In Murder in Samarkand I describe how as a British Ambassador, when I discovered the full extent of our complicity in torture in the War on Terror, I thought it must be a rogue operation and all I had to do was make ministers and senior officials aware and they would stop it.
When I was reprimanded and officially told that receipt of intelligence from torture in the “War on Terror” was approved from the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary down, and it became clear to me that there was a deliberate promoting of false intelligence narratives through torture which exaggerated the Al Qaida threat to justify military policy in Afghanistan and Central Asia, my worldview was severely shaken.
Somehow I mentally compartmentalised this as an aberration, due to overreaction to 9/11 and the unique narcissism and viciousness of Tony Blair. I did not lose faith in western democracy or the notion that the western powers, on the whole, were a positive force when contrasted with other powers.
It is a hard thing to lose the entire belief system in which you were brought up – probably particularly hard if like me, you had a very happy life right from childhood and were highly successful within the terms of the governmental system.
I have however now finally shed the last of my illusions and I am obliged to acknowledge that the system of which I am a part – call it “the West”, “liberal democracy”, “capitalism”, “neo-liberalism”, “neo-conservatism”, “Imperialism”, “the New World Order” – call it what you will in fact, it is a force for evil.
Gaza has been an important catalyst. I am not lacking in empathy, but my knowledge of the horrid butchery by the Western powers in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya was an intellectual knowledge, not a lived experience.
Sirte, Libya, after Nato “liberation”.
Technology has brought us the Gaza genocide – which has so far killed fewer people than any of those earlier NATO member perpetrated massacres – in gut wrenching detail. I have just been looking at 75kg bags of mixed human meat handed over to relatives in lieu of an identifiable corpse, and am in shock.
That is not the worst we have seen in Gaza.
If only the people of Mosul and Fallujah had had modern mobile phone technology, what horrors we would know.
Incidentally, I tried to find you some images of the massive US destruction of Mosul and Fallujah in 2002‒4 and Google won’t give me any. It will, however, offer thousands of images from fighting there with ISIL in 2017. Which rather underlines my point about the extraordinary lack of imagery of the Second Iraq War.
Of the current genocide in Gaza, again I found myself naively thinking at some point this will stop. That Western politicians would not in fact countenance the total destruction of Gaza. That there would be a limit to the number of Palestinian civilian deaths they could accept, the number of UN facilities, schools and hospitals destroyed, the number of little children torn into shreds.
I thought that at some stage human decency must outweigh Zionist lobby cash.
But I was wrong.
The Ukrainian attack into Kursk also has a profound emotional resonance. The Battle of Kursk was arguably the most important blow struck against Nazi Germany, the largest tank battle in the history of the world by a wide margin.
The Ukrainian government has destroyed all the monuments to the Red Army which achieved this, and denigrates the Ukrainians who fought against fascism. By contrast, it honours the very substantial Ukrainian components of the Nazi forces, including but not limited to, the Galician Division and their leaders.
Kursk is therefore a place of great symbolism for Ukraine to attack now into Russia, including with German artillery and armour.
German politicians seem to have an atavistic urge to attack Russia, and support the genocide of Palestinians to an astonishing degree.
Germany has effectively ended all freedom of speech on Palestine, banning conferences of distinguished speakers and making pro-Palestinian speech illegal. Germany has intervened on Israel’s side in the genocide case before the ICJ, and intervened at the ICC to object to an arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
I do not know how many civilian dead would assuage German lust for the expiatory blood of Palestinians. 500,000? 1 Million? 2 Million?
Or perhaps 6 Million?
The West are not the good guys. Our so-called “democratic systems” give us no ability to vote for anybody who may get into power who does not support the genocide and imperialist foreign policy.
It is not an accident and it is not genius that makes a man-child like Elon Musk worth 100 billion dollars. The power structures of society are deliberately designed by those with wealth to promote massive concentration of wealth in favour of those who already have it, exploiting and disempowering the rest of society.
The rise of the multi-billionaires is not a fluke. It is a plan, and the misallocation of more than adequate resources is the cause of poverty. The attempt to shift blame onto the desperate constituents of waves of immigration forced into life by Western destruction of foreign countries, is also systematic.
There is no longer any free space for dissent in the media to oppose any of this.
We are the Bad Guys. We resist our own governing systems, or we are complicit.
In the United Kingdom it falls to the Celtic nations to try to break up the state which is a subordinate but important imperialist engine. The paths of resistance are various, depending where you are.
But find one and take one.
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The Palestinians are Quite Rightly Putting the Blame on the Biden administration for weekend bombing in Gaza that killed an estimated 100 people, including at least 11 children…. And they are Correct … but it’s almost every Western nation too.
Consortium News –
Palestinians Blame US for Massacre in Gaza –
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/12/palestinians-blame-us-for-massacre-in-gaza/?
I was with you the entire way until the last line: “In the United Kingdom it falls to the Celtic nations to try to break up the state which is a subordinate but important imperialist engine.”
Balkanisation is no solution to this problem. That is just wishful thinking and copium. Given the present system is supranational and indeed ‘globalist’ and run by plutocrats who hold their money offshore, have retreats on islands, and gather together to decide the agenda at venues like Davos and Bilderberg, such a partial break away will actually disempower the people living within those newly established microstates – just as it did for the people of the former Yugoslavia.
We either hang together or we hang separately. Or put another way, there’s nowhere left (in the West at least) to run away to.
breaking up the UK would help diminish the influence of one of the world’s most malign actors. Britain’s self-important neocons are arguably even more extreme than the psychos in DC, always pressing the latter to go further. it is also one of the entities in the globalised world most devoted to money laundering. even the empty grandeur of the UK’s royal events will now be tarnished by speculation about the person the BBC has selected to commentate.
The main Celtic nationalist organisation, which is still in office in Edinburgh, supports both the monarchy and NATO. (Some of its corrupt leaders also, let us not forget, had the author of this blog thrown in jail.)
Can we even imagine an SNP that didn’t support NATO, and that supported Scottish neutrality instead? That would be a very different situation from the one that pertains now.
“there’s nowhere left (in the West at least) to run away to.”
See Sweden and Finland ditching their official neutrality. Ping! And it was gone.
The “neutrality” had been a fiction for a long time (as it was in WW2, when the Fins fought for the Nazis and the Swedes let Germany cross its border with Norway). See, for example, the way Sweden hounded Mr Assange in America’s interest.
prison planet. with the likes of Musk and other billionaires pretending to be able to escape (yeah, let’s go to Mars!).
Russia is massive; I am sure that your friends over there will have plenty of other statues strewn along the oblasts’ borders to polish over the decades to come. Why sweat that total bull? You are just a little baby. Why is it important to a black heart like yours to lay flowers on these stupid little monoliths? Certainly, you can recall the kill ratio of Soviet pw’s to Nazi pw’s…the commies shipped back only 17,000 Wehrmacht p.w’s. All the rest disappeared into what Solzhenitsyn called the gulag. Did your red friends establish memorials to their kraut victims? No. You European cloistered-simps are just so squirrely with your selective memory and grossly overbearing approaches to social and economic polity. A bunch of uninspiring babies over there.
You should write better if you wish to convey your points, Harry. You’re too punchy-punchy and epithetical.
Incidentally, Solzhenitsyn didn’t coin the term “gulag”. It means Main Directorate of Corrective Labour Camps. It’s a typical bit of Sovietese. But he may possibly have been the first person to call the camp system an archipelago. A powerful image for sure.
Harry the Only Good Nazi is a …???
Or have you got over the Glorious Besterds phase of historical infantilism and grasped the Dark Side?
