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.
QT on now
Farage Yuk
Alan Johnson NuLiebour has been.
Germaine Greer Speaks out
Nadhim Zahawi Con MP. Claimed for heating his stables. Founded You Gov.
Michelle Dewberry Apprentice winner. Reviews papers on Sky News.
Mr Warren
“Well, you certainly took the easy option;”
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Oh, I wouldn’t say that – I think I answered your two questions adequately enough. If you want to read the texts concerned, you’ll find them on the internet; just google “ECHR” and “UN Human Rights”.
As to their adequacy and coverage (and associated questions) it’s up to you to make up your own mind. Feel free to let us know the conclusions you might arrive at.
Mary, polemic doesn’t work. The place for it is in punning tabloid headlines and on march chants. If you are going to say silly things like “simply put Israel is NOT a state” then discussion becomes pointless, which would be regrettable .
Who’s “us”? Royal “we”?
Mary
“Simply put, Israel is NOT a state. It has NO boundaries and knows NO laws.”
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I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.
Or not 🙂
LBJ offered Israel an alliance. The reason Israel wouldn’t agree to one is that it would have required defining its boundaries.
No, the readers of this blog.
At Tianananmen Square nothing actually happened, no-one died. It was all a figment of western corporate-media’s rather vivid imagination, a media stunt.
A small correction, in a street just off the Square a Chinese soldier was killed, shot dead by an armed gang with links to western intelligence, attempting to carry out a wage snatch as a cash delivery was made to a barracks there.
I would not describe your response as “adequate”; although I am glad you do not claim to have aimed higher than ‘adequacy’; for I think that perfectly describes the apparent limited ambition of your endeavours, if not quite achieved in execution. It is not illuminating. What is the point? That question is merely rhetorical, I hasten to add.
Nevertheless, I have to acknowledge that you have responded to my questions graciously, and I must thank you for that.
Tony M
It really is the most complex issue i have come across..Certain Science’saside..
People did die.. it’s all about the numbers. and means. I’ve spent a long time on this… fkn mission..
http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-really-happened-in-tiananmen-square-25-years-ago/5385528
http://www.globalresearch.ca/from-the-tiananmen-massacre-to-the-lhasa-protests/8635
http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa/journal51/china1.pdf
On the great bogeyman himself. My view is that Hitler had a problem with Jewish people (and very many others too, he was an equal-opportunities hater) in general, inside Germany, inside the occupied countries AND everywhere else too, not just additionally but particularly. If he simply expelled them, to Palestine, Madagascar wherever he found them he would still have the problem of those outside the ‘Reich’ and every where else he rightly or wrongly believed they conspired against him/Germany. Simply expelling them wouldn’t deal with the issues of banking, reparations, war guilt, the reduction of the middle and working classes to penury during the Weimar Republic, and all the other gripes. Indeed he would have been creating an additional, possibly in time powerful and aggrieved ‘enemy’ stronghold, to add to London, New York, Moscow and everywhere and every other thing he railed against. For this reason I doubt plans for expulsion, emigration, Madagascar etc. were ever at all considered seriously. Labour too was scarce during the war and would be after ‘victory’, there was all that lebensraum to be developed using slave labour. Worked to death was always the plan and that was certainly what happened. The old, the sick, those who could not work perishing soonest from starvation and disease. For their respective ethno-centric states, the Zionists wanted them for Palestine, even less than Hitler wanted them in his mirror-image of Zionism, Nazi state.
Thanks, Brian, I knew we’d been sold a pile-of-shite over Tiananmen Square. RoS re-gurgitated the myth and I thought the considerable doubt over it worth airing.
Thinking of trolls brings to mind public relations and the subtle control of attitudes and opinions. Edward Bernays said:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power. We are governed, our minds moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.”
The public relations industry developed in the freest countries in the world, in England, because it is getting harder to control people by force; they have too many rights.
We are stroked, fingered and used by images and words in our own living rooms, everybody knows it but nobody sees it. If we are resolute, bulletproof and meaning business the control mode changes from passive to active.
Exceptionally, high frequency noise induced into the house wiring will certainly jam everything and raise anxiety; the tame end of a nasty spectrum.
We seem mystified and rattled at this shadowy subtle control, from a powerful elite. Thankfully in the foreground of this jurisdiction are a few mephitic, grody deviants such as YouGov founder and former aide to Jeffrey Archer, millionaire Nadhim Zahawi, the MP twat who claimed £5,822 expenses for electricity for his horse riding school stables and a yard manager’s mobile home.
