on Fukishima here.
Have you started early this evening, you old jokester?
Glenn, I find myself agreeing with your comments at 7.26pm and 7.35pm.
No doubt I’ll get FOAD-ed.
O/T
I like this.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/cameron-waiting-until-weekend-to-condemn-putin-20151022103184
Kind regards,
John
North sea oil cost the British tax payer £39 million in the first 6 months of this year.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s public services spokeswoman, said it was “remarkable” that the sector had effectively cost taxpayers money for the first time, adding that it raised challenging questions for the SNP’s promises during the independence referendum.
“The dramatic collapse in the oil price, and the devastating impact this would have had on our ability to pay for schools and hospitals, shows we made the right decision to keep Scotland in the UK and reject the SNP’s fantasy economics,”
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/21/north-sea-tax-revenues-plummet-negative-first-time-history?CMP=share_btn_tw
Habbabkuk
‘I wonder if we could agree that human rights are infinitely better protected within the UK than within China?’
Yes, we could.
Haa
Cheers for that J.S.D.
The mind Knumbing Hypocrisy of the evel wee cretin.. after his Crimes in Libya, and now the same Tactics in Syria..yesee when Bliar is mentioned as a war criminal, Cameron is too. But we never hear much about that.
A war of aggression is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense. Waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law. The governments of the United States, France, Britain and Canada waged and continues to wage such a war of aggression against Libya. As Libya did not attack the United States, France, Britain or Canada the U.S. lead unprovoked armed attacks against Libya are declared war crimes and crimes against humanity. The leaders of the attacking countries, including United States President Barack Hussein Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, are therefore declared war criminals under International Law. A state which carries out or permits slavery, torture, genocide, war of aggression, or crimes against humanity is always violating customary international law. The leader of any state who carries out or permits slavery, torture, genocide, war of aggression, or crimes against humanity is guilty of an indictable offense.
http://presscore.ca/obama-sarkozy-cameron-and-harper-declared-war-criminals
UK sentences 26 bankers to a combined 74 years in prison
Oh sorry. Got that wrong. Silly me.
s/be
Iceland sentences 26 bankers to a combined 74 years in prison
James Woods | October 21, 2015
http://usuncut.com/world/iceland-sentences-26-bankers-to-a-combined-74-years-in-prison/
Republicofscotland
You appear to have convinced Glenn but I’m afraid I must remain skeptical about your various claims.
BTW, I notice you approvingly pull in (General Assembly) Resolution N° 181 of 1947, the grand daddy of all UN Resolutions on Israel Palestine, so to speak. Essentially, it recommended the creation of two states in Mandate territory west of the Jordan, to be called “Israel” and “Palestine”.
Guess which UN member states* voted against that Resolution? 🙂
__________________
*Clue: some of which launched their armies against the newly created State of Israel a year later (pay attention Glenn).
Fuji-san
There’s a lot of “..are declared..” in your latest post.
May I ask who’s doing the declaring – is it the website you linked to? 🙂
****************
Habbabkuk’s question for today : does linking to a prattish website make the linker a prat?
Mary
You appear to be flagging somewhat today. Are you alright?
Republicofscotland (neither Scottish nor in Scotland):
“To that end, Palestinians are not defined by the state as a national minority despite UN Resolution 181 calling for such”
_______________
I think you must have cribbed that from some silly website.
General Assembly Resolution N° 181 does not call for what you say. In fact, not even the expression “national minority” appears.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/camerons-hypocrisy-who-shall-we-bomb-next/5358078
So… Look what turned up on one of MY Hebridean Beaches.. careless bastards… I hereby Declare Scotland an Independent Nation… SO There.
See thats what happens when Angry…the link for Outer Hebrides Drone.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-34609354