Imagine if all those soviet Nazis had been kept in deep freeze as we did with putting them in Canada and many other hidey holes to be unleashed upon the Russians as they have been through Natzio Bankers.
So the Trump-Musk gig was delayed by 40 minutes, or 25 minutes according to what source you read (I didn’t stay up for it and so don’t know the actual figure), and Musk has blamed a big cyberattack.
Sounds as though he’s right and there was a big cyberattack. (Other explanations are available.)
Trump’s story as the last days approach is seeming ever more like the Rasputin story. Shoot him and he moves his head and survives. Attack his show and it bursts into life after a short while… What next?
I couldn’t hear the lisp. A little bit of extra sibilance maybe.
Pisses me off that so many people say “surreal” nowadays without knowing what it means, using the word in some kind of weenybopper way instead of “amazing”, “weird”, or “unexpected”.
Did Trump mention Israel?
recommended listening/watching:
Last night Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn talked about free speech issues in the EU by way of commenting the Musk-Trump interview idea.
They weigh in on the British ridiculous and insulting reaction to this.
They speculate where this could lead to. Like determining what we listen to or an international supra-national body with law-enforcement capabilities to force extradition of anyone who doesn´t comply with European censorship laws.
Of course Kirn draws from fiction too but the audience now is full aware that the time of satire is over. This is not pure sci-fi any more.
e.g. see TC 12:18 the guy from the police suggesting they would come after Musk.
It´s 100 min. if one wishes to accompany them to the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AedK6pU6Pz4
…the free speech issues that concern us here are in the first half hour. Then they change subject and move on to the election. Which also is important for us here, because, as Kirn correctly points out, data has become the main authority. And as such it is not being questioned any more. Of course he breaks it down onto polling and that polling does not represent anything comprehensive any more.
Listen to that theoretical passage yourself. He does that well as a man of words. – “using data to create narrative” – is one of those important ideas he expresses.
As usual, unfortunately, they skip Gaza. But the structures of information and power they are digging into are the same that turn protest against genocide into criminal acts. That´s why I think it´s important to see the similarities. That´s how the EU is thinking. Those who protest against the genocide are eventually to be treated the same way as Trump sympathizers. That enables law enforcement to skip the decisive details of such events as Gaza. They divert the entire focus to administrative level and de-politicize it, de-contextualize it, empty it of any significance. And that´s what the US campaign reporting is about as well as reporting about the MidEast. Ukraine of course too. It´s the brand, the packaging, content is gone. With content gone so are 40,000 killed or 180,000. Or even – as Craig puts it – possibly 6M.
p.s. if we look into the millions killed in Angola, Indonesia, or the 300k in Guatemala – as our history books are concerned – those crimes against humanity too have never taken place. So the “phenomenon” in fact would be nothing new. The only new about it is the necessary level of control over the information flow which is much bigger now than 1965 Jakarta.
At the time when genocide is being livestreamed let’s hail this pair of cnuts who are pretending it isn’t happening..
I have repeated that criticism myself here before.
But that´s not what they are talking about.
Other things are happening at the same time and instead of ignoring them they should be integrated into our understanding of how the system works. The empire is active at many fronts, many of those invisible. And I have personally benefitted a lot from these 2 individuals’ work about censorship. That did not impede in any way with my understanding and study of Israel of 30+ years, but supported it. So don´t entirely condemn them at face value. In fact doing that could be to the service of the Israeli cause – whether intentionally or not, doesn´t matter. The danger of limiting one´s perspective is always lingering. And I am coping with this issue every single day. We face an army of PR-specialists at GCHQ, CIA et al.
Condemning Taibbi for refusing to acknowledge mass slaughter of innocents, going on almost a year, “could be to the service of the Israeli cause – whether intentionally or not”?
You can obviously no longer hear the falconer, mate. Very far gone indeed.
I am just trying to explain that there is stuff to learn from their exchange – regardless of what Taibbi says about Gaza (I don´t know what he does say.)
I already had this exchange with – I believe – Laguerre. I don´t know what Taibbi e.g. says about this when with Chris Hedges. However I would be interested to hear what Hedges would say to that. Hedges has made good interviews with people who do not agree with everything Hedges says. That´s normal.
If one is in favour of First Amendment rights (as I am) in serious one should keep to that into every direction. I am not saying it´s not odd or infuriating or puzzling at times. But if it´s a principle I defend…
Craig’s article is very depressing, but true. In my opinion the causes are due to the US Empire [plus NATO] abandoning International law and replacing it with the new ‘Rules based order’ they did this because they could not get Russia or China on board [the UNSC] for their Hegemonic adventures. Russia and China who lead BRICS are a force that will replace the US Empire. This is why the ‘West’ are lashing out at any country that does not follow the West’s agenda with sanctions, tariffs and threats of military action; they are desperate.
In the Middle East Israel/US are bombing Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen in a desperate attempt to reverse the inroads Russia and China has made in those countries. They are failing and will fail.
Israel is now faced with a multi-front attritional war which it can never win. Unfortunately many lives will be lost until the racial supremacist Israeli regime is defeated. In Ukraine, the US domination of Europe will be dealt a severe blow, costing the US and Europe financial and military ruin whilst Ukraine will be destroyed.
The US aim of weakening Russia has not materialized, quite the opposite, with Russia and China – and, it must be said, a vast majority of world opinion – teaming up to defeat the US/NATO war machine, and with it their dreams of world Hegemony.
Now you talking Harry. 100%
Don’t forget the pivot to …. Bangladesh!! Is it cause Myanmar has slipped through their fingers? Is it to wind up India and give Modi an excuse to disrupt the SCO, BRICS+ and most important the BRI – which is creating the future world infrastructure? The dismantling of the WB/IMF gangsters wanting their pound of flesh and their magik money dollar hegemony.
It is now official. Israel has the right to defend itself against aggression but Iran doesn’t. That is the gist of current European attempts at dissuading Iran from attacking Israel. So Starmer in his wisdom and without Irony “Keir Starmer warned the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, that ‘now was the time for calm’”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/12/israel-prepares-for-likely-retaliatory-attack-by-iran-as-tensions-mount
The same Keir Starmer has stated that Israel has the right to defend itself against helpless children by starving them.
Meanwhile the US is sending a huge armada to protect Israel, presumably from Iranian “aggression”. But none of our press see the hypocrisy and double standards that they are practicing by reporting this without pointing out that those who need defending against aggression are the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the Iranians and the Lebanese.
SA
+1
Oh so it is according to the rules-based-order to assassinate the moderate palestinian leader in Iran, palestinians have no right to respond then it is called “escalation”. Sigh. Are these people even human?
Why is it so important for the west to bend over backwards for a regime that the west are not benefitting from one iota!? The only reason is the tremendous influence Israel yield on the US government, corrupting the minds of the westerners that, fighting for Israel is fighting for their own security. Why risk regional war just because so the genocide could go on? How could people be so blind of this apparent foreign interference on US politics?
Israel is now accusing the BBC of bias and spreading Palestinian “propaganda” because of reporting a tiny amount of the truth of the atrocities that Israel commits daily in Gaza.
“Israel spokesperson accuses BBC’s Mishal Husain of pro-Palestinian bias” https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/aug/12/israel-spokesperson-accuses-bbc-mishal-husain-of-pro-palestinian-bias
The person being interviewed by Mishal Husain was none other than David Mercer who is “……… a British media and public relations specialist, who has acted as a spokesperson for the Israeli government since last autumn. He is a former director of Labour Friends of Israel.”
So LFI and Starmer as a prominent member of the club now have a serious conflict of interests problem as there is now a direct link between the Labour party LFI and the Israeli Government. This should be major news but of course is taken for granted and goes uncommented in the MSM.
