This article is probably unpopular. The point of this blog is not to make you agree, but to make you think; if I did not express views which are not the view of the majority, there would be no point in writing at all. This is not an applause seeking echo chamber of popular sentiment.
Boris Johnson has no more ardent political opponent than I. But some of the hysteria about him is overblown.
As a teenage delegate to a Liberal Party conference in 1976 (I think in Llandudno), I had to fend off the amorous advances of a politician who persisted even after I plainly told him I was not gay, and I ended up stabbing his wandering hand with the pin of my delegate’s badge, after which he went away. I regarded his behaviour as over drunken and over randy, but took the attitude then and now that humans are not perfect and inclined occasionally to fall prey to their basic instincts, especially when drinking. If we expected everyone to be perfect, we would live our entire lives in a state of disappointment. I expect a majority of sexually active adults have similar experiences at some time. I do not believe it healthy or sensible to elevate them to serious crimes.
(For the sake of clarity, I should add that I have never personally been accused of an unwanted physical advance).
I really do not care whether Boris Johnson squeezed Charlotte Edwards’ leg 20 years ago. I firmly believe women are every bit the equal of men, and I do not understand why it is somehow reckoned that Ms Edwards, and others in the same position, were unable to stab his hand with a fork, throw a drink in his face, or embarrass him by telling him clearly to stop. I do not accept the notion that difference of age and status between full adults makes firm rejection impossible – that thought did not cross my mind with the politician in Llandudno, who was a good deal older, more famous and wealthy than I, and in a position to further my political ambitions. Ms Edwards saying nothing at the time, saving it up for twenty years and then attempting to use the claim to cause major damage, appears to me behaviour as bad as the original.
I do realise that in this I have outlived the mores of the times. But no matter how fiercely I oppose a no deal Brexit – and I think it would be disastrous for every one but a few nasty financial speculators – I do not think the approach of throwing the kitchen sink of accusations against Boris Johnson is good for the long term health of politics. It also obscures with chaff the allegations of real wrongdoing, like directing public funds and assistance to the company of a woman with whom he was in a sexual relationship. That should be investigated. That is real wrongdoing.
Johnson’s arrogance before the Commons in refusing to apologise for the prorogation of parliament was deeply unpleasant, but I do not approve of the effort to delegitimise his use of language. Words like “surrender”, “betrayal” and “traitor” have centuries of political use behind them. Boris Johnson is as entitled to free speech as anyone else. It is perfectly legitimate for opponents to argue that his language is deliberately divisive and thus people ought to vote against him in the interests of harmony. The electorate can pay heed or not to such argument, as they see fit. But it is quite another thing to argue that such language should be excised from public life. Robust debate is an important aspect of free speech. Controlling the language of your opponents is the antithesis of democracy. I am firmly with John Stuart Mill on this one.
People were offended by Galileo and Darwin, by Gandhi, by Jesus and Mohammed. Causing offence is important to human development. Everyone is entitled to do it, even Boris Johnson.
Finally I had the misfortune to see Jess Phillips on BBC Breakfast TV yesterday morning and she gave, as an example of abuse of MPs the fact that every time she speaks about anti-semitism in the Labour Party she receives emails stating that she is exaggerating, or is a puppet of Israel. A great deal of what MPs plainly see as abusive online activity looks to me simply like people expressing their disagreement. People can be entirely right or entirely wrong in their views, but they still have a right to express them to Members of Parliament. I found Ms Phillips objection to people expressing disagreement deeply worrying.
I have no doubt MPs do receive death threats – I do myself sometimes, generally originating in Florida for some strange reason. But I do wonder how much exaggeration there is of this.
The Laura Kuenssberg case is seminal here. You may recall that 35,000 people signed a 38 Degrees petition calling for her removal for pro-Tory bias and after a major headline news campaign headed by the Guardian and BBC, claiming that the petition was full of abusive and misogynistic comments, 38 Degrees deleted the petition. However I went through all the comments personally and could only find one comment and a single related tweet which was in any way abusive or misogynistic. When I challenge 38 Degrees to produce the evidence of abuse, there was none. That was a very worrying example of the limiting of perfectly legitimate protest against Kuenssberg, on an excuse of “abusive social media” which was a lie.
There is insufficient plain speaking already in politics and the attempt to further contain and constrain, and limit political thought to acceptable channels and vocabulary, is worrying. Let Johnson say what he wills, and let the electorate judge that.
As for behaviour, I do not wish to see any further correspondence of the Overton window with sex negative feminism. I can personally think of one mutually fulfilling physical relationship in my own history, where the crossing of that difficult line from friendship to physical intimacy did indeed start with the squeeze of a leg under the table. The initiation of more intimate physical contact is the most critical point in the complex courtship rituals of developed human societies. To insist that verbal agreement must always be sought before a move to kiss or an exploratory caress of a leg or a shoulder, is a fundamental change in culture which I am not at all sure is desirable. The essential qualifier is of course that, if the other person either verbally or by action does not welcome the tentative first move, then the initiator must desist immediately. It is my own belief that sex-negative feminism seeks quite deliberately to invalidate perfectly normal heterosexual courtship and that the chattering classes have far too readily adopted this, in the interests of identity politics.
I am perfectly aware that what I have written will offend some pleasant people and is against current fashionable thinking. I am also well aware that less pleasant people will utterly misrepresent what I have written as a justification of sexual assault. I deplore entirely any non-consensual sexual activity forced on anyone, and I believe that the slightest indication of disapproval should lead to an instant stop. But to deny the existence of non-verbal communication, and make an issue of non-violent initiation of contact outside an erogenous zone, is to me not legitimate. I would also refer you to my last post, and the extraordinary difference in the treatment in these matters by the media and political classes purveying identity politics of those within the neo-liberal “centrist” consensus, like Bill Clinton and Brendan Cox, and those outside it, like Boris Johnson, Alex Salmond or Julian Assange. This is a misguided and an extraordinarily selective outrage.
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A thought-provoking piece. I can’t help thinking that the “leg-touching incident” may actually have been a welcome diversion for Johnson, in that it is phone-in fodder to distract from the much more serious implications of the Arcuri case and, of course, Brexit. Am I therefore being overly suspicious in wondering whether the lady involved knew this and wanted to actually help Johnson by going public?
I do remember something very similar just before Michael Fallon was forced to resign – a “leg-touching” incident from many years ago following a separate and more serious allegation.
Of course, these secondary incidents may also have been some kind of warning of further dirt should the alleged groper step out of line with the powers that be. The story of Johnson’s overheard row when he was on the brink of the Tory leadership always seemed highly suspicious too, with the media narrative of what happened not credible. Johnson appears to be compromised, as I am sure Cameron was (with the dead pig scandal etc).
“It is my own belief that sex-negative feminism seeks quite deliberately to invalidate perfectly normal heterosexual courtship and that the chattering classes have far too readily adopted this, in the interests of identity politics.”
What is nationalism – Scottish or other – founded on if not identity politics?
Here is an example of how those with a strongly ethnic set of political beliefs can behave when they’re “being themselves”: a recent Scottish Protestant wedding.
Note: it may help those who have little familiarity with this culture to know that loyalists in Northern Ireland and their pals in Scotland like to honour the Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitaries by singing along to Tina Turner’s song “Simply the Best”. Anybody who needs convincing that this kind of attitude is more than a relic should consider how Tories knocked on many doors during the 2017 general election campaign telling people Jeremy Corbyn was an “IRA supporter”. The allegation is false, but even if were true then so what? Isn’t the conflict over? Remind me what “peace process” means again. And the meme of “No Surrender” is playing a very big role RIGHT NOW in Tory Leaverism. There are other words that could have been used, such as “appeasement” (hello Munich), “collusion” (hello Suez), “capitulation”, whatever. But nope, “surrender” was the term chosen. Careful, DUP, or maybe the real reason you oppose EU membership may start to get more widely known.
So what? Identity politics is everywhere. Welsh want to speak welsh, Bretons want to speak Breton. It’s a judgement to make whether the glorious independence is going to be worth more than remaining attached to the larger entity. In the case of Scotland, that line may have been been crossed (in my view it has).
“whether the glorious independence is going to be worth more than remaining attached to the larger entity”
Except that independence may even be desired as inglorious, and self determination worth more than anything else. Irish history from 1916 to 1922 (and beyond) illustrates this abundantly and tragically, as we should all know, but as many seem to have forgotten or never known, and will shortly be reminded or learn too late.
It didn’t come across to me that when writing the article Craig was bearing in mind that nationalism is a form of identity politics, but maybe he was.
Regarding Welsh it’s a fact that many working class Welsh people in parts of South Wales view things like Welsh-medium schools and some other state-funded Welsh-language stuff too as middle-class bullsh*t and to do with the middle classes wanting to monopolise state sector jobs, to find reasons for giving each other and each other’s children jobs and contracts.. Some call the said middle class types “the Welshies”! There are jokes about e.g. someone replacing the message on a Welsh-language sign with something completely different from what it’s supposed to say and nobody noticing for months. And this is in no way anti-Welsh. It’s Welsh people saying it, people who are as Welsh as the people they are talking about.
The language is a far more complex issue than you imply, N_
You ignore the moral and ethical question of why Welsh speakers should continuously have to struggle to secure their linguistic and cultural rights in what is after all their own country.
I’m afraid your views quite simply smack of anglo-centric cultural imperialism.
.
“Careful, DUP, or maybe the real reason you oppose EU membership may start to get more widely known.”
Hi N_, I imagine this is your ‘Catholic continent’ meme getting its monthly outing again, but remember that John Calvin was French. If you’ve ever read any of his crazier stuff it makes Loony sound like children’s cheery bedtime stories. It’s worth reminding people that the Good Friday agreement is actually a truce.
But I’m right that that’s why they’re anti-EU 🙂 I dislike Calvinism intensely as you’ve probably noticed. The Pope supported King Billy at the Battle of the Boyne, but that doesn’t stop the Orangeist hatred of “Papism”. Things could be even worse if the notion of “sovereignty” were allowed to creep up on views from within Great Britain about the Good Friday Agreement.
Unfortunately there is no general British view, but general complete ignorance and general utter lack of interest. Why and how Ireland was partitioned, what happened after that, and what is going to happen next after the UK leaves the EU, who cares? Komodo expressed the Anglo-British view ‘here’ not too long ago, suggesting to “let them fight it out amongst themselves”. So if the Troubles do flare up again and spread (as seems increasingly likely) there will be the usual bafflement in GB followed by blundering reaction from those who think a border is only about customs and excise.
It’s becoming funny how Johnson is becoming an almost identical model to Trump. Or is it Trump to Johnson? I’m not sure I care any more.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/05/donald-trump-take-everyone-with-him
The one thing I think is that it’s unlikely to end well, for either. Quite how it’s not going to end well is more difficult to say.
I think that It’s all very nice saying you’re going break rules to further the interests of the people. but then rules are backed by law. And Johnson looks increasingly constrained by law. Hardly surprising that he now wants the choice of Supreme Court judges to be under political control.
Joanna
today – great –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZiwW1675lE&
It’s not exactly rare for diplomats to drive without regard to local road laws, nor for them to leave people injured or dead in traffic accidents and then flit the country. So what’s the Norfolk case, currently being given major billing by the BBC, actually about? Reportedly a US diplomat’s wife, herself enjoying diplomatic status, forgot that the part of Britain that is outside of US bases isn’t under US law and doesn’t drive on the same side of the road as the US and its bases – a mistake which left a British motorcyclist dead.
Now British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has asked the US ambassador to waive her diplomatic status.
He has what?? That kind of thing won’t go down well in the diplomatic corps.
There is no way this story is being given such a level of media coverage without certain people of influence in the US having given the okay – or the order.
What’s her name? Who’s her hubby and what’s his rank? Where else has he been posted? What dirty stuff has he been doing in Britain – or for that matter, anywhere else in the world? Is he a “whistleblower”? Is he CIA? DIA? What’s the real story? C’mon @Craig! 🙂
Correction: the crash happened in Northamptonshire, not Norfolk.
The name of the US diplomat has not been released.
Nor, interestingly, has the date of the crash. Why not? Might it be too easy to guess what the big event was at the US base that day?
How many people were in the car? Are we sure it was the wife who was driving, or did somebody do a Chris Huhne or Fiona Onasanya? Were any other vehicles involved?
As for the base itself, “RAF” Croughton, guess what. It’s home to the joint CIA-NSA unit that runs a network of about 100 US electronic spying facilities around the world, including the one at the US embassy in Berlin that they spied on Angela Merkel from. Oh dear oh dear. (Source.)
Benyamin Netanyahu was in Britain at short notice on Thursday 5 September, during which he met Boris Johnson, a known previous recipient of an Israeli diplomat’s “help”, and also US Defence Secretary Mark Esper.
It’s just pay back for the Tim Darroch fuss.
The Mail on Sunday will be getting a roasting too if they ever again publish stuff they perhaps shouldn’t…oh wait, guess what?
“It’s just pay back for the Tim Darroch fuss.”
Trump hasn’t got it in him to say “Touché – let’s call it a draw”.
This story is bound to start linking up with others soon.
The woman’s name has now been published – D Notice lifted? It’s Anne Sacoolas, née Goodwin. Her husband is Jonathan Sacoolas. The Daily Mail are calling him a spy. As far as I know, the date of the crash has still not been revealed.
He’s (guess what!) a (US-)registered radio ham 🙂
In 1995 he was on Usenet boasting about his knowledge about driving cars in adverse conditions.
She holds a BSc in psychology and he has a degree in electrical engineering, both from the University of Southern California. At the time of their marriage in 2003 she was working for the US State Department and he was employed at the US Department of Defense.
The watch at the gate ad well as Cctv can be viewed, but arguments of ‘too grainy, faulty, not working on the day in question’ will soon pop up.
US murder here, the car left its lane and hit the motorcycle head on, is questioning our diplomatic relationship rules and regulations, but this is not the first time murder was follow by flight from the law.
Tell them to pack up and leave.
Always respect true victims. Include innumerable true victims of PC/Pure Cowards.
So, PLEASE explain. The HUGE, INCREDIBLE, credibility-gap IN PLAIN SIGHT. Gross INSULTS to a tween’s intelligence.
