I was down in London last week for discussions around my appeal to the Supreme Court, and staying in a hotel close to Leicester Square, I wandered along to see the fans during their game with Ukraine and its very noisy aftermath. I was hoping to write a piece about disgusting uncouth yobs of racist English nationalists and their stupid and perhaps violent excesses.
With the exception of the most hardline of unionists and the politically correct automatons of the “new” SNP, it is ingrained in most Scots to support two teams: Scotland, and whoever is playing England. This is generally expressed lightly, but the centuries of oppression and cultural and economic dominance that led to these attitudes are very real. I have been amusing myself greatly on twitter throughout the tournament by supporting the Czech Republic, Germany, Ukraine, any opponent of England, I confess largely because it creases me up to see unionists so easily triggered and unable to cope with teasing.
I know, I should get out more.
Well, I have to say I was wrong. I found it impossible to dislike the crowds of England supporters. They were joyous, and there was no sign I could find around Leicester or Trafalgar Squares of the kind of racist Brexit backers who had booed the England team for taking the knee. Indeed, the most striking thing about the crowd was its extreme multiculturalism, the most joyous and unified representation of most of the ethnic groupings on this earth, all with their arms around each other and sharing beer, wine, tequila, a variety of smokable substances, and anything else to hand.
There was also a far greater gender mix than I expected, and the women were by no means passive or in girlfriend mode. In fact some of the more aggressively uninhibited groups of celebrating young women were distinctly intimidating to an old fogey like me and had me scuttling to cover (they meant no harm but might have hugged me to death).
Yes, I know London is not Grimsby or the ex-red wall constituencies, I know English nationalism is a real problem and will split up the UK (about which I am intensely happy). But I was wrong to dismiss the Gareth Southgate phenomenon of an essentially decent Englishness and its reach. My loyalties for Euro 2020 (sic) now lie with the nation of my Italian grandmother. But I feel somewhat less revolted by the continuing success of the English team.
I should make my confession; I liked the English fans I was around that night.
————–
I should be very grateful if you read this excellent article by Alexander Mercouris on my appeal to the Supreme Court. Alexander is a lawyer and it is an explanation of the detail, but it absolutely captures everything I have been lying awake at nights and thinking about the case.
I was chatting to Vivienne Westwood at a rally for Julian Assange and she is very taken with the climate crisis. We are heading for the edge of an abyss, and a few people in power are considering how to slow down a bit, while almost nobody is suggesting we turn round. Vivienne reminded me of her website Climate Revolution, which is very stimulating and worth checking for updates.
Vivienne often chooses to express her thought through her art and allegorical representation, and also writes cogently and pithily. The breadth and depth of her knowledge and quality of her thinking are impressive. For those not with a natural artistic bent, it is worth taking the time to understand. For example, she chose to celebrate Julian’s fiftieth birthday not by eating birthday cake but by smearing it on herself. It is a great piece of agitprop, and invites you to work out why.
Finally, here is a lovely picture of John Pilger, who was on great form, and me showing off my bald spot.
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There’s a (even) better version of that picture of Craig with Pilger (retweeted on Craig’s Twitter page) here:
https://mobile.twitter.com/barnabynerberka/status/1411340483473952775
In 1966 I was working as a stagehand on ‘The Sound of Music’ in the middle of Soho.
The afternoon performance – which contained an audience of 11 including 3 nuns – was ‘patchy.’ All the stagehands were watching a minute b&w TV set beneath the stage and a flautist in the orchestra had a transistor radio on his stand with the result that the delicate strains of ‘The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music’ were regularly punctuated with cries of “England! England” and scene changes took 3 or 4 times longer than normal.
The evening performance was extraordinary. Soho was invaded by tens of thousands of fans – both English and German – and all drunk. Remember that the majority of fans in the crowd would have been happily slaughtering each other only twenty years before. But there was total amity. Battalions of working class men – English and German – paraded up and down the streets arm in arm singing each others’ songs in turn.
Thanks for admitting you were wrong about English fans, Craig – good for you – but you still found a bit of space to give a typical upper middle class metropolitan sneer to the northern working classes – especially from Grimsby for some reason.
You know, I don’t understand how someone who is supporting Assange, BLM, Scottish independence, recognizes seriousness of global warming, far right threat, military industrial complex and NATO destroying democracy and Brexit idiocy can give that vile homophobic and transphobic website (you know which one Craig) even a single look. Misplaced loyalty towards anyone talking about Scottish independence? Alba did a gigantic shoot into both feet by repeating this torrent of hate, because people who accept it won’t vote for them. They will vote for Tories or something to the right for them. If Alba wants to be centre right party, fine, but someone should give them a clue using language straight from 1930s is asking for the 1% of vote they got as it’s excellent way to drive away any young pro Indy voter in a single sentence.
“Alba did a gigantic shoot into both feet by repeating this torrent of hate,”
Now you’ve got my attention elaborate a bit please, however if you’re referring to Alba standing up for women’s right which are currently being undermined by the SNP government then I think you way off base with this one. Alba in my opinion didn’t do tooo well at the polls because Sturgeon called for two votes SNP, and Alba launched a bit late in the run up to the election the former wasted the List vote, and allowed many unionist MSPs in through the back door. We know why Sturgeon didn’t want a super independence majority at Holyrood.
It’s likely what you are encountering here RoS is a process succinctly dissected by Glen Greenwald in this recent video.
https://youtu.be/WoXZP4m-Af8
All the classic elements of what is identified are present in Mr V’s post. The evidence free allegation and smear. The assumption of individual opinion-based allegation being sufficient to determine both automatic guilt and sanction, even of others by association. The appropriation of a single convenient definition designed to destroy anyone who deviates, disagrees or even fails to agree with sufficient enthusiasm.
The same process used by Establishment authoritarians and the useful idiot populist mobs they are feeding and controlling in other spheres against other inconvenient individuals and groups. Like Corbyn, Salmond, Assange, Women’s rights groups, JVL, and, yes, Mr Murray here – who for some inexplicable reason gives every indication of not having joined the dots.
A process, whatever the issue or matter, built entirely on a faith-based belief system in which any incantation from its adherents is sufficient on the grounds of having declared something to be so it therefore must automatically be so without the need for evidence. In short, the position and tool of the unthinking mob.
Am I the only person who finds CM’s wish to break away from the UK on the one hand, and his dislike of Brexiters on the other, rather paradoxical?
After the EU’s crucifixion of the Greeks and bailout of the 0.01% who’d lent to them, why do people on the Left still regard the EU as a benevolent institution? Whatever its original principles, it’s been hijacked by corporate interests and shows no signs of becoming any more democratic. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Is it because – as an ex-bureaucrat – he’s a central planner at heart, who just believes it’s a matter of getting the legendary “righteous” central planners in power?
Wake up, Craig. It’s not Left vs Right, it’s those who will definitely subjugate us rather more vs those who might subjugate us less.
No you’re far from alone in this regard, Jim. I thought I might alienate half the followers of my new pro-indy blog by arguing for Scotland not to seek readmission to the EU, but the response was overwhelmingly favourable.
https://jaggy.blog/2021/05/05/europe-for-scotland-aye-right/
Sterling analysis that by Alexander Mercuris of the painful illogic, near madness in fact, of Lady Dorrian’s reasoning. The ruling is no less bewildering and shocking at a remove of several weeks. If allowed to stand it would have chilling implications for honest reportage. It must be reviewed and overturned.
It is excellent. It is very intriguing that it seems the Scottish court is revising its reasoning around jigsaw evidence, realising presumably they are on a hiding to nothing in terms of the effect it would have on all journalism if it was accepted (ie no journalist could report on a trail including anonymity rules). The question is if that judgement, even by their own admission, is unsound, how can the rest of the verdict and sentence stand? It appears to me to be unravelling, and when you add to that the blatant personal animosity of the judge, it would surely be thrown out in any rational world. Of course we don’t live in a rational world, and they will be keen to support the Scottish verdict, however absurd and irrational it is, because of the ‘disrepute’ it would bring the court into. However that would be a poor second to the notion of justice, which is rather more important. We can only hope that whoever hears the case has some vestige of fairness and respect for a coherent legal system.
*”It is very intriguing that it seems the Scottish court is revising its reasoning around jigsaw evidence, realising presumably they are on a hiding to nothing in terms of the effect it would have on all journalism if it was accepted (ie no journalist could report on a [trial] including anonymity rules)”.
Have you considered the possibility that that is the intention? After all, not only does it hamper efficient government for the public to know what happens in a court room; it’s also inconvenient and humiliating for judges to have to put up with commentary and even criticism.
Far better, in some people’s view, if trials were conducted in secret, without juries.