No difference between LFI and the CFI. All members are in effect agents of a foreign government. These organisations would be better named as ‘friends of apartheid ‘.
And one of the topics discussed was Palestinians tortured in Israeli jails. Mercer says that these are allegations by a ‘fringe groups” – B’tselem a well known human rights organisation but of course this has been well known also highlighted by the UN
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/05/israel-un-expert-calls-probe-allegations-torture-and-mistreatment-against
If you think “The West are the bad guys”, presumably you think Putin, Kim Jong Un, Iran and it’s cohort of terrorist proxies, the Chinese Communists, Maduro and Belarus are the good guys. To paraphrase “Flower of Scotland”, go homeward and think again. No nation is perfect but I know which side I’d rather be on.
Do you also know which side your bread is buttered?
Also given that none of those named by you as “terrorist proxies” have been actively involved in a “full scale genocide” to coin a phrase, then your comparison is meaningless or at least irrelevant.
That is an elementary logic mistake.
If A and B oppose each other, and you think A is a “bad guy”, it does not at all follow that you think B is a “good guy”.
Isn’t this what is now called a “straw man” argument?
Thanks for ‘full-scale genocide’.
I’ve been wondering when Ukraine’s incursion into Russia becomes full scale.
It’s mode of thinking Craig once mocked, referring to adherents as ‘fuckwits’ [link]. That because the west is bad then anybody who opposes the west must be without fault.
When even genocide is not a red line..
“Freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t free,”
Me and Bobby McGee – Janis Joplin
Well it is interesting that the US and the UK was never occupied or invaded like the above mentioned countries.
That’s probably why you know which side you’re on.
Might happen- who know’s but when you are revisit your comment.
Might be the Commie Chinese in Surrey in the future if the Western leader’s forecasts are correct?
This is why the people have to stump up the arms candy to prevent that ever happening?
For you to live in the lifestyle you have become accustomed to of course.
I agree no nation is perfect but there are the occupied and then there are the occupiers.
I side with the occupied every time.
MC: “Well it is interesting that the US and the UK was never occupied or invaded like the above mentioned countries.”
Not sure everyone in Wales would agree with that. A few Scots might have some doubts, too. For that matter, some native Americans could also take issue with this.
Ask a native American if the US was ever invaded.
I’m afraid that the writer was not an Inuit Indian in the US or Claymore wielding Scotsman or an oppressed Irish person in the occupied Six Counties.
The real occupation by the biggest Miltary up to the US Military today is/was Imperialist and Colonial to its boots.
Proper Armies with proper weapons.
33 million Russians dead is an occupation – the bombing of London ( Blitz ) was terrible but no occupation took place in the UK fortunately – ditto the US was never attacked by Germany.
And we know what happened when Japan attacked – no bow and arrows or canons were used just nukes.
Only the smugness of Westerners ( particularly the white ones – a la Farage et al) who had never experienced Imperial occupation can be so insouciant about the fate and the struggles of others.
Bows and arrows V Rifles and Cannon is no way near what the Militaries had then in The Two wars and nowhere near the firepower ( including nukes) that the US has now.
To be fair to the British government, the EU and most of its member states are even worse. At least in Britain there is a tradition of freedom of speech, although admittedly it has been eroded of late, and you are still allowed to view websites like rt.com which present the news from a different slant.
But in the EU, internet service providers must, by EU law, block access to rt.com and a bunch of other sites.
You might be able to access RT via Odyssey and one or two other sites, but the official position is still that expressed by Nadine Dorries when Tory Culture Secretary. As reported at the time by BBC:
“Russian-backed news channel RT has disappeared from all broadcast platforms in the UK (because of EU ban impacting on streaming from EU).
UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries described the channel as ‘Putin’s polluting propaganda machine” and said she hoped it would not return to UK screens
As part of a concerted effort and discussions, Russia Today is no longer streamed into British homes, either by TV, Sky, Freesat or Freeview,” she told the House of Commons on Thursday. And we have contacted both [Facebook owner] Meta and TikTok to implore them to stop streaming Russia Today via their own online platforms. It is my absolute position that we will not stop until we have persuaded every organisation, based in the UK or not, that is the wrong thing to do to stream Russian propaganda into British homes’.
Fast forward to recent announcements about the dire consequences of sharing and retweeting “hate” messages and you can see how far the controls not just on freedom of expression but freedom of thought are being tightened.
I’m not referring to TV channels, I’m talking about internet access to https://www.rt.com.
It definitely is not directly accessible via the biggest ISP in Portugal (I tried recently) and the link I posted is to EU legislation. It’s the law – any ISP in the EU must block access by clients in the EU. End of.
Some ISPs in the UK might choose to block it (I don’t use Sky) but that is a decision they are making for themselves. It isn’t a requirement in UK law.
Not sure this is right.
Sky, among others, blocks access to rt.com from the UK. On the other hand, I’ve been in France, Spain, Portugal and Holland since the Special Operation, and all of them can access RT just fine.
RT is definitely no longer easily viewable here in France though it can be accessed indirectly via Odyssey.
Most of the world never bought the west’s claims of moral leadership, even in its most triumphalist moments like 1989. But what the youthful population of today’s developing world has seen from Gaza won’t ever be forgotten. Do not expect them to join Guardian readers in celebrating Kamala Harris as the global vanguard of racial and gender justice.
The SNP have being doing secret deals with Israel recently – Angus Robertson is a good friend of the Mossad agent Shia Masot – its an utter disgrace that the SNP are doing secret deals with the Israeli government – a government that’s committing genocide in Gaza.
https://archive.is/CSh0i
The monuments demolished or removed by Ukraine were symbols of Soviet rule and most, including 1,320 busts of Lenin, were removed post 2015. Ukraine is not alone in ‘de-communising’, most if not all ex-Soviet satellite states have programmes in place to remove Soviet memorials; many of which are pretty hideous.
https://www.rferl.org/a/poland-demolishes-soviet-monument/32002998.html
I suppose the equivalent would be an independent Scotland pulling down statutes of British monarchs. (There are 10 of Victoria.)
The SS is forever associated with Nazi fanaticism and certainly when first founded only the most ardent of National Socialists who could prove their ‘Aryan’ purity back three generations (four for officers) would be admitted. The idea of recruiting Slavs would’ve been utterly abhorrent but towards the end of the war, as the Reich began to get short of manpower, SS Divisions were raised from all occupied nations – including Russia. An attempt was made to raise a division from British PoWs but it never got above platoon strength. These were more cannon fodder than fanatics, the 14th SS (Galician) Division suffered 70% casualties in its first battle, and was ‘SS’ in name only. If nothing else it was good propaganda.
It is a pity then that hand in hand with demolishing Soviet monuments, the Ukrainians are erecting more and more monuments to commemorate Bandera.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commemoration_of_Stepan_Bandera
You can rewrite history but you can’t change it.
‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’
I’m sure many nations look on the British idolisation of Winston Churchill with horror. Ireland and India to name but two.
SA
Yes, monuments of the Soviet-era are demolished in Ukraine, nazi monuments are kept untouched and even new ones are being erected:
Nazi collaborator monuments in Ukraine
Many new streets and monuments have been erected since a new government took over in 2014
https://forward.com/news/462916/nazi-collaborator-monuments-in-ukraine/
I mean look at that link, you could scroll for days!
If the gullible westerners only knew what is going on in Ukraine and Gaza, their supremacist thinking that they are the “good guys” would be put to shame permanently.
Not just Ukraine: Canada, obviously, has Nazi monuments; the USA also. Does the UK?