How CENTURIES of High Fees Anglo Public School Elites like CHURCHILL, JOHNSON & Co, from age-EIGHT systematically mentally, emotionally, physically, seXually ‘FAGGED’/abused (or aMused) by older boys & some tutors – NEVER prosecuted.
SOMEHOW create NOT life-scarred dysfunctional VICTIM-SURVIVORS needing much HELP, BIG CASH Compo, and FAKE Media, “Me Too” FAT Fees!!
BUT trauma-FREE, laughing HIGH-achiever National & World Leaders!! Then PAYING HIGH-Fees for their OWN young boys from age-EIGHT to sustain their cynical cycle-of-the serially aMused-not-aBused!! Please seXplain.
it’s WAY past time to be NON-PC/Pure Cowards – but courageously CYNICAL of a systemically corrupt system!
I Think we Get what you are saying , Tina.. Though your spelling is way worse than mine.
Speeling? Where, wear, wot wurdz d’ya mean?
You might, Brian. I am not trained in cryptography. It is unreadable.
Ian
Correct, absolute gibberish.
I was 7 and my sister’s ex was 5. His parents were in India having been diplomats from before 1948 I presume.
You are absolutely right about public schools. Generation after generation of mixed up people running things is bad. I seem to remember the first time I ever kissed my dad to say goodbye was when I had my own children and I was about 30.
The other side of that was that the friendship s we made were good, while the bachelor house master’s only skill was Russian and politics. He was utterly offensive to me as the son of a mere boffin, but legendised by the parents who were diplomats and found an entry to the Athenaeum. Where no doubt he could bully other nasty bullies just like him.
I gave up long ago thinking there might be a special shrink whose imagination could stretch into the psychology of incarcerating children.
Common sense tells one, like Jeremy Corbyn, that this unredeemably bad idea ought to be closed down and forgotten.
However please note that Mr Johnson would have been much more fucked up by his father’s fucking around if he had been at home.
Public school nots are bred to be completely at home in public institutions and completely st sea at home.
Boys not nots.
Damian Green’s idea of a relaxing Sunday afternoon was sitting in his office in the Houses of Parliament, with a stiff porn movie and a ministerial piece of legislation.
What a normalizing experience spending the ages of 8 to 18 completely away from your mum and dad turns out to be.
I can understand that but very few others do.
Pete Fincham
Excellent post, beginning to think that I was the only one who felt like this.
I think you’re being unnecessarily insulting and I think you’re wrong about the meaningfulness of Giyane’s comments which I often find very insightful and thought provoking. I might add that that’s more than could be said of yours, Pete.
As for the boys and nuts spelling, I understood the point he was making regardless and it’s an original and interesting point.
@Pete – “Nots” is a great word for most of the male graduates of private boarding schools, as if you had ever thought properly about the effects of incarceration in those places or the behaviour and mentality of its graduates you might realise.
Anyone who went to a boarding school and who defends their existence is a sh*t.
@Giyane – There is a psychological literature now on some of the problems experienced by boarding school survivors. It’s not particularly brilliant and it’s “devoid of firing pin”, but some of it has some insights, e.g.
* on the notion of “home”
* on “not being there” emotionally,
* on the “double blind” that child victims are subjected to: “this is hell that my parents have put me in, but I know they love me, so…” and of course love goes completely out of the window. The curtains come down. Choosing to have children raised in an environment without love is child abuse. Practically everybody in the world knows that, except those who have themselves been institutionalised in the boarding school system or who think it’s some kind of “ladder” they can send their offspring to walk up towards a better life.
“Public school nots are bred to be completely at home in public institutions and completely at sea at home.”
Yep.
The Nazis came to study English boarding schools as a model for their own “Napoli” schools. Fortunately the Nazi regime is no longer with us, but the English boarding schools are.
As you rightly say, the intitutionalised minds then feel at home in institutions such as the civil service, although there are also other institutions they also feel at home in, such as the army, the older banks, sometimes medicine and law – anywhere with oak panelling, lol. One should also mention the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge – institutions run by people with stunted minds and which serve to stunt minds while inculcating in their members the idea that they are doing the exact opposite. (Hello, schizoid England.)
From this flows the fear and hatred of the lower orders that permeates British society.
In other countries, for example, a granddad in the lower orders who has reached his 70s and who has with his wife raised his children, who now have their own children, who all gather round with him on family occasions – perhaps he even has some greatgrandchildren now – is generally speaking RESPECTED. In Britain the middle and ruling classes view him as little more than livestock, a burden on national resources, a scumsucker basically. They have no humanity. Anybody who wants to understand this must look at the institutions in which the members of the British ruling class were raised, which for them are totally normal, and which of course exclude the “townies” even though many of them are actually located in towns. (They have thick walls.)
Have you watched the 1994 film The Making of Them? If you haven’t, you really should. So should everyone else with an interest. The sheer inhumanity of some of the parents is chilling – the total inhumanity of the so-called “mothers” (one wonders why they couldn’t have used contraception or kept their legs closed if after having their children they chuck them out into an institution when they’re seven) and of the so-called “fathers” who are as if emotional zeroes.
Criticism of the private boarding schools can get to the heart of what Britain (and especially England) is all about. I hope you are going to vote Labour, Giyane. Their policy on private schools alone will be worth it. It will be amusing to see Tories bray and sneer “Abolish elite boarding schools? That’s like going back to the past!”
David Cornwell called boarding schools “The Tory party in the nursery”. He was right. (In case anyone wants to remind me, yes I know about Attlee, Crossman, Gaitskell, etc. That’s beside the point.)
Last – as for the Athenaeum, it’s an interesting institution that played an important part in the history of eugenicism.
Advice from the “UK Boarding Schools Association” (an organisation which most of the top echelon of schools seem not to belong to):
“But what about the parents?
Increasingly, modern parents of children of all ages are recognising that a boarding education may be the answer to their prayers. The hectic schedules of families in which both parents have high-flying – sometimes literally – demanding jobs with irregular hours and unpredictable calls on their time mean that the old-style ferrying of children to ballet and piano lessons, football practice and Scouts is just not feasible. Even just to be there every afternoon at the school gate may prove impossible. The solutions can be as various as the parents with the problems, but many are realising that boarding even from quite a young age enables a child to have a life of their own – complete with tennis lessons, and flute, and choir and orchestra and chess club and debating and climbing trees – without suffering a deprived childhood.”
This seems aimed at rich parents who didn’t go to boarding school themselves.
Here’s my advice to those who might be taken in by this kind of advertising: if you find yourself in the position of having reproduced and you’re wondering whether your life might become “less hectic” if you throw your offspring into boarding school, just so you don’t have to look at their little imploring faces so much, here’s what you should do instead: put them up for adoption – because there are countless mothers on council estates who are much more capable of loving and looking after children than you will ever dream of being capable of doing, at any point in the whole of your sh*tty bourgeois life. Basically you don’t deserve to have children.
The ability of people to overcome past abuse at instituIions is a testimony to their resilience, but I am glad that the regime at private schools seems to be more human nowadays. Inequality of privilege may always be with us, but a democratically agreed tax regime can help to ameliorate it.
Parliament is sovereign and could (and should) instruct the seizure of these institutions’ assets and their closure.
What “privilege”?
“Wealth” or “means” might well do instead of “privilege” here. I don’t agree that people who pay their taxes should be prevented from using their residual income to buy additional benefits such as private health care, or private education for their offspring. Even the Soviet Union never succeeded in enforcing equality of privilege – all they did was create a “New Class” of party members and technocrats. Modern Marxists might reply “Oh, but the USSR wasn’t properly Marxist/Socialist/etc, whereas WE will do it right, given the chance.’ My response, in the words of the late great Sir Patrick Moore is: “I don’t believe a word of it!”
Have a look at the building blocks of the world’s preeminent capitalist state – genocide and enslavement of entire races of people. Or ar the world’s first industrial nation — life expectancy in19th century Lancashire cotton mills was 27.
Modern liberals would have you believe that wasnt really capitalism or liberalism.
* Patrick Moore was a right wing nutter who like Enoch Powell opposed the Race Relations Act, but I recall he was skilled at encouraging young people to be interested in astronomy and also at playing the xylophone.
* Not all private schools in Britain are boarding schools or even have any boarders at all. Boarders are only a small minority (less than 10%) of private school pupils.
* Abolishing private schools wouldn’t be tantamount to rolling over for Stalin.
But enough of that. There is no doubt that some rich people do choose to spend money on sending their offspring to private and boarding schools, subsidised by other people’s taxes because most of the schools have charity status and are therefore exempt from paying the taxes that they would otherwise have to recoup by charging higher fees. (I hope the Tory scum do fight the next election with the line that abolishing the private schools – and especially the elite boarding schools – would cost the public purse a lot of money, because they would look very weak trying to defend such a ridiculous position. “It’s good for you townies and chavs that we condition our offspring horribly and they swan around in gowns behind thick walls, and what would you thickos who don’t have any money understand about it anyway?” Yeah, go for it, Tories!)
My point was that when you wrote “inequality of privilege” you were assuming that being sent to a private boarding school is in some kind of real sense a “privilege” and superior to being sent to a state school or home educated. Now we all know that most state schools are total dumps, so I’m not defending them, but I wouldn’t say having toothpaste up your a*** and bootpolish on your b**** when you haven’t got any parents around to stick up for you, for example by calling the police, is some kind of a “privileged” or “rich” experience…
When William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies, the Nobel prize committee in Sweden thought “wow – what an amazing book”. It’s very rare for them to award the Nobel prize for literature for a single novel, but that’s what they did for this one. Anybody who reads it who went to a British private boarding school doesn’t think it’s especially amazing. They simply think “Oh right, he’s described a boarding school”.
Olde Pop HORROR HIT “Monster Mash”.
New UK HORROR MISS – MONSTA CRASH, “..just tell them BORIS sent U!”
Now NAIL Bank$ter Multi-Millionaire Mafia GARBAGE Farage BIG Crock o’ BreX$HIT.
UBI/UNITED BRITISH ISLES with DIRECT RULE – from DUBLIN – DOH!
I already thought the same about the “double-thigh squeezer” allegations against Johnson. If either woman had stood up and told him to bugger off, that would have been laudable. To sit there ‘suffering in silence’ (or ‘being a bit annoyed’, depending on whether you agree with his poliitics,) why could two women say nothing? Were they offended their molester had been unfaithful?
I think Johnson’s policies, his decisions and his lies are the real substance of what’s wrong with Johnson. I’m not happy to allow radical feminist puritanism or fragility-mongering play a critical role in decision-making. They were old enough and wise enough to ‘accidentally’ drop a cup of water into his lap. There are a range of social manouvers they could have made. Why didn’t t
There are two dilemmas within contemporary feminism which need sorting out before we take them seriously.
The first is, they wish to be seen as powerful human beings, strong enough to fight through wars and take tough decisions in leadership. But they would like us to believe that any unwanted attention they experience is, always, in each case, completely traumatic. Both cannot be true. One woman might be fragile, another strong, but they can’t all be both, it’s just silly.
The other is that they would like to be free to express their sexuality without fear of rape or molestation, which is perfectly reasonable. They then produce ambiguous terms like “sexual assault” to imply that a thigh squeeze under the table is the same thing as forcable molestation or violent rape.
It’s isn’t.
This ambiguity, an invention of zero-tolerance ideology, insults our intelligence. But it also results in serious side-effects : It challenges those of us who wish to protect women from genuine harrasment and attack, that the person we wish to protect may want our support not dignity or safety but for personal or political advantage. And so it undermines the credibility of real victims of real sexual assaults. Who already struggle for justice. This is an extremely serious kind of idiocy and it does women no more favors than it does men.
The death of the #MeToo movement was a lot of wanabee-victims signing on with a ‘MeTooWhyNot?’, in the hope of scoring a point for women. The patriarchy didn’t kill it. A possible solution was destroyed by opportunist exaggerration, pretentious posturing and outright lies.
Dominic Berry
It’s been a perfect summer for wine growingim the trolling Codswallop Hills above GCHQ with their West facing slopes , perfect for growing gripe water for political infants like me and you, known as Shat eau Blue Bull.
If men can feel shame , I’m quite sure women are capable of it too.
“I firmly believe women are every bit the equal of men, and I do not understand why it is somehow reckoned that Ms Edwards, and others in the same position, were unable to stab his hand with a fork, throw a drink in his face, or embarrass him by telling him clearly to stop. I do not accept the notion that difference of age and status between full adults makes firm rejection impossible ”
Hi Craig. Your personal experience on this one differs from mine. It is not unknown for people to experience a “rabbit in the headlights” paralysis in response to unwanted sexual contact. I’ve witnessed young women seeming to go into shutdown mode when they’re getting pestered by men and had that experience myself during an assault (more serious than a thigh squeeze). The social conditioning to be “nice” is very strong for women, particularly when young. Sometimes very unpleasant, even threatening, situations can trigger a conflict between politeness conditioning and the desire to reject or evade impolite advances. When fight or flight impulses are blocked, or opposed, by a strong conditioned response, you often get this “freeze” response as the person tries to resolve the conflict. It’s almost like the brain, faced with a threatening situation, and ill-equipped by its social algorithms to deal wth it, goes into a kind of buffer overflow error. It’s anyway now recognised that fight or flight *or freeze* is a more accurate way to describe the natural threat response, rather than just the binary fight or flight alternatives.
I do get where you’re coming from with this statement, though:
“To insist that verbal agreement must always be sought before a move to kiss or an exploratory caress of a leg or a shoulder, is a fundamental change in culture which I am not at all sure is desirable. The essential qualifier is of course that, if the other person either verbally or by action does not welcome the tentative first move, then the initiator must desist immediately. It is my own belief that sex-negative feminism seeks quite deliberately to invalidate perfectly normal heterosexual courtship and that the chattering classes have far too readily adopted this, in the interests of identity politics.”
In the past, any kind of extra-marital sex was seen as scandalous, but just as those restrictions on adult sexual behaviour seemed to have almost disappeared, and people really couldn’t care less about sex scandals anymore, along came these new taboos around sex, supposedly based on issues of consent. But consent seems to have been re-framed to stipulate a very explicit opt-in, almost semi-contractual negotiation, rather than being implied by the acceptance of some tentaitive, exploration of whether or not desires felt are mutual – with the option always being open to the approached party to refuse or “knock-back” the approach, or opt-out at any point thereafter. As long as this implicit “easy opt-out” convention was respected, the fact of an advance being offered typically wouldn’t be seen in itself as too much of an intrusion. If explicit verbal consent had been required before any sexual encounter could be initated, I and most of my friends (female and male) would still be single to this day. Many a long, happy marriage has started with a bit of an exploratory fumble.
