You would never guess it from the media but Lord Ashcroft’s latest major polling effort strips bare the entire lie about a Tory and Unionist bandwagon rolling in Scotland.
You would never guess it from Lord Ashcroft’s Tory agenda-driven report of the findings either. This tendentious nonsense ignores Scotland completely – indeed I do not think he even mentions the nation’s existence. No paid media journalist would ever dream of reading more than the executive summary of the report, and certainly would never comb through the data tables, which contain the actual information on which the report is just a gloss.
But the data tables break down the sample by “region”, of which Scotland is one, and thus give us a very great deal of information. The Ashcroft polls have a 10,000 sample and the Scottish sub-samples of over 900 are more than used for many standard Scotland only polls.
So here are the highlights:
It is indeed true that Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is more popular than Nicola Sturgeon – but only in England.
Contrary to constant media propaganda, Nicola Sturgeon rates over 12% higher than Ruth Davidson. Invited to rate their performance from 0 to 100, Scottish voters gave Nicola Sturgeon a mean rating of 52.91% (Table 47) and Ruth Davidson 40.52% (Table 48). Despite Davidson being proclaimed by the media as the new Jim Murphy/Jesus Christ, including constant lying claims that she is the more popular.
But Ruth Davidson is very much more popular than Nicola Sturgeon – with the English. In every region of England, Davidson is widely preferred to Sturgeon.
There is no Tory Revival in Scotland.
Asked whether they would consider voting Conservative at the next Westminster election, on a scale of likelihood from 0 to 100, 65% of Scots voters answered 0-10 “there is no chance I would vote Conservative” compared to only 10% who answered 91 to 100 “I will definitely vote Conservative”. (Table 8)
The mean Tory score in Scotland on this scale was 23.84. This was narrowly behind Labour. (Table 9) Typically Ashcroft’s poll does not even ask about the SNP. But note this methodology gives a mean result that is higher than a party’s actual percentage vote: totaling the party mean scores for England gives you more than 100%. So Tory support in Scotland is running below 23.8% and below Labour.
Again this is completely contrary to the media propaganda that has been blasted constantly across Scotland.
Tory Britain is Totally Alien to Scots.
In answer to the question “Do you think Britain is on the right track, or heading in the wrong direction” Scots stated by a resounding 67% to 33% (excluding don’t knows) that Britain is heading in the wrong direction.
This compares to a clear majority in England that Britain is heading in the right direction. (Table 15).
Again contrary to constant media propaganda, Scots are much less obsessed than the English with controlling immigration. Only 28% of Scots named controlling immigration as one of the top three political issues, significantly lower than any region of England. (Table 19) A tiny 4% of Scots think immigration is the most important issue (Table 20).
But more revealing still is the ability to discern continued Scottish support for more left wing approaches to the economy. Here Ashcroft accidentally does us a favour by his exclusion of the SNP from the question.
Asked who would “have the best approach to growing the economy and creating jobs”, and not given a chance to answer SNP, Scots favour Labour over the Tories by a conclusive 46% to 36%. This compares to an equally strong preference for the Tories across England. (Table 25). Interestingly an extraordinary 15% of Scots plumped for the Lib Dems, presumably in reaction to no SNP choice being offered.
Again this is a devastating disproof of the media narrative that Scots have swallowed Torynomics. The Scottish preference for Labour over the Tories shows up in later tables on schools, the NHS, the environment etc.
Tory Scotland is a Myth the Media are Trying to Propagandise into Reality
As we gear up for the next referendum, I am cheered that the poll clears up the difference between empirical observation of the Scottish public and the picture portrayed by the media.
The media are lying.
The Blairite leadership of Scottish Labour betrayed their party by close collaboration with the Tories in Indyref1. As a result the party is in meltdown – but there is still a strong public sympathy for what might be described as real Labour values. This mantle has been taken up by the SNP.
But because the Scottish Labour Party as an organisation is a laughing stock, and because the Tories are highly hubristic and have convinced themselves of their own propaganda about their popularity, in Indyref2 we will face an open clash between Independence and Toryism. The Tories will no longer be lightly disguised behind Gordon Brown. Hard-faced anti-devolution unionism and City of London economics will be shoved down voters’ throats.
I have no doubt at all we will win this battle and finally achieve national independence again. If Ashcroft has the honesty to look at the message hidden in the unused data of his own poll results, the Tories realise it too. Which may explain their aversion to a referendum.
Time to get Mac in to do a strategic study and resign of the organisation structure of the Government in Scotland?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinsey_%26_Company
PS If anyone wants to know the algorithm to get posted at the top of the page, feel free to drop me a line.
*redesign
For a minute there I thought we had gotten rid of you, but you didn’t resign. ? pity.
He’s another one just back from Madrid and as full of jingoism as an orange is off pith-sorry to lisp.
Perhaps Gearóid Ó Colmáin does read the comment section of Craig’s blog…
http://www.gearoidocolmain.org/french-election-candidate-leftists-vote/
Again, why attack the only leftist candidate who has a chance of winning the French presidential election? Gearóid Ó Colmáin is telling people to vote for François Asselineau of the Popular Republican Union (UPR), who is currently at 0.5% in the opinion polls…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French_presidential_election,_2017
… whereas Jean-Luc Mélenchon is presently at 19% in the opinion polls and has a very good chance of winning the presidency.