Nazi monuments in UK including one in Lockerbie
https://forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Bradford-top-border.png
https://forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Derby-top-option-2-border.png
https://forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lockerbie-option-2-border.png
Oh dear. So we are all evil Nazis and deserve to be invaded.
When your Regional Council awards an old Nazi with an honorary badge named after another Nazi.
And the list of awards also includes the Nazi Center for National Revival.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/the-future-of-wikipedia/#post-99977
Should have invaded earlier, before NATO armed this gang.
SA – What is meant by “nazi monuments”? Can you explain, please, especially (for me, anyway) the Lockerbie one? Looks to be a long time ago, whatever is going on in the photo. Not contradicting you, just wishing to know what you are trying to say, as it isn’t at all clear to me.
Jamie
Look here for more nazi-collaborative monuments in Canada
https://forward.com/news/462694/nazi-collaborator-monuments-in-canada/
Go read the links and you will realize what nazi/collaborative monuments are.
Jamie
I am sorry for the sloppiness, they are mainly Ukrainian Nazi collaborator documents. This website explains what this is
https://forward.com/news/481609/nazi-collaborator-monuments-in-the-united-kingdom/
“Lockerbie (entry added August 2023) – A memorial to SS Galichina outside a makeshift chapel constructed out of a shack on the site of a former prisoner-of-war camp that once housed SS Galichina soldiers. The Ukrainian SS POWs were moved to Britain in 1947; they built the chapel shortly after their arrival.
The vast majority of the 8,000-plus SS Galichina prisoners who were sent to Britain were eventually freed and allowed to settle in the U.K.
The chapel has seen a renewed interest when it began to be used as a collection hub for humanitarian aid for Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of the country. Coverage of this often omits or glosses over the fact the chapel was built by Third Reich soldiers. In 2022, the chapel received a grant for restoration.”
Stevie Boy.
Canada has a real problem with Nazism – I recall a few years back, that a Nazi monument was vandalised in the country – and the Canadian police opened up a hate crime file on it, after citizens reported the Nazi monument being vandalised. Also a genuine WWII Nazi – received a standing ovation in Canada’s governments Parliament – the excuse was they didn’t know he was a Nazi.
There are many Ukrainians living in Canada – indeed, Chrystia Freeland – who was/is Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister has Ukrainian ties – Freeland’s Ukrainian grandfather Michael Chomiak, had ties to the Nazi’s.
“The Ukraine Archival Records held by the Province of Alberta. It has a whole file on Chomiak, including his own details about his days editing the newspaper Krakivski Visti. Chomiak noted he edited the paper first in Crakow (Cracow), Poland and then in Vienna. The reason he edited the paper in Vienna was because he had to flee with his Nazis colleagues as the Russians advanced into Poland. (The Russians tended to execute collaborators well as SS members).”
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/chrystia-freelands-granddad-was-indeed-a-nazi-collaborator-so-much-for-russian-disinformation
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/monument-vandalism-nazi-1.5654169#:~:text=Police%20are%20apologizing%20for%20saying%20they%20had%20launched,on%20a%20monument%20at%20St.%20Volodymyr%20Ukrainian%20Cemetery.
https://news.sky.com/story/canadian-parliaments-standing-ovation-for-former-nazi-soldier-was-deeply-embarrassing-trudeau-says-12970074
RoS. Canada is, like the USA, a country of immigrants, with the indigenous population confined to ‘reservations’. Many of those immigrants came from Germany and Ukraine as well as Britain and the rest of Europe.
As an aside, I lived for a while in a town that used to be called Berlin. That name was changed during WW1 for political reasons, but the majority of inhabitants still had German roots and family. One wonders which side they batted for during the wars.
The Ukranians came to Canada in two waves: before the war, and after the war. The post war Ukranians appear to be refugees fleeing Stalin, and it is this group that has the very pronounced Nazi leanings. And, some were known Nazis, actually smuggled in by the Canadian government. The UK Government did the same. Go figure.
“ were known Nazis, actually smuggled in by the Canadian government. The UK Government did the same. Go figure.”
Maybe these governments were having a love affair with the Nazis? If so WW2 was a lover’s tiff, the result of which set the dominance pattern of the relationship. The relationship, like any, has had it’s oscillations but if one considers the trajectory of C Freeland and the adoration of Hunka, it’s plain all is fair in love and war
“You came, you saw, you conquered me
When you did that to me
I knew somehow this had to be”
These Foolish Things, Maschwitch/Strachey
There are a couple of videos on Galician SS fascist scum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)
in the UK on the Mark Felton Productions YouTube site:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_Gs-0dhOo
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASPoFzmDteg.
Pears Morgaine
Ukraine – has a serious problem with Nazism.
https://forward.com/news/462916/nazi-collaborator-monuments-in-ukraine/
“The monuments demolished or removed by Ukraine were symbols of Soviet rule.”
What of Eastern Ukraine – and its people, were/are they as happy to pull down those kind of monuments?
I suppose now that the Neo-Nazi ran regime running Ukraine – which has been attempting to wipe out those folk in the East of the country – will be desperate to finish the job – now that the folk in the East have come under the RF’s wing – I’d expect, once the Neo-Nazi’s in the West of Ukraine are defeated – that more monuments to Russia, and the alliance with the folk in Eastern Ukraine will go up – to commemorate their great victory over the evil in the West that tried to wipe them out.
Just to add a bit of “community content” from the Forward webpage (published in 2020 two years before the Russian SMO).
“1.5 million Jews, a quarter of all Jews murdered in the Holocaust, came from Ukraine. Over the past six years, the country has been institutionalizing worship of the paramilitary Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which collaborated with the Nazis and aided in the slaughter of Jews, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which massacred thousands of Jews and 70,000-100,000 Poles. —-
Ukraine has several dozen monuments and scores of street names glorifying this Nazi collaborator, enough to require two separate Wikipedia pages (there are so many Bandera streets that only a few are listed in this project)”. (Examples follow).
The West’s attitude to the atrocities committed in Gaza by the Israelis are influenced not by right or wrong but by who does them. This is explained by George Orwell in ‘Notes on Nationalism’. For instance the German government justified Israel’s recent strike on the Al-Tabin school in Gaza, which killed almost 100 Palestinians during morning prayers, saying that Israel has the “right to defend itself” (the cradle).
“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians.”
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/
The USA – appears to be building up it forces in West Asia – in the anticipation of a retaliatory strike by Iran on Israel.
“The United States is sending a guided missile submarine to the West Asia region and speeding the transit of an aircraft carrier strike group, as Israel remains on high alert for retaliatory attacks from Iran.
The Pentagon confirmed late Sunday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered the dispatch of the USS Georgia guided missile submarine to the region.
He further ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, equipped with F-35C fighter jets, to accelerate its ongoing transit to the area. The strike group will join the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and its accompanying warships already deployed to the Gulf of Oman.
The US deployment was announced following talks between Austin and Israel’s minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant.”
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/08/12/731240/Iran-US-Palestine-Defense-Secretary-Lloyd-Austin-USS-Abraham-Lincoln-Carrier-Strike-Group-Yoav-Gallant-IRGC
Presumably the Iranians are delaying to prepare a strike, for which all these US armaments are irrelevant. I have no idea what it will be, but after the 300 drone strike, I think they’re well capable of coming up with something well thought-out.
The Syrians have got the US troops in the oil-fields well bottled up at the moment, maybe it’ll be on the front of ejecting US occupation in Syria and Iraq, but that’s only a guess.