I can see how what I’ve said in this second part of my comment might seem to contradict what I said in the first part. I’m aware of the contradiction and I’m not going to try to resolve it because my point is that these issues are nuanced and complicated. Different people take different views and the same person can hold different views at diffrent times or even multiple apparently contradictory perspectives at the same time. One thing that seems certain is that we have to allow each other to speak freely and listen to each other respectfully, if we’re ever going to make sense of this as a society, or come to mutual understandings and agreement over what has become, sadly, a very contentious and divisive issue.
When Groucho Marx said ‘I have principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others’ people thought he was being funny. Actually he was referring to politicians.
Thanks Craig for some refreshing plain-speaking.
more ‘unpopular articles’
strange but true
The Donald apparently agreed with Jeremy Corbyn that the Skripal fantasy story was a fantasy story. There were some other inaccurate words in the article, I suppose it is another
article in the attempt to soft-assassinate Trump & Corbyn, deepen their “unpopularity” both, again shoveling the confirmation-bias – but accidentally letting some accurate information through. Difficult stuff this propaganda, must take truth & twist-it, but revealing actual counter-narrative events is fraught with risk.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/05/trump-told-theresa-may-he-doubted-russia-was-behind-skripal-poisoning
it’s almost like someone, say the Agency for Lying, is trying every way they can to use ‘perception management’ (tar & feather) their sworn enemy, the president & people of the united states of america (and their matrix of subordinate sovereign nations)
https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/02/breaking-anti-trump-whistleblower-colluded-with-house-democrats-before-filing-complaint/
nowadays you can even find articles which are closer to 100% misleading, as many facts seem correct, but the pernicious 180 degree tweak of malice remains , such that an article about ‘perception management’ is itself mostly ‘perception management’
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/trump-busted-running-illegal-covert-psyop-on-the-american-people-ex-fbi-agent-calls-it-black-propaganda/
I was highly amused at the Guardian’s outrage that Trump doubts the Skripal narrative despite the ‘overwhelming evidence’. Evidence so overwhelming that it has never been made public. Plus it gives the Guardian an opportunity to repackage and repeddle the same old rubbish about novochok, the two Russian ‘assassins’, blah blah blah.
Well who reads the Guardian any more?
David
Yes indeed very worrying. If you do not toe the line then you are the enemy. It is a method that is described by Chomsky as ‘manufactured consent’. It is interesting that a quote from the first article you link to is of an SNP spokesman:
“Stephen Gethins, a Scottish National party member of the foreign affairs select committee, said: “The evidence of Russian involvement in the poisoning of Mr Skripal and his daughter is overwhelming. It was an appalling chemical weapons attack that should horrify us all.“
At one stage the Guardian tried to conflate socialism with populism and to call Corbyn a populist but this label did not stick.
The problem is that Trump is a fickle guy who can change his ‘conviction’ from tweet to tweet, therefore there is something for everybody. He can be anti-Russian and pro-Russian according to the pervading narrative and this is often used as a trap. Trump is however always hailed as a great leader by the neoliberals and MSM when he wants to bomb someone.
SA
In short Jeremy Corbyn as PM would unpick 20 years of MI6 clock and bull, along with all the msn lies and spin.
He’s a brave young man Prince Harry to take on the sewer that of journalism .
How will the courts decide between the racist brexiteer media thread of his wife being a Paki and its Royal thread of truth flowing out of her majesty’s bum?
giyane
For me the royal family taking on the MSM is similar to Godzilla vs King Kong. I am afraid I have sympathy for neither.
I don’t have any truck with the royal family but kudos to Harry. My enemy’s enemy…
Like it.
Grieve vs world king hong
Coming soon .
Wot? No Luke Harding input?
He has moved on to Barr.
‘William Barr discussed FBI Russia inquiry with UK intelligence
US attorney general raised review of Trump-Russia inquiry at meeting in London, say sources
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/william-barr-us-attorney-general-discussed-mueller-inquiry-uk-intelligence
Craig called Johnson’s meeting with Trump neocon Heaven. I didn’t agree with Craig that Trump is a neocon. He outed Obama’s USUKIS Daesh in Iraq and Syria. He believes that the US making itsrlf universally hated in the world is a waste of time because human beings the world over worship power and the powerful.
Nature hates a vacuum. In Pakistan many people venerate US power which sustains an area the size of the UK dedicated exclusively to the militsry and US militsry. Many of them worship hegemonisers and they regard British “values ” as weakness
. Trump’ s a bright guy. He knows Muslims worship Saudi wealth and their murderous savagery along with it, same as he knows some women’s itchy oussies find wealth an aphrodisiac.. Why go bombg people who are desperate for Green Cards and to live in London or the U.S.
We’ve not just entered the post-truth age but the post-proof age, too. The establishment can just point a finger, say he did it, there’s very little doubt, and Bang! the media have convicted him. Very dangerous times for us all if this isn’t stopped and reversed.
This is the first msm report of Trump telling May that he ain’t buying no shit of the British secret services after they tried to buttfuck him.
He still ended up sending home 50 Ruskies! And Tillerson got the boot shortly after if I remember correctly. The rest of Rex’s appointees are out of rope on Ukraine now.
The msm is in melt down, Langley can’t give them enough new material without making everyone of them look like the utter plonkers and presstitutes they have always been. Time for a bonfire of their vanities very soon.
Dungroanin
The US lost their stupid war in Syria for which Obama signed up to USUKIS Islamic State Terrorism.
I really don’t think there was much left to discuss with Ruskies except surrender terms and agreement on Russia keeping some damaging secrets about torture-rendition-brainwashing and USUKIS arming and funding terrorism. One would hope FUKUSIS would have learnt its lesson.
In the late 1990s every man of Johnson’s generation knew it was beyond the pale to touch a woman up under the table. I do not buy any of the excuses.. Similarly using public funds as mayor to boost the career of some American prostitute. So bored of this childlike “that’s just Boris being Boris” bullshit.
Carl
Spot on. But don’t forget that Boris was brought up in London by parents who had enough money to sustain a sixties style degeneracy.
Johnson would have had money and freedom which boarders with distant parents would not have had. So Johnson is an exceptional case of an Etonian who was free from any parental control. He would have played the school institution off against the family institution and done exactly what he liked.
Another Tory twerp. Rory Stewart, who has aspirations of becoming London mayor, reads out a letter about Johnson from Eton. Doesn’t h realize that the actual people don’t give a toss for him or for Johnson.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2019/oct/04/stewart-reads-out-1982-eton-letter-about-johnsons-gross-failure-video
Pathetic.
Stewart (46) also attended Eton and went to Balliol for his PPE degree. Johnson (55) went to Balliol where he read Classics. Johnson won a King’s Scholarship to Eton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Scholar#King's_Scholars_at_Eton_College
Arbuthnot heads the list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Scholar#Notable_Eton_King's_Scholars
Before Eton, Johnson went to this prep school. The usual barbarity.
‘Ashdown House was originally an 18th-century country house, completed in 1794 by Sussex-born Benjamin Latrobe who was later one of the architects of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. and also designed the nearby Hammerwood Park and the front portico of the White House in Washington.[2] Ashdown is a Grade II* listed building.
The school was founded in Brighton in 1843 as a boys’ school and moved to Ashdown House in 1886. It first became co-educational in 1975.
Historical allegations in the 1970s of physical and sexual abuse by multiple former pupils, investigated by law firm Slater & Gordon in 2013, were followed by widespread recollections from former pupils that the regime at the school in the late 20th century had been spartan and unforgiving, with boys or entire classes regularly punished with canings. Abuse at the school is much of the subject of former pupil Alex Renton’s book Stiff Upper Lip.’
Johnson would have left at age 13, in 1977, to go to Eton.
Sharp Ears
You wouldn’t mock if you knew the half of it. I remember their team getting bellowed and sworn at from the touchline.
I went to a very creative, warm and now co-ed school nearby .
“That’s Boris being Boris” is the attitude that some took towards Jimmy Savile: “That’s just Jimmy being Jimmy”.
If Johnson tells the London Assembly’s Oversight Committee where it can stick its summons, I wonder whether a court will back him to keep him out of prison.
so touched by the laying on of hands it put her into a twenty year coma – what dreams?
such dreams…
Why is Craig murray batting for the other side?
His articles appear on a regular basis on the horrendously racist, fascist Nazi web site Russia Insider
He claims to be one of the good guys, I’ll believe him when he stops his ” work” from appearing upon sites like the one I’ve just mentioned, plus stops appearing on the Kremlin propaganda channel RT International,he claims to have received death threats from Florida, well he’ll not get many from Moscow!
It’s not very smart behaviour,Mr Murray looks like he’s thinking along the lines of ” my enemy’s enemy is my friend “!
Are you anti-Russian?
We’re in a new cold war and one has to take sides, besides Russia Insider isn’t a Russian site its a pro Putin fan boy site which attracts nasty ultra nationalists, I’m assuming they wouldn’t exactly be Mr Murrays cup of tea!
I don’t know if Murray is aware of this, but i certainly wouldn’t want my work to be associated with such sites or pro Putin media RT International
If I have to take sides then it is with China Russia Iran. They are far from perfect but US UK Israel is worse.
That puts you in traitor territory
Geopolitics explained to football supporters, innit.
Wow, there King Arthur, you have far more freedoms in the West than you would have in China, Russia and Iran.
alwayswrite
the traitors are the USUKIS governments who launched Islamist terrorism against the post-war international world order – as you very well know
@ ROS 14:40
I don’t know, it depends what freedoms you mean.
I can only comment on China where I live but I think you would be surprised at how free people are in their daily lives; in what they do, think and say. I never heard of anyone losing their job for refusing to call a hypothetical bearded six foot bloke “madam”.
In China you would get minus points for commenting on Off-Guardian, IF you could even view it that is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
A travel ban would do you good for starters.
Remember the CPC top cadre is exempted ‘of course’. Some animals are more equal than others, right?
CIA-US is bad, CPC-China equally.
Its is all about the level of totalitarianism.
Antonym
October 8, 2019 at 07:12
Utter tosh; I can get on OG, this site, MoA, Consortium news, The Slog, Golem and any more. And that is without a VPN
I do agree that currently all governments are looking for more and more control over their respective populations and that it is a problem. This is the reason why I am trying to point out that contrary to received wisdom China is no worse than the west.
“and one has to take sides” is the position I strongly object.
conflicts can be resolved through diplomacy and compromise.
no one is obliged to take a side.
If you feel you have to take a side rather than look for compromise, so something is wrong with you. This position leads people to kill each other.
—
There’s a fresh example of your position, Odessa May 2, 2014.
They were also sure they have to take a side.
I wonder what if it have happened in the UK? Is it possible that say, Remainers came across a group of Brexiters, attacked them, trapped them in a building, burned them alive while throwing stones at them to not let them out?
Tatyana we’re in an information war, and people are deciding to take the sided of our enemies, simple as that
The Russian government,or rather oligarchy, hasn’t anything to offer as a credible alternative to the west
They’ve hosted fascist, or what they refer to as ” conservatives”, they support the National Front in France, or whatever daft name they have, likewise they support fascist idiots in Italy
They’ve created a mythology about the last war, which is leading to an unpleasant and dangerous form of Russian exceptionalism, which will fail miserably once Putin’s gone
I’m a realist, i was born and have lived my entire life as you also have, in an imperialist capitalist system,there’s no escaping that
Its the Russians who unfortunately won’t except this, so there’s no way to negotiate as far as the west is concerned
Ok, let’s call it the information war, then I am a pacifist 🙂
I’m not going to take a side, I’m not going to urge people to take my side, and I’m not going to call people ‘traitors’ for not chosing my side.
Tatyana you don’t have a choice!
The decision has been made for you
Unfortunately there’s plenty of pro Putin fan boys in the west, who’s relative’s wanted to destroy Russia during the last war, and its on the websites of these people that Mr Murray will find his work regurgitated endlessly and that was my initial point, but we live in a world of endless conspiracies,ergo I’m working for the CIA or GCHQ which you yourself have indulged in!
I stand by my initial comment
Oh and please don’t even try and find some kind of comparison between BREXIT and the trouble in Ukraine
If Russia and Ukraine were run by smart people they would have joined the EU or EFTA decades ago
You’re own countrymen will think you’re a fifth columnist, or pro western liberal stooge talking like that
Oh, by the way ” traitor ” is how you’re own country will view you irrespective of which country you live in!
easy, easy, calm down. It a safe place, nobody is shooting.
Take care of yourself there in your war, do not let them hurt you even more.
Tatyana I’m perfectly calm
I see you’re living in Russia, I’d suggest its you who needs a safe place, as i see your country is gonna end up just like Ukraine probably within the next 5 years, I’ll give it no more than 10 before it implodes
” except this ”
fake vernacular or bored scribe? The monks whose job was to sit for hours in windy cloisters calligraphing latin texts used to draw little cartoons on the side.
While we are on this vile topic of the Prime Minister’s previous groping of a left leaning lady 20 years ago , has anybody given any thought as to why boris’s sister might have told the world that Boris’s banking mates were gaming the pound on No Deal Brexit?
One would hope that most people would have been lucky enough not to have been brought up by a serial sex pest with no boundaries. But in Borid’s case maybe he touched up his own sister’s leg.
Sempercorrectum
This cold war is different from the first one. Unlike the first, in this one Russia has superiors firepower, intelligence , strategic allies to Usukis and in Syria our team got thrashed ( BBC sport speak ) in round one.
“This cold war is different from the first one. Unlike the first, in this one Russia has superiors firepower”
You’re kidding right? I mean this is a joke, is it not?
No he’s not joking, and it’s exactly what I’ve been saying
There’s a bunch of anti western pro Putin fan boys who endlessly blather about the end of the west,the dollar, the EU,and the replacement by some multipolar fairly tale new world order headed up by Russia and China
Of course western Marxists said pretty much the same after the Vietnam war, you know America is bankrupt, the Soviet/ socialist system was supper dupper, and would replace western capitalism and imperialism…yawn!