Like Gearóid Ó Colmáin I also have some issues with Mélenchon, but he’s the only hope that the left have got. Mélenchon is particularly on the ball when it comes to all things nuclear (if English sub-titles don’t appear click on the first little icon on the right of the toolbar)…
https://youtu.be/TOTy-fXdNFU?t=4m51s
Just another sectarian, Rob, making a good living defending capitalism from the people who hate it because it steals from them to buy the media, among other things.
It is an old trick “I’m a revolutionary but not until the right one, with my name in the Honours List, comes along.”
He neatly avoids mentioning that Melencthon is calling for a referendum on the EU.
According to Robert parry at Consortium News if their was sarin gas it probably came from a Saudi/Israeli operation based in Jordan.
“…In the case of the April 4 chemical-weapons incident in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which reportedly killed scores of people including young children, I was told that initially the U.S. analysts couldn’t see any warplanes over the area in Idlib province at the suspected time of the poison gas attack but later they detected a drone that they thought might have delivered the bomb.
“According to a source, the analysts struggled to identify whose drone it was and where it originated. Despite some technical difficulties in tracing its flight path, analysts eventually came to believe that the flight was launched in Jordan from a Saudi-Israeli special operations base for supporting Syrian rebels, the source said, adding that the suspected reason for the poison gas was to create an incident that would reverse the Trump administration’s announcement in late March that it was no longer seeking the removal of President Bashar al-Assad…”
There is an air of hasbaric desperation in Habbabkuk’s latest essay into prophecy; his insistence on calling Assad “the butcher of Damascus” contrasts only too obviously with his persistent insistence that Israel’s regular massacres,wholesale in Gaza and Lebanon, daily retail dealings in the West Bank and Jerusalem are ‘acts of self defence.’
He would be better employed telling us about the game he attended in Madrid and how many acts of self defence he managed to perpetrate on the Spanish riot police.
Which contradicts Putin’s claim it was a rebel stockpile that was hit, Tom Dugan’s talk of a sarin factory and Assad’s assertion that it was “100% fake”.
Keep ’em coming.
If it was sarin at all why were the guys in the photograph, who are not wearing protective clothing, not victims of sarin poisoning?
It gets more and more surreal…
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/13/bana-al-abed-seven-year-old-syrian-peace-campaigner-to-publish-memoir
The sad thing is that many people still believe the lies and total propaganda that the likes of the CIAdian pump out.
You could not make it up! Mummy must be proud. So must MI-6.
3 days ago, at the start of this thread, I made the following comment. No sign of a reply. why?
“A referendum for the sake of a referendum
Politics for the sake of politics.
Independence for the sake of independence.
Whisky for the sake of whisky, I can understand.
But during the day, for God’s sake or your own, please talk about how to make the cake bigger than just how to carve it. Is *any body* in Scotland? Please show me.”
“.. please talk about how to make the cake bigger than just how to carve it.”
Nobody will ever accuse you of originality-this is the oldest and one of the silliest excuses for class society that there is. The ‘cake’ is quite big enough and every time it gets bigger the bakers get less of it.
You think your posts have such greatness about them that they have to be repeated verbatim?
So according to several establishment watchdogs who hover over this blog hoping the host doesn’t have a cerebral meltdown, and reveal all.
Assad will be gone no later than the end of the year.
How many times have we witnessed a tyrant run a country that at one point has been useful to a superpower, then when they are no longer useful a concoction of very dubious atrocities occurs and is conveniently blamed on said tyrants.
It would appear even with the aid of Russia that, tyrants and dictators who were once useful allies are now removable. The ground work is already being prepared by the media to sets the global mood. He (was a monster says the the press) won’t be missed good riddance etc.
In this day and age, the the self appointed world police Nato, led by the Great Satan, and backed by the UN, CAN remove anyone from any nation at anytime, if it suit them to do so (possibly China aside, but that war is coming believe me).
We created a global bully when we breathed life into the Western frankenstein, known as Nato. Just look at the condition of Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan after the West bulldozed their way through them.
But this global hegemony on violence and regime change is a selective one, which should (but doesn’t) shame the UN, and the Hague.
For repressive regimes such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are free to commit untold domestic and in the case of Saudi Arabia in Yemen, international atrocities, with no recriminations from the self appointed world police.
It won’t end with the demise of Assad, I’d wager the next regime to be changed in in the pipeline, is possibly Iran.
The Great Satan is the instigator and Nato is its legions, and for now only China can say to its requests.
I can’t understand why the hated dictator Mugabe has not been removed by NATO.
He dallys with torture, land stealing imprisoning opponents, car “accidents”
but also he is the plaything of the Chinese State.
If the political will was there to remove Mugabe it would probably happen. I can only surmise it isn’t.
Certain UK banks are still washing his blood diamonds clean and they have not called NATO in yet. Further the opposition is poor and can’t buy any arms to fight him.
There was vile propaganda being directed at President Assad just now by the BBC on their 6 O’clock ‘News’.
It was presented by Sophie Raworth and the fabricators were James Robbins and Jeremy Bowen. The latter used to report from Israel on the atrocities perpetrated on the Palestinians by the Israelis. He seems to think that President Assad looked strained. Hardly surprising, if true, when the weight of the USUKISNato propaganda machine is being weighed against him and he has been under Cruise missile attack from the blonde property billionaire turned US President.
Later in the programme, the same sort of propaganda was directed at North Korea.