A return to the Star Chamber? Exactly! We have among us those who strongly favour a return of the divine right of… themselves.
A return to the Star Chamber? Exactly! We have among us those who strongly favour a return of the divine right of… themselves. ….. Tom Welsh July 6, 2021 at 21:48
Here’s news of more evidence of that abomination and decidedly subversive action, TW. Aren’t lawyers and barristers supposed to be smart? What’s wrong with them nowadays? Have a gaggle of them effectively been bought to do the perverse bidding of anonymous others?
amanfromMars 1 Wed 7 Jul 04:17 [2107070417] …. having a say on https://forums.theregister.com/forum/1/2021/07/06/ransomware_4_new_square_chambers/
Re: Person or persons unknown
FozzyBear,
If that be their thinking, in this crazy remote internetworking age, are their clients negligently servered with the most delinquent of secret and confidential security protections …… and the chambers, 4 New Square, run the risk of being successfully sued by those aforementioned clients whose secrets and confidences they have lost to unknown others ….. and thus be their woes significantly compounded and highlighted ……. a double whammy of outrageous misfortune.
And does Mrs Justice Steyn actually believe in these new leaky informative internetional times her going through the motions and issuing a court injunction against anonymous/Person or Persons Unknown has real merit as opposed to being recognised as a desperate act in defence of the indefensible and support of the inequitable? Is that Hubris I see before me, Yorick?
The times they are a’changing and many more things than yet realised have already fundamentally and comprehensively been changed but that’s perfectly normal and fully to be expected in both the spaces of radical evolutionary and/or rapid revolutionary progress.
“Far better, in some people’s view, if trials were conducted in secret, without juries”.
And indeed, can any of us distinctly visualise the difference between a trial held in secret without a jury, and a bureaucrat signing a document with a stroke of his pen? So much quicker, more efficient, and cheaper!
It’s certainly a convenient process in which selective accusation without the inconvenient chore of testing of evidence and the existence of long fought for rights such as right to a defence, innocent until proven guilty, and even guilt by association can be rolled back.
A process not limited to Established and Establishment institutions and organisations.
Now just where have we seen that process in action across various issues in recent times?
I think you’re describing what happens in Dole offices when someone’s entitlement is stolen.
Today I see this:
https://wmbriggs.com/post/36450/
in which it is explained how, in Canada, the “justice system” resorts to similar dirty tricks in the mirror-image situation: where a citizen is suing the government. After long delays and preliminaries, the judge suddenly discovers that she “doesn’t have jurisdiction”!
I still fail to see why the application of the ‘objective test’ cannot be challenged on the basis the court should minimise the required degree of objectivity by demonstrating how the statements they cite can identify witnesses. Guilt is then dependant on whether the jigsaw pieces assemble to show a picture followed by objective assessment as to ease of assembly.
IMcK.
What I find utterly bizarre, is the premise is that Craig Murray be imprisoned to allow future people who have been sexually assaulted to come forward, and Craig’s imprisonment gives them the confidence to do so.
Meanwhile MSM hacks who have not only jigsaw identified the complainers but actually identified them, and are under a strict press code of conduct rules, and have a far wider audience than Craig, are not bound by the same laws so it’s okay for them to carry on because their identification of complainers won’t affect any new sexually assaulted complainers confidence to come forward.
Surely the Supreme court will come down on Craig’s side, if not, its hopefully off to Europe.
It beggars belief that a woman who has suffered a sexual assault would be intimidated from doing so because of anything said on Craig Murray’s blog. If she is worried that her guarantee of anonymity may be compromised, it is highly likely that she would think of the Salmond trial and the mainstream media coverage, but most of all the way at least two of the witnesses were forced into the court against their wishes by Scottish government officials. None of Craig’s verdict withstands a moment of scrutiny.
Why should anyone have anonymity? Isn’t equality before the law good enough?
Nice bit of anonymous comment there :~)
RoS / Ian
My understanding of British justice is the prosecution are required to prove guilt rather than the defence having to prove innocence. The phrase ‘objective test’ is unspecific and does not constitute proof. The onus should not fall on the defence to dissect the meaning of ‘objective test’ and to disprove its applicability. Therefore I am suggesting the court should be challenged to clarify the specifics as to how they have applied the test. If the court refuses to provide any specifics and without providing any justification, their case is weakened. If it does provide specifics it opens itself to further challenge and in particular comparisons with information provided by other media sources. The goal is to hoist them by their own petard.
The photographer seems to have had in mind the photograph of Paul Dirac and Richard Feynman having a chat. Still, didn’t quite make it, imho. Sorry. Different times, different people…
https://ysfine.com/feynman/feydirac.jpg
Pooh – well, I suppose they could try bringing Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle into the business of jigsaw identification to prove that Murray’s articles couldn’t have nailed anybody.
Carrramba, Jimmy, you can’t be serious, man! Try they could, succeed they couldn’t, and their trying wouldn’t stop the flow of honey the future decision makers’ way.
The oh-so-clever js id proposal’s originators could, in justification of same, cite the lepton universality conjecture whose likelihood of being true has made gains consequent to a very recent report of the latest experimental result. I bet you have thought of such a move yourself by now.
Ciao.
Winnie
Pooh – you know, I really was wondering if Lady Dorrian’s brain was reduced to half-spin. I’d be quite happy to stick her into the Stanford Linear Collider, just to see what happens ……
Many thanks, Jimmy. So it’s ‘Too spun by half’…. Fab! Goes into my notebook.
You are as smooth as Tennessee whiskey. I see you are going straight for a Nobel’ka: spin’s being, supposedly, an intrinsic, irreducible property of subatomic particles, your idea of its redaction will beget new sciences, I foretell.
Didn’t they decommission SLC some years ago? I know the tunnel is still there and some very interesting work is being done. If you can afford it, get your mojo working and book a trip for the lady you’ve referred to when things settle down.
I appreciate your comments and your being game for a laugh.
Good wishes and good luck.
Пока
https://linearcollider.org/
I have to say that it’s nice when the middle classes decide to get involved in a working class sport.
The sofaristas have all joined in ‘ the event ‘ and OK it makes for a good feelgood time but there are bigger issues to think about and clapping for carers is on a par with the emotions that the British people need at this point in time.
Nothing wrong in cheering people up with a genuinely multi cultural team but if it goes wrong the media and the public they influence with headlines and sub headlines will whip up opprobrium first against the neo Corbynite Gareth Southgate and then the knuckle draggers will blame the multiculturalist approach to life in general.
It was ever thus with the fickle media.
A lot of emotion has been invested in the current England team and as football is a metaphor for real lives disappointment will wreack its revenge in print and on the Twittersphere if they lose.
Mi fickle public as Bugs Bunny said once.
In any public event which as raised public spirits there are always the doom mongers and Jeremiahs. Whatever the results from now the England team will be perceived as having done favourably, and acted as a counterweight to the prevailing miserabilism.
Bread n circuses
Jm organising for revolution while the semi final’s on.
You don’t know me at all, Carl.
I didn’t really understand Craig’s position on which-football-team-to-support and the reasons.
I tend to (a) support the underdog (so that, with England versus Germany, the sympathies may a-priori have been for England, since Germany usually hammers them – and with Ukraine in England versus Ukraine, because Ukraine are clearly the underdogs in this encounter), but I’ll rapidly shift allegiance if some very talented player on the field does something unexpectedly brilliant.
Whatever unpleasant nationalistic undertones may be present among fans, this often isn’t true of the players on the park who can show great talent – and, when they’re not playing football demonstrate a good social conscience (e.g. that Manchester fellow Marcus Rashford).
It’s a great game, with great entertainment value (one has to be a real snob to disagree with this) and it seems a pity to show negativity towards the players on the park as a response to the hideous foreign policy of national governments, for which the players aren’t responsible and with which they often disagree.
This is a man who never criticises the Chinese Communist Party – who would send him to the Laogai for life – but whinges like a needy teenager about the people who put a roof over his head. A total fraud and and a racist bigot to boot.
I think many of us who took an interest on the back of his principled stand for Assange and scepticism over Novichok are wondering whether this guy actually has any meaningful values at all?
Glasshopper – well, I do seem to remember him sticking up for the Uighurs in China. I probably wouldn’t go so far as to call him a racist, but yes – I do find his remarks about which-team-to-support-and-why strongly tending in that direction.
I don’t follow this site for the moral compass of Craig Murray, though – I follow it because there has been a lot of razor-sharp investigative journalism, very informative, which goes way beyond the Skripal saga (where he excelled) and his detailed account of the Assange hearing. The journalism, about the corruption within the SNP, for which Lady Dorrian wants to bang him up was penetrating and excellent, I also have much better knowledge about the White Helmets and the Syrian situation in general as a result of this blog.