So you have another example of information warfare and how people buy in
RoS
Yes, I think it is very funny that David Cameron’s plan to conquer Syria using brainwashed Islamist backfired because Russia’s cruise missiles destroyed Hillary Clinton’s jihadi bunkers, every one.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Then Russia jammed the radar. The look on Lady May’s face and methane from Boris Johnson’s last ditch stand against Russia with the Skripal lies.
giyane the Russians lost the Crimean War!
the war in Syria isn’t over and all that high tech wiz bang stuff that gets Putin fan boys excited will be analysed and counter measures created
Putins been played right across the chess board and there’s nothing he can do about it, he’s in a new cold war and he’ll lose just like when he was a citizen of the old Soviet Union
The fact is Russia is incredibly weak its economy isn’t doing well and sooner or later putin will be gone and the oligarchy will be faced with a fundamental problem, carry on with this daft sovereignist thing, or sell out to the west,oh and don’t think for one minute the Chinese are gonna come to Russia’s aid because they won’t
alwaysright
“all that high tech wiz bang stuff that gets Putin fan boys excited will be analysed and counter measures created ”
now I know exactly who you are..
Empire2 boy Gavin Williamson. typing with your nose on a smuggled mobile in your padded cell in a straightjacket and gag.
Get me out theresa get me out theresa give me one more chance
sorry gavin Mother Theresa’s gone.
giyane Putin fan boy,I’m out of here just another echo chamber
“stuff that gets Putin fan boys excited will be analysed and counter measures created”
Hahaha! “My big brother’s in MI5 (or is it the Intelligence Corps?) and he gave me a Help For Heroes wristband.”
As for “information warfare”, who do you think is winning?
Then there is morale (three times as important as physical considerations, acording to Napoleon). Who’s superior in that?
I think what matters is what you write, not where it is published. Getting the truth out is getting more difficult every day as Google etc are blocking dissent. I strongly recommend you read “The age of surveillance capitalism “ by Shoshana Zuboff, published this year, possibly the most important non-fiction work of the 21st century, worth a discussion thread in its own right.
But it does matter where your work/message is published,you’ll gain nothing but a bad reputation and zero credibility using the above platforms
Crap.
Whatever
However the BBC and ITV are paragons of truth, an example of that truth would be they both constantly show coverage of the Hong Kong demonstrations with a view of demonising China.
However no such coverage is available from both British propaganda platforms of the dozens of political prisoners still held in Spain for hundreds of days without charge for organising a peaceful and democratic vote in Catalonia.
RT, the BBC, Aljazeera, Press TV, ITV etc, all produce their own propaganda, the trick is to cherry pick and collaborate info from them all, to obtain a fairly balanced view of what’s going on.
Alwaysright has an anwer for everyone, but what does he think of western arms killing brown people in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, the CAR, and more. Does s/he really think that another cold war is good for us and what is he/his.idea of diplomacy? Should we.try.it one day? Or does such enthusiasm to use once gob for anything else but shouting shite come last in his Russophobic allures here?
Ohh.. I’d rather be with Truth Telling RT
Than those Lying, War Criminals at the bbC
And Scotland. will be Freeeeee
Ok with that.
Good for you, well seems you can get some training in goose stepping, as the Kremlin loves to host and support a bunch of Nazi ultra nasty nationalists across Europe, and ironically in Russia!
So much for all that BS about fighting the second world war to save Europe, you know RT doesn’t report that, does it
Are you CIA or GCHQ?
King Arthur.
Are you 50 Cent army?
King Arthur
I think he got lost in Manchester on the way home
The Nazis are in the Ukraine and are supported by America, Israel and the UK.
Is Shoshana Zuboff’s overall take as clued up as Ian Tillium’s was in his underground article in 1994?
Tillium’s Law (1994): “Surveillance leads to control.”
That is the correct way to look at Facebook, VPNs, Chinese social credit, and the rest of it.
Ever wondered why some people get through to a human being faster than others when they call their bank? That’s social credit.
Alwayswrite, you remind me of my cousin Kevin :-
# Oh my perfect cousin
What I like to do, he doesn’t
He’s his family’s private joy
His mother’s little golden boy…#
You don’t take a side because you believed it.
You are either born to it or get paid to do it.
Following orders will NOT be a mitigation.
I’t take RT as a more reliable source of news than any of the Anglo American main stream media, that are propaganda foghorns for the neoliberals. As for the BBC, by your standards, it should be prefaced the Downing Street propaganda channel.
@republicof Scotland
I live in China.
I don’t have any restrictions on freedom.
Doesn’t mean I don’t support Taiwan, Hong Kong freedom and oppose the repression in Xinjiang, it’s just that I believe that us, uk and Israel are even worse.
Oh how predictable,as for your comment about living in China how do i know you’re not working for Chinese intelligence?
Of course you don’t have any restrictions, however with the social credit score system you’ll be well advised to make sure you continue batting for the wrong side!
You haven’t listened to what I have said. China under Xi is repressive, I don’t underestimate that. But the major threats to world stability come from the USA, aided by its poodle the uk, driven on by Israel. Can we agree on that?
Yes, you forgot to add Saudi Arabia.
I should add to that though, and I dont mean in a military sense, that economically China is a threat. Actually militarily theyve been oppressing Tibet since 1949. However again due to economics many countries turn a blind eye or ignore the Dalai Lama, fearing Chinese sanctions.
That is the problem with young recruits to GCHQ these days KA, quick to react, slow in thinking and reading.
Lol – AW, aaw, aawwww … straight from the hip without even clearing the holster – that’s a hole in a foot, better kiss it better .., try to avoid stuffing it in the gob!
Lol. I think we should make it clear to OUR boys and girls in the coming hotter battles against us civilians, that their actions may be criminal.
‘Following orders’ – will NOT be an excuse or mitigation for their actions – whether they use bullets and batons in the streets or LIES from their consoles.
A simple ‘miranda’ type statement needs constructing and posting everywhere – so that all the patriotic service folk know exactly their responsibility to the people who they are ultimately employed by and not their commanders and units – all transgressions will be prosecuted. No excuse.
“Batting” lol. You must be right because your side invented the game that your terminology comes from, right?
Discuss?
Well it’s bedtime here, look forward to your input tomorrow.
Sweet dreams
If i were you I’d stay in bed until you’ve attained some common sense, having said that since you live in an authoritarian state maybe you’re just acting the way they,Chinese authorities, want you to behave
Definitely GCHQ
King Arthur, it’s not my business, just can’t pass by. Here is a logic fallacy.
The person states some comments above that “one has to take sides”
The servicemen have no choice.
So, hardly the commenter is CIA or GCHQ 🙂
oops.
in the next comment he says “no choice”
now I wait for “highly likely” 🙂
“Definitely GCHQ”.
How do you know, King Arthur? The bad grammar, punctuation or just the stupid, facile repetition of BS?
Are you Chinese?
If not what about the Social Credit System? or the Xinjiang Re-Education camps for Uyghurs? Or the political prisoners held unjustly? Or the PRC claiming the right to censordhip the internet? Does China have one of the highest rates of capital punshiment in the world?
You’re not going to tell me you that you have just as much freedoms as we do in the UK
Jesus have you not read what i wrote, repeatedly?
One more time.
I personally do not have any restrictions in China. I have twelve years experience. I doubt you have any.
I oppose all that unreservedly.
But the actions of the us uk and Israel are worse.
And if I didn’t have a vpn I wouldn’t be writing this.
Satisfied now?
Over and definitely out.
“I personally do not have any restrictions in China. ”
Oops my apologies Mr Xi Jingpin, who you must be without restrictions in a authoritarian state. However you didn’t answer my question as to whether you’re Chinese or not, but rather dodged the question and went straight into a hissy fit.
Repeating constantly that you don’t have any restrictions at all in China (which I find hard to believe, unless you are a foreign diplomat) in an increasingly agitated manner doesn’t mean or tell us anything of any significance about China, other than you have short fuse.
Twat
I am Welsh.
Twat.
I am Welsh.
I am just a businessman with a subsidiary in China.
As I repeatedly say, I have no restrictions in China. But people such as you who have never been there know better than me who has lived there some 2007.
Well believe your own fairy tales.
Sigh, I have no restrictions Ad infinitum, seems to be your war cry.. for someone whose lived there for twelves years you don’t say too much, other than..well you know.
Twelves years in China and you tell us nothing interesting about the country however you do have a short fuse.
King Arthur: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
Living somewhere for x years doesn’t necessarily give a person any sense with regard to what the social conditions there are all about. It’s also the idiot’s preferred support for whatever codswallop they’re spewing out without thinking, usually because somebody higher up than them told them to, or because it’s what they’ve got to think to be able to function in their stupid job. “I’ve been in this job for 10 years”, etc. – always and without exception equivalent to a label saying “I stopped thinking years ago, and even before my mind became stone I didn’t even try to think profoundly”.
King Arthur if you’re a businessman in China i do hope you’re fully up to speed with the new Corporate Social Credit Score?
The very fact you come onto a site like this could effect your business
I’d move to Vietnam if i was you
Oh and the very fact you’re critical of the Chinese government will almost certainly be noted by the authorities in China
But you’d rather engage in daft fantasies about me working for the CIA or GCHQ which i don’t not that you’ll believe me
So the point is you’ve taken against you’re own side, Wales and the UK, plus you’re blabbering about the Chinese governments policy, you’re confused
Like i said ” my enemy’s enemy is my friend ” dumb,simply dumb!
“Oh and the very fact you’re critical of the Chinese government will almost certainly be noted by the authorities in China”
Yes I read about that awhile back, that companies wishing to do business were falling over themselves to comply with the credit scoring system in order to access the Chinese market.
If King Arthur really is in Chinese, as you say his internet activities will surely be monitored by the state, and negative comments about China could come back to haunt the business.
Of course I fully expect KA to burst into a rant when he next returns.
I should add he’s relying on a VPN not to get caught out. They can still be hacked or traced and VPN’s (most) keep records of all your traffic even though many claim they dont, laws in many nations prohibit them from destroying them.
Always write
NSA and GCHQ and corporations and religious sects alreadt run 24/7 spy monitoring in Britain. It’s getting harder and harder to keep the lid on the police state as the snoop sector grows.
One day soon you’ll suddenly know if you’re on the inside or outside of the loop. If you fear spying you already know we are living in the Chinese system. If you don’t fear it , You are doing what you’re told..
You obviously come on here to boost your brownie points with the British state so it’s a bit pathetic to project your fears on China . I must , I must , increase my bust.
You’ve alreadt lost more brownie points by knowing about CM blog than you have gained by demonizing the top superpower.
Giyane i came here to ask a very simple question which is why does Craig murray indulge himself by appearing on Kremlin propaganda such as RT International,and also why he allows his work on deeply anti Semitic, racist, fascist, and Nazi websites like Russia Insider, he may not be aware of this but it won’t help his cause as he’ll be tarred with the same brush
If you scroll up you’ll see “Contact” button, there’s the e-mail address you can write to.
Mr. Murray rarely visits the comments sections after page1 or 2.
Hope this helps 🙂
Alwayswrite.
Although I agree with with regards to China I certainly don’t agree with you about Craig giving interviews on Russian platforms.
Craig like others who see Western machinations are virtualy ostracised by the Western media. Yet monsters such as Blair get plenty of airtime in the West.
The likes of Craig, Pilger, Salmond and Galloway and Chomsky afford us information on our governments nefarious activities on these platforms, that would otherwise be unknown to us.
alwayswrite
PATER noster, qui es in cœlis; sanctificatur nomen tuum: Adveniat
regnum tuum; fiat voluntas tua, sicut in cœlo, et in terra. Panem nostrum
cotidianum da nobis hodie: Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos *
dimittimus debitoribus nostris: et ne nos inducas in tentationem: sed
libera nos a malo.Amen
Yes, you were told to ask why… but what is that spider going in the margin?
@giyane
I know another latin text, that I think goes better here in this situation
Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas …
I’m sorry, that is all I remembered from “The Supernatural” series 🙂
Tatyana
I don’t know how to delete your heathen soundbite.
Might I suggest you save it for October 31 when this country and its seas up to a 2 mile limit get sucked down into the deepest atriums of hot lava.
come on, Giyane, let it stay.
It seems to work, just see what a peaceful environment is here today 🙂
Snowden doesn’t trust VPNs; he prefers TOR over a powerful laptop with Qubes as OS or Tails.
How does anybody in the UK know what is or isn’t going on in China? The thing about the Uyghurs or the Social Credit system could be as much of a propaganda construct as the Skripals or poison gas attacks in Syria from the same sources.
KA might genuinely just be telling you what his experience in China is.
JC
I don’t think he is really King Arthur. He used to have a different name which I forget. There isn’t even a membrane between Chinese and Usukis spy networks if the subject has annoyed both of them at the same time.
Big brother is global, not national. That’s something big brother doesn’t want you to know , even though Trump just told us it was so. He believes he can find out the information his own officials are hiding from him – from China!
He told us something we’re not supposed to know.
I’m glad someone else noticed that. .
Corporate social credit score system is the law in China, if you want to trade or have a business interest there you’ll have to comply its as simple as that
alwayswrite
Corporate social credit score system is alive and well in Britain. If you don’t comply you don’t get a job in large institutions, You have to comply its as simple as that.
So two fingers up!
giyane: Exactly.
In Britain already, social credit governs far more than whether or not a person gets hired. It determines how fast you’ll get through to someone, or whether you’ll get through to someone at all, when you call your bank. A person may think their bank is really inefficient, but in fact the software has decided how to handle your call probably before the phone even rings the second time. It affects what adverts you get shown; what your experience is with car insurance companies including what quotes you get (note Arron Banks’s experience here); and when direct debit payments get taken out of a person’s account if they are stupid enough to use direct debit.
I too live in China. Private big brother style social credit as described in the MSM is some way off. But some aspects are in place – for example, if you are a bad debtor you are barred from using the high speed train the toll roads (motorways) or staying in nice hotels – but you can still travel on normal trains and roads (or borrow your sister’s ID card) so you don’t become a non-person.
As for the other aspects much of it is also in place in the West/UK – SC or DV is required for many roles, some companies require credit checks and criminal record declarations even (I would say) when there is no clear justification.
