Now that Liam Fox is back in the Cabinet and Matthew Gould, ex-Ambassador to Israel, in in charge of Security in the Cabinet Office, it is essential to get answers to what happened in at least eight meetings between Adam Werritty and Gould at least some of which involved Mossad – as Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell acknowledged to a parliamentary committee:
Hansard Public Administration Committee 24/11/2011
Q<369> Paul Flynn: Okay. Matthew Gould has been the subject of a very serious complaint from two of my constituents, Pippa Bartolotti and Joyce Giblin. When they were briefly imprisoned in Israel, they met the ambassador, and they strongly believe—it is nothing to do with this case at all—that he was serving the interest of the Israeli Government, and not the interests of two British citizens. This has been the subject of correspondence.
In your report, you suggest that there were two meetings between the ambassador and Werritty and Liam Fox. Questions and letters have proved that, in fact, six such meetings took place. There are a number of issues around this. I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran, in the service. Werritty is a self-proclaimed—
Robert Halfon: Point of order, Chairman. What is the point of this?
Paul Flynn: Let me get to it. Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran.
Chair: I have to take a point of order.
Robert Halfon: Mr Flynn is implying that the British ambassador to Israel is working for a foreign power, which is out of order.
Paul Flynn: I quote the Daily Mail: “Mr Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran and has made several visits. He has also met senior Israeli officials, leading to accusations”—not from me, from the Daily Mail—“that he was close to the country’s secret service, Mossad.” There may be nothing in that, but that appeared in a national newspaper.
Chair: I am going to rule on a point of order. Mr Flynn has made it clear that there may be nothing in these allegations, but it is important to have put it on the record. Be careful how you phrase questions.
Paul Flynn: Indeed. The two worst decisions taken by Parliament in my 25 years were the invasion of Iraq—joining Bush’s war in Iraq—and the invasion of Helmand province. We know now that there were things going on in the background while that built up to these mistakes. The charge in this case is that Werritty was the servant of neo-con people in America, who take an aggressive view on Iran. They want to foment a war in Iran in the same way as in the early years, there was another—
Chair: Order. I must ask you to move to a question that is relevant to the inquiry.
Q<370> Paul Flynn: Okay. The question is, are you satisfied that you missed out on the extra four meetings that took place, and does this not mean that those meetings should have been investigated because of the nature of Mr Werritty’s interests?
Sir Gus O’Donnell: I think if you look at some of those meetings, some people are referring to meetings that took place before the election.
Q<371> Paul Flynn: Indeed, which is even more worrying.
Sir Gus O’Donnell: I am afraid they were not the subject—what members of the Opposition do is not something that the Cabinet Secretary should look into. It is not relevant.
But these meetings were held—
Chair: Mr Flynn, would you let him answer please?Sir Gus O’Donnell: I really do not think that was within my context, because they were not Ministers of the Government and what they were up to was not something I should get into at all.
Chair: Final question, Mr Flynn.
Q<372> Paul Flynn: No, it is not a final question. I am not going to be silenced by you, Chairman; I have important things to raise. I have stayed silent throughout this meeting so far.
You state in the report—on the meeting held between Gould, Fox and Werritty, on 6 February, in Tel Aviv—that there was a general discussion of international affairs over a private dinner with senior Israelis. The UK ambassador was present…
Sir Gus O’Donnell: The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job. It is totally natural, and I do not think that you should infer anything from that about the individual’s biases.
Gus O’Donnell was being examined on his Cabinet Office report into the Fox/Werritty affair, which contained the blatant lie that Gould and Werritty had only met on two occasions. In fact they met eight times that we know for certain, with Gould’s role being:
1) 8 September 2009 as Miliband’s Principal Private Secretary (omitted from O’Donnell report)
2) 16 June 2010 as Hague’s Principal Private Secretary (omitted from O’Donnell report)
3) A “social occasion” in summer 2010 as Ambassador designate to Israel with Gould, Fox and Werritty (omitted from O’Donnell report)
4) 1 September 2010 in London (only one September meeting in O’Donnell report)
5) 27 September 2010 in London (only one September meeting in O’Donnell report)
6) 4-6 February 2011 Herzilya Conference Israel (omitted from O’Donnell report)
7) 6 February 2011 Tel Aviv dinner with Mossad and Israeli military
8) 15 May 2011 “We believe in Israel” conference London (omitted from O’Donnell report)
You can find full details here.
As O’Donnell states, some of the Werritty/Gould meetings happened when Fox and the Tories were not even in power. My own Freedom of Information request for all correspondence between Adam Werritty and Matthew Gould was denied as it would “breach the cost limit”. What is the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act if something as simple as correspondence between two named individuals is refused on grounds of cost.
Astonishingly, the request was denied within one hour of being submitted, and after 11pm!!!!! In reply to a further Freedom of Information Act request for minutes of the meetings between Gould and Werritty while Gould was Private Secretary to Hague and Miliband, the FCO quite literally sent me two blank pages with everything redacted except the date!!!
Various MP’s, including Jeremy Corbyn and Caroline Lucas, dragged out the information bit by bit, like drawing teeth.
The media were by and large prepared to treat the Werritty/Fox scandal purely as sniggering homophobia. Only the Independent reported the actual story
Fox’s resignation enabled the media to bury the real scandal, which was Israeli government influence on both Red and Blue Tories.
I therefore request everybody who reads this to write to their MP and ask them to find the following information. Here is a draft you may utilise, but the more you customise it the better:
Dear ……..,
I am concerned about unresolved questions from the Adam Werritty affair, and I should be grateful if you could discover the following information for me.
1) On how many occasions did Cabinet Office official Matthew Gould meet with Mr Adam Werritty, either
a) in a personal capacity
b) in an official capacity2) Who else was present on each occasion?
3) What was discussed on each occasion?I have been informed of at least eight such meetings which have been collected together from parliamentary questions and FOIA requests. I am concerned that only two of these meetings was detailed in the Cabinet Secretary’s report into the Adam Werritty affair.
1) 8 September 2009 as Miliband’s Principal Private Secretary (omitted from O’Donnell report)
2) 16 June 2010 as Hague’s Principal Private Secretary (omitted from O’Donnell report)
3) A “social occasion” in summer 2010 as Ambassador designate to Israel with Gould, Fox and Werritty (omitted from O’Donnell report)
4) 1 September 2010 in London (only one September meeting in O’Donnell report)
5) 27 September 2010 in London (only one September meeting in O’Donnell report)
6) 4-6 February 2011 Herzilya Conference Israel (omitted from O’Donnell report)
7) 6 February 2011 Tel Aviv dinner with Mossad and Israeli military
8) 15 May 2011 “We believe in Israel” conference London (omitted from O’Donnell report)Can you discover why so many of these meetings were omitted from the O’Donnell report?
I should be most grateful for your assistance.
Yours faithfully,
You can write to your MP via this website , though I awlays prefer to send a physical letter to the House of Commons. I should be most grateful for your assistance in doing this, and in spreading this appeal around by social media.
It is to me disgusting that a politician so thoroughly disgraced as Liam Fox should be back in power. Answers were blanked on the actual purpose of the Werritty connection, and I think collectively we should try to do something about that.
This business of one-off payments to “join” the Labour Party before it elects yet another leader smacks of “Buy a Leader”, doesn’t it? Or, given the modest price asked perhaps one should speak of a a “Loss-Leader”?
I hope the other mainstream UK parties will not go down the same sordid path in the future.
Indeed. Rather than individuals paying £3 or £25, it’s _far_ more seemly when the Tories accept, as a solitary example, £75,000 from a betting shop like Betfred – and never mind that it was fined £800,000 just recently by the Gambling Commission for encouraging irresponsible gambling, and breaking money-laundering guidelines.
That sort of thing is not at all sordid, is it?
Just find it amazing how many posters play various word games rather than admit just how bad world conditions are.
Not many people are able to gaze unblinkingly into the abyss.
This has always been part of the human condition – and this aspect of human nature is being heavily buttressed by the media. Delusion keeps the population passive, and for long periods of time passivity helps to maintain order. However when there are crucial turning points in the established order the passivity of delusion becomes positively dangerous.
At a simple level it was delusion that prevented those in control and with notional power from contemplating that the British would vote to leave the EU. It is delusion that prevents people from appreciating the exact nature of the threat posed by radical jihadis, and most crucially it is delusion that prevents the mass of people from understanding that their leadership is increasingly determined to provoke war with Russia
Okay, Loony, but I assumed that some of the posters here, not just your average citizen, who spend much of their time looking into the abyss would be able to respond to some of its bits, like who, how, and why did the CIA put together a conspiracy to assassinate JFK.
Not many people are likely to be interested in government assassination conspiracies.
Probably most Catholics are aware of child abuse scandals within the Church – they are not interested in the gory details and they do not, as a consequence, cease to believe in God.
Most people recognize that government make mistakes, or sometimes (out of necessity?) engage in bad actions. Likewise they are not interested in the gory details, and they do not, as a consequence, lose their faith in government.
Genuine inquiry at a mass level is forestalled by implausible conspiracy theories – ranging from lizard creatures to any and every terrorist attack being written off as a false flag or a computer simulation. Most people lack sufficient knowledge or experience to distinguish actual conspiracies from claimed conspiracies. Most people have an aversion to being associated with lunatics.
Because this is known and understood it is likely that some of the wilder conspiracy theories are in fact started by, and promoted by, government agencies.
The few people that can navigate through the foregoing are likely to be subject to an orchestrated smear campaign, and if that does not work to destroy their reputation then they may have an unfortunate accident such as the one that befell Michael Hastings.
If you read James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable, John Newman’s Oswald and the CIA (the paperback edition with the added final chapter), and Douglas Horne’s five-volume Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, you will have a very good idea of who, how, and why the CIA put together a conspiracy to assassinate JFK.
Don’t forget Mark Lane and the enchantingly palindromic Revilo P Oliver!
Loony
You paint a desolate, grim picture indeed.
But would you agree with me, I wonder, if I said that we should be grateful that there are a few – perhaps a very few – enlightened souls, such as yourself, who are still capable of peering through the fog of delusion and leading the deluded masses to grater understanding?
Your fundamental assumptions are in error. Were I to agree with you then I would be agreeing with an erroneous understanding. So, the simple answer to your question is No.
“Just find it amazing how many posters play various word games rather than admit just how bad world conditions are.”
How bad are world conditions? Our ancestors survived ice-ages, plaques, volcanic eruptions such as that of Krakatoa.
http://www.livescience.com/28186-krakatoa.html
Those who don’t survive will die, and that is, and will always be the way of this world. Life’s a bitch and then you die. What’s new about that? What makes you think you deserve special treatment?
Oh, come on, Alan.
We have regime changes, weather modification which kills millions, covert wars, man-made earthquakes which can trigger other disasters,, false flag operations, etc.
It has taken unassisted mother nature millions of years to approximate our deliberate, constant mayhem.
“It has taken unassisted mother nature millions of years to approximate our deliberate, constant mayhem.”
JFYI the upcoming pole-shift began around the time of the US declaration of independence. Maybe Mother Nature takes a dim view if people who imagine they are independent? And they are so dependent on electricity, I doubt they know how to rub two sticks together to make a fire.
There is all the difference in the world between naturally occurring events over which humanity has no control and deliberate human actions.
It would be a strange argument that justified the fire bombing of Dresden on the sole basis that it was a less energy intense event than the Krakatoa eruption
That’s hardly anything compared to the earthquake off Aceh which the special attack sub the USS Jimmy Carter caused on its breajkdown cruise around Christmas 2004.
