In general I deplore violence. But I do know that if a braying Etonian bully wandered round this country telling people how to dress, it would be very bad for their health. As someone who lived almost half of my life in England, I cannot understand the right wing intolerance, xenophobia and contempt for liberty that now characterises that nation.
And I cannot understand the degree of cringing servility that causes English people to want to be ruled – and told how to dress – by this.
bevin 24 Feb, 2016 – 5:45 pm
Odd you should mention the Maisky Diaries since only last week I bought a copy of Gabriel Gorodetsky’s edited Maisky Diaries 1932 – 1943 from Guardian Books (a 600 page hardback snip at £20 including postage) and I’m working my way through the years. Maisky arrived in London at the beginning of the First World War, together with Chicherin and Litvinov. It amused me that Yale University Press (or whoever advised) had esorted to the old derogation ‘Red’ in the subtitle Red Ambassador to the Court of St James’s . . . instead of the more proper ‘Soviet’. Old habits die hard.
There are some interesting snippets about the Webbs and George Bernard Shaw especially regarding the bad name Shaw was getting the Webbs with the volume of female visitors before his marriage, which Beatrice prided herself in arranging (though it did not work out as expected).
It is a pity that by that time Chicherin was off the scene and Maisky’s dealings were with Litvinov as Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Litvinov was only a lightweight in comparison to the polymath Chicherin. Maisky had a very interesting life living in some luxury in comparison to ordinary Russians and having dealings some of the most influential British politicians as well as associating with the above literary artists and others.
“It’s very curious that a Labour supporter, as Res Diss claims to be, would defend her at all.”
Because I don’t buy into everything she says doesn’t mean that I cannot defend her right to say such things, without her husband being dragged into it, nor that I cannot support much of what she says in her more academic work on Eastern Europe and the Gulag. When I was a lot younger I had a similar view to yourself that people in a different political camp had nothing of importance to say – now I realise that they often do. I was very taken by Nikita Khruschev’s grave in Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow which is a mix of black and white marble so as to make a similar point.
I also don’t think for a moment that Applebaum supports neo Nazis as Bevin says.
Got to say, after Cameron tried to put himself over as a representative of the people, supposedly standing up for us in Europe, he’s got to show himself as the utterly out of touch, ghastly toff he obviously is.
His purposed was to put a slick smiley-face on this rotten, filthy Tory party – full of racists, thugs, money-grubbers, crooks and liars, as they obviously all are. The mask slipped today. Both on Cameron himself, of course, and the scum who supported him – joyously whooping and cackling at the sneers against someone who clearly is not a toff.
@Bevin
He hates to admit that Corbyn, who really did crush the Blairites, is a formidable opponent who is likely to drive him into exile in Florida or tidewater Virginia where Washington’s discharged clients are wont to gather.
I don’t know if you noticed but Cameron said a long time before Corbyn’s election that he would stand down as Tory leader before the next election – so I doubt that he will be driven into exile by Corbyn.
@Herbie,
I think it’s a little too much to claim ResDes (RD) is a Labour supporter, he’s a Blairite and New Labour supporter, that is someone who’s comfortable with neoliberal economic policies that increase inequality exponentially and a neocon overseas policy that to date has resulted in millions of death from the former Yugoslavia, across Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
Thank God I’m presently in the South China Sea, as the Yank’s and British arsewipes are a little weary of China – something to do with a large army, growing naval force, nukes and land-based surface-to-surface anti-shipping missiles that would make quick work of any US Carrier task force.
No doubt RD was in his element this week reading Mandelson’s BS on the EU and Blair’s professed inability to understand the popularity of Corbyn or Sander’s, whilst issuing forth support for HRC, who no doubt has insufficient blood on her hands to enter the big league, only hundreds of thousands, rather than millions.
Indeed, Labour in May was not Blue enough, nor had sufficient Tories standing for the Party to get people to elect it – something to do with pissing off the working class, many of whom decamped to UKIP. Inspiring stuff.
Clinton tried to salvage some vestige of Cameron’s progressive shell in the 2000’s by advising him not to cozy up to Dubja too much. Cammy went down on Bush like a deranged and horndogged Hooker..lol.
An example of Anne Applebaum’s writing for the Washington Post that may be of interest to readers of this blog: Jeremy Corbyn’s Dangerous Appeal.
Another: Robert Conquest and the Need for the Courage to Illuminate the Truth.
Another: It’s the Greek Politics, Stupid.
“She must be on the right track if she gets up Bevin’s nose so effectively. I note that you have now joined Cameron (and also Corbyn I should add who used Cameron’s mum to make his point) I now call a Goss (i.e using someones’s family in order to make cheap political points) ”
Let me try an work out what you want to say. Applebaum is not “. . . an enthusiast of neo-Nazi emigre movements employed by the CIA and a proundly dishonest person.” Bevin has used the fact that as well as being deplorable herself is married to one at least equally deplorable.