As for Corporate SS – why not? The US does it with countering America’s adversaries sanctions and tariffs – and they claim worldwide jurisdiction too. Anyway it aint an argument to say China is more repressive, which was ROS’s original comment.
My position is that social credit has been blown out of proportion by a hostile press and that in day to day life its people have more freedom than you are given to believe. Possibly more than you over in the UK in some ways.
The more I see Harvey Procter’s twisted and contorted with rage face, the more I believe Carl Beech. I guess the public school pervs have won again. No police force in the land will listen any allegations against them ever again
It’s Watsons fault.
This is much worse than any fake antisemetism by a Labour MP or any transgression by any MP.
He has single handedly destroyed the cases of hundreds of abused children by the establishment. Shame on him and his local party and his electorate.
Why isn’t he being hounded out of public life?
Yes.
Harvey Proctor’s statement where he scoffed at the idea that having mutilated a young child with a knife in some kind of horrific sexual torture attack he would keep the knife for several years afterwards appeared as if it was uttered, shall we say, by a man who does not feel quite the same extreme revulsion towards even the idea of such an attack that 99.9% of people do.
@GFL – Have you looked at the Haut de la Garenne case in Jersey, in which police found a large number of children’s teeth and then later decided they weren’t children’s teeth at all and “there’s not much to see here”?
The words ‘protesting too much’ come to mind. It immediately rings alarm bells when the BBC go into non-interview mode – “what do you want to say on this” etc rather than asking real questions. Shameful.
Spot the hypocrisy test.
“For the efficient observer of anti-Israel hate mongering in Great Britain the seaside resort of Brighton in the UK was the place to be during the fourth week of September. There the Labour party’s annual conference took place.
In a few days one could receive a concentrated overview of anti-Israelism in Labour as well as smatterings of antisemitism, its minimizing and whitewashing.”
“A few examples illustrate this.
“At the conference the great majority of delegates voted for a motion to boycott Israeli “settlement” goods. This was a first for Labour. The delegates also voted to reject trade agreements with the country. It seemed that the party furthermore backed the “right of return” of Palestinian Arabs. This is tantamount to supporting Israel’s annihilation through swamping it with Palestinian Arabs. The common way to interpret this right is that those who fled can return. In the Palestinian case it is distorted by Israel’s enemies meaning that descendants of refugees from any generation are also entitled to immigrate to Israel where they have never lived.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24531
“In the Palestinian case it is distorted by Israel’s enemies meaning that descendants of refugees from any generation are also entitled to immigrate to Israel where they have never lived.”
Am reminded of Corbyn’s “IronyGate” where it was deemed by media that noting a certain lack of irony among Israeli propagandists was an ‘antisemitic trope.’
Doug stop digging- you went too deep already.
There was only one social action available to anyone anywhere that eventually led to an end to apartheid in South Africa – a boycott that could be carried out by the least powerful little old lady at any co-op store in the country with a single little girl leafleteer outside – don’t buy cape grapes or apples or if your bank had dealings there – close the account.
Israeli treatment of their actual Semitic natives has been shown to be close to South African apartheid – townships, transported labour, no go areas and long term oppression with impunity.
Scourge that inhumanity – one granny shopper at a time, Dig it? Douggy?
Wait till the dodgy kiddy winding up for the new green future profits industry rebellion, turns into a real social conscious and they turn their attention to the plight of ALL the children in the world.
That’s got fuck all to do with Labour – it’s grass roots anarchy – they will prevail.
Police smash their way into Extinction Rebellions warehouse in London without a warrant, claiming they didn’t need one because they arrested folk exiting the warehouse. All equipment seized, looks like we’ll be going extinct without their descenting voice.
Next up the police will smash their way into school to arrest those pesky school kids who protest about polluting the planet. Why can’t they see a profit comes first.
https://mobile.twitter.com/damiengayle/status/1180474119390928896
Is this a coincidence Extinction Rebellion are the same protestors who completely blocked the rear exit of the Cabinet Office when the Hungarians were at an emergency cabinet meeting?
I say well done XR.
@Angela. That doesn’t sound like a coincidence at all. Please can you say more.
Was it the Cummings-Johnson plan that the Hungarian foreign minister and ambassador’s attendance at Cabinet, or at least their exit from the building, would be filmed? Or did the news get out without them wanting it?
Another non-coincidence is that the date of the Sacoolas car crash hasn’t been revealed yet. It wasn’t when Benyamin Netanyahu was in Britain meeting Mark Esper, US secretary of defence, was it? Or does John Sacoolas keep a whistle he’s started to blow? There’s far more to this story than some US intelligence guy’s wife thinking she’s damned if she’s not going to drive in the same US fashion off-base that she drives in on-base.
The attitude in the Foreign Office and Downing Street and most of the police will be “some random chav kid got killed – oh dear, how sad, what a shame”. (For the benefit of those not so familiar with British culture, the “oh dear, how sad, what a shame” bit is sarcasm.) I can tell you that the British foreign secretary won’t have spoken to the US ambassador, nor will the prime minister speak to the US president, purely because a couple of working class people whose son has died in a road crash “want justice”. That idea is total cr*p. There’s much more to this.
Extinction Rebellion “root racers” and their supporters are currently having a complete kook-out in London, with different squadrons wearing different colours, doubtless each colour having its neo-theosophical “spiritual” meaning.
One squadron dressed in silver are wearing circular headgear carrying the “Extinction Rebellion” rune, presumably with the head circles referring to the spiritual leaders of Atlantis. The colour may refer to the “moon colour” that the Steiner cult believes characterises the “Aryans” who supposedly “migrated” from that continent before it sank.
Seriously – click on that photo and look at them and tell me they’re not a cult and they’re actually all right in the head.
What were the police looking for just out of interest?
The last page of this blog reads like an conspiracy theorists heaven.
Extinction Rebellion are fine by me but the main thing to think about for the Capitalists embracing the Green Economy is – How much money is in it for me?
If they can make a buck with State guaranteed money they’ll pretend they were all for it in the first place.
For our prolific posting friend China and Germany are leading the charge in the Green Economy.
The ironically titled Land of the Free has opted out of the whole shebang.
I suppose a conspiracy theory will be made of that but – there you go.
Follow the money is not a bad rule sometimes.
Brexit I think is simple.
If the UK still has a form of Customs Union and a close Single Market the UK would not be allowed to cut desperate lose – lose ( due to being out of the EU ) with the US.
That for me is Johnson and Farage’s mission and explains all the childish stupidity that the BBC and other media seem to wonder at.
They still believe that Johnson’s not a serial liar and his every utterance is worth clinging to as the truth.
Nota Bene: Laura Kuennsberg looks like she’s been un-embedded from the Johnson camp.
I’d love to know why?
Ken Kenn
She probably kicks out a man’s teeth on reflex when her thigh is groped. Check Boris’s teeth.
Ken Kenn 21:21
“Laura Kuennsberg looks like she’s been un-embedded from the Johnson camp.”
Maybe she refused to be bedded by the thigh squeezer.
As I commented earlier, many years Met Police watching have led me to conclusion they are slapdash and incompetent.
Yep, the SAS who trained their firearms ctews thought so as well.
Genuine oppositionists who want to express their anger in the heart of Westminster in the second half of this month look as though they will have to fight their way through streets blocked by masses of honky “root race” Steinerite “extinction” nuts simply in order to get near the buildings that deserve, ahem, their attention.
Is the crown prince backing these particular followers of his hero Rudolf Steiner yet, or is he leaving that to his mate Stephen Fry?
There are more young people maligned by your excretion^ , than you have shock hands with marxists at coffeemornings, arguing with each other as to will sing from the hills. You are one poor puppy.
Truthfully maligned.
When you listen to Police Scotland making the statement that around 20,000 were marching in Edinburgh you realise what a pile of untrustworthy pish Police Scotland are.
This is the so called force of law and order when in truth it is a lying coniving pile of shite.
How can you trust a police force that pumps out pish. Truth is you can’t, and if they can do this, what else will the bastards do.
They missed A Zero 200,000..More Like
Let there be Sputnik ..With Love. –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ansT065NG7Q&feature=share&
A great sight –
https://twitter.com/byrnesong/status/1180493487566983169?s=12&
It’s a shame your heel injury prevented you, Brian. You would have been 10 more marchers! 🙂
Extinction Rebellion is shutting London down for two weeks, including the intention of stopping the queen attend Parliament for the Queen’s Speech.
It could not be better timed to get No Deal Brexit over the line.
Yes, very convenient, as you say. In cynical moments, I believe Extinction Rebellion and Brexit are merely two sides of the same coin. Both pose as grassroots movements while in fact profiting and being controlled by the 1%, while at the same time spreading division and confusion among the population – one against older, white people and the other against young people and immigrants. Both promoted by the BBC, needless to say.
Yup. They are also involved with stopping meat at Smithfield market!!
Posters have appeared on my streets today.
The whole thing is a setup.
The Nobel self elected granters of reknown are at it this week.
A teachers conference to concentrate on Climate Change! Followed by the peace prize – any bets on who gets it?
Lol.
Snowflakes in October can mean only one thing.
Tom74
100% spot on. Divide and rule, The best way to find new jihadists is to set up an organisation called Prevent.
Jaded old cynics club together with evidence-free conspiracy theory.
i mistook it for a convening of some of the foremost researchers in the field of climate science.
lol
oh, and who would that be?
You got it!
Extinction nuts have also threatened airports. They are doing a lot to queer the pitch regarding whose interests really do conflict with whose. They are going to be in the news A LOT in the next few weeks, that’s for sure. It’s ideal for the rulers if when the food runs out they have these far-right cultist scumbags already out in force on the streets. Their pals the Scientologists will probably be doing their bit too.
I’ve left a comment on the appropriate thread for some breaking news reported today in Russia/
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/mh17-news-in-russia/#post-47745
Thank you for a very interesting article. I have been thinking about it for days. It has taken that long to articulate a response, for something that I understood previously only on a visceral, rather than a verbal level.
If a woman stuck a man with a pin because he was coming on to her — especially back when you were sixteen, but still, today — one of two things, or maybe both, would happen. He would punch her out. And then he would have her kicked out of the conference because she was deranged. She attacked him! She stuck him with a pin! If she managed to make her voice heard that he had made improper advances to him, her completely inappropriate response — to attack him! — would drown out any possible justification for that violent, unhinged, and hysterical act. She would be thrown out, her credentials rescinded, and she would never be accepted again. She would have broken the prime rule: she made a man angry.
Remember when those women protested at that conference, and that guy got up and took that woman by the throat and frog-marched her out with that look of rage on his face? She made him angry.
If a woman makes a man angry, he backhands her. If she makes him really angry, he then punches her and kicks her. Then, for good measure, just to show her he is boss, he rapes her. If he’s still angry after that, he kills her.
Women do not make men angry, because if we do, we will be beaten, raped and killed.
You live in a country that implicitly approves the rape of women. It is a crime that is almost never prosecuted, and where a conviction is an almost impossible to gain. In the UK, only a tiny fraction of rape charges — I think it’s 6% — are ever brought to trial. And only 3% of rape trials ever produce a conviction.
When men behave badly towards women, we freeze. And we smile. And we wait for it to stop. We are instructed by authorities not to fight when we are raped, because it may make the rapist angry, and then he may kill us.
So why bother to bring it up now, when a guy squeezed your thigh under the table twenty years ago? Because now, post #metoo, for the first time in the history of the world (unless you were an upper class woman, or the man was of perceived lower status), women are heard when they complain of the inappropriate behavior of men.
It is true that having to ask verbal permission for each step of physical courtship is extreme. But the fact is, the language of love is not verbal. The first message of attraction is delivered with a gaze. The body signals yes in dozens of ways. The problem is men who don’t wait for yes, but just assume that all women are their ploughfields, and that they have no say in the matter except to shut up and take it — as a compliment, even.
Thank you again for a very provocative article. I always enjoy your work.
Tanya Stone
Thank you for the most perfect definition of the rules of sexual politics. I’m going to save your words and regurgitate them I hope on Craig’s next moment of delusion.
” Hell is full of vampire women, whiskey, gin and vice .” Daniel Jazz. ” If the whiskey doesn’t get them then the women must”
I have travelled through that dark mental place in which morality dissolves into multiple shades of grey. The Western world has just emerged from it when David Cameron set his brainwashed dogs of Islamic State onto the Muslim and Christian people’s of Syria
But we got there with a little help from our friends. Right now the Tories and especially the prime minister should be in Long Lartin serving life.
“If a woman stuck a man with a pin because he was coming on to her — especially back when you were sixteen, but still, today — one of two things, or maybe both, would happen. He would punch her out. ”
You may find this surprising during Victorian times women who were travelling on a train were advised to put needles in their mouths when the train passed through a tunnel, to stop men stealing kisses from them in the darkness of the tunnel.
The women of that era also wore 8 inch long hat pins, that could skewer a Liver.
@Tanya – “She would have broken the prime rule: she made a man angry.”
Yes, and if she herself expressed anger then her emotion (one that led to an action – how “crazy”!) would be viewed as anti-social and “hysterical”.
Craig has completely lost it with this article, and he probably won’t gain it either, given how he frames it in terms of encouraging his readers to “think”.
I don’t think Craig has lost it. He’s just coming from a culture where, when you are attacked, you put ’em up, land a punch, and you both end up friends. That’s male culture. That’s what he grew up in. From his point of view “Why don’t you just fight back?” is a reasonable reaction. I was just trying to explain, in return, the culture that the majority of people on the planet come from.
Tanya Stone
While we are on this vile topic of the Prime Minister’s previous groping of a left leaning lady 20 years ago , has anybody given any thought as to why boris’s sister might have told the world that Boris’s banking mates were gaming the pound on No Deal Brexit?
One would hope that most people would have been lucky enough not to have been brought up by a serial sex pest with no boundaries. But in Borid’s case maybe he touched up his own sister’s leg.
The Donald – is in no mood to be denied his pounds of flesh.
JFK was a bit priapic too from all accounts.
Better a lover than a fighter baby?
Honey traps are all too real too.
Most modern women wouldn’t accept any bs sexual creepiness from anyone.