How do these highly paid stooges live with themselves?
I think North Korea’s dear leader won’t be so constrained as Russia and it’s possible Kim is planning a response which will catch Trump and the world off-guard. He knows America wants to attack his country and will likely do so whether it is challenged or not, and as that will bring the end of his country he’s really got nothing to lose. He can’t beat America one-on-one but he could make a move which escalates the conflict and brings in others who can bring an end to America.
If China looks like betraying him he may false flag China and attack America in hope of getting them fighting. Or attack India and Pakistan to involve all their allies. It won’t matter to Kim. All that will matter to him is ending the American empire.
Years ago we were told that all the German people were complicit in the crimes of the Nazis.
They must have known what was going on.
Well.
Now you know.
They wouldn’t have a clue what was going on if Nazi media was as good as ours at lies, bullshit and bollocks.
The Scottish Lib Dems have launched their council elections manifesto by having Willie Rennie on a sit on lawnmower.
Groundsman Willie’s UK leader Farron must have been on a flying visit to Edinburgh because he doesn’t seem to have been pictured with him.
Is the US wisening up to Waziristan?
The US drops a ‘Mother of all Bombs’ on Pakistan. Google away, but you read it here first!
You know the spiel: if English sub-titles do not show, click on the first little icon on the right of the toolbar…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwy6gjuSnbk
This will interest you Robbie. 4 candidates within spitting distance of each other:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French_presidential_election,_2017
In every post I give that Wikipedia link to the latest polls, which perhaps shows that you don’t pay attention.
I’m also sure that no one watched all of the link I gave above to a 1 hour speech by Mélenchon, which was given to a French military academy last month.
It seems that the voters don’t want thoughtful, intelligent, well-educated people for President. They just want complete morons who are controlled by the banks.
(and as I type this it’s just about to all kick-off in Korea)
“Those beautiful weapons”, to quote one of the complete psychos in the American MSM.
That fat fake Hollande promised pro-labour policies, but followed the neoliberal path.
I don’t really see how an outsider like Mélenchon can do much even if elected.
The local elites have to want to change their policies, from necessity usually.
That time could well come, the way things are going, but should it come then whoever is in power, right or left will implement that change.
The best we can hope for, I’m afraid, is that the productive economies win out over the financialised economies.
They need the peeps much more in the former than in the latter.
That’s where we’re at.
It is getting down and dirty in France.
Le Pen campaign HQ in Paris targeted by arson attack
http://www.france24.com/en/20170413-france-arson-attack-targets-marine-le-pen-campaign-headquarters-paris
The Paris headquarters of extreme-far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was the target of a suspected arson attack early Thursday morning, with the leader of the National Front (FN) party suggesting that extreme-left-wing extremists were to blame.
“Now is not the time”.
Heard that before from someone.
Was it about the Scottish Indyref2?
Macron. This tells ALL you need to know.
‘Macron worked as an Inspector of Finances in the French Ministry of Economy between 2004 and 2008. In 2007, he served as deputy rapporteur for the Commission to improve French growth headed by Jacques Attali. Macron paid €50,000 to buy himself out of his government contract in 2008, and left to work as an investment banker at Rothschild & Cie Banque, where he amassed a “small fortune”.’
and
‘Macron was in 2012 a Young Leader with the French-American Foundation, a pro-American organisation founded in the 1970s by two US members of the Council on Foreign Relations.’
‘He supports the continuation of President Hollande’s policies on Israel, also opposes the BDS movement, and has refused to state a position on recognition of the State of Palestine.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron
CFR Albright, Rockefeller, and so on. Even Mr Fink is there. He’s the new employer of Gideon Osborne @ £650k pa for 4 days a month. Lovely jubbly Gideon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations#Membership
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_Council_on_Foreign_Relations
Macron is ‘their man’.
Sadly, from my little corner of France I can report that many people are falling for it.
Le Pen doesn’t have a hope in hell in my little corner of France, a corner where the French Resistance were most active, particularly in the aftermath of the D-Day landings in 1944. My elderly neighbours still remember it all.
And on that note, although you never knew her, say a little prayer for my neighbour, Elise, who died on the 28th December at the age of 98.
She was an incredible woman who lived through the Nazi occupation of France.
Didn’t a lot of France actually pitch in with the Nazis? After all, only about 10% were sympathetic or joined the legendary French Resistance.
Indeed so, but Rob G lives in “la France profonde” which has always resisted central authority (and hate Brussels as much as Paris). They liked le Pen until she became part of the machine. The supporters of Vichy were well educated careerists.
You could make the same points about Palestine. They do not prove anything other than that most people have to work hard just to keep themselves alive and, where the Occupation is ruthless and cruel, they will not openly defy the occupation authorities.
Far more than 10% of the French, however, were sympathetic to the Resistance, especially after the war on Russia began and, after 1942 when the Petain regime in the south was replaced by military occupation.
There isn’t space here even to begin to detail the ways in which you are wrong and are demonstrating your ignorance not just of modern history but of humanity.
The communist party of course refused to back the resistance until after Hitler broke his pact with Stalin http://pcf-1939-1941.blogspot.co.uk/
I don’t recall many other occupied countries forming their own most loyal Nazi forces – do you? Perhaps you could explain how the SS Charlemagne division came about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33rd_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_Charlemagne_(1st_French)
People just trying to keep themselves alive, perhaps? Curious, then, that they were about the last forces to surrender, and defended Berlin until the bitter end – resulting in their almost total destruction.