Iran and Lebanon are well armed, and the Houtis cannot be ignored. Although the Iranians appear intelligent enough to be careful with any response, the danger, as always, is the mad dogs in Israel. All that firepower sat just off the coast with nothing to do, other than ‘march to the top of the hill and back down again’. All it needs is ‘something’ to kick off the fireworks and murder. Keep your eyes peeled for a false flag event.
I suspect they may be engaged in tempting Israel to attack, in a way that doesn’t justify US intervention, putting Israel in the wrong. That’s very tricky, but not impossible. Israel is so on edge that the least thing may set them off. In addition they’ve got the invasion of Lebanon all prepared, according to report. You can’t keep an invasion force waiting in jump-off points for all that long. Unless it is of course that the Israeli military, who are opposed, but the far-right government doesn’t care, really haven’t done the preparation for war in the north.
At any rate forcing the US to go to war just before the November election will be very unpopular in the US, even worse if it involved body-bags. That could be the controlling factor in Iran’s delay. The commentators clearly haven’t the foggiest why it might be.
There are people who know the West is supporting genocide but still believe in the sanctity of their governments and media. They will only ever condemn approved enemies of the axis of genocide.
While it is easy for me to sit here and say what Iran should do or not do, Iran must cultivate their response to these attacks against them. Israel now had over 2 weeks of preparation for an incoming missile attack, thus, If Iran indeed will end up shooting missiles towards Israel like last time, nothing will come out of it, majority of the missiles will likely be blocked and Iran will only be humiliated once Israel, in turn, shoot back with more firepower. Iran need to use drones, use sabotage etc be clever.
Look at Ukraine how they manage to even send exploding drones over the actual Kremlin building.
Kremlin drone attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlin_drone_attack
This is the type of surprise attacks Iran should plot against Israel.
Or just as Israel go around assassinating people all over the world, the same option should be utilized by Iran.
Just remember how Israel have assassinated multiple iranian scientists over the years
Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nuclear_scientists
Israel did the same against Iraq by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_El_Mashad
Thus Iran should pinpoint Israeli persons of interest, whether they are in Israel or not, and put them six feet deep. Tit for tat.
Tit for Tat, Eye for an Eye is the Israeli Judaic way and never achieves the desired affect. It just leads to escalation. To defeat Israel you have to defeat America, in current circumstances that cannot be acheived by Iran.
On the bright side. Just think of the costs of the threat to USA and Israel. This ramping up will be costing millions if not billions. Also, think of the psychological impact on the Israelis, waiting for an attack that may or may not happen at an unkown time. That will sap the morale and lead some to leave the country. Which is just as effective as killing them.
Israel only understands force so Iran should give them just that. A bully needs to put in its place, using the same tactics against the bully is often an effective tactic.
It is amazing how the dumbed down american population/politicians but also how dumbed down the european population/politicians is that do not understand that Israel try to woe and pit westerners towards a war with Iran. Just like the way Netanyahu, personally, got the US into the Iraq war he is using the exact same playbook, and the stupid on Iran and the stupid westerners buy to large extent!?
Reporter: Netanyahu told Congress in 2002 Iraq was developing nuclear weapons—this was a lie—and wanted regime change in Iran. How can we trust someone who goaded us into war based on lies & how can we be confident he won’t do the same with Iran?
White House spox Patel: I’m not sure I understand
Video https://www.instagram.com/seastersjones/reel/C54Pe-ry1tX/?locale=ar-EG
Over and over again the west fall for the same lies, over and over again it is westerners that end up being killed on the battlefield for the interests of Israel.
Sadly, jack, I suspect the politicians know exactly what is happening and just use the situation to suit their agendas. Playing dumb is a big show for us plebs.
Cui bono: money, oil, influence, power, you name it – the west wants it for them, not for us.
Indeed we are not the good guys, and facing this realisation has much to do with our national complicity in the horrors inflicted on the people in Gaza. Atrocities sometimes happen, and it is usually crystal clear who the bad guys are. The Srebrenica slaughter is scarred into my memory of a 12 year old boy who was holding a white baby rabbit, being pulled from his mother’s arms, to be shot with the men in a field. It was unbelievably horrific, but it wasn’t our fault.
Gaza is our fault. We invited the Jewish refugees to come and live in the British Protectorate of Palestine, and we signed an agreement on which Rothschild assured us that the refugees would respect land and property title deeds issued by the British to the Palestinians. The first Nakba made much of this and showed people leaving Palestine with their front door keys and their property deeds.
Palestinian diaspora is dispersed around the world. The very least we can do is to coordinate with other countries which have Palestinian diaspora communities, and seek to arrange safe passage from Gaza and the West Bank. Because the alternative is complete annihilation of Palestine and all who remain in what is left of that former country.
Starmer’s wife is Jewish. His children attend Orthodox schools. Kamala’s husband is Jewish. He is proud of his heritage and devoted to Israel. This is not about a far away country influencing our country, this is one undivided unit, committed to one undivided culture, largely genetic in context, but ferociously bound to its destiny.
I was first concerned when I learned that the Book of Esther is still taught to Jewish children. It tells of the Jewish Queen of Persia who unlocked the gates so that the Jewish invaders could conquer the land. Marrying into the ruling classes is part of the Jewish game plan and perhaps democracy can’t get its head round this.
Western democracies plan for the next five years. China plan for a thousand years. It was forbidden to say the word Taiwan at the Olympics. It is forbidden to say the word Tibet.
Our multicultural, multi-ethnic country faces the realisation that we don’t all play by the same rules, and the government consists of key players with their own agendas. Rule of law, the monarchy, and the second chamber, are the checks and balances on our democracy. These too are facing greater strain than ever before, because we have sold off, subcontracted, and shut down much of the engine of our productivity. Transparency and better decisions in future will require us to work together and hold government to account for decisions.
Brexit is bad enough, but weakening the entity further by separating the nations that make up Great Britain is perhaps not the priority just now. Devolution means we can do some things better in our separate nations, each with populations lower than Greater London, but holding leaders to account is the priority in this unstable time. I was glad to see that Thangnam Debbonaire lost her seat because she stated overtly, completely without irony, that being an MP is not about representative democracy, but requires toeing the party line with very limited dissent.
There are still a lot of very decent MPs serving communities, and working hard to make things better for everyone. Labour has been in power for just 6 weeks. It has inherited some heavy baggage which will all be unpacked in due course.
Sorry Alyson, you’ve pushed this agenda before. The reality is you are proposing ‘we’ support ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
No way Jose ! The only approach is the democratisation or destruction of Israel.
Quote:
In little over a month, Israel has bombed at least 18 schools in Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinian people.
On 5 August, in strikes on two United Nations-run schools – the Hassan Salama and al-Nasr in Gaza City – 80% of the victims were children. This is a feature of Israel’s assault, where Israel has killed 16,456 children so far.
A particularly deadly strike on al-Tabin school in Gaza City on 10 August killed over 100 people. According to Palestinian civil defence, every body found was torn apart.
On social media, people analysed the carnage brought upon civilians, compared to Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on 31 July.
Palestine’s education ministry reported that, as of 6 August, Israel had killed around 10,043 Palestinian students since 7 October. It said Israel killed a further 504 teachers and administrators.
On 3 August, Israel bombed the university of applied sciences in Gaza City, reportedly entirely obliterating campus buildings. It has destroyed or damaged all 12 universities in Gaza.
Israel: committing “scholasticide”
25 UN human rights experts expressed grave concern back in April:
With more than 80% of schools in Gaza damaged or destroyed, it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide’
The experts also pointed to the damaging or destruction of libraries, heritage sites, and the Central Archives of Gaza. They said:
The foundations of Palestinian society are being reduced to rubble, and their history is being erased
Despite Israel’s occupation, UN-run schools for Palestinian refugees have helped deliver one of the highest literacy rates in the world for Palestine.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in January that Israel “has targeted academic, scientific, and intellectual figures in the Strip in deliberate and specific air raids on their homes without prior notice”.