The French parliament yesterday extended the ‘state of emergency’ by another six months, and it looks like it’s going to be permanent…
https://www.rt.com/news/352208-french-emergency-state-extension/
… and of course for the last week they’ve been bombing the fuck out of Syria. Yesterday French planes bombed a village, killing 124 people, mostly women and children…
https://www.rt.com/news/352255-france-syria-civilians-dead/
And there’s been major civil unrest just north of Paris for the last two nights…
http://www.thelocal.fr/20160721/clashes-in-paris-suburbs-after-man-dies-in-police-costody
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world…
Of course the events in France over the past year, have given France a almost carte blanche, by some of the French public, to exact some sort of retribution, Id imagine Syria will be the killing field, so to speak.
The threat of terrorism, has been constantly reinforced by the government and the press, no just in France but around the globe. The public have been frightened into submission, especially by events in France, in my opinion. Media reports show the French public blaming Hollande and his government for a lack of protection.
The question is protection from whom?
Republicofscotland, I would say that the ‘terrorist threat’ is sustained by quite blatant/clumsy false flags. You, like many others don’t seem to buy into this, and that’s understandable, because it means we’re in very frightening territory.
I’ll just ask folks to look at what happened in Nice last week with a rational mind.
“I’ll just ask folks to look at what happened in Nice last week with a rational mind.”
Sigh.
What are you going for here, RobG? All “Crises Actors” and nobody was killed/injured at all, CGI fakery, holographic projections of a lorry, did it actually happen but someone was put up to it (Tony M thinks it was Boris Johnson who set it up!), or was the lorry mysteriously lacking in blood and gore (like Paul Barbara keeps going on about), or something else again?
Or could it be various self-contradictory combinations of the above? Or haven’t you made you mind up yet.
Obvious, it couldn’t simply be some murderous, ISIS-inspired religiously brainwashed lunatic bent on mass murder, could it? Why – that would just be C-c-c-C-rrRR-AAA-zZZ-YYY!
Yes it was the “coincidence” of Boris being appointed Foreign Secretary at the time of the Nice atrocity. Must have been BoJo wot dunnit!
Rob.
Id say my last sentence leave my opinion open to interpretation.
It’s well known that security services of some nations approach, befriend and help radicalise vulnerable young Muslim men. The security service provide encouragement, equipment and plans, under the guise of commitment to the cause, whatever that may be. The young vulnerable and easily persuaded Muslim man/men then go on to carry out the plan unaware they’ve been manipulated.
After the patsy has committed the planned action, in which people do on occasion die, it isn’t difficult for the security services to show the radicalisation of the man/men. It’s a almost foolproof way of turning the public against a section of society. In a majority of cases however the assailants must not be taken alive.
Sometimes the assailant is supplied with fake explosives, they are then neutralised almost always on camera. A catastrophic event is avoided, plaudits and blame can then be apportioned. The target religious or dissenting group, at home or abroad can then be moved on, it will of course have already been idenified as a threat long before the patsy has been manipulated.
Oh, and the new employment laws have been shoved through the French parliament. There have been massive protests against these employment laws (aka the neo-con agenda) all across France. Despite this, notice how briefly Le Monde reports it…
http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2016/07/21/apres-cinq-mois-de-contestation-sociale-la-loi-travail-est-definitivement-adoptee_4972875_823448.html
What with the blatant false flag in Nice (amongst other things, not one drop of blood on a big, white lorry that we’re told ploughed through hundreds of people, killing 84 of them), the extension of the state of emergency and the new employment laws being forced through, I wouldn’t dare to predict what’s going to happen in France in the coming months.
The ironic thing is, I always predicted that the UK would be first to become a full-blown police state, and thought that I would be safer in France.
Id imagine French minds have been shifted from the unjust labour laws forced through the parliament, by the event in Nice, how convenient.
Couple that with, the much needed French feeling of unity, at this time, I’d imagine descent against the government for anything other than protection, will take centre stage for quite sometime in my opinion.
An ideal window for Hollande, has been open for sometime now to foister unfair policies on the French public.
“not one drop of blood on a big, white lorry that we’re told ploughed through hundreds of people, killing 84 of them”
No dents either.
“There have been massive protests against these employment laws (aka the neo-con agenda)”
Aka EU law, which is breached by France’s current labour laws. The punishment for non-compliance will entail fines running into billions of euros starting next year, hence Hollande’s desperate attempts to push through new legislation this year.
Try stepping in front of a lorry travelling at a mere 20-30mph, and see how much damage you do to it.
The answer will be, approximately, none at all.
You discredit yourself (and insult the victims) by publicising the notion that what everyone saw happen, witnessed by thousands, captured on literally hundreds of cameras from as many angles, resulting in scores of dead, even more injured and more still traumatised, just simply didn’t happen. Nah. Nothing happened! ‘Natch.
No-one is seriously disputing people were run down by a lorry.
These events though are simply too, too convenient not to scrutinise the scant verifiable information, the habitually lying media’s contortions and the behaviour of state and other actors before, during and subsequently, I hope someone is doing this, as I can’t be bothered, why do you want to draw a veil over it? Healthy scepticism, is, healthy, yours is a bit under the weather. It is you manic debunkers who are putting forward preposterous theories all on your own and then duly, lip-smackingly double-debunking them. Do people really think that as French farmers can sometimes be a bit eccentric, and think the vacuous slogan ‘Liberty, Egalite, Fraternity’ is anything more just hollow words, that therefore France is somehow then some sort of perfected democracy, or even any kind of democracy. I’m surprised too that even easily-amused primitives would want to go be deafened, half-blinded and to breathe all sorts of toxins spewed out, the air an acrid stench, from fireworks. I just don’t get it, never have.
.
“No-one is seriously disputing people were run down by a lorry.”
They fucking well are. And you were claiming it was a false-flag orchestrated by BoJo a few threads ago.
This place is full of loons and now MJ has decided to join them. What is it that does this to a person? Too much Internet? :
Tony M“No-one is seriously disputing people were run down by a lorry.”
Have you not read any of the comments around here saying precisely that?
Anyway – you’ll have stated that Boris Johnson ordered the attack, “case closed Boris Johnson ordered the attack on Nice” if I remember correctly. Which I certainly do.
The rambling stream of consciousness in your excessively long second paragraph could do with a bit of work. Try editing for cogency, brevity, and break it up a bit too.
A small young deer once ran in front of my car when I was driving very slow (I would estimate 5 or 10 miles an hour — I was being careful, because snow had started to fall), and we collided. That deer did quite a number on the grillwork in the front of my car. The repairs ended up costing my insurance company hundreds of dollars. I don’t remember if there was blood on my car, but I do remember there was lots of blood left on the fallen snow.
Yep, it was all faked :
http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=b81_1468627473
@MJ: / Jim / RobG / Other nut-cases here:
Is this your idea of “no damage” ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nice-attack-hero-motorcyclist-reveals-how-he-threw-himself-onto-truck-to-try-to-stop-killer-a7144326.html
Idiots.
I was being sarcastic, don’t lump me in with those loons.
My apologies, Jim – hope you accept it. Didn’t even look at your link, thought it was yet another ludicrous pile of BS like those Paul Barbara likes to inflict on us.
No probs Glen ?
My idea of no damage is that the photos of the lorry show no damage. That’s all. Sorry.
MJ : Look at these pictures:
https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/nice-truck-attack-750×400.jpg
http://www.vocfm.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Bastille-Day-nice-attack.jpg
https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/ad_212985196.jpg?w=748&h=468&crop=1
https://newsnation1.s3.amazonaws.com/images/2016/07/16/345292467-Nice-truck-attack_6.jpg
http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/1040424/category_article_update_img.jpg
https://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article8427068.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Lorry-Attack-Aftermath-Nice.jpg
http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/incoming/2016/07/15/nice-truck-reuters5.jpg/RESIZED/bigResize/Nice+truck+Reuters5.jpg
https://media2.abc2news.com/photo/2016/07/15/16×9/84_dead__hundreds_wounded_in_Nice_attack_2_42476692_ver1.0_640_480.jpg
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nice-attack-hero-motorcyclist-reveals-how-he-threw-himself-onto-truck-to-try-to-stop-killer-a7144326.html
And you don’t see any damage, huh?
https://media2.abc2news.com/photo/2016/07/15/16×9/84_dead__hundreds_wounded_in_Nice_attack_2_42476692_ver1.0_640_480.jpg
Fascinating.
—–
Some of those links might not work now – try substituting http for https. Anyway… I can’t be bothered looking up a new set for you denialist freaks.
“Yep, it was all faked”
Have you ever seen a person who’s been run down by a lorry, let alone hundreds of people? There’s blood and entrails everywhere, all of which are missing in the photos that people are linking to here; and as for the so-called ‘mobile phone footage’ of the event, please, spare me. Where’s the real, clear footage from mobile phones and the plethora of security cameras? or don’t you think about that?
Here’s images of a real terror attack: Jakarta last January. You might notice the huge amount of blood everywhere and the disfigured bodies…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3398712/explosions-heavy-gunfire-heard-central-Jakarta.html
Can the GCHQ vermin and the useful idiots explain why such images are completely lacking from the event in Nice last week? (bearing in mind that a big truck driving into a crowd will cause much more human destruction than gunmen could)
And most importantly, and blindingly obvious, it’s the old ‘cui bono’: who benefits from these events?
How many different lorries are depicted among those links? Please take a moment to assess your evidence before presenting it.
MJ? To me, Glenn’s links all seem to show the same truck, though I can’t get the pictures from mirror and abc.
Clark: They’ve got nothing to say about it. There are hundred of other pictures and videos showing extensive damage to the lorry, caused by impact on people.
They don’t want to know. They’d rather have their fantasies about False Flags, etc. etc., the truth is just too mundane, or doesn’t fit their belief system.
Btw – the system here has (un)helpfully converted http:// into https:// – and the latter doesn’t work. I wonder if a friendly mod could convert it back, so the links actually work?
Blood on the lorry and it’s tomato ketchup.
You can’t lose in conspiracy la-la land.
There is no blood on the lorry, whatsoever.
Indeed, Rob. The 84 dead were all dolls made of feathers.
There’s neither feathers nor blood on a very big *white* lorry (the maniacs who perpetrate these events totally take the piss out of the general public for being so gullible/stupid).
These bodies real enough for you RobG? :
http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=5bf_1468545131
It’s a measure of a Government, how they respond to terrorist attacks. To no great surprise, this one has responded by quietly forcing through employment laws that they know are deeply unpopular. That’s hard-hearted, by any measure, regardless of whether the attacks were false flag. A decent Government would suspend such machiavellian politics, at least for a time.
It’s pretty disgusting really. Personally, I always had Hollande down as a massive neocon fake, who talked a bit of socialism, just to please the rubes. I take no pleasure in being right. This ‘shock doctrine’ is so firmly entrenched in Western Political circles, it’s hard to know how the citizenry can respond. But, it’s good to see our French cousins get up to some socialist mischief, with mass protests. With any luck, they’ll take down the Government. Wish we had some of that here in Oz. Our Government is basically a criminal cabal, totally on the take, backed by psychopath Murdoch. Dispiriting.
“And I think to myself, what a wonderful world…”
It is a wonderful world! It gives you the air you need to breath, the water you need to drink, the food you need to eat. Just because politicians are fucked-up, don’t blame the world.
RobG
What is your basis for saying that the state of emergency is likely to be permanent?
Has the govt which declared the state of emergency said anything to this effect or is it just your supposition?
Well whoever instigated the Turkish coup? and it’s still open for debate, the real winner appears to be Erdogan. He has declared a state of emergency in Turkey, whilst claiming it won’t affect democracy in the country.