I’d say that he is dead wrong with his reasons for wanting Scottish independence. He sees it as a way of smashing the last remnants of British imperialism.
Well, he is very much out of date here, by at least 75 years. The Anglo-Saxon empire is going strong and has been for at least 200 years. The only thing that happened was that in 1945 the centre shifted from London to Washington. The Americans may permit Scottish independence, but only in a way that does not interfere with the running of the empire.
So I’m convinced that if his dream of Scottish independence comes to pass, he’ll soon discover that it was all for nothing.
Scottish independence will not go any way towards the dismantling of the Anglo-Saxon empire which, among many other things, destroyed Iraq.
No country has ever regretted ending rule by London. Btw do you seriously think you have alerted Craig to the existence of the US empire?
U Watt – of course not – Craig Murray clearly understands the continuity of the Anglo-Saxon empire and that the only very minor alteration that took place was shifting the centre from London to Washington in approximately 1945 – and that, nevertheless, the UK and USA establishments are still culo e camicia.
You may be correct about rule-from-London (although frankly I don’t see Sturgeon even as a slight improvement over Johnson) – but that is irrelevant to the main point that independence for Scotland won’t change the nature of the Anglo-Saxon empire one bit.
They have already managed to plant Sturgeon there. Do I hear anything about Scotland as a neutral country after independence? Do I hear much about an independent Scotland supporting the Palestinians? Do I hear much about an independent Scotland telling the USA to stick the US naval vessels stationed at Faslane where the sun don’t shine?
If it was China that was sending bombs to pound kids in the middle east I’m sure moralists like you would be the first to damn them to hell.
“there was no sign I could find around Leicester or Trafalgar Squares of the kind of racist Brexit backers who had booed the England team for taking the knee.”
Sometimes you say things that really highlight how much of a brainless bigot you can be.
Did you interview any of the fans (never mind a representative sample) on their Brexit views or their views on the woke and racist BLM movement of which ‘taking the knee’ is a visible symbol?
I’m guessing not, but since these English fans didn’t fit in to your prejudices you seem to just have assumed their views.
Very disappointing.
the blm movement is racist? if cops in scotland murdered a man on video by slowly choking him to death, would the scots be all “back the blue” and sh.. or would they protest? as long as we’re being “woke”, wake the eff up about government thugs murdering people. It happened in a murder video that wikileaks showed, and it happened to george floyd. People who make excuses for government thugs are bootlickers.
Of course it is racist. They have zero interest in the fight against slavery taking place in Africa – by Africans – today.
And the hideous problems with police brutality in America should never have left that country. We already have Kick it Out thank you, and it has made remarkable progress for many years.
I suppose we are to view you as an anti racist.
you got any support for you laughable assertion that “they” have zero interest in fighting slavery in africa?
your immediate backtracking to a different issue, (the hideous problems with police brutality in america should never have left that country). you are correct in your assertion that america has hideous problems with police brutality, but you have gone further to tie some of those problems to racist cops. Tell me do you have any objection to cops murdering people in the street and claiming self defense??
Glasshopper,
Here is my answer to you with historical context provided. Would be happy to hear your informed comment after you have read.
https://blackcommentator.com/170/170_guest_barnett_reparations.pdf
Cheers.
Courtenay
Ah Kick It Out has removed Institutional Racism??
Grasshopper you have eyes but cannot see the truth that Not much has changed – except in the representation in some sport where there has been no choice but to have the best players.
But lacking still in many other sports traditionally closed – golf, snooker , rugby, motor racing…even the All Time Best – Lewis Hamilton has had to make a ‘stand’ – you ready to diss have m too?
Institutional racists hate BLM because it smashes through their front doors and through their hiding behind sops like KIO.
When players make simple gesture of mutual respect between all races, what should anyone make of those who boo them?
Those who boo are providing direct evidence that they are, in fact, racist – exactly because opposition to racial equality is a defining charatersitic of racism.
Brexit was sold by the Brexit elites by waving flags about and by promoting xenophobia. Comments I’ve read in support of Brexit in the DE and other such places are unequivically racist. The same people – for they have the same user names – excuse their own distaste for BLM with “legitimate concerns”, that are somehow impossible to satisfy. That’s because they are covers for racism.
Similarly, the culture wars against “woke” are yet another cover for racists.
Yet who benefits from the racism? Who is that fans the flames of xenophobia? What gain is there for working people – regardless of race – to fight over the remaining biscuit, when the boss has theived 9/10 of them?
on being a bit wrong…..you are not the only one.
Here is Delta de Peffel Johnson dishing out cash to those who have loads.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/uk-gave-63-4m-in-secretive-payments-to-six-middle-eastern-states-say-mps/ar-AALPgIT?ocid=msedgntp
And while he is at it, here is a little Gerrymandering for future funds.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/boris-johnson-pushing-through-bill-to-let-wealthy-tax-exiles-fund-tories-labour-warns/ar-AALQ96u?ocid=msedgntp
very wrong indeed and the story behind is that the NSDAP has provided the model for today’s Conservative cabal. Not looking forward to the Wembley moschpit tonight, booing the moment a Danish player touches the ball.
Or do they only exercise their biggest organ when playing Germany?
“the kind of racists who had booed the England team for taking the knee”
It’s very racist to suggest that racists are racist. Have you learned nothing from your readers!?
Meanwhile…Stella Morris gives a statement outside the not so High Court on their ruling on Julian.
The British court has, unsurprisingly, allowed the US’s appeal, undoubtedly following directions of the UK government in obeying its directions from the US. Even though both the US and the UK know that the legal case against Mr Assange is hopeless, they will continue with the extra-judicial punishment, torture and incarceration of Mr Assange. It was never a matter of law; quite the reverse.
It will only be when the US and its poodle the UK realise that the costs of their illegality exceed any perceived benefit of JA’s death or continued incarceration that he may be freed. Expect either JA’s death or some highly trumpeted ‘loophole’ legal release before long.
Thank you for dispelling the notion that everyone who lives in Scotland hates the English or anyone who wants independence – moreso. I grew up in England before returning here (born in Scotland) and my daughter and grandson are in England, she barely remembers Scotland and my grandson is English. I have no problem with the people of England, there is nothing wrong or inherently bad about Englishness and I have always found the people I have met to be overwhelmingly welcoming. There ARE obvious exceptions, but you’ll get that everywhere. I think that the people of England have been quite mislead about Scotland but that’s far from being their fault.
The cheap shot of all pro indy Scots being anti-English is used in parliament and elsewhere to reduce the power of our MPs, to reduce the importance of our parliament and the whole point of our argument. Wanting independence is normal and doesn’t have anything to do with hate.
Totally agree with this post.
I hope this bigoted fellow is not living on a pension paid for by hard-working British people?
Tax payers money is a fucking big lie and fairytale. There is no such box full of cash in the Treasury. So why keep repeating that lie?
One man’s lie is another man’s religious belief and vice versa €:~)-
If it’s good enough for the Saxe-Coburg-Windsor gang…..
My father who has lived and worked in London for nigh on 30 years told me of a recent event. Walking over a bridge footpath in London he accidentally bumped into a young white English female upon apologising he was told to foff back home you fing Irishman. Upon correcting the young white English female that he was in fact Scottish was told to foff back home you fing Scotsman. Given the lack of hospitality meted out to fellow Brits in the form of Scotland supporters in attendance at our Capital city during the Euros I seriously take issue with this piece. Scots often forget that London is our Capital and we are as entitled to live, work and visit there without interference, prejudice and hibition.
Interesting post. But London is not our capital.
It is the capital of the UK.
It wasn’t specified in the Treaties of Union but it has been subsumed as the capital for whatever reason.
M. Boyd,
Parochialism and prejudice – is – parochialism and prejudice however it comes.
Recall an incident in London while being driven and someone shouts from one car to another, ” Fucking Paki bastard”
The driver replie, ” Bway – guh suck yuh Mama.”
Reply: ” Fuck off – Black bastard”
Same story – mistaken identity.
( Chuckle – or – cry).
May I please comment on BLM movement?
Mr. Floyd’s death was mentioned – be him 100 times more evil criminal, how does it empower a policeman to take his life away? To take his life in daylight, in the street, despite of so many passers-by asked him not to? Mr. Floyd had no weapon on him. He was no threat to the policemen. That was an act of pure cruelty.
Black people stood up to say Police treats Black men worse than White men. It’s a fact.
Police themselves as well as many ordinary people recognise this fact. The explanation was that Black people commit crimes more often, so police is in alert mode when interacting with black suspects. This is also a fact.