Then I get a bit lost. I remember yesterday that Habbabkuk got himself in a pickle through insulting Mr Rogers’ family and you early this morning tried to label me with the same brush which naturally I defended because it just is not true. Cameron in the clip above insulted Corbyn by saying his mother would have told him not to dress so scruffily at the despatch box. But Corbyn did not insult Cameron’s mum. He told Cameron that his own mother would have advised him to defend the precious NHS at the despatch box was how I understood it. How does that insult Cameron’s mother? So it seems you, a professed Labour member, are out of sync with your leader. Is that right?
For the accusations of baseless slurs upon the English, let me say that in England alone, 55.1% of those voting at the General Election voted Tory or UKIP. In no other part of the UK did Tory and UKIP combined get over 50%.
Does this statistic incorporate the 33.9% of electors who abstained? A nice man like you wouldn’t exclude us from consideration would you?
Interesting how you twist words Mr Goss – a Goss is using someones’s family in order to make cheap political points. There are more ways than one of doing this – go figure.
Corbyn initially used Cameron’s mum to make his point – Cameron than used his mum to direct an insult at Corbyn. Both are Gosses.
Great news, after apologising to the man he punched, the motoring buffoon supreme is said to have to pay a six figure sum to which the BBC, as an integral part of his shyster-dom, agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the punched man.
Why is this great news?
Well one presumes that the BBC will also help and pay for all those victims sexually abused on their premises, and by their most favourite celebrity charge, Jimmy Saville, as they clearly supported his various campaigns and turned a blind eye to his victims peril. Why should there be differences?
What has happened to the inquiry into Elliot Johnson’s death? Do the Tory rip off artist in Norfolk really think they can cover this all up?
Or do they have better more lucrative things to follow up then to support young Topry campaigners who took their own life?
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/north_norfolk_district_councillors_increase_their_allowances_by_23pc_and_hike_seaside_car_park_charges_1_4430669
A word about elected cllr.s at any level. They have no contracts as such, are not accountable to the public for their errant choices. They receive perks, such a free broadband and parking in North Norfolk,but, most importantly….
They are all volunteers who put themselves up for public office, party political fanatics, so why can they not phase in remuneration rises of 23% over some years? their public officers did have to accept their puny pay rises being phased in over two or three years, so why not those volunteers who seemingly have the good of the public at heart?
answers on microfiche please, I feel nostalgic.
and tired, going to share my pillow now.
United Nations appointed Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order Alfred de Zayas (US) calls on the UK and Swedish Governments “to accept and implement without delay the findings and recommendations of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in the case of Julian Assange”.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17042&LangID=E
Professor de Zayas is currently professor of international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, which doubtless means he’s a lay person in the eyes of the UK Government and Philip Hammond (legal qualifications nil, recently described as a “thug” by John Pilger).
Duly circulated to Nick Cohen, Stephen Daisley, Hadley Freeman, Marina Hyde, and Oliver Kamm, to see if they would be interested in publicising this encouraging development to the Twittersphere. No responses so far.
Kind regards,
John
Nevermind: You’re going to “share your pillow now” ? Can’t you afford when each where you are, or at least take it in turns?
@JSD,
Unless you were to send Tweets to the Jewish/Zionist cabal at The Guardian instructing them that JA had had a sex change, you’ll get zero sympathy, truth or anything else from the well paid idiot trolls masquerading as ‘Journalists’, although you’d have good support from John Pilger, who does happen to be a journalist and a good one at that – regrettably he’s too leftwing and not into feminism or transgender rights, nor an apologist for Israel – so he’s unlikely to finish his career with a regular slot with that particular toilet paper.
Still, I’m amazed that if performing a sexual act with a condom and said condom break, you can be accused of rape, which means we are talking thousands of rape victims alone in the UK based on the fact that utilising condoms as a form of birth control is not 100% effective – but why bring such common sense into the equation.
When I am reading a book a bedtime -it takes at least the first chapter – maybe two nights – the first 55 pages or so – to understand at least a little about the person writing it – and it gets like – This is Quality. I want to read the next Chapter now…
You kind of know what is going to happen next…but you haven’t read it yet..Chapter 2 is for tomorrow night
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/552008.Scum_of_the_Earth
“Scum of the Earth”
“At the beginning of the Second World War, Koestler was living in the south of France working on Darkness at Noon. After retreating to Paris he was imprisoned by the French as an undesirable alien even though he had been a respected crusader against fascism. Only luck and his passionate energy allowed him to escape the fate of many of the innocent refugees, who were handed over to the Nazis for torture and often execution.