That’s not just failing to openly defy the occupation authorities, Bevin. That is full throated endorsement. Perhaps you don’t understand the difference, or maybe you’re just not quite as clever and knowledgeable as you like to think.
Perhaps you could stop being quite so smug and insulting, eh?
I think the Left/Right thing is a false paradigm, at least so far as the institutions of Left and Right are concerned.
Bit like the way the Church doesn’t properly represent Christians.
Then they have a split.
And split again.
And again.
And yet again etc.
All very interesting from a biological perspective, of course.
But really you’re looking at a power thing within these institutions, rather than the moral values themselves.
Only a small number of French were collaborators.
France had been occupied by the Nazi war machine (sound familiar?). People did whatever they could to survive, as most of us would. My part of south west France saw some of the most vicious battles in the country. In the wake of the D-Day landings in June 1944, the French Resistance in my part of the world rose up against the Nazis.
The fighting was fierce. Many, many people died.
I won’t go on, but will just say that this is deeply ingrained in the French psyche (which is why Le Pen will never got elected). Likewise with the Russians, who call WW2 ‘The Great Patriotic War’. 30 million Russians were slaughtered in this war.
Compare this to the facile, childish lunatics in America, who have no idea of what war really is, because they’ve only ever inflicted it on other people.
I will repeat again: the USA is now in serious danger of a nuclear first strike by Russia and China.
The US military is total crap, because of corporate corruption, and can in no way properly defend America.
That’s the shit stream you are now in, yet many people still believe the propaganda bollocks that they pump out.
RobG: Le Pen is worryingly popular right now. The situation in France is as if the BNP were in front-running in the UK, so it’s kind of tough to understand how you can claim France is such a bastion of anti-Nazi sentiment.
Just about every European country has had its flirtations with fascism in some quarters, to varying degrees. But I was pretty astonished to read that between seven and eleven thousand Frenchmen enlisted in 1944 to fight for the Nazis, since you brought that year up. I bet not many Russians did so.
France is a beautiful country, and the cities are wonderfully well preserved. My city was not so lucky, having been bombed absolutely to rubble by the Luftwaffe. There are innumerous cities around the UK which suffered the same fate. Relatives of mine died fighting Hitler’s forces.
Sharp Ears – if you insist on refusing to accept that George Osborne can change his name in real life, why should we respect your wish to change, repeatedly, you fictive name on this blog?
Oh dear, not so much oil needed these days.
Oil demand growth slows for second year
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39588363
Demand for oil is expected to slow for the second year in a row, the International Energy Agency has said.
The forecast comes after years of excess supply, which last year prompted major oil producers to agree to cuts in output.
Opium is as almost widely sought after as oil…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/13/us-military-drops-non-nuclear-bomb-afghanistan-islamic-state
Surprise, surprise the USA now has its biggest heroin problem in history, all courtesy of the absolutely criminal CIA, the absolutely criminal CIA that UK security services are totally in bed with…
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-drugs-usa-heroin-idUSKCN0Z90UX
Nah it’s all the twerrorists, innit, and the immigrants, innit.
Once people start to grow-up they might start realising that the bods in the security services are total vermin and war criminals, vermin and war criminals who are totally unaccountable (did you elect them?), vermin and war criminals who need to be arrested and held to account for their heinous crimes.
It’s not about oil per se (with fracking the USA is now self sufficient in oil), it’s all about the petro dollar; ie the currency that oil is sold in. Much like privately owned central banks, and fractional reserve banking, the petro dollar (see the 1973 agreement with Saudi Arabia) is one of the most gobsmacking parts of modern history.
This is why the death machine known as the United States of America can continue to exist.
Both sides, Leave and Remain are depressed. drown their woes and cash in. More kegs, same cake. Looks like Scotland has a headache.
Seems like Trump has got a taste for military action all of a sudden. His last strikes (notwithstanding the unfortunate deaths of US allies) raised his poll numbers from circling the pan to just not liked very much.
The latest hawkish comments about North Korea – saying how the US will sort them out if China doesn’t – must make those with Clinton Derangement Syndrome (CDS) have some pause for thought, if they have any integrity at all. People like Bevin and Lysias campaigned for Trump because Clinton was, erm, well… Clinton. Clinton! The Devil! And so on.
How will they excuse their campaigning for Trump, when people start dying in huge numbers due to wars Trump is now considering?
Neither I nor Lysias ‘campaigned for Trump.’ That is a lie, like many of the premisses of your arguments. I cannot speak for Lysias but I was happy to say that voting for Clinton, to keep out Trump, was a mistake. Clinton’s criminality is well established-she was responsible in large part for Honduras, Haiti and Libya. She also established the war in Syria and in Yemen.
Your support for her (see what I am doing?) surprised me at the time. It still does.
As to Trump the most that could be hoped from him was that he would break the line of succession which has been uninterrupted since Reagan. He appears to be doing, in office, just what Clinton wanted to do, except that there is less sanctimony and hypocrisy about his evil doing. He is rotten to the core but he isn’t wearing a pant suit, flirting with LGBTs, rolling up the black vote, (preacher and ward healer by preacher and ward healer) or pretending to give a flying fuck about his victims. He horrifies the rest of the world who regard him as an animal just as they regard Clinton as a reptile and of he goes on in this way NATO will dissolve, Germany will start looking eastwards and even the Tories in Britain will start blusjhing about the company they keep.