The core of it is that Black people more often live in certain background, because they more often cannot afford living in better districts, because they have worse education and less paid jobs.
I’m not saying that white people have built their wealth and wellbeing by exploiting black people. I don’t feel I should say it. But, the inequality is a fact.
BLM movement is about destroying the inequality. Color of the skin here is just a historical coincidence. Imagine history went another way, and instead of Africa they’d enslave Eastern Europeans, then today you may have watched SLM *slavic lives matter* perhaps.
I’m appalled to see some statements here. I suggest people should read more of Russian classic literature.
You either agree that all people are equally worthy, or you support theories of untermenshen/exceptional races. That simple.
Every time you say that someone should be treated differently because of their race, or because of anything that was not chosen voluntary by that person – congratulations on being a nazi.
Tatyana
Yes, racism is invisible to the racist. Britain has a long shared history with India. Because of this, like family members , we know their emotional push buttons and they know ours. We push their buttons and they push ours buttons, and our country is intstitutionally racist against them and their country is institutionally racist against us.
By racism, I don’t mean personal animosity, I mean trying to put the collective bad experience of history onto innocent individuals. I take no responsibility whatsoever for the collective historical abuse of Indians or black people by former white people, so I refuse to have their grudge against my race put onto me as an individual.
Many races come to England with the idea that this is pay-back time for the crimes of the British Empire. That’s fine , so long as they don’t want a pay-back from me, because I oppose the crimes of British Empire 1 and now 2. But while history is closed to us because the propaganda of the British Empire 1 has written the history books, I can plainly see on my mental archaeological dig, that games are played between two cultures and Empires are constructed by turning individuals from the other race against their own race’s interests.
One example of this would be that London under Boris Johnson has made a secure home for Russian criminals otherwise known as oligarchs. Boris has bought their loyalty by protecting them and this is extremely bad for the Russian people. Then the rogue British Empire 2 builders who support criminals try to portray all Russians as criminals , including Putin.
The two enemies are: All corrupt politicians and All their accomplices from other races against the interests of All people collectively in the whole world. We are many, they are few. It’s a constant battle for us, unpicking the prejudice which is created by politicians , and for the corrupt politicians and their acolytes , using their propaganda machines to keep us divided and ruled.
Giyane
I’ve posted before I saw your comment, but I see we agree on every point about racism and history. Thank you.
By the way, my knowledge about Indian-British relationship came from a Bollywood film. That was modern reproduction of the Pride and Prejudice with Aishwarya Rai 🙂
And one more addition to that piece of my philosophy on top:
I don’t like the knee gesture. For an outside observer like me, this is a humiliating pose.
Booing won’t save the day, it’s a destructive reaction.
It would be constructive to come up with an appropriate symbolic gesture that does not belittle either side. Like the slogan “All lives matter”.
I also observe that some representatives of the BLM movement do not act for the sake of the idea, but exploit it for personal gain. They see it as an opportunity for revenge. That is, they want inequality to continue to exist, but now the parties would change places.
I am skeptical about this. Should children be penalised for the sins of their fathers?
In general, the parties are caught up in the maelstrom of negative reactions and counter-reactions, but the way out is not found until the anger is overcome.
What surprises me is that the participants do not see this obvious fact.
What doesn’t surprise me is that certain forces are making money from this confrontation.
kneeling is meant to show support for the country while commemorating the victims. it does not belittle anybody. “All lives matter” has been used to dodge the criticism of police, the point is that black lives, and the lives of poor people and the homeless, and the lives of immigrants have not mattered as much as other lives have, particularly the lives of affluent people whatever color, and this is especially true of the lives of cops. of course all lives matter, nobody is disputing that. anger will continue to boil as long as cops legally get away with murdering people, stealing their property and cash, charging them with nonexistent crimes, and the like.
the forces making money off brutal government thugs in america are the same forces making money off brutal government thugs america sends abroad to topple governments and kill people. and they protect those thugs.
“kneeling is meant to show support for the country while commemorating the victims.”
Perhaps not quite.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/sport/articles-reports/2021/06/10/taking-the-knee-football-fans-europe-support
players and staff taking the knee before matches
Since June last year, players and staff across the footballing world have been making the symbolic gesture of kneeling before each game to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and a wider commitment to tackling the issue of racism.
“the forces making money off brutal government thugs in america are the same forces making money off brutal government thugs america sends abroad to topple governments and kill people. and they protect those thugs.”
And in the current incarnation those forces are covering themselves in the BLM flag.
I’d like to think that the people booing were expressing a dislike of the use of the race issue and minority rights generaly as a means of rallying support for the current US administration and the continued US/UK foreign policy of going around killing people and stealing all their stuff. That and the use of ‘anti-hate’ laws by the establishment to silence and intimidate anybody who is an obstacle to that foreign policy.
The BLM riots and the phony attack on the US capitol in January look like colour revolution tactics to make the two party duopoly look like it means something.
The real game which we must wake up to is the the elite vs the people, and one of the great tricks the elite has is to play the people off against each other with identity politics.
yes, historically black people have been exploited and oppressed no question. But the elite love Black Lives Matter and the kneeing malarkey. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be happening. BLM would simply be denounced as a terror organization.
Meanwhile the banking and monetary system is stealing everyone’s value and it will to the point where we have the helot society that Craig Murray has commented on. There will be aristocrats and an underclass, and it indeed won’t matter what anyone’s skin tone is, but not in a good way.
In the U.K. we now have quite a few ethnic minorities in high office in our government.
They seem to generally be doing a reasonable job and seem to be reasonably well liked.
Is this not progress?
michael norton – well, when the `ethnic minority’ in question was a Scotsman by the name of Gordon Brown, it didn’t work out too well …..
Although Scottish ethnics have usually played a massive role in U.K. politics, thinking SuperMac, Smith, Brown, Blair, Cameron, I was more thinking of people of South Asia, like the Home Secretary, Health Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer, COP26, Vaccines Czar, those sort of ethnics adding to the abilities of the U.K. to recover from the pandemic.
michael – yeah – sure – I was just trying to lighten it up a little.
You are, of course, right. There are a lot of talented people, who have made a good, positive contribution – and, if we look at their backgrounds, we see that they come from ethnic minorities.
They are just the petty patels of imperialists.
They have as much in common with their ethnic general populations as Eton schoolboys do with every other child in the country.
Not buying the wolves in sheep ‘skin’ game, that is underway in the DS narratives and has landed on the btl boards with the ii bots.
Are you?
One of the two* present BAME holders of a UK Great Office of State – the daughter of immigrants from Uganda – is currently trying to pass a bill through the Commons that would potentially leave the captain of a British fishing-boat facing life imprisonment if he or she decided to rescue one or more asylum seekers from a sinking ‘second class’ inflatable dinghy in the English Channel and brought them safely to shore.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/priti-patel-borders-bill-immigration-criminalise-most-desperate-help-1090690
(*assuming that Dominic Raab, with his Czech Jewish father, doesn’t count as ‘minority ethnic’)
LA , a correction, Just to address her history briefly.
She is not an immigrant- She was born English.
Her family weren’t thrown out of Uganda like the other Asians- they had already established in the U.K. previously.
She is just an apparatchik of Empire , a jumped up tax collecting petty patel.
She represents grass roots Asians as much as Kwarteng does AfroCaribeans or Black English.
They are no more than Body Snatchers, Ayn Randian spouting, slaves of their ancient masters and psychopaths chosen to play the role.
Thanks for your reply Dungroanin. I did say that Ms Patel was the *daughter* of Ugandan emigrants. I’m aware that they set foot in Blighty well before the self-declared Last King of Scotland’s reign of terror, but if they’d instead decided to stay in Uganda throughout the 60’s and British policies regarding asylum seekers in the 70’s were similar to what it seems they are about to become, would her life have been over before it had barely begun?
Anyway, if the views of yourself, John and myself – which I think can reasonably be described as left, right & centre – are anything to go by, then with regard to Mr Norton’s question: no, the appointment of ethnic minorities to senior positions in UK politics cannot necessarily be described as progress.
P.S. I think newbie Health Secretary Sajid Javid is the main Ayn Rand aficionado in the Cabinet.
Bringing in hate crimes laws and invading people’s privacy to speak their minds in their own homes doesn’t sound like doing a reasonable job to me.
I noticed that when Celtic FC were fined for displaying Palestinian flags at a Champion’s League game , no TV pundits or footballers backed them. It was an illegal political message, that’s all. When Israel bombed Gaza a few weeks ago, none of them said a word. Perhaps it is stipulated in a footballer’s contract which ‘people’ can be supported and which ‘people’s’ name can never be uttered.