There is still a highly sexist and sexualised mainstream environment (juat look at the tv programs being devoured by hoi polo)i
It has always been a mainstay of control and power by the out of control rulers – Epstein and Maxwell weren’t just providing underaged jail bait for their own amusement- their blackmailing wasn’t for their personal enrichment. Their protection wasn’t because they had compramat it was because they are state actors.
Sex and Power – the same old story.
It is probably calculated by the likes of ‘Doc Strangelove’ Cummings, that potential Tory voters would be persuaded by a shagstatic, shagadolic, shagmeisters tales of thrusting his hips and bellowing – oomph! But Doms a demented 20th Century plonker psycho chosen by the pathocrats to save them from the EU!
It is over! Their war is lost. The Empire is in disarray – and potus ain’t letting them start any more wars – maybe a small one if he gets his second term, but not otherwise. He is busy finally with the swamp critters (yes he ain’t a saint himself – Mother Theresa definitely wasn’t one either)
On that note – how about something about the actualite on the ground in Syria, Yemen…
It seems the end game is on. Hell the dumbbos from the CIA have even tried a coup in IRAQ.
MoA has a great piece on that meanwhile O-G had a translation from the deceased German journo who revealed how all journos are picked and manipulated by secret services working for the pathocracy – excellent revelations of how the dodgy war reporters are just hams who get to dress up and be wined dined and whored into their cushy careers. Unz is still rebealing more on Maxwell/mossad.
A fine week for the homeseeking chickense thinks – mat be getting up early for more than the Rugby WC.
It seems Robert Maxwell stole US nuclear secrets for Israel through the stolen PROMIS software, which Maxwell sold to US government agencies after an Israeli agency built in a backdoor.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-group-maxwells-mossad-spy-story-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/261172/
I think it is obvious too that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were working for the Mossad. Their targets (US AI experts and politicians etc.) wouldn’t be of much direct interest to the CIA. (The CIA could just put Marvin Minsky under surveillance and why would the CIA need to blackmail him?) But all these targets would be of direct interest to the Mossad and Israel’s military/technology industry.
A voxpop – pensioner in Uxbridge.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ridgeonsunday/status/1180755149473615872?ref_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.rt.com%2fuk%2f470324-boris-johnson-toerag-constituent%2f
Former Save the Children International CEO Helle Thorning-Schmidt was paid $309,524.12 USD in 2018.
On Tuesday 10 July, we announced Inger Ashing as our new CEO. She will join Save the Children International in early autumn.
https://www.savethechildren.net/news/global-child-rights-leader-inger-ashing-lead-save-children-international
(Helle Thorning-Schmidt is Mrs Stephen Kinnock. Trust the pension from Save the Children International is OK)
The CEO of Save the Children UK is Kevin Watkins. I assume that every country where Save the Children is based has a separate management team
Watkins spoke at RUSI (Chatham House) recently. Perhaps he didn’t see the irony when retailing the effects of our wars on the children in Afghanistan and Syria. How many warmongers were in the audience?
https://blogs.savethechildren.org.uk/2019/09/british-leadership-protect-children-report/?
https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are/our-organisation/ceo-and-executive-leadership-team
‘The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, sometimes still referred to by its pre-2004 name, the Royal United Services Institution, is a British defence and security think tank. It was founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington, Sir Arthur Wellesley.’ Wikipedia’
I’m not sure what you’re saying about RUSI and Chatham House. Chatham House is a metonym for the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Its “rule” – quote what a speaker said if you like but don’t identify them – is sometimes applied by other organisations that hold conferences and discussion meetings. RUSI is based in Whitehall; Chatham House is on St James’s Square.
My incorrect conflation of RUSI with Chatham House aside (for which apologies) my original point remains.
Why was the CEO of Save the Children talking to RUSI, whose board includes Petraeus, Hague, Scarlett and other warmongers?
So not as much as the part time war criminal at International Rescue who is paid over a $1,000,000 p.a. partly by the U.K. government.
Not Jeff Tracy?
Miliband D.
I’m bringing you some news on CrowdStrike, Robert Mueller, DNC servers, russian hackers and disinformation
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/off-topic-chat/#post-47761
welcome to the off-topic chat
seems to be at least a couple of disinformation purveyors in this very thread.
As the Western media falls over itself to report the growing unrest and struggle for independence from Hong Kong, it’s very interesting to now see Russia’s RT news now begin to condemn the protestors as violent.
Of course Russia and China have close links, just like the US and the UK, and one has to imagine that eventually Beijing will send in the troops to quell the fledgling buds of independence once and for all.
Still China doesn’t want its dirty laundry displayed in public for all the world to see, just as Eastern European satellites of Russia/Soviet Union in years gone by were suppressed, China would like to crush the movement in Hong Kong behind its own Iron Curtain.
Ridiculous priorities on display from the MSM this weekend, while over 100 protesters had been shot dead in Iraq by government forces the main headlines in the UK have been protesters in HK wearing masks.
China has shown remarkable restraint in allowing the HK authorities to try to get to grips with the protests – which have morphed from being about an extradition law (which has since been dropped by HK admin) to provoking China into a heavy handed response so the US/UK can crow on about Chinese anti-democracy brutality etc.
Anyone with a passing understanding of these matters will recognise US/UK led geopolitical propaganda when they see it.
Here’s a couple of articles about US flag waver Joshua Wong, who appears to be run by the US Consulate General in Hong Kong, Julie Eadeh, having had numerous meetings with her – probably in the Victoria Nuland style.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/09/15/hong-kong-activist-joshua-wong-seeks-support-donald-trump-us-congress/
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/08/11/us-china-step-war-words-hong-kong/
Well said. Now Milord Patten (Chancellor of Oxford Univ, ex Governor Hong Kong, ex EU Commissioner etc etc) has weighed in against China.
China’s Hong Kong Problem
Sep 30, 2019
The Chinese government is playing for time in Hong Kong in the hope that the demonstrators will lose heart and perhaps the will to resist. But if China’s leaders were as sophisticated as they claim, they would behave very differently.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/hong-kong-demonstrations-china-problem-by-chris-patten-2019-09
His register of interests on the HoL Parliament website. https://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-patten-of-barnes/1136
“Anyone with a passing understanding of these matters will recognise US/UK led geopolitical propaganda when they see it.”
So it hasn’t crossed your mind that the young folk of Hong Kong might actually want autonomy from China, and that’s why they’re protesting.
As for Iraq, Aljazeera tv has very good coverage of what’s going on. Iraqi’s are fed up with high unemployment, poor wages and decreasing living conditions, is it any wonder that they’re venting their wrath on the US puppet government in Iraq.
Don’t know why you seem to be missing the simple point I made. Hasn’t it crossed your mind that the mindless violence of some protesters has been whipped up and exploited by outside influences and has casually been given cover in the MSM, who prefer to portray individuals that have stated that they want to kill police officers as freedom fighters? What is going on in HK in terms of civil disobedience and criminal behaviour is far worse compared to what happened in France and yet French people were being killed on the streets by police, maimed for life and blinded – where was the MSM during those long months? As for Iraq, I was specifically pointing to the UK media’s blind-spot in favour of HK coverage.
“What is going on in HK in terms of civil disobedience and criminal behaviour is far worse compared to what happened in France and yet French people were being killed on the streets by police”
Well in HK the stakes have been raised recently a police officer shot a protester in the chest at point blank range but the French Yellow Vest have done considerabke more damage than you make out. However on another point I will concede that Western influences are probably in the mix, still over 300,000 folk protesting a extradition to China in the beginjing is a pretty big turnout.
How far will China let the unrest go is really the main concern, will it be a Tiananmen square event for all the world to see (Though some say it didn’t happen) or will China agree to their demands only to quietly slip in at a later date and take control when the cameras aren’t looking.
The Taiwanese watch with bated breath.
Republicofscotland
“is it any wonder that they’re venting their wrath on the US puppet government in Iraq.”
I find that difficult to accept, considering the PM of Iraq is a Shia and was bsed in Iran for a while. Moqtada al Sadr, another Shia with links to Iran has the highest number of seats in the Iraqi parliament.
The reason for the Iraqis plight is all down to the US invasion and then subsequent chaoes caused by ISIL.
RoS This is the most recent news bulletin on RT. Seems pretty factual to me.
This is part of the ‘The Purge’ made in July that is referred to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDUJH-JTfz8 .
Comments from a politics lecturer at the University of Bath are included.
https://www.rt.com/shows/news/470354-rtnews-october-07-12msk/ First 8 minutes.
He is Pak Nung Wong, the lecturer – https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/pak-nung-wong
I see the US has given Turkey the green light to massacre more Kurds. So much for Turkey aligning itself with Russia. I think this means we can confirm that I was right in another assumption, that Turkey was only pretending for domestic political purposes to be at odds with the US.
Raytheon will be pleased.
Those same Kurds were being supported by the US and the west until recently in the supposed fight against ISIS. They were applauded generally for their bravery, on the BBC and elsewhere. And now they’re going to massacred and forgotten— again.
This isn’t the first time the Kurds have been stabbed in the back by the west and it certainly isn’t the first time that we’ve turned a blind eye to their slaughter. Truth be told, we have typically profited from genocidal attacks on the Kurds waged by Turkey and I’m sure the foreign office will be busy tonight signing licenses for our glorious arms dealers (all those arms dealers care about is creating jobs… just ask them).
And so, the Kurds will soon be back in the game competing with Palestinians for the title of the most abused and downtrodden people in the world. Turkey is also back in the game competing with Israel for the title of biggest recipient of US “aid”.
Massacring Kurds is a serious business. It always was.
The US was always going to abandon the Syrian Kurds. It’s just not that big an interest for the US, and the Syrian Kurds know it. What was wrong was the US encouraging the Kurds to think of independence, when it wasn’t actually particularly wanted, except by a faction.
The US’d be better to get on with it, and leave the Kurds to finalise their deal with Asad. An autonomy deal is available there, like KRG in Iraq. Better to get that consolidated. of course, they’ll lose the oil-fields on the Khabur, the ones they nicked off the Sunni Arab population, but it wasn’t about oil, was it now?
“The US’d be better to get on with it, and leave the Kurds to finalise their deal with Asad”
There’s a point in discussion at which misunderstanding a situation becomes indistinguishable from an intentional effort to skew the understanding of others.
The US isn’t getting on with anything remotely like leaving the Kurds to finalise a deal — the US is telling Turkey it can go into Syria, a sovereign country, for the purposes of massacring Kurds. Clinton more or less did the same thing in the 1990s and about 3000 Kurdish villages were wiped off the map.
As for the deal with Syria, where did you pluck that from? I could guess.
Well, they’re talking now about the US withdrawing extensively, if not completely. The situation has developed since yesterday.
>As for the deal with Syria, where did you pluck that from?<
Excuse me, but are you really that ignorant of Syrian affairs? The Kurds have never been enemies of Asad. Stand-offish, but not enemies. There's still a Syrian army base in Kamishli, which the US tried to have eliminated once, but the attack was stopped after one day. Why is it still there if the Kurds are enemies of Asad? They aren't. It is the US who wanted to use the Kurds against Asad, but the first time Trump wanted to withdraw, the Kurds went to Asad and arranged a deal, which frightened the NeoCons, and they convinced Trump to change his mind. This time we'll see. Frankly Asad is a better ally against the Turks than the US.
It’s an interesting state of affairs when I feel the need to apologise for specific words having specific meanings.
I didn’t say anything to imply that the Kurds were or are enemies of Assad. The Kurds want a nation-state, though, and if you think Assad will stand and watch tracts of Syria being hacked off to accommodate that, you haven’t been paying attention. Not that it’s likely to happen now with Turkey about to wipe them out.
The absence of hostilities between Syria and the Kurds does not equate to a deal. The Syrians have more pressing issues to deal with and just don’t need another front right now.
But I’m not into a petty exchange with you on this. There’s no point. The reason I commented on it here is to try and encourage others to give more emphasis to this stuff over say Brexit, the Skrippals, and even Assange. I think it’s probably the most important fault line in the world right now and suspect the Americans are gearing up for an attack on Iran but nobody seems able to do a thing about anything these days.
The Internet has turned us all into a shower of ineffectual — if well informed — spectators.
The Kurds in Syria, as in Iraq, aren’t going to get independence. And probably not in Turkey either. The problem is that their territory is too indefinite, and and changes its borders too frequently. For example, the famous city of Kobani, so stoutly defended by the Kurds, was not actually Kurdish till 1964. It was previously occupied by Armenians. So where is the god-given right that it should form part of an independent Rojava? The Kurds have been expanding recently. Acquiring land by force was until recently a no-no, now that’s less certain, but precisely what is Kurdish territory remains unclear.
They’ll have to settle for autonomy in the near future, and leave independence till another day. The Kurds in Erbil have consolidated their rights pretty well, and nobody’s going to take KRG away from them. Better follow that model.
“The Kurds want a nation-state, though,”
No they don’t. Not the Rojavan Kurds, that’s American propaganda, and the KRG have settled for autonomy too.
I doubt Erdogan will be bought off that easily, and he won’t cancel his military ware orders with Russia either. Or want to risk dead soldiers and downed planes in North Syria.
He will instead be inclined to behave better and relish the role of lynchpin between Europe and Eurasia. And what better legacy than peace with honour with the Kurds?
I expect the Kurds will get their homeland – which may even get a pipeline through it – along with the Belt and Road!
The Kurds were screwed long ago by the perfidious Brits and French. And ever since by the US and the 5+1 eyed gollom. They will hopefully finally find some security and wealth to go with it and cement the peace in the ME.
Sometimes I do get accused of being over optimistic!
I can not think it is right for Turkey to invade Syrian lands.
The Turkish Empire was supposed to have ended in 1918.
What about the Syrian people/government are they to have no influence in what happens to Syria.
The bulk of the known Syrian Methane and Oil sources are in Rojava plus the best cereal growing land.
The bulk of the Syrian population live in land controlled by the Syrian Government, which is only about half of Syria, the rest is either controlled by Turkey, Kurds or terrorists.
If you’d said that about 10 years ago, you’d have been right. But anything goes today. The US, Britain, and Israel, along with a few of the usual cohorts, basically decided that national borders and international law are no longer applicable.
It’s on that basis that the US has bases in Syria to this day, Turkey was sending trucks in to steal oil from Syria during the (so called) civil war, Israel annexed Golan, etc., and now this.
