I learn the interesting news that David Aaronovitch tweeted to Joan Smith and Jenny Jones that I am:
“an angry and dangerous man who could as easily be on the far right as the far left”.
I had no idea I was on the far left, though I suppose it is a matter of perspective, and from where Mr Aaronovitch stands I, and a great many others, look awfully far away to the left. I don’t believe you should bomb people for their own good, I don’t believe the people of Palestine should be crushed, I don’t believe the profit motive should dominate the NHS, I think utilities and railways were better in public ownership, I think education should be free. I guess that makes me Joseph Stalin.
But actually I am very flattered. Apparently I am not just angry – since the invasion of Iraq and the banker bailouts everybody should be angry – but “dangerous”. If I can be a danger to the interests represented by a Rupert Murdoch employee like Aaronovitch, I must have done something right in my life. I fear he sadly overrates me; but it does make me feel a little bit warmer, and hold my head that little bit higher.
Talk to the hand, you’ll get more sense out of it…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-is-shunning-us-say-ecuadorians-as-tension-continues-over-assange-8076621.html
Billy was assuring us last week that negotiations were continuing with Ecuador. What better way of guaranteeing that they’re not?
If anyone in the FCO is reading this, isn’t it in the national interest to come out of the woodwork and expose this shite? You LIKE working for the Americans?
@Craig
@Keith_Crosby
They must have known Craig would spread the information about. They do, er, pride themselves on knowing what people are like and judging how they might act.
Craig can’t have been the only person who was told. Julian Assange said it was the arrival of people outside, to watch what was going on, who stopped the attack on the embassy “in the middle of the night”. Teams of police swarmed inside the building – but not into the embassy – in large numbers.
This suggests that some officials in the FCO smiled “yes sir” to the Americans’ faces, and to Cameron and Hague’s faces, and then as soon as their backs were turned, they said “To hell with that! We’re not going to jeopardise our work abroad just so the Yanks can capture and kill an Aussie”.
My conclusion is: heads will roll at the Foreign Office. Just who do those damn Limies think they are?
We all call the UK a vassal state, and we’re right, but let’s not forget that the CIA Head of Station in London sits on the UK Joint Intelligence Committee’s weekly meetings.
It’s remarkable just how amazingly arrogant the Americans are. I don’t think a receiving country has ever officially stormed a sending country’s embassy. Not on a single occasion. Everybody knows it’s unlawful to do so, under all circumstances. No country can be empowered to do so by domestic legislation – unless they say they’re resiling from the Vienna Convention.
Yes, the Americans entered the Nicaraguan ambassador’s residence in Panama, but they were invaders. They had to apologise later. They played music at the Vatican embassy in Panama too. They got Noriega. (Peculiarly, Mike Harari, the Israeli who was the real power in the country, managed to escape. Maybe they missed one of the windows?) And they bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, for which they also apologised.
Their apologies were fake in both cases, but my points are: 1) they weren’t the receiving country, and 2) they apologised. Even those thugs didn’t claim the right. The receiving country can’t say it doesn’t know where diplomatic premises are.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Americans sack William Hague over this.
http://www.plenglish.com//index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=537950
*************
Prensa Latina:
Quito, Aug 23 Ecuadorian Deputy Foreign Minister Marco Albuja said that his government is assessing strategies to go to international juridical institutions and have the United Kingdom grant a safe-conduct to Australian citizen Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, to leave London.
Albuja pointed out that the International Court in The Hague is one of those institutions to which Ecuador may go so that Assange can get a safe-conduct and the Ecuadorian government’s will to grant him asylum be fulfilled.
The deputy foreign minister told Prensa Latina that if Sweden guarantees that Assange will not be extradited to the United States, he might decide on his condition of asylum in Ecuador.
He noted that the Australian activist could reject the asylum and travel to Sweden to testify on alleged sex crimes.
Otherwise, he would have the option, under the same status, to testify on Swedish territory or the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has stayed since June 19, when he requested asylum for fear of being extradited to the United States and sentenced to death.
Albuja told reporters that only Assange could decide about what to do in each case. “Don’t forget that his life is at stake and he has an opinion in that regard,” he pointed out.
As long as he does not make a decision, the Ecuadorian government is seeking legal alternatives to solve this crisis, which began after the United Kingdom issued a note threatening to raid the Ecuadorian in London to arrest Assange.
The deputy foreign minister confirmed that groups of jurists are working to exhaust all legal recourses at international institutions like the United Nations Security Council and the International Court in The Hague to get a safe-conduct for the Australian journalist to leave London.
At present, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño is on an international tour to explain the reasons why Ecuador granted asylum to Assange and the demand to the United Kingdom to withdraw its threat to raid the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
The Ecuadorian government expects the Organization of American States (OAS) to condemn the UK’s warning on Friday, as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) did before.
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Craig,
Why is my previous comment at ’08:39 Today’ being moderated?
I have not previously been moderated here and cannot see that I have been anything but constructive and polite.
Regards
Phil
[Mod/Jon: item now released – it is sometimes queued automatically, probably due to the large number of links]
As I have noted before, some time before Haig issued his threat, the BBC world service was reporting that a “US law professor” had found a justification in UK law for the government to invade the Ecuador embassy. This suggests to me that the origin of the threat was the White House or State Department, and that Haig was following orders. Of course, he did it in a typically Haig dumb-as-shit fashion we are so well acquainted with. I imagine he got a rocket (rather than drone) from Obama, which is why Haig flip-flopped the next day. What a daisy !
Ok, it appears I am not being moderated, so must be the content of my comment. I guess it may be the number of links. Hope it is acceptable. I cannot see why it would not be.
Maybe you have more than one link in the post, Phil, or a block of text in a foreign language?