None of these BLM supporters have a word to say about the UK’s actions abroad or those UK government employees who whistleblow.
The PTB have been trying for about 5 years to get people to ‘take the knee’, since Kaepernick – Why?!
Well, if they try suing the players for taking the knee, they can always reply `I was only bending down to tie my shoe laces’.
The waving of the Palestinian flag was most commendable – and I don’t want to discourage them from this – even if it does mean getting fined a few euros.
The elite loves BLM the same way it loves “freedom” and “democracy”. BLM is treated as a terror organization, and both democrats and republicans do this, even as they pretend to support it.
And just for your information, this isn’t some historical artefact. BRUTAL government thugs in the u.s. continue to murder people, continue to steal from them, or rape them, and those thugs usually escape punishment because the people they usually target are powerless. This is not a manufactured controversy. PEOPLE DON”T LIKE GETTING MURDERED, whether it is by helicopter attack in iraq or on the streets of an american city.
pretzelattack, the elite love BLM. It distracts from the crimes you mention. You have to realise this is divide and rule. We are in an endgame, and while we argue over matters of skin colour, there is a grand larceny taking place over all of us
“This is not a manufactured controversy.”
” while we argue over matters of skin colour, there is a grand larceny taking place over all of us”
Both of these things can be true at the same time.
Squirrel
“ If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be happening. BLM would simply be denounced as a terror organization “
But it is! Looky here.
How about what this brown shorter in charge of a county police force with a multiethnic population has edicted :
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/08/leicestershire-pcc-bans-staff-from-contact-with-black-lives-matter
Still many believe we aren’t living in a fascist coup state masquerading as a freely elected democracy with an uncontrolled media that doesn’t know the meaning of propaganda let alone spewing it none stop.
Including on the reinforcement btl
There’s a good article, I translated it from Russian for you.
This describes how to make money off of such widely discussed minority rights movements.
A stunning text, I never thought that you can put Chekhov and transgender people in one sentence.
Or, Romeo and Juliet with zoophiles .
Your opinion?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/earnings-on-high-hype-topics-russian-opinion/
Tatyana,
You say “The core of it is that Black people more often live in certain background, because they more often cannot afford living in better districts, because they have worse education and less paid jobs.”
While that’s true, the shocking truth – overlooked or downplayed in the western media – is that African-Americans were until recently deliberately consigned to separate living areas in the US (“land of the free”), segregated from white people by state and local laws and regulations, enforced by the courts.
https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/
p.s. According to The New York Times:
“If a British court permits the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face criminal charges in the United States, the Biden administration has pledged that it will not hold him under the most austere conditions reserved for high-security prisoners and that, if he is convicted, it will let him serve his sentence in his native Australia.
Those assurances were disclosed on Wednesday as part of a British High Court ruling in London. The court accepted the United States government’s appeal of a ruling that had denied its extradition request for Mr. Assange — who was indicted during the Trump administration — on the grounds that American prison conditions for the highest-security inmates were inhumane.
The new ruling was not made public in its entirety. But in an email, the Crown Prosecution Service press office provided a summary showing that the High Court had accepted three of five grounds for appeal submitted by the United States and disclosing the promises the Biden administration had made.”
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/cps-press-office-us-assange-appeal-and-assurances/303b4ec3fe4bb95c/full.pdf
“Specifically, it said, Mr. Assange would not be subjected to measures that curtail a prisoner’s contact with the outside world and can amount to solitary confinement, and would not be imprisoned at the supermax prison in Florence, Colo., unless he later did something “that meets the test” for imposing such harsh steps…<'p#.
No hearing date has been set. The Crown Prosecution Service and the United States Justice Department declined to comment.
In a statement, Stella Moris, Mr. Assange’s fiancée, urged the Biden administration to instead drop the extradition request and abandon the charges, which she portrayed as a threat to First Amendment press freedoms.”
All sounds very reasonable of the US government, doesn’t it? Shame the New York Times has yet to report that the lead witness in the US indictment was coached to lie by the FBI, thus confirming the whole effort to prosecute Assange is a criminal enterprise.
quote in Guardian article today https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/08/julian-assange-fiancee-rejects-us-proposals-over-possible-extradition
(Nick Vamos, former head of extradition at Crown Prosecution Service)
While a date has yet to be set for a high court hearing in relation to the US appeal, Vamos suggested things could move “quite quickly”.
While the ruling earlier this year had gone in Assange’s favour, he added: “The difficulty he and his legal team now have is that, if the court says we are denying extradition because we are concerned about his treatment, we are worried that a, b or c might happen, and the requesting state then provides an assurance which says, ‘under no circumstance will that ever happen’, then it defeats the objection.
“There’s also a longstanding history of our courts accepting the assurances from requesting states. The question is: ‘Does the assurance address it in fact or can it be undermined by suggesting that it is not quite as good as it appears or that they will dishonour it anyway?’”
The Guardian article doesn’t say WHO determines whether the assurance is “not quite as good as it appears” other than the vague “courts”,
Paul Mc
I have just read the completely poisonous article in The Guardian of 1 May about Craig’s case.
There may be a market for insinuating gossip with little connection to the facts, but salivating the expectations of the fashionable Far Right, doesn’t mean what they say is right.
Biden needs Assange’s extradition like a hole in the head. It would turn off the dreams of Democratic liberals and scupper his popularity immediately. Anything the Guardian says, the opposite is likely to be the case.
Tatyana,
Here is a point of view to provoke some thought:-
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/movies/spike-lee-says-black-people-are-being-hunted-down-like-animals/ar-AALRNkG
Rather funny that Mr. Spike Lee, commenting on the anti-LGBT law in Georgia, considered it appropriate to mention Putin in the same paragraph 🙂
The only explanation that pops into my mind is that Mr. Lee wants to continue to be a successful director in his country and under the current government.
Tatyana,
With regard to what you said, I understand that ‘Putin bashing’ is a popular game here in the West.
However, there is something to what Spike Lee says. If my memory serves me correctly, via the Panama Papers and Wikileaks Putin was implicated in accepting large sums of money in a Panama Bank while using a musician as his front man on the account. Likewise, we are not fools and do understand that Biden via his son did some influence peddling business with the Ukraine. And so it goes on around the world.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. With no exceptions.
Mr. Lee didn’t add Mr. Biden to the list of gangsters 🙂
Tatyana,
Ah! – there is the point – so we are both correct. Lee is politically positioning – and – I/we have had an honest exchange.
So, as Bob Marley would say from the land of my birth – Jamaica – ‘One Love’.
Tatyana, what do you think those police officers should have done about George Floyd, should they have just given him a cheery wave and sent him on his way? They were attempting to arrest a known criminal, accused of spending a forged $20 dollar bill at a local store. 6ft 5in Floyd wasn’t cooperating and was clearly under the influence of drugs – the toxicology report stated that he had enough fentanyl in his system to kill an average person, indeed, only months earlier he had accidentally overdosed and was saved by the local ER department. Watch the bodycam footage, you will see cops acting with remarkable professionalism and restraint for a considerable period of time, notice also that Floyd is expressing an inability to breathe long before he ended up lying in the road – suppression of breathing being classic signs of fentanyl OD. Chauvin couldn’t and certainly didn’t get a fair trial because the jury and the state feared the mob.
I fail to see anything wrong in police paying attention to any particular group committing a disproportionate amount of crime. Take homicide, black males aged 18-40 make up 3% of the US population, yet commit 51% of all murders.
The irony of SLM *slavic lives matter* is that historically the number of white Europeans taken for slavery far exceeds the number of Africans taken across the Atlantic, many fold. We have been conditioned into believing slavery was an exclusively black suffrage, it wasn’t, neither was the keeping of slaves an exclusively white thing.
Spencer Eagle
Enslaving any human being is obscene. Slavery existed at the start of Islam so ignorant puritans amongst the Salafists argue that it is part of Islam , which it is categorically not.
Similarly , you seem to be saying that white slavery makes black slavery less obscene. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The obscenity of enslaving of white people doesn’t make the enslavement of black.people any less obscene.
To enslave people today because slavery had not been eradicated 1400 years ago is like Israel claiming Palestine as a birth right. But hey ho! Nothing like an expert in Law to make white black and black white. We should do as we would wish to be done by. End of.
Mr. Floyd was already in handcuffs. The policeman was not alone, there were several of them. And in that situation, the police officer actually had a choice.
He could have handcuffed Floyd to a rail, or to a fire hydrant, or to the steering wheel of a car – any of these options would allow Floyd to breathe while remaining under the control of the cops.
You see, Spencer, the cop chose to keep the knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for over 7 minutes. I watched those videos.