Given a free and unsuspecting hand by the people of Turkey, Erdogan, is having a field day clearing out anyone he thinks opposed him, now, or in the past. Dissidents can now be rounded up like eveyone else, and tarred with the Gulenist brush.
Turkey in effect, will become a more authoritarian state, and Erdogan couldn’t have wished for a better outcome, if he’d planned the coup himself, which is a possibility.
If however the US has backed a Gulenist style coup, they have only succeeded in pushing Turkey further into unity with Russia. Press reports show that Erdogan is adamant, that US based Gulen was behind the coup, and with the US stalling over the fate of Gulen, Erdogan’s, and Turkey’s relationship for that matter, with the US, deteriorates by the day.
Obama appears to be leaving his successor and I think the next POTUS Hilary Clinton, in a difficult position with regards to Turkey. Still Clinton a confirmed war hawk, and backer of the industrial military complex machine, has been around long enough to deal with Turkish suspicions.
Could Turkey be on the invasion radar of the US, Nato military machine in the future? One could feasibly say yes to that question. The persecution of the Kurds in Turkey could yet come back to bite Erdogan, however I’d imagine the main reason to remove Erdogan and weaken Turkey in the future, would be to avoid strong Turkish, Russian bonds from reforming.
A scenario already being played out in Syria.
The biggest loser from the attempted coup in Turkey is likely to be Merkel and the EU.
The Turkey – EU deal on migrants may fall apart. Turkey has suspended the European Convention on Human Rights and is mulling the reintroduction of the death penalty. It could be that migrants reaching Europe from Turkey can now claim that Turkey is not a safe country for them to be returned to. It could also be that Turks themselves can claim asylum in Europe.
There are a lot of Turks in Germany and it is not obvious that they all share the same views with regard to Erdogan. There is a possibility that Germany may become host to internecine fighting between disparate groups of Turkish migrants.
Erdogan has a penchant for humiliating Merkel – and he may find it politically advantageous to step up this humiliation – especially if any German policeman fails in his constitutional duty to only arrest anti Erdogan Turks in Germany.
Strange days indeed.
“the real winner appears to be Erdogan.”
Or is it Russia?
Apart from the fact that Erdogan is now less likely to shoot down Russian jets it is hard to see how Russia wins.
Something I read about oil pipelines. I’ll try to find it again. Sorry, I just read stuff, take notice, and move on. I’ll try to do better.
This is it, I think:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/20/the-coup-in-turkey-has-thrown-a-wrench-in-uncle-sams-pivot-plan/
“A failed coup in Turkey has changed the geopolitical landscape overnight realigning Ankara with Moscow while shattering Washington’s plan to redraw the map of the Middle East. Whether Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan staged the coup or not is of little importance in the bigger scheme of things. The fact is, the incident has consolidated his power domestically while derailing Washington’s plan to control critical resources and pipeline corridors from Qatar to Europe. The Obama administrations disregard for the national security interests of its allies, has pushed the Turkish president into Moscow’s camp, removing the crucial landbridge between Europe and Asia that Washington needs to maintain its global hegemony into the new century. Washington’s plan to pivot to Asia, surround and break up Russia, control China’s growth and maintain its iron grip on global power is now in a shambles. The events of the last few days have changed everything.”
I do believe Counterpunch to be relatively believable in a world where many news sources are unbelievable.
” I do believe Counterpunch to be relatively believable in a world where many news sources are unbelievable.”
___________________
Having followed Counterpunch over the years (specially contributors like the egregious Dr Paul Craig Roberts) I find it to be more than relatively unbelievable. Dr Roberts comes a close second to the late Tony Benn when it comes to predictions which turn out to be nonsensical.
Any news on the whereabouts of the missing ships of the Turkish navy?
Where can I read a detailed analysis of Corbyn’s guardians and if new local constituency membership.
If Corbyn succeeds in dominating labour then that may be all well and good for the conservatives, but might it not also feed the far right and feed a potential reemergence of currently kipping UKIP.
Perhaps leftists ought to reconsider Owen Smith.
Sorry FWL I’m with Corbyn and would not consider a “chicken coup” candidate. We already had a leader. I think Smith is only standing as a token oppositionist. Here are the Corbyn supporters standing for the executive committee.
http://imgur.com/yluq4cb
Use your vote wisely (if you have one).
I respect your position. I’m just flagging that if you move a party to the left or to the right several things may occur: 1 you pull the entire political circus un that direction; 2 you fail and become irrelevant; 3 you set up an opposite reaction and empower the opposite extreme.
So as always follow your convictions, but not so that you lose basic common sense, orientation and pragmatism and be careful what you wish for. Many of us enjoy a little mischief to poke a stick at society’s hypocrisy and selfish indifference, but if you do more than wave a stick and actually lever the lid of then be ready for the opening of Pandora’s box. That is essential what has happened with BREXIT. A peaceful democratic mandate here has somehow partially facilitated a series of unforseen events to such an extent that although I voted out I have to concede that there wad something to project fear. The fear mongers were wrong in the specifics of their warnings, but were justified in having cause for their jitters. So, just be careful. Change is fun, but it ain’t never going to be what you expect. Rapid change gives opportunities to opportunists, and they are not usually the good guys. Corbyn is a good guy and his tenacity is impressive, but ……
I’m not calling for a revolution!
I left the Labour Party because it no longer represented social justice and those who have difficulty representing themselves. It became another Tory Party and its original objectives as a party for the people were being replaced enabling career politicians a pathway to personal progress. Now there is a chance to win it back and become a principled party again. But the way the executive and career politicians have behaved in trying to retain all the social injustices which give them an easy life has been a circus to watch. When Jeremy Corbyn, for a second time, is elected leader the party needs to get behind him. Anyone not feeling comfortable with socialist policies should join a party to which they better belong.
May I point out that Mr Jeremy Corbyn is also a career politician according to the generally accepted definition of a career politician (ie, someone who has done little or nothing else than politics all his adult life).
Mr Corbyn has been an MP since 1979 (I believe) and before that was a London local councillor and chair of a constituency labour part (also in the metropolis). The same may well apply to many other members of the current hard left in the Labour party.
++++++++++++++++
There may be merit in the thought that no MP should be allowed to serve for more than five parliamentary terms or twenty-five years (whichever is the longer).
It’s not going to happen, Jeremy will win by a massive margin and we’ve got several more years of Tory misery at the very least. God, it’s depressing.
fwl, I’m part of new local constituency membership. I was at my local constituency meeting a couple of weeks back and the Corbyn supporters seem reasonable people to me. Join up and attend; see for yourself.
I say this respectfully: no way.
The far right always pop up whenever the left has a resurgence. Make of that what you will; perhaps they are just responding to events, or perhaps they are carefully managed ‘oppositional’ groups, who are activated by our spook overlords, to battle with the left. I go with the latter, but for this argument, it doesn’t matter. We can’t allow ourselves to be scared off by the ’emergence’ of the far right, and Corbyn should continue doing what he’s doing.
Owen Smith is a nothing, sorry. Corbyn isn’t perfect, but there is no comparison. Smith is a neocon. Corbyn is a left-centre social democrat. So, I can’t agree Smith is in any way an ‘option’ to consider, unless of course one believes that the Nu Lab model of centreism is just how the Labour Party should be from now on. Some may think so, naturally, I do not.
Owen Smith bleats “It’s not much of an employer that says, you know, work for me and work harder or I’m going to sack you all – which is effectively what he’s doing today,” Mr Smith told the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36859550
That’s funny – it’s EXACTLY what an employer is likely to say in my experience!
Smith whines on : “He just wants to control the Labour Party.”
A leader wants to control the party? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
Indeed, what more proof do you need that Owen Smith has never inhabited the same world as the rest of us?
Glenn
If you accept – as you appear to – that the Labour leader should be able to control the Labour party then you will surely welcome the fact that Tony Blair exercised firm control over the party for many years?
Let’s be honest, it’s that old chestnut isn’t it? A “strong leader” is welcomed as long as you like them. Thatcher would be praised by you as a “strong leader”, I imagine, but would you appreciate the same qualities in, say, Stalin, or S. Hussein?
There’s also a difference between leading a party and corrupting it, which is what I believe Blair is guilty of (among much else). Thatcher, not so much – much as I despise her, she was not guilty of corrupting the Tory party (given that it was already a party for the monied classes).
Someone like Blair who ushered in a gaggle of yes-men (and women, with his Blair’s Babes – remember them?) helps to concentrate power at the top. Not so accountable, democratic, and entirely at odds with the principles of the party.
As ever, it’s never as simple as a soundbite might suggest, wouldn’t you agree?
Glenn
Should your most interesting comment not have been addressed to the poster who wrote, with heavy irony :
“A leader wants to control the party? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!” ?
In other words, to yourself?
Please explain what your problem is here.
“Horrifying scenes of the beheading of a very young Palestinian boy by the US and UK backed terrorist faction in Syria, Nour-Al-Din Al-Zenki, flooded social media feeds yesterday.”
“The US is scrambling to both disassociate themselves and their proxy murderers from this abhorrent crime. 21WIRE will not post the videos in the report below as they may be too distressing, but they are available in the link to the article. We stress that this footage is graphic and horrific.”
http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/07/20/syria-us-attempts-disassociation-from-its-proxy-psychopaths-after-beheading-of-palestinian-child/
I wonder how many Western main stream newspapers and TV stations will carry this story, not many I wager.
However when Daesh, ISIL, IS or whatever they’re calling themselves these days, beheaded anyone, it was front page news for days on end in the Western media.
Now the fucking Guardian has done a rewrite of the Shah;s troubles after he fled Iran.
The rewrite uses official documents to put weasel Thatcher in a better light than William Shawcross, son of Sir Harley, had spelled out in much greater detail, discussing Alan Hart’s missions, the Iron Lady weaseling on her promise to help him get to the UK, thanks to the efforts of the FO’s Sir Anthony Parsons, and sending out Sir Denis Wright to check on how his family was faring on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
And, of corse, there is no mention of the book, The Shah;s Last Ride: The Fate of an Ally.
How can a noted news organization engage in such weaseling!
How can a noted news organization engage in such weaseling!
Yes! When the main thing it is noted for are weasel words.
I think the vast gaps in essential information are more common, and worse.
Here, Shawcrosses’ account showed what a weasel the so called “Iron Lady’ was.
Hartley Shawcross (aka, by some, Shortly Floorcross).
Not a peep on the state broadcaster about the French/US slaughter of 200 civilians in Manbij, Syria.
If those had been Russian bombs it would have been the top story. Same with the state broadcaster on Corbyn – last night’s ‘Newsnight’ was a disgrace. Kuenssberg really is a nasty piece of work. Cut from the same cloth as Theresa May.
I think I’ve solved it.
On the one hand we have 84 people mown down by a lorry and thousands witnessed it. On the other hand we have NO BLOOD on the Lorry.
This can only point to the FACT the lorry wasn’t a lorry at all. It was a HOLOGRAM. The “victims” jumping under the purported lorry were crisis actors who were painted with tomato ketchup by Mossad agents. They are ALL alive and well and living on Diego Garcia.
I KNOW this is true because I read it on the Internet.
Would it have been possible to substitute a different truck for the truck that did all the damage?
Surely you meant to say “substituting a different hologram”? Easy to do in this digital age.
Autopsy reports, death certificates, funerals? although I know that if this did really happen it would take them some time to scrape up all the human remains from the tarmac, and none of this is shown in the footage/images released. Same story with the Paris attacks last November: no autopsy reports, death certificates, funerals. Just a load of bullshit fed to you from the presstitutes.
Perhaps you can give me a link to ‘the thousands’ who witnessed the attack in Nice last week?