The entire stance of the ‘west’ since 1948 has been one of arguing that it is more cultured, less ruthless, more civilised than its critics. It was always a lie, now with Trump’s face on the brand it becomes so outlandish that it is incredible. ‘ But you tell us GlennUK: would your Hillary have denounced the ‘sarin’ ruse as a lie? Would she have called back the death squads from Yemen? Would she have pursued a more peaceful policy?
What were you hoping for when you campaigned for her?
Yes you did campaign for Trump with all your Hillary bashing. Whether you can excuse it with your CDS, I don’t know.
And yes – I did support her candidacy once she was the representative of the Dems, because the alternative was a fascist called Trump. It is a BINARY CHOICE. Bashing one means supporting the other. Unless you’re given to magical thinking, there was no other choice, just Trump or Clinton. Bash one, you’re lifting up the other. Jesus – why can’t you understand this?
What I was hoping for from Clinton was more of the progressive side she had been showing, and we would now have a President having to listen to her own supporters. As it is, we have a President who has utter contempt for progressives, and is being egged on by maniacs, fascists, white supremacists, clansmen and the ultra-rich. The American Nazi party was phone-banking for your preferred candidate, for Christ’s sake.
You do have some decent points about how nakedly awful Trump is, but I doubt that will make Britain any less subservient to US policy. Nothing ever has.
It’s cheap and lazy to talk about Clinton’s “criminality”. If she were actually guilty of anything criminal, the Repigs would have been all over it – she would be under arrest and prosecuted right now.
I’m not ashamed to say I preferred her over Trump. It seems that you don’t, and are quite content with the Nazi-in-chief that’s currently very happy with his new found method of boosting his polling numbers – drop bombs, threaten other countries, and get the great killing machine into high gear.
Just out of interest Glenn, did you give Blair the benefit of the doubt in 2002/2003 as well?
And regarding Hilary/Trump, how precisely does a more informed debate lessen the democratic component of elections?
Is the following statement correct in your view? “Democracy is enhanced and improved the less we know about politicians, their record, their character, their associations and their financial interests.”
Do you prefer unpleasant truths are not known about all the candidates or just some of them? For example, Trumps exceptionally long list of flaws were disseminated by just about every MSM outlet. Comparatively less well known and less covered by MSM were Clinton’s actions in and out of office.
Do you believe that her record, what she actually did, is less important than your gut feeling?
Do you believe that wikileaks were wrong to publish information which shed more light on her actions as secretary of state and that voters should have to make a less informed choice at the ballot box because of your gut feeling?
Would you tend to believe that a jury is liable to make better judgement if it has less access to all the relevant information regarding an individual criminal case?
Regarding Syria, given that western media already tried to frame the Syrian government in 2013, as demonstrated by many independent researchers, does advancing that truth imply that they are de facto in support of Syria’s government?
Are you more or less likely to believe the same story in 2017, given that it was a lie the first time around?
Do you believe that an empirical argument is improved or even possible excluding all the known and relevant facts?
In your own time.
Lot of questions there, J – so I’ll answer them briefly. Will be back on Sunday if you want to continue the dialogue.
1 – No, I did not give Blair any benefit of the doubt. There was no doubt – he was lying. I campaigned against the war before it started (for all the good that did).
2 – Straw man.
3 – No, that statement seems to be an argument for ignorance.
4 – The information about both candidates should be presented in an equally prejudiced manner, not bashing one side but overlooking the other’s flaws. Your example is not factually correct.
5 – No, the record of a candidate is important. Trump also argued in favour of the Iraq invasion, btw, he just lied about it afterwards.
6 – Wikileaks deciding to campaign on behalf of Trump (by bashing only Clinton) was wrong, IMHO.
7 – Tricky, but a jury ought to be solely informed about the facts of the case, in order not to be prejudiced. A judge can consider past crimes upon sentencing.
8 – The question is a little ambiguous. Are you saying independent researchers are in support of Syria’s government, by trying to get the truth out? I’d say the truth is neutral.
9 – Me personally? Tough to say, since I don’t tend to believe things like that just because it’s officially stated anyway.
10 – Do you actually believe all the facts are ever known? This does not appear to be a sensible question.
Hope this helps.
Fascinating interpretations and responses. What more could I possibly add?
J: I see you wasted my time. That’ll teach me for giving you the benefit of the doubt of being a serious contributor for a moment.
Glenn, there just aren’t the words. Life is too short for the what you just tried to pass as ‘serious.’ (And getting shorter.) Be well.
The USA and its poodles are about to be taken out by a Russia and China limited strike.
They will incinerate four major cities, just to send a message.
Could you provide more detail, Rob? I’d like to get a couple of tenners down to the bookie tomorrow, and make some money off what less well informed people would consider exceedingly long odds. Which cities? What date, at the least?
They are attacking North Korea (but you probably won’t be told about it for a while, if ever).
The fact that people take this kind of stuff so slightly is just breathtaking.
Am I interfering with your Facebook stuff?
I have no Facebook account.
Where is your information coming from then – how are you privy to news that’s kept secret from us proles? Is your source a secret too?