The core of the problem is not how dangerous a criminal Mr. Floyd was, or how much he has worsened his health – it was his personal choice and he himself is responsible for it. Society recognizes the danger of criminal behavior and has already established appropriate services to prevent it.
The core of the problem is that cops make the worst choice when they face a black suspect. It is with this danger that BLM is fighting, trying to create an appropriate mechanism to stop it.
It, in hindsight, would have been better for the most senior poilceperson present ( the officer now convicted of murder) to have called for mental health assistant.
the man who died was almost certainly experiencing a mental incident.
He was in handcuffs, he was not going to get away.
SE,
I haven’t seen the snuff movie of his death.
It exists – if you don’t want to accept the veracity of its description – then I guess you’ll have to watch it.
Try not to enjoy it too much.
The limited appeal is less of a problem because the US would have to win in order to get extradition. But the other way of getting extradition is complying with Baraitser’s conditions by agreeing not to impose the kind of inhumane solitary confinement conditions that were the basis of her order barring extradition.
They sound lovely. However the morning after the Semi Final it took UEFA to come out and condemn the laser shone in the Danish keeper’s eyes and the booing of the Danish national anthem. Not a word had been heard from any public figure in the land that valorizes ‘fair play’. So maybe you were wrong. Maybe you weren’t….
Brexit screwed my plans to travel and work freely in the Mediterranean. No fan of the EU, the EU Parliament and Council. Just another Closed Shop Block of Northern European countries trying to insulate themselves and well paid jobs and expenses. I wish I had an Italian Grandmother Craig, or an Irish one ! Looks like I will be making my way way up the Irish sea to bonny Scotland. Lucky I have a stove.
Wikikettle
As a child I used to read a story about a witch who sailed in a bath. I have just thrown out a beautiful fibreglass bath you could have made good use of for your journey, but the stove might have been a problem.
iain – have you looked at Craig Murray’s `twitter’ feed recently? I was reminded of Stanley Baxter’s `Parliamo’ with `the referee’s as blind as a bat’.
Football is best watched at a safe distance – it does seem to attract all sorts of headbangers. The only `live’ football matches I would dream of taking my son to would be Peterhead matches played at home.
I’m with Stella Morris, the best thing for the US and Biden to atone for their war crimes is to set Julian free.
According to one article in the i paper today, Stella and Julian want to tie the knot in Belmarsh prison and marry after being engaged for 5 years.
Shall not link to the article as they steadfastly refuse to print any letters in support of his legal case.
I wish them both health and happiness in their endeavours.
nevermind. Stella is the best Advocate for Julian in my eyes. Her statement outside the not so High Court could not have been clearer.
I agree Wikikettle.
It’s outrageous how Julian’s been treated.
Her [Navalnaya’s] husband, she learned, hadn’t died, but the hardest was yet to come. At the hospital in Omsk, Navalnaya would encounter a wall of doctors who seemed more scared of their civilian superiors than they were of losing their patient. They were reinforced—or kept in line—by a small battalion of plainclothes federal security officers, all intent on keeping her from seeing her husband. To enter his room, she would need to present a marriage certificate, they said, and secure verbal consent from Navalny, who was still unconscious and on life support. She would stare them down, out-argue them, and bend their will to hers, all while a gathering swarm of journalists trained their cameras and microphones and smartphones on her. She would finally break through to see him, his body sprouting tubes and cords like vines, writhing in near-constant seizures. (She wouldn’t know until days later that this was the result of a military-grade nerve agent in the Novichok family.) She would have to fight with doctors and hospital administrators to see the results of her husband’s lab work, to give impromptu press conferences on the hospital steps, to sneak around the city to find the German doctors who had arrived with a private medevac plane and whom the authorities had barred her from seeing. She would have to demand, over and over, that the Omsk hospital release her husband and allow him to be loaded onto the plane and taken to Berlin, the only way, everyone knew, of possibly saving his life. And she would never, ever lose control of her emotions again.
Mrs. Navalny’s personal assessment of events may be interesting, but when do we get the official statement?
On Russian enquiries Berlin only replies with the same personal assessments of Navalny couple.
Why cannot they just give evidence to the russian investigators and be done with the case?
The OPCW council is taking place in The Hague now. Russian spokesman Shulgin says Germany requested assistance from OPCW technicians with Navalny back on August 20, when Navalny was still on the plane. Officially Germany says that assistance was requested on September 4.
Something strange is going on in Germany.
Eh ?
‘Captain’ Nimmo I presume?
Craig shame on you for listening to the MSM narrative on England football supporters. We are as varied as the general population and certainly not unique as a nation in having some idiots that let us down. Pity you didn’t pop down to the big screen in Brixton last night to join in the fun……….
Anyway keep up the good work.
How are the pies and bovril at half time in Wembley stadium? At Balmoor Stadium, the home of Peterhead football club, you get a great pie and tea at half time for a very reasonable price.
Seems to me that, under the current COVID restrictions, where crowd sizes are limited, they would be much better off playing the final at Balmoor rather than Wembley.
Jimmy, I love pies, however I have ballooned over Lock-Down and need to ease off the pies and kebabs. Football can bring people together in a good way but the Delta-Covid is now reaching very high levels of infection in the U.K. at least in part because of football.
Racist Brexit backers!? What intolerant divisive prejudiced nonsense. You have gone down in my estimation writing such drivel. Every right thinking person should be booing grown men kneeling to a racist Marxist organisation that has deified a thug who spent his life attacking his own people including threatening a poor pregnant women’s child in the womb if she didn’t hand over her savings.
Haha, your satire is a bit stereotyped. Good pile-up of memes. Gareth Southgate is a Marxist now.
When you use the words ” right thinking ” it begs the question as to who the right thinking people are and more to the point what they think?
To myself the phrase you use was around at the time of Thatcher where ‘ right thinking ‘ people tolerated the destruction of industry – the lowering of wages and a real stupidity of buying shares in something that they already owned (privatisation).
As far as I can see BLM is not a Marxist Organisation – China is but they are under the cosh of right thinking people who have invaded and smashed up countries because their people didn’t think right thinking things.
Perhaps you should rephrase this as Right thinking people.
I’m going to frighten you her by uttering a word that has not passed many a persons lips for many years
That is Class.
The black people – the Muslim people – the white people are vastly working class and the idea ( as it has always been for the Powers That Be ) is to divide and rule.
It has worked but its magic is gradually wearing off because most of the younger generation have no desire to hum the Dambusters theme and long for an Empire that was usurped by the US in the 50’s.
In fact the US is still powerful but not as powerful as it was and like all Empires it will fall.
Afghanistan has been deserted by its alleged democratisers and more withdrawals will follow as Biden pursues
an America first economic policy.
Britain will follow as trained pets do and do as they are told.
There are not only people who are deliberately divided.
Countries do this too and the orders now are to gang up on China.
The EU will be dragged in as well.
Right thinking people ought to think about the consequences and implications of that.
Unless their thinking is wrong of course?
You would get on well with my 84yr old father. We were discussing the football (that doesn’t happen often, neither of us has much interest). I mentioned Rashford, to which my father replied “oh, that’s the one that has been mouthing off”. Clearly a Right thinking person too, these immigrants should know their place.
No barrier equals no country equals eventually no services for those who pay for them and their children.
The title of this post is the story of my life.
As a real man, I’m never wrong, as my wife will tell you …
My wife knows an awful lot of stuff, some of which isn’t true.
Whilst I am not always right, I am never wrong.
😀
Be interested to hear your thoughts on the Afghan thing now it’s finally being wound up. You have good knowledge of that part of the world and form with the architects of the great adventure.
It’s not wound up in a sense, as Biden will sanction drone warfare in Afghanistan, twenty-years, mostly under Hamid Karzai of allowing US firms like Halliburton to asset strip the country’s rare earth elements, and guard the poppy fields that led to huge profits is just the usual aspect of the Great Satan’s aggressive foreign policies.
China is getting ready to strip the shit off of Afghanistan, they will not leave a single pomegranate tree.
The place is awash with minerals.
According to the Pentagon, Afghanistan has one trillion dollars of untapped minerals, that is a lot.
Part of Afghanistan touches China and part of Afghanistan touches Iran.
China is developing its new silk road, part of that could be hydrocarbon pipes running from Iran through Afghanistan and into China.
I think Biden has missed a few tricks.
Wound up, I don’t think so !
Military forces out BUT Special Services and Military Contractors will remain.
The visible part moves out but the invisible part continues. Expect more of the same, maybe the Taliban can, at last, flush all the foreign scum out but I’m not optimistic.