RobG, can you refer me to a reputable investigative journalist or other investigator to corroborate the absence of funerals, autopsies etc?
You know I can’t at the moment; and that’s the point I’m trying to make: there are no autopsy reports, death certificates, funerals (there should have been more than 120 funerals after last November’s Paris attacks, but in the weeks following the event can you point me to even one that can be verified?).
I would venture that the burden of proof is not on those of us who question these events, but more on those who perpetrate them.
RobG, you made such accusations before, and another commenter linked to French press coverage of funerals. There was footage from outside the Bataclan, but you linked to a discredited YouTube contributor who claimed it was fake because a woman hung from a windowsill until helped back in.
If these attacks were being fabricated by the media, it seems very likely that someone would expose it. Anyone can make any random claim that something was all fabricated, such as the pro-Corbyn rally in Parliament Square. I think you should either post better evidence or desist. When you make these claims you just lower the quality of debate.
Perhaps you shouldn’t take so seriously someone who dispenses death threats like confetti.
When it comes to last November’s ‘terror attacks’ in France, the footage of a heavily pregnant woman hanging from a window sill was published by Le Monde…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRSTQ9dxgxM
… and it’s the usual bad quality video that we get from these events, despite the fact that in ordinary circumstances there would have been zillions of people around with HD camera phones.
In otherwords, the woman hanging by her fingertips from a Bataclan window sill is not a fake, in the sense that it is what the presstitutes reported, but how any rational person can believe that this actually happened is beyond belief.
RobG
Are you saying that the autopsy reports, death certificates, details of the funerals and so on should have been made available to the public at large on the internet (or published in the mass media)?
And are you also saying that because they were not, the events in question never happened?
If you are saying that then you are either a very sick person or just being mischievious in the extreme.
Beyond a massacre: FRANCE deliberately bombed SYRIAN civilians after Nice attack
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/352283-syria-us-france-bombing/
Is this true?
Syria’s foreign ministry said Tuesday’s air strike, which hit the village of Toukhan north of Manbij, was carried out by French forces, while Monday’s strike was by US jets.
“(Syria) condemns, with the strongest terms, the two bloody massacres perpetrated by the French and US warplanes and those affiliated to the so-called international coalition which send their missiles and bombs to the civilians instead of directing them to the terrorist gangs,” it said in a letter sent to the United Nations this week, according to state news agency SANA.
http://www.france24.com/en/20160721-usa-probe-civilian-deaths-syria-opposition-calls-suspension-air-strikes
Inspect the URL. The article is in the “Op Edge” section of RT, “op” presumably meaning opinion, and maybe “edge” implies marginal opinion. The article doesn’t claim to be RT’s opinion; it’s an interview with “political commentator Marwa Osman” – whoever that is.
I think that’s a slightly more nuanced perspective than either “true” or “RT bullshit”.
Nuanced my arse.
“Western” media publish opinion pieces and interviews, too.
What is the RT ‘position’ on this:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/20/ukraine-journalist-pavel-sheremet-killed-kiev-car-bombing?client=safari#
Michael Norton :
Of course it’s not true, it’s more RT bullshit. That’s not to say bombing by either the French, Russians or US is likely to be as ‘smart’ as they all claim when defending their actions, but the idea the French military are randomly killing innocent civilians as ‘revenge’ is utterly insane thinking.
Of course the French military has never ever engaged in randomly killing innocent civilians have they.
I’m well aware of the egregious history of French colonialist barbarity (Algeria to name just the most well known), but to suggest that they are deliberately commiting such atrocities in 2014, in some sort of post-colonial spasm of revenge, is just nonsense.
2016!
Fully agree with you, Jim.
What do you agree with? That the French military have form in killing civilians? In which case you are agreeing with the point I made. Or are you claiming that the French military have never engaged in the willful killing of civilians?
And whatever else ‘ISIS’ are they’re certainly not the West’s proxy for the overthrow and annexation of more of Syria and for theft of Iraq’s and the Kurds’ oil.
That would be just too ridiculous, ISIS, created, funded, trained, armed, controlled by US/UK/Saudi/Israeli/Turkish/French. Anyone thinking that must hate our freedoms.
But it is patently and obviously true, and accepted, known as such universally.
“Of course it’s not true, it’s more RT bullshit.”
______________
How do you know it’s all bullshit Jim?
Or is it because it’s a Russian news station, it must be bullshit, as opposed to Western poius stations who constantly tell nothing but the truth.
Pious not poius, my apologies.
RoS:
How does anybody ‘know’ anything? It just seems so absurd that my gut instincts tell me it’s complete bullshit. What possible good could come of deliberately killing innocent Syrian civilians? You think the pilots would be totally gung ho for such deliberate evil?
Your gut feeling Jim, well that’s reassuring.
Let me try and explain Jim, if I may.
Since at least the end of the first Gulf War, in the early 1990s, all British governments with no exceptions, from that of John Major through to that of Theresa May have been enaged in genocide. There’s no doubt, no grey areas, no ifs, no buts, and its inarguable that it’s wrong, seriously wrong. They have killed many millions of fine inoffensive Arab people, men, women, children -and there seems no means of them stopping them carrying on doing so, nothing either by us the people of these islands, or by some outsider, except perhaps by use of nuclear weapons. Soviet Russia managed to stop a very terrible genocide in Europe in the 1940s, at great cost to themselves, and might have to do something again to stop this one, it has gone on too long. I’d rather we find a means and deal with it ourselves, it would be more pleasant than the alternative.
That is where we are. Is that clear enough for you, is there anything there that you don’t understand?
p.s. If anyone sees a tall white-haired elderly gentleman with a limp and some fingers missing, carrying a large ticking briefcase, can they direct him to the cabinet room and place him next to the
fuhrerPrime Minister.Tony M :
Absurd hyperbole again. Genocide is a term that can be used for things such as the Holocaust, or Armenia, or Rwanda. That is, the deliberate mass murde of a whole population of ‘undesirable’ people. To suggest that the criminally stupid actions of Tony Blair in joining Bush’s invasion equates to genocide, or that Bush’s motivations were equivalent to those of, say, Reinhardt Heydrich and Heimlich Himmler, is ridiculous. I think both Bush and Blair in any just world should be in the dock at the ICC by the way.
Or, for that matter, that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank constitutes “genocide”.
Quite recently the Americans have admitted they bombed a hospital, i think it was in Afghanistan.
America did not commit a war crime by bombing a hospital in Afghanistan
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/29/politics/u-s-airstrike-hospital-afghanistan-investigation/
Yes.
Anything to say on the Liveleak footage I posted RobG?
I have gut feeling about it Jim…..oh wait! It’s only indigestion.
Reuters reports that the most corrupt/traitorous French president in history denies it…
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-hollande-idUSKCN1011DD?il=0
… so obviously the French military aren’t really bombing the feck out of Syria.
And obviously people in the West don’t live in totally wacko societies where the truth resides somewhere in the 4th dimension.
“..the most corrupt/traitorous French president in history”
_______________
That’s quite a statement, RobG, which would seem to indicate great familiarity with, and knowledge of, French political history since the nineteenth century.
That being so, would you care to flesh out your claim with reference to other French Presidents and events since then?
Thanks.
Nice
http://uk.reuters.com/places/france
I thought it had been said, the man driving the lorry had pulled up and got out of the vehicle to shoot at police and by-standers, so why fifty bullets in an un-bloodstained lorry?
How many bullet holes in the lorry driver?
How many had passed through the lorry into the driver?
How many had not passed through the lorry before entering the driver?
if the answer ( not that we will be allowed to know)
is that none of the bullets passed through the lorry /windshield before entering the body of the driver, then added to no blood,
something is going on?
No lorry theory. It’s the only explanation.
ANON
let us just “imagine” it was untrue that soon after the running down of people in Nice,
it was claimed
“The driver pulled up, got out, then shot at police and by-standers”
So let us imagine that the truth was that the lorry driver was stopped by fifty bullets through the lorry/lorry windshield,
many hitting the intended target, the driver.
At no time did he stop the lorry or jump out the lorry.
Then we must assume after he was shot and became dead, the lorry crashed, at some speed.
The front would have sustained a huge impact.
The inside of the cab would be filled with blood, body parts and bullets and other lorry debris, the body of the driver would still be in the cab.
Now which is the truth.
1) driver stopped the lorry got out and was shot outside the lorry – before fifty bullets were shot in the cab.
2)driver was shot multiple times driving the lorry
which then crashed, utter mayhem inside lorry cab.
It can’t be both
Michael Norton :
http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=5bf_1468545131
This is all a ‘false flag’?
Not per-quarter, Alcyone. Paying per-post would concentrate everyone’s minds wonderfully, though. And impartially. Serial questioners and irrelevant spammers alike.
Your “views” here are not simply alternative, Rob. Frankly, it’s highly offensive BS.
Alcyone
If I were the Moderator I would be inclined to delete posts like that on sight.
Alternatively, establish a separate thread called “Miscellaneous Conspiracy Theories” and automatically move all such posts there.
Posts like those do not do the reputation of Craig’s blog any good at all. One has to wonder sometimes if the authors are not agents provocateur.
Michael, perhaps you’re coming round to the view that there is more than just one opinion in this world.
And there is such a thing as ‘evil’ (which is totally regardless of political opinion).
RobG :
What’s your opinion on this then?
http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=5bf_1468545131
The posts are getting a bit mixed-up here (as the spooks try to figure out what’s going on), but here’s my response:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/07/fox-gould-werritty-israel-please-write-mp/comment-page-3/#comment-614392
Well, let’s just say that the aftermarth has been “managed”
certain “things” have been going downhill in FRANCE for a few years.
Job insecurity, racial/religious tensions, political scandals and intrigue, extreme corruption, especially by some of the police,
assassinations, “suicides” by among others top policemen, lies/corruption in the mainly state-owned nuclear industries, which have immense ramifications for the FRENCH STATE.
Poisoning of African countryside for the extraction of yellow cake,
remember Rainbow Warrior?
What I am getting at is the French State is capable of massive deception and intrigue, you should believe they are certainly as capable as the Americans/British/Russians for false flagging.
Let’s not forget the American and French drone centers in the Sahel.
These are the drones that kill.
These are the French drones that protect the Uranium mining, on which France is so very reliant.
France like Britain, stays at the top table with America, Russia and China, partly because of their once massive empirs but also because France and Britain stay first strike countries.
France however is also one of the most highly nuclear-powered countries, something like 50 working reactors.
This Nuclear state is extremely dependent ( or thinks it is) on its nuclear capabilities.
Most of the nuclear businesses are essentially state owned but even those that are not, are kept afloat with state monies.
Most of the state owned nuclear businesses are essentially bankrupt.
FRANCE is hiding, in plain sight a monster with no end, that is bankrupting the country with its rapacious demands.
The writing has been on the wall for a long time but they do not want the populace to read the wall.
If they do not change, very soon, there will be no France left.
“Let’s not forget the American and French drone centers in the Sahel.
These are the drones that kill.”
____________
US drones fly from British soil to Libya etc, from USAF/RAF base Lakenheath Suffolk, and RAF Waddington, in Lincolnshire.
GCHQ supplies intelligence for US drone bombing, in the shape of specific targeting from RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire.
We in the UK love our drones almost as much as the US and Israel, they allow indiscriminate murder. Murders that I’d say have virtually no accountability.
One wonders if drone bombing, is used to knock corporate competition, in countries under attack from Western/Saudi/Israeli forces, I would imagine it would be.
Jim. my opinion is that it’s total bollocks.
These ‘victims’ are shown laying in the road, and thus must have been in the direct path of the huge lorry. If this were real all you would see would be body parts and entrails and gallons of blood.