Glenn – Information is not so hard to find. Why here is NBC reporting that the US is considering a preemptive strike against the DPRK
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-may-launch-strike-if-north-korea-reaches-nuclear-n746366
Here is the FT confirming that a US Carrier battle group is steaming toward the Korean peninsula
https://www.ft.com/content/0d4a22e8-1ce3-11e7-a454-ab04428977f9
Here is the BBC reporting that the US has dropped the largest non nuclear weapon in its arsenal in Afghanistan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39598046
What the BBC does not bother to comment on is the timing of this strike. Neither does the BBC consider it relevant to
recall the expressed opinion of Donald Rumsfeld in around 2002 that Afghanistan was a “target poor country” The intervening years are likely to have further exacerbated the poverty of targets – and so this naturally begs the question as to the true purpose of dropping such a large bomb on a pile of rubble.
Elsewhere you can find confirmation that the US heavy bombers in Guam are primed and ready to go.
Maybe you remember that Trump met with Xi Jinpeng only last week. Here is some (almost certainly unconnected) information that China has in the last days moved some 150,000 troops to the border with the DPRK
http://uk.businessinsider.com/china-150000-troops-north-korea-xi-trump-2017-4?r=US&IR=T
I well understand that none of this is as interesting or relevant as the fantasy of Scottish independence – but secret it most certainly is not.
RobG
I would say they are menacing North Korea in the hope that it will do something as irrational asTrump in Syria so as to allow Sino(?)US intervention. My view is that things are too closely monitored to allow a’false-flag’ such as Tonkin Bay. An alternative could be a very large pay-off (super -fake dollar -printing plates?) to the Kim clan and the roughly 5% actively supporting them. Anyway a surprise is promised for the eternal president’s birthday tomorrow.
Comprehensive critique of the media and political framing of Syria at Media Lens. This is indeed Iraq 4.0:
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2017/844-trump-s-tomahawks-the-instant-certainty-of-the-mainstream-press.html
Meanwhile in the Land of the Pure, Pakistan:
” Angry mob kills student over blasphemy allegations in Mardan university
Mehmood Jan BabarApril 13, 2017
PAKISTAN, MARDAN: An enraged mob killed a student in his dorm room over blasphemy allegations at Abdul Wali Khan University’s Garden campus, Mardan, on Thursday.
The clash, in which five others were injured, occurred in the afternoon, in which students resorted to firing and vandalism.
The deceased student has been identified as Mashaal, enrolled at the university’s Mass Communication department.
The body of the student was shifted to a hospital, where it went under post-mortem, the relatives of the deceased did not show up to claim the body.
Later on, Police arrested more than 20 people in relation to the murder probe.”
https://www.geo.tv/latest/137947-Student-dies-five-injured-in-Mardan-university-clash
____________
Disgusting. This is who Trump should be calling animals.
Any response from Pakistan on the MOAB drop?
Assange Urges Media to Call Assad Chemical Attacks ‘Alleged’ — ‘CIA Has No Credibility in This Area’
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/04/11/assange-urges-media-call-assad-chemical-attacks-alleged-cia-no-credibility-area/
Includes worthwhile radio interview.
Q: How do you solve a problem like Pakistan? How do you solve a problem like Saudia?
A: You don’t. Trump picks the easy targets, the easy way.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/138022-US-tells-Pakistan-to-act-against-terrorists-in-yet-another-do-more-call
Yes, what passes for the British media is dominated by the upper-middle class who do the bidding of an even smaller clique of billionaire old white men. When the sole purpose of the papers and TV channels they own is to promote and protect their vested interests, it’s small wonder that the ‘news’ we are fed about what is happening in the world is very limited and the miniscule part of what they allow us to see is purposely distorted and twisted anyway. Most of Britain largely doesn’t realise it, but most of the mainstream information we get is no different from blatant propaganda, delivered exclusively in support of an already pre-conceived ideology. When the papers and TV commentators have only one default, party-line position on all issues is this situation all that different from the old days of the USSR when the masses were fed the version of the outside world according to Pravda (which ironically literally means ‘Truth’ in Russian)? Okay, fair enough, there is the Internet and we do have access to foreign newspapers and news channels – although I wouldn’t be surprised if government efforts were underway to crack down on freedom and organising via social media too. Then there is the Guardian – which is probably the only mainstream national newspaper where you’ll read anything that remotely differs from the right-wing tabloids and Murdoch media. Still, a lie repeated over and over again gains currency frighteningly easy and we sadly live in a 24/7 society where the economic pressures are so much on ordinary people that very few of us have time to stop and think and do the research into whether or not what we are told is true. Ordinary working people are mostly knackered most of the time and when presented with simple truths by the media have neither the time nor energy left to look deeper and find that actually a lot of issues are a lot more complex that they are being told and information is being left out and edited.
What you gonna do about it Becky?
The situation is even worse than you describe it. As you say the media does the bidding of a small clique of “billionaire old white men” This is true and surely proves that even money itself is misogynistic.
This must be true otherwise Lilian Bettencourt (net worth $36.1 billion), Alice Walton ($32.3 billion), Jacqueline Mars ($23.4 billion), Maria Franco Fissola ($22.1 billion) and others would all be able to buy media that would promote and protect their interests. That it does not do so is an absolute disgrace – how are these multi billionaire women supposed to grow their wealth in such an openly misogynistic environment.