YouGov is really a public relations, subjective, psyops proctor and manufacturer of lies. Zahawi is the man who buys oil from ISIL and sells to Israel. This man is the stanchion of ISIS in Iraq, wielding power in Kurdistan with Israeli deception and reckoning.
https://uprootedpalestinians.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/uk-mp-nadhim-zahawi-accused-of-isil-oil-trade/
[ Mod: Caught in spam-filter, timestamp updated ]
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9:33 in which our pet intellectual tries to recover from his humiliating sovereign territory faceplant, only to parade his ignorance of erga omnes obligations. (Perhaps our nutty professor could reconcile his little disquisition with the HRC’s comments and recommendations regarding the crucial criterion of control.)
9:50 in which the passive-aggressive shtik breaks down, leading to the secondary reflex, facile questions.
9:52 in which the obsessive-compulsive traits bust out and he has to come back and buff up his rhetorical turds a bit.
I hope this article from the Telegraph is genuine, but I’ll reserve judgement. The Establishment has been doing a thorough job of blaming and discrediting victims and whistle-blowers these past couple of weeks. Is this dossier genuine or just the latest part of a co-ordinated campaign to kill off the pedos-in-high-places story.
Mark.. Can i ask.. Do you Know what an underwater mine Being expoloded looks like …
Is it a Straight up ..one gush… i Know distance on water Ect…just wondering of your opinion..
There seems to be some misguided view that we have had a fundamental change in foreign policy in the way in which we relate to China. Misguided because we have always sought to be a middleman with trade and healthy back channel.
Thanks Brian for the link to that Stanford article at 11.42.
“What I offered was what I believe is meant when it is said that certain human rights are (or should be)universal – ie, that every state should ensure that those rights are available to its citizens (most of whom are by definition withing its borders). That concept is intimately linked, of course, to the concept of national sovereignty, the idea being that for example the UK is responsible for whether it provides those human rights for its own citizens but cannot be held responsible for the fact that another sovereign state does not provide them for its citizens.”
Well, this is interesting. Human rights are universal but this is “intimately linked …. …. to the concept of national sovereignty”. So not strictly “universal”. This apparent anomaly is solved because the UK (only for example) “cannot be held responsible for the fact that another sovereign state does not provide them for its citizens.” This is unexceptionable, but the solution doesn’t address a state’s precise responsibility for human rights in another sovereign state when it is acting or intervening abroad and its activities affect universal human rights in that other state. I think this statement requires clarfication.
I would thank the commenters who prompted it, for I missed it.
J.s W
Don’t Leave us…just yet
Tony M
23 Oct, 2015 – 12:02 am
“Thanks, Brian, I knew we’d been sold a pile-of-shite over Tiananmen Square.”
And Tony M knows all about selling piles of shite.
There is a US lawsuit against Ehud Barak for his part in the Mavi Marmara killings.
US civil action filed against former Israeli PM over Gaza flotilla death
This marks the first time in which an Israeli and former prime minister has been sued in the US
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/civil-action-filed-us-against-former-israeli-pm-barak-over-gaza-flotilla-1843731484
‘Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak is being sued in a US federal court for his involvement in the Israeli army’s raid on the Gaza flotilla in 2010, a team of lawyers announced on Wednesday.
The lawsuit is being brought by the family of Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old American citizen, who was on board the flotilla filming when he was shot five times, including once at point blank range in the head, the lawyers said.The complaint accuses Barak of “international terrorism”.’
Greta Berlin of Free Gaza writes:
‘You miss the point of this suit if you just think we were on a mission to deliver humanitarian supplies. Free Gaza, the original organizer of these flotillas and the only initiative to actually get into Gaza five times has clearly stated that sailing into Gaza is a political statement to break Israel’s draconian siege on 1.8 million people trapped in the concentration camp called Gaza. Our mission is clearly stated here.
http://www.freegaza.org/about-us/our-mission.html
However, our partner, IHH, is a charity, and they sailed with us to deliver humanitarian supplies as their mission states.
However, we always brought in what we could on our small ships, supplies that Israel would not allow to be delivered to hospitals. And for this flotilla, we did have a small cargo ship called the Rachel Corrie, which had been sabotaged before the sailing. It, too, was brutally stopped a week later.
Finally, this action by the attorneys for Furkan Dogan have clearly put Israeli war lords on notice that they cannot travel freely any longer. Even if nothing happens in the US court, these military and governmental thugs will need to watch their backs from now on, for fear of being served, arrested and tried.