In October, teenager Shaimaa Saydam was among those Israeli forces killed in strikes. She was the highest performing Palestinian high school student of 2023.
Responding to the attacks on schools, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said:
Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood at a time, one hospital at a time, one school at a time, one refugee camp at a time, one ‘safe zone’ at a time, with US and European weapons.
Ben Gvir Al-Aqsa
NEWS
Far-right Israeli extremist Ben Gvir once AGAIN violates Al-Aqsa
13 AUGUST 2024
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The Book of Esther is a piece of historical fiction which ends with a mass murder by Jews of their enemies on the feast of Purim. Netanyahu has used this ahistorical work as a justification for the hostility of Israel to Iran, since the (fictional) enemies of the Jews in the book are Persians.
The bombing of London in WW2 resulted in some 40,000 civilians dead over at least 10 months. That’s comparable to the current Gaza figures. However the big difference is that many children were evacuated into the country whereas that’s not possible in Gaza. The after effects of the London blitzkrieg are still present after 80 years so just what is in store for Gaza?
Its just unfathomable why the likes of Biden and Starmer are not stopping the daily atrocities. It’s completely illogical even if one is the biggest Zionist zealot.
I know what you mean by being “shattered” with the knowledge of the West atrocities. It has been gradual for me. We have lived in Chicago, England, Scotland, France and Texas so have been exposed to other views that what is taught in US schools for many years, We are both 77 and have retired to a small town in East Texas where we keep up with world events by mostly unbiased media.
thanks craig for your excellent article here… i have appreciated your work for some time and sent some money your way today too..
Who are the good guys then?
History will obviously say Yemen, South Africa, all the ordinary people marching, occupying and trying to disrupt supply of the genocide. China is also engaged in trying to bring the Palestinian political factions together, having already brokered a big peace in the region between Saudi and Iran. However all the efforts of humane people pale in comparison to the extent of the evil still being perpetrated 10 months on. No one has ever seen anything like this shit with their own eyes. That is the biggest problem for the West.
If you want a candidate, let me propose the Republic of South Africa. Not being South African, I have no axe to grind. After all, they took Israel to the IJC for genocide. By all means let other readers propose the countries of their choice, and we could have an informal poll.
Correction “ICJ” (International Court of Justice)
That Victor, is not straightforward to answer. We are used to thinking as nation states, but globalisation has turned the focus to extreme wealth, and the disproportionate influence and power held by the most powerful and wealthy individuals. Investment is still considered the prerogative of these individuals, rather than a duty of the state to plan for the well-being of all the people. Starmer may well say he prefers the decision making simplicity of Davos to leading the Labour Party rabble in a straight line, akin to herding cats…..
The broad mix of ideologies which have emerged since the decline of the Church of England, has put humanism central to concepts of goodness and community ethos. The Labour Party after WWII placed decent housing, cradle to grave free healthcare, and education for the jobs of the future at the forefront of its investment in rebuilding the country.
Many politicians in the Labour Party still hold with that central plank of government responsibility. But the global economy has been played by rules which benefit the winners, and those on the treadmills of supply and demand wish only for a home, a warm bed, and enough to pay the bills and participate in their communities.
Humanity is the same everywhere. Leaders are different. Greed is the problem and the wealthy are not smiling on the possibility of being taxed their fair contribution. Dangers are many and so we stick together and try to find a way out of the conundrum through democratic processes. Dollar hegemony has sustained stability for most of our lifetimes and a multipolar world is less certain.
Well spoken!
I hope that the NHS will be turned back from being privatised by stealth to the original model of Aneurin Bevan, and that the “internal market” in public services will be abolished generally.
Alyson, Thank you for taking the time to answer. Indeed it is not easy to find the good guys. I don’t agree with much on these pages, but I do like to challenge my own worldview by reading Craig’s articles and thoughtful responses like yours do make me think!
Looking for the good guys makes little sense.
I suggest just be as good a guy as you can, yourself.
Spot on. Individual people are generally good, groups of people are always a problem. Human nature !
Tatyana
Good point. I do my best to be a good guy.
There are no eternal goods and bads
At the current moment, “good” is whatever defeats the imperialism described above.
While they’re fighting zionism, Hamas are the good guys
While they’re fighting nazis, Russians are the good guys
While they’re fighting US colonization, Iranians are the good guys.
Once this stage of the struggle is complete, “good” and “bad” will have to be evaluated again.
Who are the good guys? Is there such a thing at all?
The only good women and men that are on this world are the poor lumpen workers who have no time for politics or Governments.
We are witnessing an evil game of degenerate greedy men and women who could not give a flying f..k about those who are being fooled with defunct moral dystopian philosophy and celeb/comsumerist excesses.
Its wan..rs like Musk, Trump, Bibi, and those financial monoliths who steer our lives that makes this earth uninhabitable. Monkeys are more intelligent, ants are more organised and in tune with what keeps them alive, than these wretched humanoids with their pseudo-philosophical brain gangrene.
It’s either the people, communities living in Harmony within their environment or Armageddon.
Again today, the UN condemns Israel for its many war-crimes, but the wholesale killing of Palestinian civilians and the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure continues unabated, with the use of US$ military supplies.
The time has surely come to introduce UN Peace-Keeping Troops to facilitate the distribution of medicines, food and emergency shelters.
Otherwise the whole thing just goes on and on until Palestine is just an wasteland and an entry in historical records.
Simultaneously the US-made bombs and bullets have to stop; and when the aid convoys start to move, then if just one UN trooper is fired upon by IDF snipers or an aid truck gets droned, then our UN troops should be able to fire back and eliminate all threats to the successful distribution of the humanitarian assistance.
“The time has surely come to introduce UN Peace-Keeping Troops to facilitate the distribution of medicines, food and emergency shelters…”
Long past time. However, UN peace operations are deployed on the basis of mandates from the United Nations Security Council. As the USA, UK and France are 3 of the 5 UNSC permanent members with a veto it’s not gonna happen as any such a resolution will be vetoed.
https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mandates-and-legal-basis-peacekeeping
Better late then never will the sinner wake
Newborn twins were killed in Gaza while their father was at a local government office to register their birth.
Asser, a boy, and Ayssel, a girl, were just Four Days Old ! when their father Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan went to collect their birth certificates.
While he was away, his neighbours called to say their home in Deir al Balah had been bombed.
The Israeli air strike also killed his wife and the twins’ grandmother.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I am told it was a shell that hit the house.”
————————————————————————————-
The Zionists and their supporters will not grieve but dance and sing in joy.
What sort of people are they that have no human compassion for others?
The former IDF academic Omer Bartov writes of how disturbed he was at observing the outlook of Israelis during a visit in 2024, and looks at the parallels with the outlook in Nazi Germany during WW2:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov
He refers to a novella about the Nakba, S Yizhar’s Khirbet Khizeh, censored from Israeli schools in 2009. A film based on the book of the same title was banned in Israel, but can be seen on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB-WW7D3Ajo
Bartov’s position has shifted somewhat. The article you cite was very powerful. We all see truths at different moments. I read something by him a decade ago and he was a lot less clear about where the situation in Palestine was heading
I read “The Eastern Front – German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare” and thought highly of it. The crimes of the Wehrmacht had been known but Bartov, by fixing the view to three German divisions with ample extant records gave an image of what was going to a degree of granularity that I had not previously understood.
