Down From the Mountain 426


I had been spending the last few days living here in Avatime district while visiting Ghanaian friends nearby. Away from internet, TV and any other distraction, it has given me a chance to ponder what next to do with my life.

This has been a real problem. Have submitted Sikunder Burnes to the publishers, and while there is still editing and proofs, a huge amount of time is now free. My determination to dedicate myself to working for Scottish independence led to my comprehensive rejection by the SNP. This left me confused as to what I might usefully do with my life. I suppose the question I have been pondering is, what good am I?

I have come up with a potential answer, and will out it later this week.

Climate change deniers should come to Ghana. Not only have changing rainfall patterns devastated the hydro-electric system, life has become extremely hard for farmers. The last decade has seen the highly predictable wet and dry seasons become wildly unpredictable. It has been unseasonally raining heavily on me all over Ghana. The situation is extremely difficult for farmers. Mango farmers are now praying for relief from the rain for the next six weeks or the mangoes won’t flower. The continuing rains may already have adversely affected next year’s harvest. Meeting cocoa farmers today. Am now in Kumasi.


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426 thoughts on “Down From the Mountain

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  • Macky

    Fedup; “This latest is akin to an alcoholic using any excuse as a celebration with a drink”

    These people are beyond shameless; wasn’t he previously complaining that the Russians were NOT bombing ISIS, yet ISIS repays by killing Russians !

    Any excuse to let loose the dogs of war for the MIC, every bomb dropped is a profit for the merchants of death.

  • BrianFujisan

    Well Said Macky

    US claims otherwise are a complete fabrication. All anti-Assad forces are US-trained, armed, funded, and directed terrorists, taught the fine art of killing, committing atrocities and using chemical weapons – including ISIS, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and various splinter groups.

    The so-called Free Syrian Army and other alleged “moderates” exist only in US and go-along media propaganda reports, willful misinformation to deceive an uninformed public.

    Wars depend on lies to gain popular support, or at least no significant opposition. Often they collapse under the own weight.

    Putin’s righteous Syrian mission shows the emperor has no clothes. If enough Americans pay attention and express outrage, Washington’s imperial Middle East agenda may falter, perhaps collapse. It’s already wobbly.

    ISIS et al represent proxy US foot soldiers, imported abroad from scores of countries. They’re all legitimate Russian targets, all being battered by formidable air power to Washington’s consternation, wrecking its regional agenda – for the first time, a real challenge to its hegemonic aims.

    Putin is effectively contesting Obama’s dirty game. Washington has no effective counter-strategy, increasingly transparent propaganda and dubious military moves alone, along with continued Russia bashing and fear-mongering.

    In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, two State Department officials repeated tired old Big Lies.

    Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Anne Patterson and her European and Eurasian Affairs counterpart Victoria Nuland committed perjury – claiming Russian air strikes hit 85 to 90% “moderate” rebels and civilians in areas with no ISIS presence.

    http://sjlendman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/no-moderate-syrian-rebels-exist.html

  • lysias

    Andreas von Bülow speculated in his 2003 book on 9/11 Die CIA und der 11. September. Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste [The CIA and 9/11: International Terror and the Role of the Security Services] that the 9/11 planes had been hacked and remotely guided. I have no idea if that is what happened, but the author, a former German cabinet minister (Minister for Research and Technology 1980-82, secretary of state in the German Federal Ministry of Defence 1976-80, member of Bundestag parliamentary committee on intelligence services in late 1980s and early 1990s, would certainly seem qualified to opine, and I think at least established that that was possible.

  • Mary

    Burt, said minister for social care, referred to above for filibustering, would have been better employed attending to this crisis.

    Much of the state run care sector operated by local and county authorities has already been shut down. Now a large private provider of care is getting out.

    ‘Care home sector in ‘meltdown’ with UK’s largest provider threatened by US vulture fund
    Exclusive: Four Seasons Health Care is preparing to sell scores of properties and slash its budget by millions
    1 hour ago

    The UK’s largest provider of care homes is preparing to sell scores of properties and slash its budget by millions to fend off an attack from a US vulture fund hoping to cash in on the UK elderly-care crisis.

    Four Seasons Health Care, which cares for thousands of residents, is facing a £500m-plus credit crunch after government spending cuts and financial engineering by City investors left it struggling to pay lenders.

    The little-known H/2 Capital Partners has been buying up the group’s debt in the hope that the current owners, Terra Firma, will cede control of the homes after finances were squeezed by local government funding cuts.