The damage that the West has done in places like Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and of course Palestine, over the last decade or so is of historic proportions. Measured in terms of destruction of property and lost of life, it makes the Nazis look like a bunch of Boy Scouts.
I see Iraqis are uprising against “democracy”. Watch that story disappear from the news when they find someone “moderate” enough to slaughter them on our behalf. The people of Iraq have never been so poor but the oil taps are in full flow… just don’t waste your time trying to find accurate data on Iraqi oil exports.
The horror, the horror.
The following is what Donald Trump tweeted about an hour ago (and this is not a joke or spoof):
“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over…”
“….the captured ISIS fighters and families. The U.S. has done far more than anyone could have ever expected, including the capture of 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. It is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory. THE USA IS GREAT!”
I don’t think Trump will win a second term. Sufficient numbers of swing voters will realise he is literally insane.
N: “I don’t think Trump will win a second term. Sufficient numbers of swing voters will realise he is literally insane.”
I wouldn’t bet on that. There are enough on the dumb-dumb left who’ll find whatever candidate opposes Trump does not pass their ‘purity’ test. Then they will nobly and with great smugness stay home on voting day, or vote for a no-hope spoiler candidate like Jill Stein, in the ludicrous belief their personal integrity is improved by allowing a howling fascist to take office.
There are plenty here who spluttered “Bu…bu… but Clinton!!!” at the last election, holding their noses high and ushering Trump into the White House. They are responsible for this freak.
The bought and paid for wing of America’s other big business party has nothing to do with the left.
Its policies while in government are what enabled Trump’s election and since then they have had little issue with his headline policies, whether the tax cuts for their donors or his record military budget (in fact the Democrats actually demanded that he spend more on the military than what he was already proposing.) Hardly surprising when they are one of the two main political instruments of the most rapacious and imperialist capitalist ruling class on earth.
With impeachment they are in their true comfort zone: attacking Trump from the right on “national security” grounds. The Hillary zone..
Thanks Joel – I didn’t think someone would be so obliging as to prove my point right away.
Of course the Dems are not perfect, and it’s a straw-man to pretend that anyone said they were. But they are a lot better than the Republicans with their white supremacy and theocratic rabble-rousing, while they work without any hesitation solely for the ultra-rich and environmentally destructive industries.
Obviously the Dems would attack from national security grounds, because this is one completely unarguable case and something that should make any honest Republican (don’t laugh) feel they should not support Trump.
But the purity voters – like yourself, perhaps – can only look on the bad in both candidates, and lack the sense to vote for the only least bad candidate who actually has any chance of winning.
You seem more than a little uninformed about the “not perfect” lesser evil, Glenn, which is of course how they like it.
They are equally in hock to every sector of America’s ultra rich, including all the environmentally destructive industries.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/401356-dnc-passes-resolution-on-fossil-fuel-donations
Another cycle of disingenuous corrupt rule by corporate Democrats wiould provoke another cycle of Trumpism or worse as surely as night follows day. We are currently living through the repercussions of lesser evilism
And for all their posturing about Trump, corporate Democrats would much prefer a second Trump term to a Bernie Sanders presidency, something that might genuinely threaten their class interests. If you believe otherwise you really dont understand who they are or what their role is.
You are entirely missing the point, joel.
Who would you prefer in the White House, and in control of the House and Senate – the Republicans, or the Democrats?
When it comes to voting and campaigning at election time, it really is that simple.
Can you answer my question above? It shouldn’t take you too long – a single word actually – there are, after all, only two serious contenders.
If you’re talking Republican or corporate Democrat, then obviously neither.
Either of those options would mean the continued rule of the most rapacious and imperialist capitalist rulng cclass on earth.
Sure, joel, sure. But they are the only two options you have. Get real!
There is a realistic third option this time, as in 2016 — Bernie Sanders. He’s that rarest thing in US politics, a clean candidate who has fought for ordinary workers’ interests his entire career. About as far removed from figures like Biden and Trump as it’s possible to imagine.
It’s hard to tell if he’s simply insane or if he just gets some really good cocaine every now and then.
Its actually quite funny – a bit like Chaplins great dictator.
The Donald knows he won’t need to intervene because the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation juggernaut is sweeping through from the east and north – and their version of pax romana will sweep away the jihadists, the US bases and the Saudi and Israeli grand plans.
These tens of thousands of proxies being curated in the Idlib camps will not be deployed to die for the Anglo Imperialists.
Erdogan knows which way the wind has been blowing and is loving it!
Peace in our times is winking like the light at tunnels end.
Trump is securing re-election – he has already dealt with Bidens hopes and is looking forward to wiping the floor with the DRC screwballs again.
Turkey has been massacring and oppressing the Kurds long before the US turned a blind eye to Turkey’s onslaught.
Even Saddam used them to test his chemical weapons out. However Britain is no stranger to using brave soldiers from foreign lands then unceremoniously dumping them, the Nepalese Gurkhas fought bravely for Britain only to be denied residency and a fair pension.
Across the pond the Oneida and Tuscarora native American indians fought for the US in the War of Independence, only to be like the rest of the native American tribes genocided to the point of extinction at a later date.
That’s a bit simplistic. Turkey is not Iraq. The Iraqi Kurds are doing fine in KRG now.
Even in Turkey, there was a long period, starting in the 80s, if I remember correctly, where there was détente with the Kurds, until Erdogan relaunched his war with them. Erdogan is certainly a megalomaniac. Also a populist in the Trump style. I suspect that his electoral base in Turkish Anatolia are affeared of the Kurds, but he hasn’t handled the question very subtly.
The Turkish Kurds, too, haven’t handled the question very well. It’s all hate the Turks, instead of looking at what could best be done. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq is a good example of a success. The territory is consolidated, and might in the future provide the base of a state, if they can get over the problem of depending on the 17% of Iraqi oil revenues, to which they have a right, but don’t have a replacement.
Mod: That comment needs to be deleted, as it was a reply to a now-deleted comment.
Wonderful, Turkey, that is a Nato member, could invade and plan to annex neighbouring country and NO friggin outcry by the media, liberals, Nato themselves!
Crimea on the other hand…
How is this hypocrisy possible to carry out? Are westerners too brainwashed to protest this horrible indifference? Or am I the dumb one?
Russia did not invade Crimea. The vast majority of people there are Russian and voted for Crimea to join Russia.
N_
Indeed –
With over 75 percent of the votes already counted, preliminary result show that 95.7 percent of voters said ‘yes’ to the reunion of the republic with Russia as a constituent unit of the Russian Federation. Only 3.2 percent of the ballots were cast for staying with Ukraine as an Autonomous Republic with broader rights. The remaining 1.1 percent of the ballots were declared invalid.
The overall voter turnout in the referendum on the status of Crimea is 81,37%, according to the head of the Crimean parliament’s commission on the referendum, Mikhail Malyshev.
I’m not sure it’s as simple as that though, is it, Brian.
Using that logic, the Irish would have no grounds for wanting Northern Ireland back as part of Ireland.
Maybe you would be happy for a such a vote to be carried out in the Shetland islands which, as I understand it, has been arranged (by the UK government) in the event of Scotland voting for independence. If that happened and Shetland voted to secede from Scotland, they’d be taking a fair chunk of Scottish oil with them. You okay with that?
Building a military base in an area and stuffing it with outsiders looks like a pretty convenient way of manipulating demographics and future votes. But on what basis can you or anyone decide where these boundaries and borders lie for the purpose of that sort of manipulation? I think, if memory serves, me, this is called tullymandering.
I don’t know enough about Crimea to decide if it’s part of Ukraine or not. Any such decision would need to take account of the area’s history prior to the arrival of Russians etc., and revolve around the question of ‘on what basis this area could be regarded as distinct from the rest of the country for the purposes of having such a vote in the first place?’
Hatuey
” If that happened and Shetland voted to secede from Scotland, they’d be taking a fair chunk of Scottish oil with them. You okay with that?”
Scotland would get on just Fine without Shetland ( Scotland ) Oil
I think too that we would be Monsters to Allow such a Suicide.. But if we can’t stop them ?
Hatuey,
Minority/Independence is a tricky question indeed, as far as Crimea, they likely want to be part of Russia,
Consider the multiple polls on that question showing just that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#Alternative_estimates_of_results
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#Post-referendum_polls
Having said that, how all that was carried out…was not pretty.
Okay Brian, I think that is a strange position but I’ll acknowledge it even if I can’t respect it. How would you feel if we extended the logic to say Perth? Are you okay with Perth declaring its independence from Scotland too? We can go on and on.
This isn’t a ridiculous or silly line of reasoning. Look at the size of say Egypt or India before independence. Britain is famous for carving countries up that move towards independence. The famed Gordon off Khartoum who fought for British imperial rights in Egypt would have been fighting in Sudan today.
I have no loyalty or love for national borders (or nationalism) but they are the foundations of international law and so much else and I don’t think we should stand back and allow the bullies of the world to draw them as they please.
“Using that logic, the Irish would have no grounds for wanting Northern Ireland back as part of Ireland.”
Actually its a pretty close call with around 48% Protestant and 45% Catholic. However Brexit could tip the balance if Johnson gets re elected, leaves without a deal in the process, and messes up the GFA with regards to the backstop.
As Ukraine it wasn’t until the late 20th century that it became fully independent. Having been part of the Polish-Lithuanian empires and the Soviet bloc, not surprising then that Ukraine means borderland.
As for Shetland leaving Scotland, I doubt that very much the Lib/Dems held onto it from the SNP by a small majority recently, after someone mysteriously daubed the words SNP on a war memorial, I wonder who could’ve done such a thing? Of course you can put your unionist point of view across, and it’s only unionists who spread the Shetland wants to leave story.
On the otherhand you may like to know, that a Wings poll only in England, resulted in the folk of England would rather lose Scotland and NI than Gibralter.
‘“Using that logic, the Irish would have no grounds for wanting Northern Ireland back as part of Ireland.”
Actually its a pretty close call with around 48% Protestant and 45% Catholic.’
But that’s not what Hatuey was referring to as he clearly said “Irish…wanting Northern Ireland back…” not “Northern Irish reunifying with Ireland”. This is the second time on this page that you have conflated two entirely different points and then present them as an argument against the first.
“Irish…wanting Northern Ireland back…” not “Northern Irish reunifying with Ireland”
Deb.
If the Northern Irish don’t already have NI then who does?
As for my comment
On the contrary if you think religious demography which in NI, I would say pervades votes and ergo the percentage of votes isn’t an important point then you need to look again.
1st conflation please, ah yes not instantly agreeing with you thst thecHK unrest is all Western led, I’m happy to disappoint.
If you were to partition Northern Ireland according to current demography, Protestant majorities are now pretty much confined to Antrim, North Down and East Derry (very much not including the border city of Derry, with a 71 percent Catholic majority. Armagh is split, and the rest of the province has Catholic majorities.
The original partition was unjust. Two of the six counties (Fermanagh and Tyrone) even then had Catholic and Nationalist majorities. Why need this injustice be continued?
N, if I was to arrange for 5 people to move into one of your rooms, would you be happy for them to have a vote on declaring that room a separate house?
@Hatuey – Can you argue with reference to what you think has been the recent history of the Crimea?
I’ve already said I don’t know enough about Crimean history to form the basis of a decision about its sovereign status. I know as much about your room.
But if it’s the simple and irrefutable argument that you and others on here seem to be implying, then why does that argument seem to always rest on the referendum result?
I could look into Crimean history, I suppose, but since it’s your argument then I think it’s you who are obliged to show an understanding that alleviates concerns.
In short, on what legal or legitimate basis can we distinguish between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine — does the region claim nationhood in the same way Scotland does and, if so, do we have any historical records to support such a claim?
These are legitimate questions. If you can’t answer them without a tautological (used correctly) argument that rests on its own assumptions — i.e. that the people there voted for this or that… — then you don’t have an argument.
@Hatuey – Are you worried that debunking nationalist lies in one place might lead to their unravelling in another? This is not difficult. The vast majority of people in the Crimea are Russians. That means they see themselves as Russians, not as Ukrainians. Now there are areas of the world which have a Russian majority who are not clamouring for the place where they live to become part of Russia, one example being the town of Narva in Estonia. This is why the referendum is highly relevant – because it shows that the vast majority of people in the Crimea DID want the Crimea to become part of Russia. Anybody who thinks the referendum was “fake” and that most people in the Crimea are not Russian but Ukrainian, and that they would have loved to vote to stay in the Ukraine but Russian “invaders” wouldn’t let them, or “little green men” from Moscow stuffed the ballot boxes with fake votes, is a complete ignoramus about that part of the world.
N: “Anybody who thinks the referendum was “fake” and that most people in the Crimea are not Russian but Ukrainian, and that they would have loved to vote to stay in the Ukraine but Russian “invaders” wouldn’t let them, or “little green men” from Moscow stuffed the ballot boxes with fake votes, is a complete ignoramus about that part of the world.”
I agree. Thankfully I have not encountered any such people on here or anywhere else.
Crimeans do not live in someone’s room, but in their own.
Did they simply vote to make it their own room? Is there any evidence that they regarded it as their own room over the last few hundred years? Is there any record of others regarding Crimea as a room in its own right?
Maybe it would suit you to compare with Scotland which can trace its recognised status as a sovereign nation back for around 800 years.
It’s your argument. Make it.
“Crimeans do not live in someone else’s room, but in their own.”
is better.
Or, “some other’s room”.
There are other ways of putting it, but I think that’s closest to what you’re saying.
“Maybe it would suit you to compare with Scotland which can trace its recognised status as a sovereign nation back for around 800 years.”
Aye well, even Ireland finally fell to financial didgery widgery.
Scotland, much earlier.
“another’s room”, is probably best.
So:
“Crimeans do not live in another’s room, but in their own.”
what a strange criterion do you put forward? Well then, let’s dig out the records of Byzantium, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and hand out all the land back to their ‘rightful owners’. Ah, and not to forget the Golden Horde 🙂
This part of our planet had many names, e.g. Taurida, when we fought it from the Ottomans. Then Soviet Social Republic of Taurida, Crimean Soviet Social Republic, Crimean Autonomos Republic, Crimean region of USSR. It was never nothing like the Ukrainian Crimean Republic.