There were huge crowds of people in Nice that evening, yet the only mobile phone footage we see is this sort of badly shot bullshit.
Likewise, every inch of the lorry’s route was covered by CCTV cameras. If they want to stop the ‘conspiracy theories’ why don’t they show some real footage of what occurred?
It seems like an obvious question, the sort of question that never gets answered in these ‘terrorist attacks’.
“If they want to stop the ‘conspiracy theories’ why don’t they show some real footage of what occurred?”
Because it would be in bad taste and help the terrorists in their objective of terrorising people. Next stupid question please.
– “If this were real all you would see would be body parts and entrails and gallons of blood”.
No. If this were a movie all you would see would be that etc… Real life looks less, er, dramatic than screen drama because it hasn’t been, er, dramatised.
No, Rob, you just ask stupid questions. Is your mission here to give Jim credibility? It’s just as plausible as your GCHQ theories.
RobG wrote: – “If they want to stop the ‘conspiracy theories’ why don’t they show some real footage of what occurred?”
They probably don’t give a shit about stopping your stupid theories BECAUSE THEY’RE COPING WITH THE AFTERMATH OF A FUCKING MASSACRE.
You’re acting like a highly unpleasant egotist, Rob.
Repeat: to quell ‘conspiracy loons’ such as myself, why don’t they just release real CCTV footage of the event (there were at least 18 CCTV cameras that would have captured it).
Clark says: “because it would be too terrible for us to see”.
That’s classic totalitarian stuff, straight out of 1984.
I definitely part company with you on this one. Russia Today showed graphic images of the lorry in Nice driving through the crowds and people with pure panic on their faces running away. It is not a Boston Marathon performance or the unmentionable 9/11.
Having said that it is alarming that those who started the war on Islam (Bush, Blair, Straw et al) have created a world in which madmen like this lorry-driver can go off the rails.
Clark
“No, Rob, you just ask stupid questions. Is your mission here to give Jim credibility?”
___________________
Or to make this blog in-credible??
Resident Dissident – Oh if only it were true that footage is suppressed for reasons of taste and to avoid publicizing the actions of terrorists.
Compare and contrast with the situation in the US where recordings of the police shooting suspects are widely distributed and widely commented upon. Why a cynical person may even suggest that these recordings act to provide encouragement to individuals to engage in revenge shootings of the police.
Right, that’s sorted than: we can’t talk about it, or, heaven forbid, show any images because it’s too gory and will further the ‘terrorists’ agenda; this while the MSM go into a complete orgy about it, with non-stop fear, fear, fear, and governments drop even more bombs on dusky-skinned people, and the ‘state of emergency’ is extended, taking away what little civil rights you had.
What-fecking-planet-are-you-people-on
What are you talking about, no bombs are dropped on “dusky-skinned people”.
No, it just doesn’t happen. Have you got proper interviews by the – supposed – bereaved? Crisis Actors, more likely!
I tell ya, the fake explosions of that “Shock and Awe” was just made-for-TV CGI nonsense. As if anyone died for real in the whole thing.
Did they really bury actual _bodies_ ? I don’t think so! Actors, dummies, et cetera.
No Rob – you’ve been totally had. There are no bombs dropped in the middle east, never have been. You’ve been punked big time pal.
This must be bullshit? Why? Well its PressTV that’s reporting it.
So it never happened the Knesset didn’t pass a vote, on Wednesday night, Netanyahu and 62 other parliamentarians were never there, its all just a illusion, a fanciful report concocted by drug induced FSB agents, who’d drank gallons of 100% proof vodka.
Well according to Jim it is.
“Israel’s parliament (Knesset) has passed a controversial bill that allows authorities to suspend legislators critical of the Tel Aviv regime’s policies toward Palestinians, with critics arguing that the law is meant to target opposition Arab lawmakers.”
“The law, which was supported by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was passed on Tuesday night following an intense debate with 62 votes in favor and 47 against. Several members were absent.”
“The legislation stipulates that the Knesset can kick out a parliamentarian for “incitement to racism and support of armed struggle” against the Israeli regime if a total of 90 members of the parliament vote in favor of the expulsion.”
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/07/20/476044/Israel-Knesset-parliament-legislation-expulsion-lawmakers-Palestinians
Incoherent and irrelevant drivel.
Agreed
Is your gut feeling telling you that Jim?
With such an informative gut Jim, it’s a wonder, why none of the security services around the world haven’t employed you yet? Or have they?
Intelligence services, like almost every organization in the world, are not looking for truth tellers or geniuses. They just want people who will go alomg with anything, especially not ask any probing questions.
I had a really smart friend while at graduate school who wanted to go into the metallurgy business, and kept taking tests for positions in it, and kept flunking the tests though he was always sure he had breezed through them.
I finally suggested that he not show his brains so much by messing up a few questions.
And guess what happened. He passed, and got the position with the Vanadium Corp.
Well it was George Carlin, in one of his comedy appearances who said, they just want people smart enough to work the machines, and nothing else. It has a ring of truth to it.
Also reported by Haaretz, Daily Mail, Voice of America…
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.732525
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=62+votes+in+favor+and+47+against
Lessons on how to use search engines only £25 per hour.
So Boris Johnson is attempting to play the serious politician, and to show he means business, he’s given the half million deposit back on his biography of William Shakespeare.
Johnson, who’s been thrown a bone in the shape Foreign Secretary, has in recent times through his column in the Telegraph newspaper, insulted just about every foreign dignitary in the book.
Johnson can’t even make his mind up, on what to do about Assad and the conflict in Syria. In December last year Johnson claimed Assad could help the West defeat ISIS, now Johnson claims Assad and his regime must go.
I often wonder if Theresa May is rubbing Boris Johnson’s nose in it, (over Brexit) by giving him the Foreign Secretary job, afterall he’ll need to come face to face with those dignitaries he insulted not so long ago.
Most of those dignitaries will probably see Boris Johnson as a clownish buffoon, who lied to pull Britain out of the EU.
Speaking of buffoonish behaviour, the Britsh imperial submarine, HMS Ambush, was itself ambushed by a lowly tanker ship today, near Gibraltar, thankfully the sub wasn’t carrying WMD’s. The collision reminds me of something out a Carry On movie, fitting really.
“Israel’s parliame“Israel’s parliament (Knesset) has passed a controversial bill that allows authorities to suspend legislators critical of the Tel Aviv regime’s policies toward Palestinians, with critics arguing that the law is meant to target opposition Arab lawmakers.”
“The law, which was supported by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was passed on Tuesday night following an intense debate with 62 votes in favor and 47 against. Several members were absent.”
“The legislation stipulates that the Knesset can kick out a parliamentarian for “incitement to racism and support of armed struggle” against the Israeli regime if a total of 90 members of the parliament vote in favor of the expulsion.” with critics arguing that the law is meant to target opposition Arab lawmakers.”
“The law, which was supported by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was passed on Tuesday night following an intense debate with 62 votes in favor and 47 against. Several members were absent.”
“The legislation stipulates that the Knesset can kick out a parliamentarian for “incitement to racism and support of armed struggle” against the Israeli regime if a total of 90 members of the parliament vote in favor of the expulsion.”
____________________________
The Iranian state broadcaster “PressTV” could do with a couple of competent sub-editors by the look of it.
The following refers:
“… allows authorities to suspend legislators critical of the Tel Aviv regime’s policies toward Palestinians…” on the one hand
and
” can kick out a parliamentarian for “incitement to racism and support of armed struggle” against the Israeli regime….”
Do I detect a slight difference – perhaps even a contradiction – between those two squibs? 🙂
Quality of debate’s good tonight, eh?
Absolutely first class, cutting stuff. Couldn’t possibly have it any other way around here.
In otherwords, don’t talk about anything that really matters; just follow the bullshit line pumped out by the mainstream media.
Bravo for critical thinking!
Talking about critical thinking, do you consider it wise to leap upon the most ludicrous explanation the ‘Intertubes’ cough out, call everyone out as GCHQ agents if they find it less than convincing, and ignore a 56-gallon drum of solid evidence in favour of a dodgy pipette’s 1 μL offering of dubious questions that someone, somewhere, managed to squeeze out?
After all, death rays from Mars might have caused all those fatalities, and that lorry was dragged along in its wake by the magnetic pull after the fact – didn’t you even bother considering that?
What about one of Trowbridge’s famous transponders – perhaps the lorry was fitted with one, taken over by those rascals at Langley.
Maybe the scumbag driving the lorry actually had implants, I read about them in The Gap series by Stephen Donaldson, and they controlled his brain. Why isn’t that being talked about – it’s an obvious cover-up. Black-ops fingerprints all over it.
It could also be a mass hallucination, caused by the LSD the CIA put in that cheap French wine they were giving away free at the event. Mass hysteria can account for a lot.
Didn’t you notice there was nobody in the lorry at all, apart from a blow-up doll with a Muslim-style moustache pencilled in? Obviously, it was on autopilot.
Those weren’t bullet-holes in the windscreen, any fool could see that. It’s a new sort of ventilation being tested to cope with global warming.
Anyway – don’t we realise that a lorry causing death and injury to people by driving into a crowd at speed is just silly, it could simply never happen?
Over to you, Rob.
Those eight Turkish military men who fled to Greece will not have to face prison time. A Greek court gave them only suspended sentences for illegal entry. The Greek authorities will decide later on their request for asylum. Greek court hands suspended sentence to Turkish officers who fled coup.
Any news on the 14 missing Turkish naval ships?
Not that I have seen, but the obvious, quick solution would be to go to a port in Syria.
It seems inconceivable that their whereabouts are unknown. The truth must be too uncomfortable for everyone but what that is I don’t know.
I had wondered about Crimea or Greec, but hadn’t thought Syria, which would have interesting implications, but we shall have to wait and see.
What is position at Incirlik. Why is power off? Accident or turned off? What does it mean that airspace is closed? It’s not closed to US & other NATO air forces – is it?
Think that Erdogan has a most trusted subordinate running the base.
The previous commander who is facing almost certain execution shut down the electrical system to sabotage any American response, but they frustrated it by having an emergency power source.
And a no fly zone has shut down incoming and outgoing flights there.
Thanks, I think no fly is open now, but still on generators for power. Is there a power shortage in Turkey, or just at base?
Ps I’m posting too quickly. Yes I agree. Good night.
While your search bar’s power has obviously been turned off, a narrative regardinbg US involvement is being created. It centres on the use of tanker aircraft from Incirlik to refuel ‘rebel’ F-16s operating from other, purely Turkish bases. The implication is that these were US aircraft; the truth is that they were not. They were Turkish, and would have operated without the need for permission from the Americans, let alone orders. This refers:
https://theaviationist.com/tag/turkish-air-force/
Interesting sideline on why Erdogan wasn’t shot down in his Gulfstream en route to Istanbul: they knew he was coming, but they couldn’t be certain as he’d spoofed his ADS-B transponder to look like a commercial flight. There’s a snag with this version: TC-ATA had disguised itself as a nonexistent Turkish Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Chicago…and this information would have been available to anyone near its actual flight path. Think I’ll knit myself a new tinfoil hat….
I hear there weren’t any laser cannon involved, and that no US submarines set off earthquakes on the N. Anatolian Fault. Loving you too, pissant.
If you were replying to fwi. why didn’t you so indicate rather than alluding to my claims about how the National Reconnaissance Office’s lacrosse laser satellites caused the devastating Sichuan earthquake of May 2008, and one of the Pentagon’s special attack submarines, most likely the USS Connecticut, caused the Fukushima disaster by overdoing the Tohoku earthquake?