The work fits very neatly with the Soviet film, “Come and See”(1985) which depicts the liquidation of a Ukrainian village by a Nazi death squad and was shot in the village where the massacre occurred. The survivors flee to the swamps. A young boy lives through the massacre and wanders stunned. He meets another survivor and asks about his ninety year old granny and is told “Ran off to join the partisans”. A dark film illuminated only by a strong cast, particularly the young lad, and some great scenes in the swamps with all the old people in the village, who had survived the original historical massacre as young people, playing all the old people hiding in the swamps as extras.
I am left contemplating how someone who could write “The Barbarisation of Warfare”, which both hit me on a deeply humanistic level and for the high quality of the scholarship, could take so long to recognise the deadly potential of Israel’s march to the genocidal right. I wonder what Guardian readers thought of it?
Are ‘we’ the bad guys ? Yep.
And now the government wants to bring 60,000 Israeli nazis to the UK, and almost certainly with lots of free benefits not available to the local population.
“UK ministers are drawing up plans to evacuate 60,000 Britons from Israel”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13740979/uk-ministers-plans-evacuate-israel-iran-hezbollah.html
If Israel is such a good place then maybe all these nazi sympathisers should stay there and die defending the shithole. We have ukranian nazis, now we’re going to get Israeli nazis; what are we, some south American type bolthole for failed members of the master race? Yep we’re the bad guys, for sure.
Dual nationals, they have no right of British protection, when they are in the country of their other nationality.
What do you mean Laguerre?
The government is talking about a “Dunkirk” type operation to bring these people to Britain, so it seems your observation as to “rights” is moot
The question for me is how many are religious psychos? Will they be de-radicalised? Do we have the anti-terrorist personnel to handle what could be many thousands of self-avowed religious terrorists coming from a racist country that operates an apartheid system more deadly and degrading than anything white South Africa ever imagined?
Isn’t it obvious? Britain has no obligation to rescue dual citizens in their other country. Why is it being done in this case?
I think you will find the answer in the term “Dunkirk”
One should never let a crisis go to waste.
Can’t you see the front pages – remember the Falklands turned a useless crank like M Thatcher into “The Iron Lady”, courtesy of Saatchi and Saatchi and of course Murdoch’s near media monopoly
We don’t why it is being done. In view of Britains relationship with Israel I am surprised that you are surprised.
I would imagine it is for the same reason as to why Britain is helping Israel liquidate the Palestinians – whatever that is
will moon
Why do you imagine I am surprised?? I in no way said that. I am merely pointing out that Britain is going far beyond its obligations, no doubt for the political reasons of Starmer’s personal preferences.
Laguerre, I’m not sure Starmer’s personal preference has anything to do with it. The only potential leader who might not have come up with this plan is Jeremy Corbyn and we know what happened there.
Britain went far beyond its obligations in the aftermath of the civil disorder in Hong Kong, extending citizenship to several hundred thousand Hong Kongers at least. The American-led campaign against China in Hong Kong was therefore serviced by British support. Hong Kong was signed over to China in 1997 and the recent disturbances were a bonus for the Anglo-American warmongers. Not so Israel, many British and American Pols care more for the Israel project than they do about the countries they are supposed to represent. If this was not true Al-Jazeera’s “The Lobby” would have led to prosecutions for treason for Joan Ryan and espionage for Shai Masot amongst many other state responses
If this “Dunkirk” operation is begun there will be large numbers of British military personnel in the locality. This will give cover for operations to be mounted that have nothing to do with any humanitarian mission, especially if the fog of war is as thick as it was on the seventh of October and beyond – which it will be.
Just before the election Foreign Secretary D Cameron, spoke to a Vovan and Lexus generated “Poreshenko” and assured this comedic construct that the election would bring no change whatsoever to British foreign policy
Whoever is running British foreign policy, at least its operative component, is not elected. Robin Cook suggested a change but unfortunately died before being able to implement it. The chaos in the governing Conservative Party made no policy difference whatever to the steady rhythm of the war drums.
I suggest this plan has long been extant, with considerable redrafts in the recent and very recent past. If you think K Starmer has anything to do with it, you hold a fundamentally different view to my own.
Only Starmer would have been in such a hurry to prepare ahead of time to do sth that was not necessary.
Laguerre, I am suggesting this plan has existed in some form since Suez and Nasser at least.
The problem is how to get boots on the ground quickly. Whatever “humanitarian” crisis emerges is grist for that mill. With the recent discoveries concerning gas in the wider maritime Mediterranean basin, it certainly looks like a good time to increase the British military presence. And of course, if one thing leads to another and the presence of extra British military assets is fortuitously beneficial, well who knows where things could end up.
Will Moon
LG is right in the sense that someone with UK and Israeli nationality cannot call on the UK for protection if he gets into legal difficulties while in Israel.
However, that person could benefit from any UK moves to evacuate UK nationals from Israel because he is a UK national.
As often, Laguerre is being less than clear. I hope he reserves this way of exposition for the readers of this blog and not for his unfortunate students.
Shlomo I was meaning it won’t matter what the rules are. It has a predestined feel to it – as if it was always going to happen
As for Laguerre’s opaque expositions or otherwise – no problem. I know what I am looking for and I know when I find it. I guess that means I am not a student
Are you a colleague at the educational institute Laguerre works at? Lol
Funny how hasbarists keep obsessively detailed notes on the biographies of people who criticise Israel. In this case they’re rather old notes, as I only mentioned my profession once, I think, and that was before I retired getting on for ten years ago. They obviously share the notes so carefully kept, as this is the first time I’ve seen the username of Shlomo Ben-Tal. It could of course be that it is just a new name for the Israeli spokesperson who pestered this blog at that time, and kept notes on the commenters, but whose username I forget now.
I can only say that I am proud to be considered sufficiently dangerous to Israel that I am thought worth registering on the hasbara database, and to be worth personally insulting.
Detailed indeed…. having read this blog for many years, I had no idea that you were retired, nor that you used to be a lecturer. It’s not as if you go bragging about such things.
Such is the way with highly authoritarian, control freakish states. They must know everything about everybody, particularly if someone dares to question their righteousness, notes their criminal behaviour, or fails to accept their endless stream of lies as received truth.
I don’t care whether you support the Palestinians, Israelis, or indeed the Man in the Moon. It’s your unpleasant tone and modus operandi I (and I suspect some other people on here) object to. You can’t stand having any of your opinions or statements questioned and you have a tendency to call anyone who dares to have a different opinion a hasbarist. That’s why I said I pity your students….including the chap whose thesis you once wrote you were on the way to examine (this was a couple of, and not 10, years ago). You seem like the awful Howard in the Malcolm Bradbury novel……
You live in Paris. Why don’t you occasionally post something about the deplorable attitude of the French government (this and previous ones) to the question of justice for the Palestinians? What’s holding you back – are you frit?
shlomo
Exactly what I would expect of a hasbarist who’s been caught out, exercising his unpleasant activities. You have access to a good source of information, far beyond what any normal commenter would have access to.
Laguerre
Are you losing it? My “good source of information” is just what you’ve written on this blog – volontarily.
Namely: that you were an academic who left the UK for Paris for certain (undisclosed) reasons. And that your father’s picture hangs in the premises of the LSE (where he was an academic). And that you have examined students’ higher degree theses.
As for your general reaction to everyone who points out errors on your part, and your penchant for calling people habarist at the drop of a hat, I suggest you look up any of your own posts.
And now explain to your breathless audience how that makes me a habarist. 🙂
I almost forgot.
You are this blog’s correspondent from France.
French policy on Israel/Palestine and French support for Israel is, in reality, no better than US, UK, German policy. But whereas you slate the latter, you never utter a squeak about French policy and French support.