Their own decision on how to call themselves – tells a lot.
Imagine Scotland called itself ‘the Scottish Republic of Britain’. The same with the Crimea.
Now I’m thinking “anyone’s”, is best.
“Crimeans do not live in anyone’s room, but in their own.”
Other suggestions welcome.
Thank you, Herbie, it’s hard to express minor shadows of sense with the foreign language.
@Hatuey, I take this opportunity to
say helloinvite you in the off-topic 🙂https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/an-unpopular-article/comment-page-5/#comment-898203
“Other suggestions are welcome.”
Here’s one: give it a rest!
I see. You’re the only lexis nazi in the village.
Thing is, you do it with native English speakers.
I’m assisting a foreign speaker.
Completely different attitude.
твоя мать была хомяком, а твой отец пах бузиной
[ i.e. “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!” – clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The meaning is analysed here. ]
The Catholic one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3v9unphfi0
The Protestant one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O91aabHmKRY
So, anyway, the Protestants are doing it in a restrictive small Religious Meeting Hall, Scandinavian kinda thing.
And the Catholics have this ancient, acoustically perfect church.
Who’s taking the piss out of whom, you see.
SIncere thanks, Herbie, for your gracious musical reply to my facetious remarks. I don’t quite get your meaning about Protestants and Catholics (or what may be your support for Craigspeak, which I have indeed criticised “whom should be” recently, or “rooves” and suchlike anti-English usage in the past) but the acoustic contrast between the two ‘identical’ performances of the Allegri’s Miserere is most illuminating, and proves that ideally music should be heard in the environment it was composed for, with the correct reverberation time.
Russian soldiers stationed in Crimea breached the law by leavng their positions and involving themselves in the politics of Ukraine, I dont think that is debatable. Having said that so did west in many ways by meddling in Ukraine before and under the coup.
My issue though was with the double standard we see now. Even EU have nothing to say of substance on Turkish behavior.
Involved, went out and stood still ready to defend in case of attack.
Who else do you think could ensure order during the referendum? Ukrainian police or Ukrainian troops?
Mentioning the soldiers don’t forget to mention the reason of their involvment, otherwise it looks like you are unhappy that people dared to defend.
I’m with you on this one Tatyana, the Ukranian so called uprising was a Western backed event, Russia was merely defending its borders and access to Sevastopol.
Of course US bases are peppered all around the globe, but it is Russia that is a threat to the world, well according to the West that is.
Lets not forget that Britain kicked out the Chagossians to host the US, a room in the house thats turned into the whole house.
By Courtesy of Captain Bob’s (maxwell) geneorous philanthropy I recall, how could on forget, watching Georgian Rustaveli Company Richard III in Georgian. Many years ago the Georgian Rustaveli Company brought their production to the Roundhouse for a short season. The last night performance culminated in standing ovations and throwing of flowers, and a “phenomenally successful production”. I wonder what they are doing now?
Tatyana
These russian soldiers had no right to leave their positions. Period. Equally if Ukraine had troops in Russia for some reason, they would breach the same law by involving itself in russian politics right?
Ukrainians (i.e. ukrainian russians) had the right to involve in a referendum, defence and so on. No foreign actor had/have this right.
“Of course US bases are peppered all around the globe, but it is Russia that is a threat to the world, well according to the West that is.”
It is staggering that an adult can make an argument like this. On the basis upon which you argue here, I’d have every right to burn your house down on the basis that some other guys were burning lots of houses down too.
Seriously, by the age of 5 I understood that the wrongs of others do not make my wrongs right.
Maybe you aren’t an adult.
Hatuey
But that argument is easy. Why should Russia care about international law or condemnations when the same parties breach it even more than Russia itself?
Jack, sure they had no right, I agree, by any judgement it was illegal.
What I argue is – substituing the moral with the law. I know some samples from the history, when people preferred to act out of their moral values rather than to stay keeping to the law. Mr. Snowden is the latest.
The second, I don’t understand what is the disastrous outcome of the soldiers’ presence? Thousands of killed or, what? Why so much fuss about it?
—
It is more about me, than about the Crimea.
I don’t recognize ‘legal’ as the highest measure of justice, because once upon a time, you know, slavery was also legal, and racial segregation, too, and punishing kids and beating wives was absolutely legal. So? Would you also have condemned the runaway slave or a beaten wife for the illegality of the escape?
Tatyana
Yes I agree Russia is held on a double standard, they acted perhaps morally right but not legally.
The problem is, if you OK Russian activity then you will have to do it when US, Nato, EU and so on do it to in my opinion. Likewise people that accept Nato illegal activities should be prepared to accept them if/when Russia do it too.
No, Jack, you are wrong.
There’s an activity and there’s an activity. How do you tell one is good and the other is bad? My measure is the degree of evil.
If the action leeds to war and killing, then this is a bad action. If an action saves lives, then this is a good action.
As to the Ukraine’s and US’s buttnurt on the loss of the Crimea… it has not yet brought any of them to the grave, so they will survive 🙂
Tatyana
Everyone can use that argument, and it is used. Hitler used it, Bush used it, and yes russians use it. No one tell they are going to start a war to kill people – they are doing it to save people.
Hatuey.
You have the political thinking of a child, infact you openly admit you think politics is evil, stop seeing the political world as black or white, the truth is with politics in mind its mostly shades of grey.
You have a strange way of reasoning, Jack.
Reminds me of tests for children, you know such “here is a ball, a doll, a candy and an apple, group these objects by 2”
Ordinary children pair a ball and a doll, because they are toys; and a candy and an apple are food.
There are creative children, who don’t accentuate the main attribute (how do we, humans, use it), but firstly some secondary one (form or color), and easily combine the ball and the apple, because they are round, or red color.
And there are very very creative children (I’d say that type of creativeness that goes hand in hand with schizophrenia) they are able to find a common attribute “illegal” in the Nazi invasion of Europe, the US invasion of Iraq, and the Russian soldiers standing on their land, protecting their citizens during the referendum.
There was no invasion, and no one was killed is the main difference and I don’t know how you fail to see it when you talk of Hitler or Bush.
—
I know that comparing with a mental disease may sound offensive and I’m sorry for that, I didn’t mean to offend you, it is just a scientific fact.
Tatyana
No offense to you either, but you are led by tribal argument, i.e. when you/your state commit a certain act, its ok. When others do it, its not. I dont buy that, because its based on double standard.
Bush did it to save “democracy”
Hitler did it to save “western world”
and so on.
Exactly the way you are reasoning did the Bush supporters in 2003 after Iraq invasion.
no.
I tell you that your manner of finding similarities doesn’t coincide with logic. From my point of view, you are struggling to simplify and to generalize. It’s the same like calling the failure to use condom – a rape (that might be easy if you don’t know the details :-))
Since USSR dissolved we signed a treaty on the seaport and the military base in the Crimea, and we paid money for rent, and the soldiers were there quite legally, and everything was fine until the Right Sector, Maidan, tatars who started sending their old men and wives to the mainland leaving only young men in the Crimea, the crimeans who decided to vote for Russia… And you say that the soldiers are the reason for escalation.
The soldiers’ involvement occured after, Jack.
It is “Post hoc” fallacy.
Yet, you end up appealing to me personally, as an unreliable source, but again not to the facts. For a logical conclusion it doesn’t matter if a Russian or a non-Russian person voices the facts to you.
It is “Circumstantial ad hominem” fallacy.
Finally, comparing Nazis and Crimea is ‘False analogy’ fallacy, known also as “apples and oranges”.
Tatyana
Sorry but you just keep proving my argument over and over.
You dont realize that the propaganda of waging war has been similar for thousands of year. And there have been people like yourself trying to justify the law breaching as something right.
You just have to read the deal Russia had with Ukraine to station troops, nowhere was of course a paragraph reading that these soldiers could involve themsleves with ukrainian politics. You are arguing for what you personally think is right. You can do that, but your reasoing has no bearing considering international law.
Jack 🙂 I agreed from the very beginning about illegality, but you persist and don’t even try to understand me.
This time it is Ignoratio Elenchi fallacy 🙂
Tatyana
Exactly. It was illegal and that is the point of the whole dicussion. Apparently you dont think the law should be followed any way.
Now I am done.
Finally.
Exactly, Jack. I don’t think the law should be followed any way.
Apparently you assume that this is bad, even if it saved the lives of a couple of millions of Crimeans and prevented a war there. Who cares about lives, if the most important thing is that the law should be followed any way, Jack?
Even if you think that comparing the Crimea and the Nazis is a correct comparison, so… what can I do? you are free in your beliefs, just please don’t try to convince me with another bunch of logic fallacies.
Did English soldiers break the law by attacking civilians in Afganistan or in Syria?
Will we follow the US and abandon our military advisers in both countries? Is Labour going to break diplomatic ties witjh Saudi Arabia? Or arrest them for holding slaves in their London real estates?
What do you do if you have a runnt nose Jack? Take out your hanky and offer it up to somebody else to wipe theirs ?
nevermind
Not sure what you mean. My point though, one should be equally critical of Russia’s (or any other nation) behavior, if not, are we not hypocrites if we then condemn western illegal wars in the next sentence? I consider western nations behavior far worse than russia judging past decades, if that will help understand my view.
“Russian soldiers stationed in Crimea breached the law by leavng their positions and involving themselves in the politics of Ukraine”
If the latter part of your theory is true, the Rusians saw it coming a long time ago and that case what else were they going to do to meet your standards of polite reaction to covert war? Just examining your own logic.
J
Saw what coming? They were part of that escalation, they were the reason for the escalation I would say.
Regardless they shouldnt have done anthing at all, its not their business, just as it is not the business of US or Turkey to involve themselves in Syria right now.
N_ “…voted for Crimea to join Russia.”
Rejoin Russia you mean.
for me it’s no sense to choose this or that emotionally loaded word. The people wanted to Russia, they did it, no one is killed and this is good.
Oh don’t fret Tatyana it’s a conflation not to instanty admit the West are knee deep in HK, but similar conflation for some could never have materlised in the Ukraine.
what do they want, those protesters in Hong Kong? I do not follow news on it, can someone explain in a couple of simple words?
Republic, I think you will struggle to find anyone on here more critical of the west than I am. You can validate that by scrolling up on this page where you will see that I describe western exploits in the middle east over the last ten years as making the Nazis look like Boy Scouts.
However, even if I was the most loyal and deluded westerner who brushed over these things, that would not in any way legitimise the underhand behaviour of anyone else in the history of humanity. This is a basic moral point which most children understand by the age of 4.
Tatyana, it does you no good to perpetually refer to “the people” of Crimea who wanted to be part of Russia. You need to explain and show how the people there always considered themselves Russian. If you can’t do that then we must ask on what basis the area was separated from the rest of Ukraine and a vote held in the first place.
It strikes me as odd though that Crimea decided to go down this road just as Ukraine was discovering itself and aligning itself with the west. There are other discrepancies too.
Tatyana I have added a comment to your MH17 thread.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/mh17-news-in-russia/#post-47768
No, Hatuey, I’m not a Crimenian, nor am I a professional historian with all the answers ready on your demand. So, I’d love to join your point of historical records, just for fun 🙂
I choose the times of Catherine II the Great and spit on ukrainian self-determination together with crimean identification. The lands are the suburbs of the Russian Empire, so the people are all russians and enough of that 🙂 Independence, identification… ha ha, who cares? Russians. Ditto 🙂
@Tatyana – For a while an important issue was the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to Mainland China. Last month the protestors won on that, when the extradition bill was withdrawn.
Two other very important features of the movement are
1) resistance to the surveillance state – that’s why umbrellas and masks are used, and
2) the demand for one-person one-vote rather than the current system in which the Chief Executive is nominated by an electoral college based on “functional constituencies” and the Legislative Council consists of some members (35) who are elected by one-person one-vote in geographical constituencies and an equal number who are elected in functional ones.
T.
What is happening with in HK?
The same as South America, North Africa, ME and exactly what happened in Ukraine.
A Color Revolution.
Like Maidan and the various other colours and Springs – the HK one is represented by the colour Black (their uniforms) and their umbrellas (which make the numbers look bigger from the sky) and their masks – which hide the identities of the agitators. They agitate school children (no masks, school uniforms) to get on the streets for ulterior motives – just like the XR bastards are doing and as Baden-Powell did with the Scouts, and Hitler with the Nazi Youth and Mao with the Culture wars.
HK is aimed at getting back into the South China Sea and limiting the expansion of the SCO – the first genuine world federation in history.
HK is the last throw of the dice by the Anglo Imperialists to retain their 500 year empire there – it is doomed to fail. Thanks in large part to Russia and its superpower weapons technology and Putin and Co’s embracing of the SCO partnership and expansion of the EAEU. Thanks to their non-racist embrace of the future unlike the European settlers of the 5+1 eyed monster empire.
Hope that helps?
Dungroanin, it helps but to some extent. Your comment reminds me of my first visit here, people were discussing the events using all these unknown names and acronyms. It makes understanding extremely hard, especially when I try to google 2-symbols abbreviation 🙂 I’m currently at the page 1 of different ME results and already afraid to start googling XR
—
Anyway, thanks
Tatyana: “I choose the times of Catherine II the Great and spit on ukrainian self-determination together with crimean identification. The lands are the suburbs of the Russian Empire, so the people are all russians and enough of that ? Independence, identification… ha ha, who cares? Russians. Ditto ?”
It’s hard to argue with that, I suppose. Please accept my surrender.
Was Stalin from Crimea? Georgia maybe? One or the other, I think.
Anyway, Eastern Europe generally is a tricky place for moralists. It’s a graveyard of broken promises. NATO really shouldn’t be expanding into Eastern Europe — promises were made on this — and at the same time I understand why so many there fear Russia.
Hatuey
The primary problem here is your self admitted ignorance and persistent reluctance to find out for yourself the history of the Crimea. If you did you will understand the nuances here and why this is so different. This is unlike you as I usually find you very logical. Occasionally however I find that you like to play devils advocate.
“NATO really shouldn’t be expanding into Eastern Europe”
As you probably know, Soviet membership of NATO was considered a real possibility from 1949 onwards: even Charles De Gaulle was quite keen in 1952, but by 1954 the idea was seen as incompatible with democratic objectives.