Scum of the Earth is more than the story of Koestler’s survival. His shrewd observation of the collapse of the French determination to resist during the summer of 1940 is an illustration of what happens when a nation loses its honour and its pride.”
He Eventually Escaped to England
And Craig Murray Slags Us English Off – and His Moderator Bans Me Again?
Clark – What Did I Say???
I have written it before – do you want a link??
Tony
Chris Rogers
24/02/16 11:38pm
Anna Ardin, who we are not supposed to name (unlike the New York Times and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), brought this alleged torn condom along to the Swedish police – apparently she had left this pleasant artefact lying around her flat for over a week – but it seems that there was no DNA on it, even though it had been intimately snuggled next to Ardin’s and Assange’s private parts for a considerable period of time. How’s that for common sense?
Incidentally, from what I know of Pilger I would be very surprised if he were not an enthusiastic supporter of both feminism and transgender rights. The trouble is he tells the wrong story about other things.
Kind regards,
John
Thanks for the Applebaum Robert Conquest’s link in which she acclaims the right-wing Vietnam War supporter Conquest as a poet. I did a quick search. This is one of his.
“There was plenty of good-natured chaff
When I popped in to fuck the giraffe,
And the PRZS
Could hardly suppress
A dry professorial laugh.”
The other establishment shit of a poet Kingsley Amis retorted:
“When I came back to roger the gnu
I was scarcely delayed coming through,
and the staff – most polite –
cried, “please stay overnight”,
it’s a privilege granted to few.”
No wonder neither made laureate!
He buggered the head of a boar.
“I’ll get this thing begging for more.”
He buggered its head
though the poor thing was dead
he’s a fever and horrible sore.
The clinic has hardly a clue.
his disease is decidedly new,
“Now put on your clothes.
It isn’t a dose
you’re lucky, it’s only swine flu.”
Applebaum has been working for elite interests since college.
Her husband Sikorski, whilst at Oxford, was chosen for the Bullingdon club another elite institution. How did they know eh, him just recently arrived from Poland in 1982.
These aren’t analysts. They’re courtiers.
They’re simply PR for elite interest, same as all those tedious historians of similar ilk.
They’re all employed to translate the horrors of their masters’ doings into plausible fairytales.
Chris Rogers
24/02/16 11:54pm
Personally, Chris, I am not too enamoured of a phrase like “Jewish/Zionist cabal”. Walks an anti-Semitic line, to my humble mind, no offence meant. You can be Zionist without being Jewish – many people are – and you can obviously be Jewish without being Zionist. Conflating the two is a serious mistake, I believe.
“Zionist” is perfectly respectable. “Cabal” can sound a little bit paranoid, I think.
Kind regards,
John
@JSD,
Perhaps all this neo-feminism and transgender stuff is quite catchy, but it remains a sad state of affairs nonetheless that one can get accused of rape in Sweden if a condom breaks. Again, a decent brief would have undertaken some quick research to ascertain the number of pregnancies result in Sweden as a result of condom’s not being fool proof and then compared that with the actual number of prosecutions brought. Simple stuff, but would certainly again highlighted the arbitrary nature of the prosecution.
Regardless of said facts, the Yanks want their man and Western Europe obliges, which is a sad indictment of where we are today with regards warmongering and ruthless propaganda.
“Corbyn initially used Cameron’s mum to make his point – Cameron then used his mum to direct an insult at Corbyn.”
Wrong! Corbyn did not make any such point and I think you should apologise for the way you’ve insulted your Labour leader and supported the Bullingdon Club of right-wing neocons. The establishment used the same tricks against Michael Foot. You should really be ashamed. Socialism does not support what you believe in only the Blairite Toryism that purports to be Labour. Why don’t you join the real tories where you clearly belong?
“Why, he’ll soon be denying that the Eastern European countries were incorporated into the Soviet “Empire” through means other than force, coercion, fraud, show trials and executions!”
Funny things “empires” aren’t they? Take the British Empire or the USA, another empire which grew by exterminating the indigenous people, seizing their land and resources and replacing them with either slaves or immigrant colonists. Is that what you, or Applebaum argue occurred in eastern Europe?
Force was certainly involved in the Soviet expansion of its zone of influence into eastern Europe: it fought its way to Berlin at the cost of more than twenty million of its citizens.
Among those the Red Army fought, besides the Wehrmacht, were fascist militias and SS units recruited/conscripted in eastern Europe. Including both in the Ukraine, whose remnants, exiled to north America became inveterate enemies and propagandists against not only the Soviet Union but Russians as a people.