As you say it is lucky we have the Guardian to represent the interests of these downtrodden billionaire women who are discriminated against in so many ways. Given that money has value to men but no value to women perhaps we should move toward the abolition of all money. Maybe you are familiar with the remarkable successes of Pol Pot in introducing a truly egalitarian society. It is surely a model that should be replicated. It is often forgotten that a well known woman (one Margaret Thatcher) was so supportive of Pol Pot that she even dispatched military advisers (sadly all men) to ensure that Pol Pot did not fall victim to reactionary forces. Sadly some people felt it more important to eat than to pursue ideological purity.
As you so presciently observe a lot of the issues are more complex than people are told and information is often left out and edited. It is indeed fortunate that you are aware of this trend and so yourself can avoid over simplification or leaving out or editing information.
Good to see you back in fine fettle, Loony.
“In his lengthy interview with AFP on Thursday, Syrian President Bashar Assad mused that the American “Deep State” was more responsible for pelting his Sharyat airbase with 59 cruise missiles than President Donald Trump.
When the interviewer proposed that the retaliatory missile strike marked a drastic change in Trump’s position on Syria, Assad insisted the U.S. and Syria could still be partners in fighting terrorism, once Trump wrested control of Washington away from the military-industrial complex.”
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/04/13/assad-americas-deep-state-blew-up-my-airbase/
The full interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnpy7mrGMS0
Obama was adopted by the Deep State. Is Trump up for adoption?
It’s usually Tony O that links to the great Saker..Hope he is Ok..But a Brilliant Piece here –
The pretext:
” I don’t think that anybody seriously believes that Assad or anybody else in the Syrian government really ordered a chemical weapons attack on anybody. To believe that it would require you to find the following sequence logical: first, Assad pretty much wins the war against Daesh which is in full retreat. Then, the US declares that overthrowing Assad is not a priority anymore (up to here this is all factual and true). Then, Assad decides to use weapons he does not have. He decides to bomb a location with no military value, but with lots of kids and cameras. Then, when the Russians demand a full investigation, the Americans strike as fast as they can before this idea gets any support. And now the Americans are probing a possible Russian role in this so-called attack. Frankly, if you believe any of that, you should immediately stop reading and go back to watching TV. For the rest of us, there are three options:
a classical US-executed false flag
a Syrian strike on a location which happened to be storing some kind of gas, possibly chlorine, but most definitely not sarin. This option requires you to believe in coincidences. I don’t. Unless,
the US fed bad intelligence to the Syrians and got them to bomb a location where the US knew that toxic gas was stored ” ..
” What I am sure of is that 36 advanced cruise missile do not “just disappear”. There are two reasons why the Russians would have decided to use their EW systems and not their missiles: first, it provides them “plausible deninability” (at least for the general public ”
http://thesaker.is/a-multi-level-analysis-of-the-us-cruise-missile-attack-on-syria-and-its-consequences/
I’m Away for the weekend.. Why do Places I end up in always say they Have WiFi..but never do.. be good to turn off for a while Methinks
A Bonny weekend to All.
Same to you Brian, go look up some cairns…..;)
The Tory government has seen applications for nursing course in England drop by 23% after they abolished NHS bursaries. Applications to England’s NHS from EU nurses has dropped by 90%. Meanwhile the Tories have given away the English health service to their filthy rich donors and supporters. Richard Branson is the new founding father of the health service and no longer Nye Bevin. Actually it’s no longer a health service but a health business.
Yet still there is such a political disconnect in English politics that people who protest at the state of their health service still vote Tory. A recent opinion poll found the Tories lead Labour by 12% among 18 to 24 year olds in England.
Scotland resists health privatisation in the separate Scottish NHS. But if we stay in the UK the block grant will be squeezed until privatisation can no longer be resisted. Once that process starts Mr. Branson and Co will move in. While brexit will ensure that a huge proportion of the 20 000 foreign nationals who currently staff the Scottish NHS will leave.
We can be a sensible and fair social democratic small nation of north west Europe with independence or we can stay in the post brexit UK and see the laying waste of Scotland. That’s no exaggeration. That’s no unfounded fearmongering. It’s that stark a choice. Wake up indyref Don’t Knows and soft NOs and don’t consign your country to greedy billionaires and their politician lackeys who despise us.
Good post reel guid. ?
Well over the Last Week
The Scottish Donald has deployed 59 Scottish cruise Missiles to Syria, some to the fifty hardened bunkers of Shayrat Airbase
where did the other Tomahawks land?
He has dropped a MOAB on Afghanistan, most of us thought that was over?
He is deploying a nuclear aircraft fleet to The Koreas.
He deployed the Tomahawks, whilst the President of CHINA was his dinner guest in Florida, message in a bottle.
So my guess all three of this weeks events are linked.
Who are the messages primarily for?
My money is on CHINA
North Korea issues warning as U.S.A. Nuclear Aircraft Carrier Group heads to Korean Peninsula
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/10/politics/us-aircraft-carrier-carl-vinson-north-korea-strike-capabilities/
In a statement provided to CNN by officials in North Korea, Pyongyang said the “current grim situation” justified its “self-defensive and pre-emptive strike capabilities with the nuclear force at the core.”
“We will make the US fully accountable for the catastrophic consequences that may be brought about by its high-handed and outrageous acts,” the statement said.
The Pentagon sent the 97,000-ton USS Carl Vinson with an escort of a guided-missile cruiser and two destroyers after the latest missile test by North Korea last week.
I expect Diego Garcia will have its hands full at the moment too.
Any news yet on MH370
That went missing near Diego Garcia?