    Martin Green, the chief executive of Care England, a trade group for elderly-care provision, said the Government needed to step in to stop speculative investors targeting the troubled industry.’

    /..
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/care-home-sector-in-meltdown-with-uks-largest-provider-threatened-by-us-vulture-fund-a6724936.html

    ‘The prey: Guy Hands is one of the best-known figures in the City due to his vigorous pursuit of deals and rapid rise to the top.

    The Goldman Sachs alumnus ran a 70-man division of the Japanese bank Nomura in the late 1990s and did everything from taking over pubs to nearly buying the Millennium Dome and turning it into a Beatles-themed entertainment centre.

    The noted wine aficionado, who shared a house with the former Foreign Secretary William Hague at university, eventually got too big for a bank and spun out the division, renaming it Terra Firma.

    Since then he has hit the headlines over his scrap with investment bank Citigroup over the ownership of the record label EMI. Mr Hands is currently suing Citi over the affair.’

    Vultures. Prey. Apt. Well named.

  • BrianFujisan

    Bless the Whistleblowers –

    The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military’s kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars — between 2011 and 2013. The documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the drone program, were provided by a source within the intelligence community who worked on the types of operations and programs described in the slides. The Intercept granted the source’s request for anonymity because the materials are classified and because the U.S. government has engaged in aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers. The stories in this series will refer to the source as “the source.”

    https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/

  • ------------·´`·.¸¸.¸¸.··.¸¸Node

    Hey Brian, I think I wrote a haiku. It’s called “Apparently”.

    Apparently

    freedoms are preserved
    by anti-terrorism
    laws removing them

  • Jives

    Mary,

    Indeed quite right about the odious shits Davies and Burt.

    Beneath contempt these types.

    **********

    Re remote control of aircraft.

    I remember kids in the 1970s remotely controlling toy boats planes and cars.

    Where do we think this tech came from,then?

    Almost 50 years later what do we think possible now?

  • BrianFujisan

    Nice one Node –

    “removing them” the Police state is here.. i was watching some Police undercover stitch up job, from Million mask march…

    great stuff, keep it up..

    i Was tonight making some Haiku.. For Beautiful Music –

    Slowly the Meadow
    awakening and rising
    Fills my heart with joy

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8MqDC8FU3A

  • glenn_uk

    Brian:

    I am intrigued
    this art and literacy,
    somehow combined.

    ===
    A design flaw shows
    Capitalism on show
    Greed not the answer
    ===

  • KingOfWelshNoir

    Ministry of Love
    Hoovering up our data
    Winter in my heart

    Nineteen Eighty-four
    Adultery website hacked
    Denounce mum and dad

    Oh! GCHQ
    Scoop data like Pelican
    Double Plus Ungood

    Nineteen Forty-four
    Brave men die in Normandy
    Make land fit for spooks

  • Mary

    John Mann MP says there is a copy of the Dickens dossier.

    7 November 2015

    AN MP has said a dossier handed to a minister in the 1980s alleges a child sex abuse ring in Portsmouth.

    Speaking in Westminster Hall, John Mann MP said he had a copy of a Dickens dossier – so-called because it was given to Geoffrey Dickens MP who in turn handed it to Leon Brittan in 1984.

    http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/crime/mp-claims-dossier-alleges-child-sex-abuse-ring-in-portsmouth-1-7053502

    ~~~~~

    Cynthia McKinney writes of a cover up of criminal activity including paedophilia within the US government.

    Why is FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Boiling over Former Speaker Hastert’s Plea Deal?
    6 November 2015
    http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/why-is-fbi-whistleblower-sibel-edmonds-boiling-over-former-speaker-hasterts-plea-deal/

  • Putinista

    Is Putin a prophet of God? They are targeting him like Muhammed at Charlie Hebdo? And the synagogue of satan worldwide, including the devils at this blog, are after his ass as if he were another Son of Man too. There is not one aaronowitch in the ENTIRE MSM that has one good word to say about Putin, are we seeing the beginning of the final confrontation culminating with the death of the anti-Christ bibi at Lod in israel, felled by a deadly karate chop by a black belt Putin !!

    The Sinai attack bears the standard saudi/israel hallmark like 8200 faked chatter we saw during the al-Ghouta false flag? The chosen have no compunction about slaying goyim children either, and this template of recording for posterity like in the 911 car park has also been met apart from a concurrent military exercise taking place.