—
Greta Berlin, Co-Founder, the Free Gaza movement
Editor, Freedom Sailors
22 October 2015
PS The Hasbara Zionists were directed to the comments on the MEE article.
Fwl ‘Israel is not a state. It has no boundaries and knows no laws.’
Not polemic. Purely a statement of facts.
RIP Dr Hashem al-Azzeh and all the other Palestinians who have been killed in recent months. Over 600 have been taken into ‘detention’,
After years of peaceful protest, Hebron doctor dies in tear gas
Hashem died from excessive tear gas inhalation when he was stopped at a checkpoint in Hebron’s Old City.
Oct. 22, 2015
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Dr. Hashem al-Azzeh, who died on Wednesday after suffering excessive tear gas inhalation in Hebron’s Old City, was the latest victim of the Israeli settlement policies he spent most of his life struggling against.
The 54-year-old activist and medical doctor was one of a few Palestinians who chose to remain with his family in Tel Rumeida, a neighborhood in central Hebron that over the course of decades has seen most of its Palestinian residents pushed out by aggressive Israeli settlers.
On Wednesday, after experiencing chest pains in his home, he found himself trapped.
His family called an ambulance, but it was unable to reach him due to a series of Israeli army checkpoints along the nearby Shuhada Street, his niece Sundus al-Azzeh told Ma’an.
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https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768426
Imagine how he died. Unable to breathe. Eyes and nose streaming. Pain too. Poor man.
Mr Warren
“Well, this is interesting. Human rights are universal but this is “intimately linked …. …. to the concept of national sovereignty”. So not strictly “universal”.”
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I don’t know whether it’s particularly interesting but it’s certainly clear enough: universal in the sense that every country is expected/encouraged/bound to guarantee those human rights within its own territory (this is where the notion of sovereignty applies and that is why there is such argument about and criticism of so-called “humanitarian interventions”).
Mary
“Fwl ‘Israel is not a state. It has no boundaries and knows no laws.’
Not polemic. Purely a statement of facts.”
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Have you told all the other states and international organisations that recognise the State of Israel as a state?
Fred: That’s your tink Caithness scrappies for you. However, I don’t think it will be too long until there is a general awakening to the desirability of recycling the rather scarce materials involved – even without extracting their components:
http://www.electrochemsci.org/papers/vol8/80608201.pdf
You are being obtuse and you offer the clarity of mud. “universal in the sense” that it isn’t universal; no, that isn’t very interesting. The problem is you appear to think like an apparatchik; you do not explain problems, you attempt (not very adroitly) to explain them away.
In the real world rights depend on reciprocal duties; you require to account for “duties” and their limits, not indulge glib rationalisations: “that is why there is such argument about and criticism of so-called ‘humanitarian interventions'” is not an explanation, it is just a very clumsy evasion. Nobody suggested this was easy, except of course – yourself.
Surely you can do better than that? Every problem solved in one short paragraph of inadequate waffle?
But I have learned something; I am clearly wasting my time on a source of ‘information’ or understanding that is, it seems, not worth the effort it is required to expend. The commenters on this site may also take a leaf out of your playbook, and I commend it: “it’s up to you to make up your own mind”. I have.
Google the name ‘Yusi Oulen Shahak’ and many links come up to this story.
‘Guess Who is Behind the Islamic State: Israeli IDF Colonel Leading ISIS Terrorists Arrested in Iraq
Fars News Agency 22 October 2015
“The security and popular forces have held captive an Israeli colonel,” a commander of Iraq’s popular mobilization forces said on Thursday.
“The Zionist officer is ranked colonel and had participated in the Takfiri ISIL group’s terrorist operations,” he added.
Noting that he was arrested along with a number of ISIL terrorists, the commander said, “The Israeli colonel’s name is Yusi Oulen Shahak and is ranked colonel in Golani Brigade of the Zionist regime’s army with the security and military code of Re34356578765az231434.”
He said that the relevant bodies are now interrogating the Israeli colonel to understand the reasons behind his fighting alongside the ISIL forces and the presence of other Zionist officers among ISIL terrorists.
The Iraqi security forces said the captured colonel has already made shocking confessions.’
/..
http://www.globalresearch.ca/guess-who-is-behind-the-islamic-state-israeli-idf-colonel-leading-isis-terrorists-arrested-in-iraq/5483679
Quelle surprise!