Why is that? Are you afraid to do so?
Shlomo Ben-Tal
You just add more and more evidence for what I said. You’re either an obsessive keeper of notes on commenters’ biographies, like the other guy whose username I have forgotten, or a professional agent of the hasbara with access to their database. I didn’t say which one you were; I don’t much care, as I don’t hate commenters personally enough to keep notes on them.
Two articles this morning that caught my attention:
With reference to the enemy foreign agent members of LFI, CFI, LDFI, etc. They are supported in their endeavours by the MSM who also are funded by the zionists through the Europe Israel Press Association (EIPA).
https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-pro-israel-groups-shape-global-media-coverage-of-palestine/
And, the recent disturbances in the UK are echoed in this article about Serbia. “Ever since the color revolution of 2000 any sort of mass protest, no matter how legitimate, always gets hijacked by elements sort of recruited by foreign governments”. Israel brooks no dissent from its agenda. The ousting of Corbyn was undoubtably, IMO, a color revolution by Israel and the USA.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240814/serbia-remains-island-of-independence-from-globalist-us-empire–analyst-1119762245.html
How do we free the country from the deadly embrace of the vampire squid that is Israel ?
“ that is Israel ?”
I think the problem is wider than Israel Stevie Boy.
We are led to believe Israel faces many thousands of missiles, if the conflict widens – so many so that the country would be destroyed. If the worst came this country would be free of Israel but nothing would change
Israel is a piece on the board. It is not the player who plays – who or what that is remains opaque – the game is clear enough – mastery. AG mentioned a new book, about the concentration of capital globally – something like 113 individuals control $50 trillion. If your looking to free the country consider these people and their bought governments
Your comment is in fact hasbara on behalf of Israel, suggesting that Israel is not an independent agent (which it clearly is), but only a vassal of other hidden forces. Nobody’s forcing Israel into genociding the Palestinians, it’s their own independent choice based on a fanatical ideology two millennia old.
[ Mod: Habbabkuk/Charles Bostock. ]
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There you go again – now Will Moon is a hasbarist!
Isn’t one of the rules of this blog that you should remain polite towards other posters?
Sclomo if a child injures you, do you you take offence?
If the family cat tries to stare you out,does it ruin your evening?
If you saw the face of Lady Di in the clouds in the sky, would you mention this to anyone?
The answer of course is no, no, no, and thrice no – true I’m sure for any well fixed barnacle, such as myself and what with you being a straight talker, probably for you as well
I have to ask, how come you know so much about this somewhat mysterious (to me at least) virtual entity, “Laguerre”? I would not like to think you are singling him out for special treatment Schlomo because of some imagined or even real grievance – holding grudges is bad for one’s mental health and the targeting of virtual entities is a somewhat nebulous pursuit at best. Investment in such ventures can be risky. I hope to hear you say this was mere Kismet rather than some premeditated campaign of vilification seeking a dubious vindictation
Thanks mod. I’d forgotten the name Habbabkuk. I rather thought it sounded like the same person.
You’ve rumbled me Laguerre. How did you see through my well-crafted cover story posing as a penniless vagrant? I’ve been method acting the role for for a couple years – y’know, down with the bro’s in the hostel, living on five pounds a day that sort of thing. Then you come along – and poof I’m getting the sack
But you’ve no idea what you have done, The organisation I work for has exceptionally high performance standards and takes a somewhat terminal view of failure. Whatever lies in store for me, crocodiles or Komodo dragons, it won’t be pretty. SPECTRE values symbolism over all, the rest is considered data and meat
great stuff.
Thanks for your kind words
But somehow I feel I have disappointed you – the story of my life, if I must truly tell ☹️
“ It was me, waiting for me
Hoping for something more
Me, seeing me this time
Hoping for something else”
New Dawn Fades, Joy Division
Some would take issue with the ‘we’ part.
For who actually decides ‘our’ foreign policy… or more specifically ‘our’ foreign policy priorities. That is, if not our elected representatives – via parliamentary debate and internal party democracy – then whom?
That’s where these international elite gatherings come in: Bilderberg meetings; the Trilateral Commission and even NATO gatherings. Initially developed to foster ideas and understanding – to coordinate, they’ve in fact become a defacto unaccountable western government. The idea of a major western country doing its own thing in relation to their diplomacy with any of: Russia, China; Iran, Irak, N.Korea , Venezuela, Syria, or opposing Israel has become unthinkable.
I know this is nothing revelatory. But the way sovereignty has been lost to a kind of pooled internationalism, dominated by the hegemonic US; and how a relatively small cabal really do control the West, explains why the world is so starkly divided.
The sovereign Parliament of Britain voted nearly 3:1 against ending the genocide in Gaza.
Jules Orr
That’s a testimony to how powerful the central party machines have become and the quality of the current crop of MPs. There are so many ‘career’ politicians these days, that instead of lively well informed debate, we’ve got a culture of obedience among those sent to hold the powerful to account on our behalf. Then there’s the ridiculous behaviour of the party whips; whips whose coercion and intimidation tactics wouldn’t be tolerated in any workplace outside the Palace of Westminster.
Parliamentary candidates are now selected on the basis of likely obedience to the party’s leadership – nowhere more so than in Starmer’s Labour party. And as a result, we’ve got hundreds of ‘on message’ nodding donkeys barely anyone admires.
Then dimmer parts of the establishment and guardian et al, wonder why people have less respect for politicians and whether democracy itself is at risk. The quickest way to renew democracy in the UK, would be to have no official parties and let each prospective representative stand on their own merits and platform.
“ let each prospective representative stand on their own merits and platform.”
But Goose that would mean the views of “people in general” would be factored into the political process! Some more security-minded Hobbesian members of the “status quo” might see your prescription as sedition. If the “Intelligence” community do indeed monitor this website, your card has been marked – let us both hope that we aren’t at the “camps in the countryside” stage – yet.
will moon
It’s not an anti-democratic view: it’s the opposite and could restore faith in democracy.
Political parties have become anti-democratic structures stymieing and narrowing debate, limiting choice and preventing and undermining the spirit of representative democracy. Scrapping official parties may seem like a radical step, but it’d be an incredibly liberating and healthy move for UK democracy. You could still have loose cooperation arrangements between like-minded parliamentarians. But the big two need to go, because they have become like a conspiracy against democracy in the UK.
A better method would be the same basis a jury is chosen, basically at random say 500 people. not likely to happen though.
What have really become a trait of the western corrupted mindset is the hypocritcalness.
Take the latest Venezuelan election. Western media/politicians instantly claimed fraud, that Maduro was antidemocratic and son. Big headlines right.
Just a week before, Rwanda had their elections, Paul Kagame, the pro-western incumbent leader, that have ruled Rwanda for 24 years won with 99% of the vote as he had banned the majority of oppostional candidates.
Rwanda’s Kagame sworn in for fourth term after 99 percent election win
President Paul Kagame secures himself another five years in power, pledging to ‘consolidate national unity’ amid criticism from opposition.https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/11/rwandas-kagame-sworn-in-for-fourth-term-after-99-percent-election-win
Rwanda’s Rigged Election: Paul Kagame has banned all but two opposition candidates, ensuring himself another landslide win.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/12/rwanda-kagame-rwigara-ingabira-election-banned/
Of course no condemnation, no threat of sanctions no nothing by the oh so humane, democratic,rule based west.
It is amazing how many westerners that still believe that west have some higher morality etc.
And by the way, of course Rwanda backs Israel:
Kenya, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo back Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/10/15/voim-o15.html
I believe Israel have become a good lackmustest. If a person backs Israel, that says alot about that person.