    How will the Russians react?

  • Mary

    Thanks Suhayl. I admire John Pilger greatly.

    I needed a breath of fresh air after reading this. What madness whilst their mother lies refrigerated in a mortuary. The monetary cost of justice being sought is also high.

    Siblings of different faiths in high court row over mother’s funeral
    Judge says ‘nearest equivalent of biblical solution’ would be one equally unwelcome to Jewish brother and Anglican sister
    http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/06/siblings-church-of-england-jewish-high-court-mother-funeral

    Judge Arnold does indeed need the wisdom of Solomon for his judgement.

  • fwl

    If a haiku is to have a title then Apparently is a good one.

    GOP woman pencil hovers
    The Don smiles to Vladimir
    Can autumn leaves trump gut?

  • fwl

    What do people make of Trump on Putin? Contrarian polemic, naive and would u turn if elected, or is he sincere in his Rand Paul like anti interventionism. People here say no one has a good word to say about Putin, but Trump does. He says that he is v happy if Russia want to knick the hell out of ISIS let them do it tho they may end up in a quagmire, US owes US 19 Trillion so stay out. He says he would get on with Putin.

    Its interesting but what would he do if faced with a creeping disposition towards Chinese and Russian economic an military dominance? Although those two don’t necessarily get on well for long and what happens when China starts to occupy eastern Russia not by invasion but by trade and settlers?

  • ------------·´`·.¸¸.¸¸.··.¸¸Node

    It shouldn’t have a title, though, should it?

    Apparently not 🙂

  • MJ

    “Would a fighter-plane in the area not have been registered by one of the countries near it?”

    Perhaps there were just too many fighters in the area at the time.

    “Air forces from around the world have gathered deep in the Arava desert in the south of Israel for the past week and a half to take part in the largest aerial exercise in the history of the Israeli Air Force. The “Blue Flag” exercise, which is continuing through November 3, pits the Israeli Air Force, the United States Air Force, Greece’s Hellenic Air Force and the Polish Air Force against a fictional enemy state, the captain in charge of all IAF exercises told The Times of Israel Thursday night”.

    http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-hosts-its-largest-ever-international-air-force-exercise/

  • fwl

    KOWN yes they tho they are also symbols of self scrifice.

    Node yes I get it. Tho there are rules for haiku if written in Japanese but in English they tend to be less compliant.

  • MJ

    I wonder if this obviously planted story about a near-miss encounter with a missile near Sharm el Sheikh earlier in the year is being circulated in order to soften us up for the possible revelation that the Russian plane was brought down by a missile after all.

  • fred

    “We are, as a matter of empirical fact and undeniable history, the greatest force for good the world has ever known. … security and freedom for millions of people around the globe have depended on America’s military, economic, political, and diplomatic might.”
    – Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney,

    Are you confused by the Middle East? Here are some things you should know. (But you’ll probably still be confused.)

    Why does the government of the United States hate Syrian president Bashar al-Assad with such passion?

    Is it because, as we’re told, he’s a brutal dictator? But how can that be the reason for the hatred? It would be difficult indeed to name a brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th Century or of the 21st century that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population; at present the list would include Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.

    The United States, I suggest, is hostile to the Syrian government for the same reason it has been hostile to Cuba for more than half a century; and hostile to Venezuela for the past 15 years; and earlier to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; and to Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Chile; and so on continuing through the world atlas and history books.

    What these governments have had in common can be summarized in a single word – independence … independence from American foreign policy; the refusal to be a client state of Washington; the refusal to be continuously hostile to Washington’s Officially Designated Enemies; insufficient respect and zeal for the capitalist way of life.

    http://williamblum.org/aer/read/140

  • fwl

    Fred George Bush Snr has come out of some choice comments about Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

  • KingOfWelshNoir

    Fwl

    ‘…they are also symbols of self sacrifice’

    oops! I didn’t know that. What bird would symbolise a morally dysfunctional, keyhole peeping panty-sniffer?

  • Mary

    Hopw Craig’s OK. He was going to write again with a decision on his future.

    ~~

    David McIlwain, who comments on MLMB, writes:

    Western Media’s Despicable Justification of Terrorism
    If the downing of a Russian airliner in Sinai was in fact an act of terrorism, Western media’s veritable gloating over the murder of tourists is another mark on their long record of shame
    http://russia-insider.com/en/australias-crocodile-tears-over-russia/ri10972

    For ABC read BBC and for Bishop read Hammond or Fallon.

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