Stevie Boy. On TRT World (Turkish) English language news on YouTube “One on One – Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen ” I have never in the media heard such a detailed Q & A from their side. He said they had signed an agreement for all foreign forces to leave by May 2021 among other things. What I do know is that Afghanistan has been used as a live fire traning ground for NATO forces. If you you are an Afghan and don’t want any foreign troops, take up arms, you are deemed a Terrorist, and target practice for NATO gunships, jets, and snipers. The US boasts of setting up a kill, with decoy equipment/ supplies, then over a mile away, the snipers wait, triangulating for chalking up the kills. Imagine how many young boys, men and old men have been killed in the last 20 years. Not to mention dropping the worlds lagest bomb there recently. We sent our young boys there to get blooded. Our Special Forces from US and EU and Australia FFS !!!!
They suffer occupation, death and amputations if lucky, our boys suffer as well, and I wonder how much of PTSD is having nightmares and sleepless nights when you’ve killed?
The Taliban certainly seem to be getting the upper hand at the moment, having captured nearly 25% [TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT as the Grandstand vidiprinter would put it] of Afghan district centres in May & June of this year alone – including several in former Northern Alliance territory. As you might imagine, along with US forces, ex-ANSF personnel are fleeing the country in droves.
https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/war-and-peace/a-quarter-of-afghanistans-districts-fall-to-the-taleban-amid-calls-for-a-second-resistance/
Since many Taliban now have access to captured high-spec US-made weaponry, I can’t see special forces hanging around there for too long.
Lapsed Agnostic. There are many outside vultures circling to fill the vacuum in Afghanistan. Turkey is threatening to “secure” the airport. I wonder if they will fly in their proxy paid Idlib mob ? Other neighboring countries will no doubt interfere. Lots of resources. I hope the Afghans stay united. Lots of dirty tricks will be played : ISIS brought in, so we can bomb and drone kill. We use the Poppy as a symbol to remember the carnage of WW1. I hope the Taliban once again destroy that drug trade.
Even though I’m sure various actors would like a slice of the action, I reckon Afghanistan is the Taliban’s for the taking – though Kabul might hold out for two or three years, like it did after the Russians left.
I doubt the Taliban will bother trying to eradicate poppy like they did last time – there’s too much tax money in it for them. That said, most Afghan poppy fields will probably go the way their Mexican counterparts are currently going before too long though; fentanyl is where the action is now.
There’s more to the Afghan Class A scene than heroin these days mind. Dextro-methamphetamine is now being produced in similar amounts – mainly in the Taliban-run Bakwa district of Farah province. It’s made from ephedrine, which originates from ephedra shrubs that grow wild in the central highlands.
(Info courtesy of the brilliant David Mansfield & colleagues – https://twitter.com/AlcisGeo/status/1333350377949962247)
Wikikettle, read on the Saker’s blog that the Taliban have made a number of commitments to Russia and other near neighbours at a meeting in Moscow recently, one of which is to end Opium production.
Afghan is much in russian news. Essentially, the US is fleeing, abandoning even Bagram. Locals post in their social media a lot of photos with the ‘things they collected from abandoned military base’.
The US turned to Afghan neighboring governments asking them to accept 9000 recruited locals, who worked for the US. *Reminds me of the White Helmets*.
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan are concerned with the situation, someone of those -stans turned to UN, someone recalled they are allies of Russia.
Taliban got most of rural areas, moves to big cities. Put their flag on the bridge over the Pyange river. Took the customs check post near Iran border
Taliban delegation visited Moscow. Spoke to russian official on Afghan affairs.
Taliban stated they will not allow using Afgan territory for attacks on other countries.
Lavrov commented, that Russian position is – we don’t act until Taliban is in the Afgan borders, not our business. But, ex-USSR countries are our allies, so I’m concerned.
Ah, important, Taliban says they are not going to establish ISIS in the country, they won’t bother neighboring countries either.
New proposed name for Afgan is ‘Islamic emirate of Afghanistan’.
Most recent news report that Taliban is taking over Kandahar and another post near Iran border is also taken by them.
Too speedy taking, it seems. One may wonder what the US were doing there for 20 years?
Tatyana,
“One may wonder what the US were doing there for 20 years?”
Do you believe that there is a direct international comparison to be made between Vietnam ( the war) – the exit from Saigon – and the rapid and accelerated US departure from Afghanistan. But – truth be told – it is a US defeat – not a victory.
So – what next?
Courtenay
My husband’s opinion on the US’s activity in Afgan is – they were ‘exploring the budget’ – sort of idiom, modern russian saying for spending taxpayer’s money on personal needs, corruption. He also said something about opium.
I partly understand what you mean about Vietnam. I didn’t dig into that part of history yet, and to be honest, I have no desire to. Because I guess it would be more sad things to learn, while we are living through a wonderful summer among Covid and there’s not too much cheerful things around.
Tatyana. Russia is the world leader in diplomacy with Lavrov standing head and shoulders above the so called collective Western diplomats who want chaos and instability in their former colonies so they can send in their armies and jets. The vast majority of the countries of Africa, Central and Latin America, Asia are fed up of interventions sanctions and constant war. They are turning away from their old colonial masters.
Danish woman claims assault by England fans after semi-final
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jul/09/danish-woman-claims-assault-by-england-fans-after-semi-final
You left yourself wide open here Craig, despite everything you know. And to what end?
I thimk that national tub thumping and anthems should be discontinued.
The penalty should not count as the goalie was assaulted with a laser from some idiot, they should be asked to play another half hour tomorrow.
Pants to the organisers of this covud moschpit.
He said what he saw; guilt by association shames you.
It is a fool’s errand to try and rebrand English nationalism as something joyous and essentially decent.
Do you think that was what Craig was doing?
I suspect ‘taking the knee’ has nothing to do with anti-racism. It looks like one of those smokescreens from the intelligence agencies to provide cover for far-right governments like Johnson’s – the idea being that the government cloaks itself in fake-liberal values and misdirects public anger at ‘racism’ instead of the extremist policies of the Tory and SNP governments over the past year or so. Governments don’t care one way or other about racism, except in its capacity to sow division, which is why they and the media spend so much time debating it – rather than the many lockdown issues which they ignored, of old people being locked up in care homes without contact with relatives and children suffering unprecedented psychological torment at home. Stoking up racism, or exaggerating it where there isn’t ‘enough’, has long been an active policy of the British government and media, so that the peoples of the UK fight each other rather than unite against the government and establishment.
Tom74
I agree with you. Everything about sport is choreographed. People actually watch digitally generated virtual horse racing and coming soon near you digitally generated virtual HoC debates on TV.
As CM said recently, ‘ holograms have more empathy ‘ .
“I agree with you.”
Hehe.
Jay
Not every Urdu sentence ends in hehe, but some do hehehe.
Giyane, I would agree with you on this.
As an old fellow, I remember when sport was amateur (mostly) and far more enjoyable. Of course then the inverse problem existed: excellent sports performers could earn no money at all for their efforts.
In 1957, when young Herb Elliott was drawing tens of thousands of spectators to Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch his sensational mile races, not only was he forbidden to claim any expenses – he actually had to pay for a ticket to enter the ground! Otherwise the “authorities” would have ruled him a professional – a form of sporting leprosy that would have prevented him from ever competing again.
Tom
Yes talking about the downside of sportsmen earning no money I recently became interested in the life of heavyweight boxing champ Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston who became involved (worked for) and was beholden to the mob and which also allowed him to support his fighting. He’d battered his way through opponent after opponent knocking many of them out before his Clay fight in 64 and lo and behold, he went down in the first round to the famous ‘phantom punch’ that nobody saw. Seems highly likely he was under orders – he made more of a show of it in the second Clay (or was it Ali by then) fight in 65 when he pulled out after the 6th. But his fighting career wasn’t over he carried on battering opponents except one (and he may well have been under orders) until his last fight in 1970 and he may well have ignored orders when he battered Chuck Werner to a blooded mess and few months later was found dead under mysterious circumstances.
It’s hard to think of any human activity that isn’t spoiled or ruined by the pursuit of money. The following passage from Alan Watts’ autobiography (“In My Own Way”) may be of interest.
” Now making money just for the sake of making money is a game, like bridge, in which people can find extreme pleasure and which can occupy almost all of their waking hours. But one of the rules of the game is that you must pretend not to enjoy it. It must most definitely be classified as work; as that which you have to do as a duty to your family and the community, and which therefore affords many businessmen the best possible excuse for staying away from home and from their wives. The nemesis of this attitude is that it flows over into the so-called leisure or nonwork areas of life in such a way that playing with children, giving attention to one’s wife, exercising on the golf course, and purchasing certain luxuries (which are largely symbolic) also become duties. Survival itself becomes a duty and also a drag, for the pretense of not enjoying the game gets under the skin and tightens the muscles which repress joyous and sensuous emotion. To some extent this may be a penance for the exploitation of poverty, but, as should be well understood by this time, penances do nothing to correct evil: they are simply payoffs which allow business as usual.