You really are a tin-foil loon.
ROFLMAO. * wipes tears of mirth from trousers*
I was, incidentally, responding to fwl’s question. Perhaps you thought it was all about you. It wasn’t.
Are you able to undercut Clarke on search engine tuition?
What do you take me for, a global entrepreneur? Please contact Zevul Global Enquiry Solutions (Tel Aviv and Panama) for our recommendations on the resource package best tailored to your needs.
The bully boys (and girls) of the PLP promise a “war of attrition”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-election-jeremy-corbyn-s-critics-will-wage-war-of-attrition-to-force-him-out-a7149086.html
Ha-Ha! These are the same people who failed to plan for the aftermath of the Iraq War and now they are pretending that they are “ard”?
Oh please give us a rest, you bunch of wankers…
And even worse are the Daily Mail. Just look at this garbage:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3701122/Kalashnikov-rifle-ammunition-French-police-basement-man-Bastille-Day-attacker-sent-text-messages-minutes-massacre-five-suspects-appear-court.html
“An accomplice told the Nice Bastille Day killer to ‘load the truck with 2,000 tonnes of iron, release the brakes and I will watch’ months before the terror attack which killed 84 people.”…
So to begin with, it was an 18 tonne truck, so the maximum load it would take is around ten tonnes. To carry a 2,000 tonne load you would need a train containing about 30 fully loaded wagons, considering the gross weight of a modern hopper wagon is about 104 tonnes.
Duh!!!
French Tonne Crashes on International Markets?
Turkey suspends European Convention on Human Rights in wake of attempted coup. This declaration of a state of emergency in Turkey is sounding like the Reichstag Fire Decree in Germany in 1933.
Didn’t Erdogan say this to be Turkey’s 9/11?
Speaking of 9/11, if any gongs or prizes were awarded for transparently lying in a press conference, GW Bush would surely have to be at the top of the list of nominees.
See this video:
Dick Cheney and George Bush should be made to testify publicly about 9/11, under oath, with the idea that they will be held accountable for lying. It is LONG overdue.
US used it, UK used it, France is using it, Belgium used it, ……… Turkey is catching up using it.
keeping the fear at such a levels that wearing long coats is now a trigger for a total shut down of the the city centres
I’ve been in touch with a good friend in Turkey, political science professor only recently returned after decades in exile, a youthful communist who’d suffered torture for his political leanings. He sounds pretty chilled about things. I was surprised and very relieved to hear from him, I feared the worst.
Jim, I’m glad of your good news.
Cheers Clark ?
Hardly, Lysias. Historians (other than some revisionist ones, of course) concur that the Reichstag fire was started by a Dutch loony and former Communist acting alone. The state of emergency in Turkey results from an act of government.
Habbs :
Lysias is talking about the decree not the fire. He’s suggesting that the coup attempt was the ‘Reichstag fire’.
Jonathan Cook is always perceptive whether writing about Palestine or the UK. Here he writes about the underlying reality of the repeated anti-Corbyn moves.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/07/why-corbyn-so-terrifies-the-guardian/#more-63419
What Corbyn, and the Labour Party, has to deal with is a caste of professional organisers and publicists who are not merely redundant but an expensive handicap, in a society in which instant communications and the internet make the Alistair Campbells, McNichols and Mandelsons irrelevant. What we are witnessing is a desperate last ditch struggle by the apparatchiki to preserve their jobs and privileges. And they are using every Stalinist tactic in the book: banning meetings, purging the membership, banning opponents etc.
They are, of course, being supported by the “big donors” because without professionals to support (one of them gave four hundred thousand pounds to Tom Watson’s ‘office’) they would have greatly diminished power.
It is no coincidence that almost all the MPs who voted against Corbyn came from the ranks of the professional political caste which has made them rich and secure for life. Unless the system is changed and the party membership take control of the selection and nomination of MPs.
Of course in a very general sense one can understand that the ‘world'( or at least how we experience it has changed and that change has created a ‘caste of professional organisers’ but according to the theory, these professionals (communicators/politicians) are ‘redundant’ or irrelevant, due to modern communications. But that cannot really be the case.
Blair and Campbell were products of that culture of instant communication. OK they were ‘early adopters’ of the technological methods(pre twitter that allow this fast communication bit one of the striking things about the (for instance-Iraq war rhetoric and dodgy intelligence) is that it was seen through by so many people.(Actually there were millions). At no time in history has there been such an large opposition to some major event. In other words these ‘professionals’ were not very effective. If you think about the Vietnam war and the widespread opposition to it, that opposition did not materialise in numbers until well into the conduct of the war-and my memory of to is that it was not until the Nixon era (many years in) that public dissent became an influence for change.
Of course ‘early adopters’ have an advantage and get away with exploiting loopholes and the deficits of understanding in many people, but while irritating, and potentially morally reprehensible, that kind of behaviour is not exclusive to people like Campbell and many people regard that as just the nature of the activity.
I also noticed the donation to Tom Watson’s office, and like you i am not a great fan of Tom Watson but I also cannot think of him as some beneficiary of the professional elite. The problem is that ‘professionalism’ in politics, as in other activities, has advantages and benefits. These advantages are very clear when it comes to things like wiring up a house -purely a technical matter-but this advantage is less clear in other activities which are less technical and more human based-dependinhg on rapport, trust and communication and all the other ‘soft’ skills that are so much more difficult to refine and develop. i mean things like politics, teaching and diplomacy.
@ Bevin – a good link to the Jonathan Cook article. I liked:
“But whatever his critics claim, Corbyn isn’t just a relic of past politics. Despite his age, he is also a very modern figure. He exudes a Zen-like calm, a self-awareness and a self-effacement that inspires those who have been raised in a world of 24-hour narcissism.”
Too true. It continues to astonish me that Corbyn resists any and all efforts to provoke reciprocal personal attacks on his opponents. They are so desperate Angela Eagle is now trying to associate Corbyn with alleged instances of threats, insults and damage to property. It’s as logical as Corbyn claiming Eagle is behind the death threats he has received since becoming leader.
It is the death throws of the right in Labour. They cannot beat the movement the party has become again. The only question that remains is how far they will go in destroying it.
” Corbyn… exudes a Zen-like calm”
____________________
Catatonic, more like.
As a lifelong socialist, Habba, you will, quite naturally be impatient as you wait for Jeremy to rally you, and all the other Labour Party militants to the electoral battle.
“Catatonic”: you wish.
“Death, destruction , terrorism .. and weakness.” Trump’s accurate verdict on the neo-con relic, Hillary Clinton. RIP
A report in 21st of July edition of Le Figaro newspaper states that France’s anti-terrorist executive (sous-direction anti-terroriste- SDAT) has ordered Nice’s urban surveillance authorities to destroy all CCTV footage of the Nice attacks on Bastille Day…
http://www.gearoidocolmain.org/en/french-government-orders-destruction-cctv-videos-nice-attacks/
What is their reasoning?
One can think of different reasonings but what is their public reasoning, would it be to prevent that footage from getting into the hands of IS,
to prevent IS from using that footage for recruiting.
BFMTV just reported (in passing) that there are at least 4 different versions of what exactly took place when the truck passed through the barriers in the direction of the Promenade, there’s the police version, the Mairie, the eye-witnesses, and someone else that I’ve forgotten. . . the cctv being cleansed presumably allows for narrative control & avoids potential future legal challenges.
BFMTV further reported that the EU is concerned about the delaration of State of Emergency in Turkey, they didn’t comment on the rather more local État-de. . .(other than to say refusal to allow your car to be searched is 3 months of reclusion in prison)
BFMTV also mentioned that the board of EDF meet today to decide yes/no for Hinckley Point nuclear elephant
(yes, it is raining in sud-France!)
Perhaps it’s to save the bereaved from further distress.
Standard practice is of course to retain all evidence so the case can be reopened in the future if necessary. Destroying evidence never reflects well on those responsible.
That CCTV footage is evidence of a crime, and if the footage is destroyed that, too, is a crime.
Head on down to your local gendarmerie to report it then, Rob. It’s your civic duty, after all.
He can’t, Glenn because he probably doesn’t speak French.
Authorities in Nice have rejected the request.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/22/nice-officials-reject-request-to-delete-truck-attack-surveillance-footage
It might’ve been an attmept to cover up shortcomings in the security arrangements.
Bastille Day is a major public holiday in France and events like this attract large crowds so if this was a “false flag” with crisis actors how were the general public kept away without anybody noticing? Social media would be crawling with people complaining that they were turned away because they didn’t have the French equivalent of an Equity card.
I see that the Guardian are pushing the ‘jihadi propaganda’ line (citing an unnamed source).
With regard to anybody noticing, I would say that the Boston marathon bombing was the first really blatant one, and that took place in the midst of a big crowd.
Who again didn’t notice being barred from entering or the pre-mutilated pre-blooded “vic-sims” being carried onto position.
In the hours after 9/11, the FBI confiscated all the security footage of gas stations and the like around the Pentagon. That is said to be the reason that there is only that footage that the U.S. government later released of whatever it was that hit the Pentagon that day.
Nice, FRANCE truck attack: Five suspected accomplices charged
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36859312
The four men and one woman, aged between 22 and 40, are accused of helping driver Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel prepare the terror attack.
One of the suspects returned to the scene of the attack the following day to film the aftermath, French prosecutor Francois Molins said.
Lahouaiej-Bouhle killed 84 people when he drove into a crowd on Bastille Day.
He received logistical support for the attack from the five suspects, Mr Molins said, and had planned the attack for several months.
Three of the suspects, identified as Franco-Tunisians Ramzi A and Mohamed Oualid G, and a Tunisian named Chokri C, were charged as accomplices in “murder by a group with terror links”.
An Albanian man named as Artan and a women who is a French-Albanian dual national, identified as Enkeldja, are suspected of providing Lahouaiej-Bouhlel with a pistol and were charged with “breaking the law on weapons in relation to a terrorist group”.
All five will be held in custody, Mr Molins said.
from BBC
Two police officers opened fire when he mounted the kerb, but he simply accelerated and then zigzagged for up to 2km (1.25 miles), leaving a trail of carnage.
Police finally managed to bring the lorry to a halt, raking the driver’s cabin with gunfire and killing Lahouaiej-Bouhlel.
More than 300 people were wounded in the attack.
France has extended its state of emergency until the end of January 2017. It gives the police extra powers to carry out searches and to place people under house arrest.
So this BBC piece goes against early reports that the driver of the killer lorry, stopped the lorry, got out and started shooting at police officers and stander-by.
The strong implication is that he was killed while still driving the lorry?
Let us say, for the moment, we go with the current report in the BBC website.
That would mean
that the driver did not stop the lorry and get out of the lorry to shoot at the police officers and also shoot at passers-by.
So if any police officers and stander-by have actually been shot, they must have been shot by others?
Those others would probably be people working for the FRENCH STATE?
Why would there be four different versions doing the rounds.
O.K. it could be four differently positioned witnesses?
If the minister of the interior is still in Nice,
it would be refreshing if he could give the government official account of what happened,
I doubt they will allow that.
Like I said earlier, may not be false flag
but the “aftermarth” is in FRENCH STATE management mode.
Wiki account seems to cover lots
mixing and mashing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_attack
This is enlightened comment from, Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Israel. The analogy based on Kuhn’s theory of suppression of new sience because of vested interests with the establishment’s concern in stamping on the progress that Jeremy Corbyn wishes to establish is classic.
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2016-07-22/why-corbyn-so-terrifies-the-guardian/
But it’s complete garbage, Newtonian mechanics has not been supplanted by the arrival of quantum mechanics. They describe physics in two different spheres, Newtons laws are as applicable and true as the day he discovered them, and quantum mechanics describes only the world of the very small. That’s my laymans understanding at least, correct me if I’m wrong.