Rockwell B-1 Lancer
is a four-engine supersonic variable-sweep wing, jet-powered heavy strategic bomber used by the United States Air Force (USAF)
based on Diego Garcia.
Axis of Nuclear Love: How Deep is the Love between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?
Report: Saudi Arabia Still Seeking Nuclear Weapons Capability
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/report-saudi-arabia-still-seeking-nuclear-weapons-capability/
(read the actual 40-page report linked therein)
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/786768/Nuclear-war-fears-Saudi-Arabia-nuclear-deal
We’ll have to wait for Craig to blow another whistle on this one. Surely there is stuff that crossed Craig’s table way back then, even then.
Down and Dirty in FRANCE
French prosecutors have asked the European parliament to lift the immunity of extreme-far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen
over an inquiry into alleged fake parliamentary jobs, legal sources said Friday.
The revelation comes just nine days before France heads to the polls for a highly-unpredictable presidential election with Le Pen,
who heads the eurosceptic Front National (FN), one of the frontrunners in the April 23 first round.
In fact Marine has been the front-runner, the whole time.
I detect the fat sticky-pudding fingers of Hollande, he is rubbishing Melanchon and Le Pen and Fillion,
the Three most likely to push is boy to one side.
Legacy of failure for Hollande.
A good Friday and long weekend to reflect on this:
“How do we help children face the threatening world?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwAVHI5cM5s
Krishnamurti also makes reference to terrorists way back in the relatively golden days of 1982, in this 23-minute video
About 5,000 patients who have had heart operations in Scotland have been told they may have been exposed to a potentially deadly infection linked to medical equipment.
NHS Scotland has written to patients who have had valve replacement or valve repair surgery since 2013.
Ministry of Truth
This is worth a laugh, albeit they are probably about 5 people here with a sense of humour. The rest know who they are.
Julian Assange @JulianAssange 13h13 hours ago
Called a “non-state intelligence service” today by the “state non-intelligence agency” which produced al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran & Pinochet.
202 replies 1,760 retweets 2,872 likes
A sense of humour..?
I wish a happy Easter to all those who follow this particular religion, and those who use it to get off the hamster wheel for a brief moment.
The question is, will we all still be alive when Easter Monday arrives?
But sorry, I forgot, we’ve all got to be happy and smiling as we’re incinerated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guOLo4I8Ufc
You people are complete psychopaths.
https://g.co/kgs/dtFXd9 As Tom Lehrer sang
Here is journo Osang trying to paint a nice as possible of Frauke Petry, the German leader of the AfD, the equivalent of UKIP here, just with balls attached.
In one sentence Mr. Osang speaks of how she congratulated Gert Wilders and Donald Trump of their electoral successes, then in the next he proclaims that she is hard to figure out.
She is a fascist in sheeps clothing, a good looking woman who plays the masses something rotten. I agree with one sentence, i.e. that she could wind up a crowd within five minutes to burn down a mosque. I hope that the AfD does not manage to jump the 5% hurdle and enter the German Parliament.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/frauke-petry-a-1142901.html
Quite right. We don’t want any more Fascists no matter what kind of animal they may be dressed up as. What we need is more diversity. How many Europeans fancy severing their own hand in an attempt to atone for alleged blasphemy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-35341256
How many Europeans would demonstrate the moral fortitude necessary to throw women into burning buildings because they are dressed immodestly
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm
How many Europeans would have the strength necessary to fight off lifeguards who are trying to save a drowning child
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/father-daughter-drown-rescued-male-6226135
So there we have it. Spineless Europeans who refuse to sever their own hands, who refuse to throw women into burning buildings and who refuse to make sure that their own children drown. Only by welcoming such diversity of views can Europeans ever hope to atone for their own innate racism and intolerance.
Keep holding up that mirror to them, Loony. One day they might actually find the courage to look into their confusion. They’re leading themselves up the garden path.
Complete psychopaths.
So go on, ban me Mods, on a weekend that is going to be one of the most crucial in history.
If there are no honourable people left the human race deserves to die.
And this race will die not on a wave of good and wise words, but on a wave of lies and deceit.
The total scumbags killed us, because we allowed them to do so.
Letting people drown happened in Germany before “Stasi files reveal something that no one at the time knew: Two border troop guards, so-called scouts, had watched as Cetin Mert fell into the water and even photographed the accident. But because they had no communication link, they did not report the incident until much later.” But then it was immigrants drowning
Letting kids drown was EU policy in 2014.
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/01/europe-keeps-its-rescue-ships-far-from-the-coast-of-libya-where-thousands-of-refugees-have-drowned/
And cutting your own limb off is all the rage in Europe.
http://www.able2uk.com/able2uk-news/people-who-make-themselves-disabled
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/01/25/can-you-be-transabled-meet-the-people-trapped-in-their-working-bodies/
In the 1980s Channel 4 did a documentary about a boy who had a leg he thought he shouldn’t. The filmmakers introduced him to an older man who had previously cut off his own arm. The boy went ahead and cut his leg off.
At least I think so. Haven’t thought about it for years and a quick search came up empty. I could be misremembering.
The war propaganda on UK LBC Radio is quite breathtaking.
By contrast I have noticed a slight turn from the likes of the BBC and CIAdian in the last 24 hours.
These cockroaches are starting to realise that they will be held to account.
This cockroach radio talk is all so last century Rwanda.