“It is thus that most businessmen work in environments, such as the average office, which are unpardonably ugly… Only quite rarely do people involved in the money game know what to do with money when they make it… their beatific vision is crisp green paper in the hand, and this wholly abstract, inedible, and spiritual satisfaction far surpasses harems of fair women, wide lands and forests, gorgeous palaces and solemn temples, silks and furs, and even reasonably palatable food. By and large, no one is poorer in real wealth than a man of business. For he is a very strict ascetic”.
haha yes Tom and of course we can now add flying off into space as a use of the ill gotten gains of the most ‘successful’ – hopefully on a one way mission many would say. Maybe it all ties in with military matters.
Tom,
Your observation does not have to be binary.
One can be anti-racist and also be progressive for the betterment of all regardless of race.
Not trying to knock you for a six ( so to speak) – just saying.
Cheers.
The government supported those booing the players’ anti-racist stance. Keep up, ffs.
Tom74
Yes
“If your god exists you will undoubtedly rot in hell.”
rather a good turn of phrase, although recently said about Jacob, it could be better put to Tony Blair.
I can’t help feeling that if God did exist neither of them would have been created. The mere existence of Tony Blair (and Biden and Obama and all the others) constitutes one of the most powerful arguments for atheism.
“It’s not that I don’t accept God, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket”.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880).
On being a bit wrong.
An old friend, way back in the mists of time, when absolutely sure of something, would say: “I’d bet my left ball on it”.
When asked why he chose the left one, he’d say: “I was wrong once before”.
This is the situation we, or more precisely Boris Johnson are now in.
Boris is betting his left ball on opening up England on the nineteenth, yet Delta is rampant.
How will Ms.Sturgeon react.
The football must be super-spreading?
Michael – well, I think we know how Commissar Sturgeon will react. She has a track record on this – any excuse to impinge on basic civil liberties.
The vaccine really is working – as the (7 day moving average for) daily deaths shows. They just seem to have an absolutely enormous testing programme on the go right now, so they get an enormous number of positives – but this isn’t translating into deaths – which is 25 per day (for the UK).
They would never have had lock-downs for an illness that produced 10 000 deaths per annum.
What annoys me most of all is that they really are scaring the willies out of foreign countries with all this talk about `Indian variant’. The test seems to give a positive result for anyone who has had a vindaloo curry within the last 24 hours.
Daily deaths are (of course) inflated. If you have 30 000 testing positive, then some of them will die anyway within the next 28 days – and they’ll be counted as COVID deaths even if they die of something else (for example hear the funniest joke in the world and die laughing).
Win or not win, the die is cast.
After the final on Sunday there will be super-spreading.
This will cause hospitalisations a few weeks down the line but Boris must be betting that ten days after the Euro Final, infection rates will ease?
If he isn’t betting on infection rates easing we are in for one hell of a shocking time.
I think it is quite clear that these big events are super-spreading events.
Michael – I quite agree about the football. This is unnecessary and can only do harm.
Right now, though, I live and work abroad and I cannot easily get back into my own country (Scotland) and this is my main concern. If I return home, I’ll be subject to quarantine (even though I have had two doses of Astra Zeneca and even if I present a negative test result).
Furthermore, even if they do relax the rules so that I can easily get back home for a couple of weeks, all this talk of `Indian Variant’ has scared the willies out of most countries, so it isn’t completely clear that I’ll be able to return to the country where I work (even with my EU vaccine passport – there seems to be particular concern about arrivals from the UK – all thanks to the UK government).
I don’t understand why the UK is doing so much more in the way of testing than anywhere else (so that the infection figures really are inflated and distorted). I don’t understand why they allow these football matches (which – as you say – are super spreader events). I don’t understand why they can’t operate the civilised rules that other countries operate for arrivals (e.g. you can get into Sweden simply by presenting a negative test result from a simple `rapid’ test taken less than 48 hours before arrival; other countries accept vaccine passports).
I have been watching the figures. With previous waves, a substantial number of infections would have fed into the death figures within two weeks of the wave of infections starting – but with this `Indian variant’, this simply isn’t happening. The infection rate has been reasonably enormous for some time now – and has only resulted in a daily death rate of 25.
So the vaccine really is working and I therefore don’t understand why they continue to be sticky about people trying to return home for a couple of weeks.
There’s ‘positive’ and there is ‘positivity’.
Know the difference?
The numbers of positives are, and have always been, models.
Because the whole population doesn’t get tested daily.
This is science.
I despair at the logic and scientific illiteracy constantly displayed in an effort to sicken people into believing baloney ‘common sense’ against actual hard science.
The scripts are so obvious.
The hospitalisations are following the infections and deaths will inevitably follow as soon as hospitals are under max pressure.
More Italy flags currently flying around Scotland than there were Scottish ones during the group stages.
Tells you everything you need to know.
Yes – tells you what an unpleasant country Scotland has become …..
I consider myself English but I probably have more Scots relatives than English relatives, many of the Scots-born ones live near me in England, they all seem perplexed why the impression is given in Scotland that Scots hate the English.
Certainly the Scots-born people who live near me do not hate the English, they mostly marry them, it is a puzzle.
I have just as many relatives who have moved to Scotland and marry people born in Scotland, why should we want or need to hate each other?
I don’t think the Irish, Scottsh or Welsh “hate” English people at all. Most English are actually decent people. When it comes to sport though, that’s a different matter. Any Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish sports person is always British in the media whilst any English sports person is always English never British. We never hear the end of 1966, still blathering on about it despite it being so long ago. It is the insufferable triumphalism that gets everyone’s goat along with the assumption that it’s their right to win. Southgate seems to have realised this and is doing much to change that view.
Here is an article from The Irish Times:
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/international/southgate-won-t-let-boris-johnson-hijack-england-s-success-1.4615215
A joke doing the rounds in Ireland. Two Irishmen in a country pub, one asks the other:
Would you ever cheer an English side?
Yeah, if they were playing Dublin!
(I wonder how many will get that)
And here is Southgate’s letter:
https://www.theplayerstribune.com/posts/dear-england-gareth-southgate-euros-soccer
surely their partitioning of your country is a bigger gripe than references to 1966.
That’s a different matter largely resolved by the Good Friday Agreement assuming it’s adhered to in good faith by both parties. That is under some strain currently post brexit.
I was exploring the reasons England sports teams don’t get support from other countries but especially the British Isles countries and I think it’s largely down to their lack of humility in victory or defeat. It mostly comes from the media/commentators not the players. Strangely, the English clubs get massive support the world over.
The one exception might be rugby.
“Any Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish sports person is always British in the media”
Not always.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/14019013/andy-robertson-new-house-sir-alex-ferguson-neighbours-liverpool/
“SIR ALEX FERGUSON will be hoping his new neighbour isn’t a noisy one – after Liverpool’s Andy Robertson moved into his road.
The Scottish left-back has splashed out £3.3million on a new mansion not far from the Manchester United legend.”
Michael – there is much in what you say about the interaction between the Scots and the English and there is possibly something Freudian here. The general idea seems to be the basis of the plot of many good movies. For example, in `The Big Sleep’, there is serious animosity between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall at the beginning, but all that changes and they end up romantically involved with each other.
Yet again, it’s the MSM narrative. Hate, shit, division, etc. it sells their poison.
I’m English and really, really hope that England gets beaten. I cannot stand the tribalism, the associated alcohol excesses, the dumbed down flag waving moronic attitudes, the shite politicians jumping on the bandwagon and the wall to wall media coverage that assumes everyone loves this game.
It’s part of the agenda: bread and circuses while the country is trashed. Hope you all enjoy your pointless 90 minutes, the country will still be f*cked tomorrow, whatever the result.
Haha, anything you’d like to add to the general good mood the tournament has engendered? Such rancid bitterness over a game millions will enjoy, without the raddled stereotypes you insist on deploying. Poor you.
Thanks, Henry – I certainly will enjoy the 90 minutes. It will probably present a higher class of footballing skill than your average Peterhead versus Arbroath encounter – and I don’t imagine that many goals will be scored by aiming the ball straight between the goalie’s legs.
I would have suggested that you loosen up a little and have a nice glass of chianti in honour of our Italian cousins in preparation of the event, but your remarks indicated that you seem to be off the booze. Perhaps a nice cup of horlicks instead would do the trick.
I wonder if Italians enjoy pies and bovril – or will Wembley make a special effort with cappucinos and focaccias at half time?