That’s generally correct, Jim. Newtonian physics are fully applicable to the observable universe except in the realm of very tiny and very large quantities – extremes. Everything we are able to comprehend and observe, in other words.
For the exceedingly small, and vanishingly tiny moments of time, quantum mechanics comes into play. At the other end of the scale, for the exceedingly fast and large, Einstein’s relativity would be more appropriate to understand and predict the situation.
Been a while since I studied it properly, though. Clark keeps much more up to date.
Is the God of small things hiding in the other 6 0r 7 dimensions inherrent in String Theory.
IOW things we don’t fully understand and term as ‘mystical’? I don’t know, but then we humans don’t know vey much, do we? But people come on here with with their chests expanded and behave like apes that would like you to believe they know everything!!?
Yet, IOW again, is it not as important, perhaps even moreso, to acknowledge what we don’t know and given the infinity of The Multiverse, we may never know.
Ahh… you’re straying well beyond whatever I might laughingly consider my personal field of knowledge here 🙂
I think you missed the point. It was not about whether the new science was right or wrong particularly, as I understood it, but because university departments, research establishments and departments already had lucrative science going on there was no room for entryism, and it took time to introduce new ideas because of those with vested interests in the old. The analogy with what is going on in the Labour Party is sound.
I know that John, my point is that someone who has so little understanding of the basis upon which he builds his ideas doesn’t really enhance the credibility of his thesis. And he was suggesting that Newtons laws had been supplanted, even I as a non-scientist know that’s complete rubbish.
Jonathan Cook makes good use of Kuhn’s writing – that’s the important bit.
Grief, where to start on the rest of this confusion?
Kuhn’s theory wasn’t really about “suppression of new science because of vested interests” (for instance the “suppression of Tesla” conspiracy theorists). Kuhn made very valid observations about sudden acceptance of formerly marginal theory (plate tectonics is a good example), but the unwillingness of the scientific community to abandon older theory is more to do with the success of old theory up until that time, than it is about justifying previous research funding. When you have a framework as simple, powerful and elegant as Newton’s laws, you’d need damn good reasons to switch to something much more complex, inconvenient and counter-intuitive like quantum physics, so for a while many theorists tried to patch up the old theory rather than adopt the new one. It takes a decisive test to force the issue – for quantum physics the theoretical possibility of a test came from Bell’s inequality, which was tested much later by Alain Aspect’s experiments.
The “New physics” (quantum physics and relativity) don’t really contradict classical physics such as Newton’s laws of motion. Actually they confirm them while simultaneously providing an explanation for their applicability. For instance, relativity can be applied to objects with velocities anywhere between rest, right up to light speed – which is the entire range of velocities – and apply anywhere in the universe from essentially empty intergalactic space right up to the event horizon of a black hole – which is the entire range of gravitational strength. But most of these complete ranges do not exist anywhere in our solar system, let alone here on Earth. In our solar system and for parsecs around it, velocities of material bodies are all a small fraction of light-speed, and the strength of gravity is a small fraction of that found near a black hole….
…Well, if you take the equations of relativity, but constrain the ranges such that velocity and gravitational strength are both very small, the equations can be greatly simplified because various terms tend to zero, and guess what you get? Newton’s laws of gravitation and motion. So far from contradicting Newton’s laws, relativity actually confirms them and places them within a broader explanatory framework.
The same goes for quantum physics. All of reality seems to be subject to the laws of quantum physics, verified to our limits of accuracy (currently about 1 part in 10 to the power of 20) There are macroscopic quantum effects (anyone can do many of the “two slits” type experiments), and indeed some seriously weird things can be done under laboratory conditions but they’re easily disturbed and hard to set up and to all intents and purposes, in everyday life, you can act like Newtonian mechanics is “true” and your calculations will nearly always be within your limits of accurate measurement. But we do live in an apparently quantum universe, and effects as macroscopic as photosynthesis are inexplicable within the classical framework.
String theory is yet to bear fruit, and I suspect it will yield no more than a tangle.
(tee hee) …so maybe there is a small subdomain within the entire range of all possible economic conditions in which the principles of neoliberalism really would apply and the “trickle-down” effect actually would enrich one and all, but population growth and technological progress have long since expanded the the field, rendering insignificant the zone within which neoliberalism remains ethically acceptable.
String-tangling theory has long since been shown to apply only to complexes of front companies for offshore accounts held on islands of vanishingly small population and area. Very large quantities can be “borrowed” but, in accordance with the uncertainty principle, the stability of such funds is inversely proportional to their magnitude.
Jon Lansman is a big fan of string tangling theory apparently :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/12060177/The-cheerleader-for-Corbyn-who-supports-sons-schemes-to-sell-off-homeless-hostels.html
Hmmm, Jon Lansman director of Momentum, and his brother Stephen’s reportedly unethical property business. It seems most odd (sibling rivalry on steroids, perhaps?), but I’m much too cynical to take any media article at face value – the Telegraph publishes Delingpole, for instance. I’ll let it pan out and see what happens. It doesn’t reflect upon Corbyn.
God, Delingpole, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as horrible. First came across him attempting to deny climate change, arguing the toss with top scientists in the most repulsively arrogant manner. Ugh!
Cheers for the lucid explanation Clark, that were a reet good read! What do you make of the abandoning of Jeremy’s cause by the much heralded luminaries of ‘the dismal science’ though?
And do you seriously think JC can become as popular with the wider public as he is with the multitudes of the faithful? I just don’t see it myself.
I say let’s give Jeremy Corbyn a chance by supporting him. We won’t see him at anything like his best until the PLP stop undermining him and he has party support behind him. We keep hearing the slur that he’s “unelectable”, yet he’s attracting huge numbers of new members; the criticism that they’re all hard-left bullies is in direct contradiction of my own experience. It’s over three years until the next general election so the relevant question right now is about being in Opposition, and with so many Labour MPs supporting war and Tory causes, by God we could do with some opposition!
Corbyn’s problem, obviously, is the mass media. The Overton window has been shifting rightwards for decades. Of course mass media organisations are a critical point in any democracy, and for this and other reasons they are always targeted for manipulation by those who would disempower as many people as possible (have you read Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science? I recommend it). The main manipulation used is simple omission, and where that can’t be done, distraction, the sowing of confusion, innuendo and ridicule.
Opinion polls show that many policies such as greater public control over utilities, particularly the railways, are already popular among the public, so sympathy for his policies already exists. The Leader of the Opposition cannot simply be ignored by the mass media. Corbyn would give a voice to the socialist tendencies latent in the population that have been marginalised by decades of slow movement to the Right, which has now manifested very worryingly in the racist undertones of this Brexit débâcle. Whatever happens in the UK between now and the next general election, Jeremy Corbyn leading the Opposition would extend the Overton window leftwards, and that would provide much needed room to manoeuvre for the Labour party, no matter who leads at the next election.
I almost wish I shared your optimism, the whole project seems doomed to me though. The right-wing bias in the media is just a given fact of life, it’s not as if this barrier is new obstacle, why can’t the newly enthused faithful see that Jeremy is a lamb to the slaughter for Fleet St? He’s a Godsend for the Sun and others of its ilk.
But it’s not just that, I did ask about what you thought of the recent abandonment by the economic all-stars supposedly brought on board the JC train, Blanchflower, Picketty and Stiglitz? Hardly a ringing endorsement of their faith in he and his team’s economic credibility? And I know it sounds snide and picky, but the sort of hypocrisy from the likes of Abbott, Milne and Lansman does stick in my craw. I know it’s a kind of smearing of JC by association, but the old adage of judging by the company one keeps is still true.
Anyway, as you say, he’s a cert for leader of the opposition so who knows? And maybe the latent socialism you see will be stirred by example.
Yep, the Ben Goldacre book is great, I’ll have to give it another perusal!
Jim, please link articles by Blanchflower, Picketty and Stiglitz. Thanks for your appreciation of my physics comment.
There must be something behind the popular wave of support for Corbyn. For me it’s his rejection of the constant proxy war for hydrocarbons, and the lies that support it. Honesty is a big influence for me.
Current economic orthodoxy is dismal, and I think a result of leaving so much to the market. Look at the great advances after WWII; they happened because governments made them happen. I’m no fan of UK nuclear weapons nor nuclear power reactors, especially pressurised, water cooled ones, but I have enormous respect for the speed of development of nuclear tech in the post-war period, along with advances in aviation, space exploration and satellite technology. All of that was achieved, multiple times in multiple countries without powerful computers or the Internet! These days, with all our apparent advantages and a much larger, more widely educated population, we can’t even build a simple nuclear power station in under a decade and every such project goes way over budget. We seem to be going backwards.
Someone needs to take a lead. Look at this awful proxy war for oil. It’s obvious what’s happening and why; between them the Great Powers of Russia and the UK/Western empire have the major hydrocarbon reserves surrounded, and they vie for position on the ground in the Middle East:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/map.jpg
It’s an utter drag on true economic progress and development. People talk about “the energy crisis” but the mass media never mention the importance of liquid fuel. It’s the only viable mobile power source of sufficiently high energy density. Mention oil and everyone thinks of cars. I tear my hair out! We can get by without cars, but not without combine harvesters, tractors and air freight. Run ’em on batteries? No way; little domestic electric cars barely have adequate range. When the harvest starts in the field out the back of mine, each combine will be burning forty litres of diesel per hour, tended by three tractors burning twenty an hour each. It’s only a little farm. We’re dependent.
If we couldn’t suck hydrocarbons out of the ground we would have to synthesize them, but I don’t see any country building that infrastructure. Why? Well, it’s cheaper and makes more profit more quickly to fight over the fossil fuel reserves, especially as wars are fought with taxpayers’ money but the profits are reaped privately.
Corporations have grown in size and reach and now exceed all but the largest governments in scale. The governments used to command the corporations, but now it’s the other way around – that governments even consider signing away their remaining power to monstrosities like TTIP and TPP is proof of this.
Democratic systems have to take back control, gather tax and spend it for the common good, which is what used to happen in the heyday of progress when governments were more economically powerful than corporate concerns. If humanity don’t manage that, our phenomenal growth and development over the last century seems bound to collapse as the hydrocarbons run out and the atmosphere overloads with CO2.
Regarding mass media – it’s not simply that it’s right wing which, as you say, has always been the case. It’s what E. F. Schumacher called Giantism, corporate concerns consuming each other until only a few giants are left, which also drives the scale problem which is overwhelming governments. Competition no longer functions as a check on their distortion; in many cases a single media organisation runs many “brands” to appeal to different sections of the population:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership
These organisation all hold one objective in common – that massive corporate concerns should remain more powerful than governments. And it’s no use looking to the goodness of individuals. The scale difference between a person and a giant corporation is sufficient for corporations to use, dominate or eliminate individuals like an organism controls the individual cells of which it is composed. I wrote the following years ago as an e-mail to a New Age friend; I should really rewrite it but it describes the process adequately:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/corporate-behaviour.html
This is why I’m supporting Corbyn. He’s the only one who stands for the principle that the people’s democratic systems should control the private sector. All the others on both sides whinge that they have to accept the dictates of the market. Well that isn’t how the great post-war progress was achieved, and it isn’t how humanity will avert disaster.
The corporate media giants are never going to support him on that, so it’s up to us. I’ve started campaigning, as I hope you can see. We have the Internet now…
Just read both of your posts Clark, cheers for them. It’s pretty late I should be in bed, but just a quick google on Blanchflower & Picketty’s leave-taking here :
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/economist-piketty-ex-boe-adviser-blanchflower-quit-corbyns-economic-advisory-council-1568061
Stiglitz never even turned up for a single meeting of the Labour economic policy making team, even though he (with the other two) had been loudly and proudly welcomed on board by John McDonnell.