These are the people that Applebaum is currently supporting in Ukraine. Those who do deny that they are neo-nazis are obviously not paying attention. And the fact that they are neo-nazis in the pay of oligarchs applauded by the “west” including the abominable Sikorski (who is said to have arranged for these fascists to be trained as snipers in Poland) changes nothing. The truth is that the Ukrainian militias are full of bikers, skinheads and nazis from the prisons of Western Europe.
The history of the Cold War, as Lysias is constantly pointing out, is complex and worth studying. But Applebaum’s colouring book propaganda is no guide.
As to the countries involved (enslaved !) most of them had much higher living standards than the Soviet Union, even though their economies and cities were devastated in the war, by the 1970s. That is not the way that empires work. Ask a Puerto Rican.
But when it comes to “force, coercion, fraud, show trials and executions” supporters of the British and American Empires ought to be experts.
I am not talking about the ancient origins of Empire: British and US depredations in south east Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere, in the post war period, outweigh by several orders of magnitude the worst exaggerations of the heavy handed authoritarian policing that Soviet backed governments in eastern Europe were wont to employ.
There simply is no contest: while Radio Free Europe and the BBC were bleating about Soviet Imperialism, millions were being imprisoned, massacred, impoverished and insulted in the vast zone of influence that the “west” arrogated. Try a million in Indonesia, another million in Laos, three million in Cambodia and Vietnam, enormous numbers in Korea.
Then there are the casualties-ongoing- in Congo, the victims of South African and Imperialist aggression in Angola and Mozambique. And then there are millions in Latin America-victims of US determination to kill Communists, nationalists, socialists and free thinkers wherever they could be found.
Eastern Europe was a tranquil backwater, a peaceful region in a world full of guerrilla actions, death squads, drug financed militias, fascists and wars, then as now, authored in Washington, with nasty bits added in Europe. That is western Europe-Algeria, anyone? Or Kenya? The naqba perhaps? Rhodesia maybe? The Philippines? Malaya? Egypt?
One thing I will grant: trials, whether show or otherwise, were few and far between. They generally took place, they still do, after the sentence had been carried out and in the form of Press Releases distributed to the media, often to ‘journalists’ on the Intelligence Services’ payroll.
Sikorski, in being chosen for the Bullingdon club in the early 80s, was clearly being primed for his subsequent important political position in Poland.
So, who was manipulating Polish politics from abroad, Polish pope, Solidarity and Bullingdon club memberships. Naughty, naughty.
Anyway, looks like the Poles sussed them out eventually.
Chris Rogers
25/02/16 12:16am
I quite agree. The allegation, however, is that Assange broke the condom deliberately – an allegation I find bizarre, to say the least. How do you deliberately break a condom one-handed in the middle of sexual intercourse? What for? Remove it, fine, okay, but break it? I have never heard of such a thing. Makes no sense – so it’s probably not true, as Judge Judy Sheindlin would say.
Kind regards,
John
@JSD,
I think ‘cabal’ is correct in my humble opinion, if you look at The Guardian’s Gove/BoJo coverage as of Wednesday, it’s revealing how interconnected the system is within London, they detail examples themselves, and then congregate on Twitter like fools – oblivious to how silly they look.
The fact remains Jonathan Freedland is an entirely disagreeable person. I will also make this observation, given the UK’s Jewish community is approx. 300,000, does it not strike you as odd the preponderance of their number represented in London media circles when compared with other ethnic communities, mind you, the same applies when we look at education background, again which predominantly is Oxbridge, so I’m not one for conspiracies, but certain interests intersect.
And yes, I’ve made the case I trust on the boards that a Zionist need not be a follower of Judaism, we should also emphasise clearly that followers of Judaism does not constitute an ethnic group, it’s a religion.
However, time for me to get some shut eye as spent far too long on Blogs again and Blogging does not pay the rent I’m afraid.
““Cabal” can sound a little bit paranoid”
The Paranoid Mason.
Sounds like a title Flann O’Brien might have used.
Herbie
25/02/16 12:32am
Obviously the Third Policeman was a Freemason.
Kind regards,
John
Chris Rogers
25/02/16 12:30am
I am not contradicting you that a network of shared interests exists. I am giving you my opinion that using a phrase like “Jewish/Zionist cabal” hands ammunition to people who will be keen to discredit what you say.
Kind regards,
John
“followers of Judaism does not constitute an ethnic group, it’s a religion.”
Loads of people, including religious Jews, say that.
But.
That’s not what Zionism’s about. Oh no.
Zionism, which is secularist 19C Jewish nationalism, needs the concept of Jew to embrace both the temporal and spiritual.
They need it to be a race or a tribe.
Otherwise Zionism don’t work very well, you see.
No point in an elite with no peeps. No point in a nationalism with no peeps.