I’m no economist but I was under the impression that even the IMF has recently made public statements disparaging the inequalities and unfairness resulting from the last decades of the neoliberal project. They’ve taken Picketty’s analysis onboard and agree with his conclusions. How could they not? No serious economist has, as far as I’m aware, made any serious dent in his by now world-famous conclusions.
But it’s Picketty who has declined to continue supporting McDonnells team. What is anyone to conclude?
Anyway, time for bed…
Clark: I also appreciate your attempts at our collective edification on the matters of physics. But I wasn’t sure about your statement on relativity theory operating “anywhere from rest right up to light speed”. I thought it dealt mainly on the high end of energy, speed, and mass. Are you saying it is equally in tune at the quantum level too?
Anyway, about media. I was struck by this sentence within an article the other day:
“The media’s function in a democracy is to enable the public to make informed choices, which in turn requires laying bare the human consequences of policy decisions.” *
That is the entire problem. Media now serves to meet a charter, but only if entirely free from government influences, when owned by the state; or to make money and suit the agenda of their owners.
While peddling their agenda, very much against the interests of the readers, they must keep them entertained. They achieve this attention by providing gossip – a highly prized resource in homo sapiens.
There is very little incentive to upset the status quo, while living at the top end of society. Particularly if you’re making good money in entertainment, which is pretty much all there is these days.
* http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2016/2/26/goodnight-and-good-luck.html
People found the truth too real, too depressing. They’d rather be entertained. And hear some gossip.
Oops, my comment, July 23, at 00:31, fourth paragraph should read:
– “…Great Powers of Russia and the US/Western empire…” – though the UK certainly figures in the US-etc alliance.
Jim, thanks for the replies and the links; more links to “New Economics” articles would be appreciated. Yes, it’s late; I’ll pick up on this thread again tomorrow. Again, let’s not be too impatient, eh? All sorts of things could have happened with these economists – ultimately, they are just three individuals, and everything has been in great flux recently. Let’s see what pans out as things settle down.
Goodnight, or good morning, depending…
“In the countries widely admired on this blog Mr Cook would be in gaol – or dead.”
You mean in the USA? I doubt it. Or the UK? Unlikely.
Oh, but you mean in Russia. The Security Services just cannot give up the Cold War can they? It was so much fun and so stimulating for the personal fortunes of drones playing minor roles in the massive protection racket of Defence.
I see that the now censored FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was mentioned in the comments upthread. In the days immediately following 9/11/2001 Ms Edmonds worked as a translator for the FBI specializing in translating Turkish and Farsi. Just thought I would pass on that to avoid the censorship imposed on her by US authorities after becoming a whistleblower she has written a “fictional” account describing how NATO’s Operation Gladio black-op of the 1960s to 1980s was updated and morphed into its current form which she refers to as Gladio B. Ms Edmonds work of “fiction” comes in the form of a novel called “The Lone Gladio.”
An excerpt from a basic synopsis of the plot:
More at: http://www.thelonegladio.com/
(You can also order the book in hardcopy or e-format at the above link or at Amazon)
Here is a video review of The Lone Gladio by James Corbett of The Corbett Report:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkPJ1Kh-o_A
Excerpt from a reader review at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Lone-Gladio-Novel-Sibel-Edmonds-ebook/dp/B00NQ6BK68/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469186248&sr=8-1&keywords=the+lone+gladio+sibel+edmonds&refinements=p_72%3A2661618011#navbar
“The Lone Gladio” has as one of its characters a member of the Republican House leadership who is blackmailed for his sexual misdeeds. This was before it was revealed how former House Speaker Hastert was being blackmailed.
So who else has written to their MP with regards to the topic?
An absent Adam Werritty, the sad reappointment of Liam Fox to the Government front bench and still unresolved matters of access to PPS’s and secret meetings at the MOD for someone without any security clearance.
Mind, if you are used to being abused party politicians who rather cheat than offer you a proportional fair vote, if you are used to being lied to at the doorstep and pushed around by ever more tiers of party political representatives, PCC’s and now mayors of devolved (centralised) regions. It looks like Osborne’s dream of devolution is fading in the hot winds over Easy Anglia.
Following on “fwl” at 21h37:
“Any news on the 14 missing Turkish naval ships?”
or, alternatively, following on “Lysias” at 20h10:
“Any news on the whereabouts of the missing ships of the Turkish navy?”
my question is :
“Anything new on the Turkish warships whose whereabouts were and may still bel unknown?”
Freedom of movement, establishment and residence within the Member States of the European Union does not – contrary to what some might believe – mean that deportation is a dead letter.
Freedom of movement within the EU also does not appear to mean freedom of movement in any normal sense of that phrase.
I understand that Danish authorities have reestablished border controls on the Germany/Denmark border. I am sure I read somewhere that Orban is building some kind of fence along parts of the Hungarian border and Hollande has made remarks regarding the necessity of securing French borders. All of this would seem to conflict materially with any freedom of movement doctrine.
Loony
Let me help you if I may.
1/. Schengen is one of the practical expressions of the freedom of movement/establishment/residence concept. It is a facility (an individual may cross an intra-Schengen border without stopping or identifying himself); freedom of movement in the Treaty sense existed before the Schengen agreement and would not be effected as a legal right to be exercised concretely by EU citizens even if the entire Schengen agreement were to be scrapped. You must not confuse a Treaty principle with a practical facility, nor reduce the former to the latter.
2/. The Schengen Agreement allowsfor the temporary re-introduction of border controls, at the discretion of the Member State(s) for certain reasons (mainly for internal security, defined quite generously). But, to repeat, by taking your example – the fact that a EU citizen entering Denmark from Germany might be asked to identify himself in no way impinges on the right of that citizen to visit, take up residence or work in Denmark.
3/. The fence you are talking about is probably on the Hungarian border with Serbia? If that is correct, then it has nothing to do with the Schengen Agreemen, except insofar as one of the conditions for being allowed to join the Schengen Area is that the candidate State has to show that it has adequately secured its “external” borders.. You will be aware, I assume, that Serbia is not in the Schengen Area (nor, for that matter, in the EU itself).
4/. Re President Hollande’s declarations, it might be better if you waited to see what – if anything – he means by that.
I hope I have now demonstrated to your entire satisfaction that your assertion “all of this would seem to conflict materially with any freedom of movement doctrin” is inacurate and incorrect..
We can learn something of Hollande’s intentions by paying attention to his actions and words.
Thus he has called up in excess of 10,000 French reservists and has said that he intends using these troops to secure French borders. France only has land borders with Switzerland and fellow Schengen members.
The foregoing actions, justifications and context would all appear to any reasonable person as conflicting materially with any freedom of movement doctrine.
Presumably your reference to the securing of external borders is some kind of bad taste joke. The EU (principally in the form of Germany) has done everything it can short of imposing direct rule to undermine the security of the Italian, Greek and Spanish external borders.
The Spanish have erected a fence around their enclave in Melilla. More accurately they have erected 3 fences as the composite fence comprises 3 separate barriers. In their wisdom the EU has issued an opinion that in order to reach Spain it is only necessary for would be fence climbers to surmount the first hurdle.
Postscript: as I said, deportation is still available to national authorities – to be used sparingly, of course (indeed, it would be dangerous and absurd if it were not available).
Perhaps I should add to what I wrote a while ago on a maximum term for MPs.
It is notorious that Ministers are overworked because in addition to their ministerial duties (running a department and its policies) they also have to act as MPs in the House of Commons and as constituency MPs. That cannot be conducive to the optimal exercise of all three of those functions.
Now, this could be remedied by a system where, at election times, each established political party puts forward its candidate for a constituency TOGETHER WITH a “substitute” or “alternate”.
Should MP Joe Bloggs be appointed a minister, his place as an MP in the HoC would be assumed by that substitute/alternate.
Minister Bloggs would then be free to run his ministry; however, he would still appear in the HoC when the latter is discussing matters falling within his remit and for which he is responsible (this takes care of the question of accountability to Parliament).
Whereas Mr Bloggs would not have a right to vote in divisions, the balance of parties in the HoC as per the outcome of the election would be maintained by the presence of the substitutes/alternates who would have that right.
+++++++++++++++++++++
It is ideas like this which deserve an airing rather than witterings about how democracy functioned in ancient Athens.
Oh yes. Let’s double or triple the cost of an already very expensive parliamentary system.
Well it wouldn’t do anythiing of the sort.
It might increase the cost by about a third (on the basis that over the life span of a parliament about one third of the MPs from the governing party end up on the govt payroll.
Against that one would have to weigh the likely benefits of ministers being able to devote far more of their time to running their departments properly.
Think!
‘It is ideas like this which deserve an airing rather than witterings about how democracy functioned in ancient Athens.’
Yellow rain on both of your Methuselah houses of cards, and lots of it. If our democracy loving MP’s dont want to offer the electorate a fair proportional vote, when their system so clearly has fckued up for all to see at the last GE, then they will have to turn to Erdogans methods and turn this country into a dictatorship with all the trimmings, no doubt the real emphasis behind the Tory’s drang to rid themselves of the pesky Human rights act.
Those politicians who don’t want to talk about fair votes for us, don’t mind talking about a bill of rights, no doubt enshrining eternal rights for the noblesse oblige and utter fancy, whilst we are going to be used and talked to like, well, slaves.
Athens has not invented democracy, that is just western centric historic thinking, the ‘common good’ existed 3000 years before the Greek empire of slaves. Do fess up!
Ancient Athens faced the same problem we face now: excessive power of the elites. And they discovered what up to now has been the most successful way to limit that excessive power and defeat the Iron Law of Oligarchy: give political power to average citizens by appointing officials by lot.
“It is ideas like this which deserve an airing rather than witterings about how democracy functioned in ancient Athens.”
This particular idea, or one slightly more democratic had an airing from 1689 until the mid nineteenth century.
It was a limited airing, in that the definition of “an office of profit under the crown” (disqualifying its holder from Parliament) changed several times.
Those with long memories will recall that Daniel O’Connell won the Clare by-election after the incumbent W. Vesey Fitzgerald, having been appointed President of the Board of Trade, had to run for re-election.
Another idea from the C17th was triennial elections. These lasted until the Hanoverians arrived and the septennial act was passed. The Chartists called for annual elections. Nothing would be more conducive to improvement of current parliamentary representation than this simple and easy to implement reform.
The political class, in all its various manifestations since 1688, has been opposed to Annual Parliaments. And that is a very good reason for insisting on them.
As ever the “keyboard warriors” will be having a seizure with this:
creating a ‘generation of terrorists with a justified grudge’
Needless to point as in case of this blog that has been coerced and bullied and reduced to a platform that is at the disposal of the “keyboard warriors” to spew the same tosh as the worst of the oligarch owned rags, and going further by suppressing any debate. As this thread is stands in evidence.
The same treatment is being dished out and as ever the charges of antisem…….. abound the coercion and on goes the bullying to stop even stating the most obvious of facts. Because as we all have been “trained” to respond to the current “blaspheme laws” in which none can dare to state the obvious facts and everyone is required to regurgitate the same tripe that is prescribed; “Palestinians are inherently bad, and violent…… All Arabs are bad and violent, …………. Islam is the cause of al the aggression, and the nihilism …….”
Nothing to do with the lunatics in the shitty strip of land that have been surpassing the racism and exceptionalism of the Apartheid South Africa, and nasty Nazi invasion of Poland, and the atrocities thereof.