O/T 5 judges declare declare Breivik sane so it will off to prison for him. I would not like to be a prison warder on his watch.
He’s still at it. Speaking of human rights abuses. Laughable.
Iran’s shameful abuse of human rights continues
24 August 2012
Foreign Secretary William Hague has condemned Iran’s widespread abuse of its citizens’ human rights as a “disgrace” and a “shameful indictment of Iran’s leaders”. http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=803144682
Yes mary, Breivig is sane and they can’t find any connections to any others who possibly could be involved.
That means that any of the Freemasons he gallivanted with had nothing to say to the parents of these murdered children, a tragedy worth writing a play about.
What a humongous farce.
Still no excuse from the BBC for their mentioning of Anna Ardin some 18 month ago.
here is Havana’s link again, how about disseminating it as wide as possible?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mundo/cartas_desde_cuba/2011/02/no_es_para_menos.html
Between them, Thatcher and Major took £440,000 from Nadir. Major promised to return the money if it was proved to have been obtained dishonestly. Now the party are staying schtum or back pedalling in Rifkind’s case.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19364753
Yes Nevermind and he was given only 21 years, with a minimum of 10. He smiled apparently having got what he wanted.
This (or something similar:
“The Government has written to the Ecuadorian embassy in London to resume talks over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the building for the past two months.
The Foreign Office confirmed a ”formal communication” had been sent to diplomats from the South American country which granted the Australian political asylum last week, but would not reveal the contents.”
is now appearing under headlines like “Julian Assange: foreign office asks Ecuador to resume talks”
in the Telegraph, the Metro and, bizarrely, a lot of small local papers. Evidently a press release from HMG, then. But as the FCO declined to reveal the contents, how do we know what it was about?
I assume the crime of receiving stolen goods remains on the statute list, Mary. I say TRNC could charge the Tories and demand their extradition…
@Komodo – “as the FCO declined to reveal the contents, how do we know what it was about?”
Keep an eye on the Ecuadorean state news agency:
http://andes.info.ec
For example, they issued a public document in response to the British threat to storm the embassy, signed by the president of the national assembly, the president of the national court, and the attorney-general. As far as I’m aware, the lickspittle Brit press didn’t report it.
http://andes.info.ec/node/5594
Attached document:
http://andes.info.ec/sites/default/files/Anexos%20Assange_0.pdf
Cheap but effective: the British government and press are presenting Britain as the subject, describing the FCO as ‘asking Ecuador to “resume talks”‘.
This is in readiness for today and tomorrow’s news of decisions by ALBA, UNASUR, and even whatever happens at the OAS. (Even countries such as Colombia and Peru didn’t vote with Uncle Sam against holding the OAS meeting.)
They always do that for the home market. The wouldn’t want the oiks thinking their betters are anything other than completely in control. Control grammar, control everything? As if! But that won’t stop John Sawers’s arse from hurting when the CIA give it a good birching at the JIC meeting. He’ll be well advised to stuff some blotting paper down his trousers!
Don’t do as I do principle holding:
Ahora está en el bombo el caso de Wikileaks y varios de los cables secretos hacen referencia a Cuba. Sin embargo, no es la única vinculación. Anna Ardin, la sueca que acusa a Julian Assange de violación habría trabajado con la disidencia cubana.
Translated into English;
⃕
“Swedish Anna Ardin accusing Julian Assange of rape”
Do as Esler says dammit! Oh yeah and his sidekick that bint from the Independent.
http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/wpr0436l.jpg
.
The ACLU obtained this monster legal opinion after attempting to obtain under FOI some embassy cables already released into the wild by Wikileaks…attempt failed. They’re classified.
http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2012_07_23_dkt_24_memo__opinion.pdf
Doesn’t the Vienna Convention trump the European Arrest Warrant?
The British government must surely be obliged to officially inform the Swedish authorities that Julian Assange is now no longer here, but in Ecuador, and that the EAW is thus void.
“The Foreign Office confirmed a ”formal communication” had been sent to diplomats from the South American country which granted the Australian political asylum last week, but would not reveal the contents.”
Now I wonder which ? Must be Uruguay !
Pompous asses !
I’ve had time to check the Today interview I linked above. Interviewer was Will Grant, not Naughtie. Time on the playback is ca 52-53 minutes in. (before 0700, then) Correa goes on to explain that even this interview was part of the plan, necessitating the loss of valuable Presidential time…”my dear Will.”
Direct link (I think)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b006qj9z/console
Get it before it disappears.
I’d second Nevermind’s suggestion to disseminate that BBC article far and wide.
Starting here:
[email protected]
@alaric 23-8-12 11:32.
Thanks for the compliment. The site would be more active if more people were prepared to contribute to it. Thant’s an invitation to the many commentators here who demonstrate that they understand the need for alternatives to pretty well all ‘official narratives.
In true wiki fashion, it’s content is intended to be crowd-sourced, whereas it’s current 7,000 + articles are largely the work of just one man – and frankly I’m knackered.
Putting it together has been an education in the unrelenting, calculating, machiavellian dishonesty of power, with our own UK State apparatus its pre-eminent global example.
BTW – I’d take great care over al Jazeera. It is effectively an instrument of the conservative elements of the GCC – meaning all those medieval absolute monarchies that affect such grave concern about a lack of democracy and human rights in Syria and Libya – which makes it a useful tool of Western Intelligence services, especially MI6.
Thank you wikispooks and three cheers for your unrelenting knackering work, you are doing a tremendous job. Now leave the keyboard, have a tea break and go for a walk, its still sunny out there.
Craig wrote:
“Sorry, should be Jenny Jones. Green Party.”
Surely you mean Jenny Jones of the Marxist-Green Party?
Jimmy Giro get a grip, she is part of the solution, she says and as someone who has lingered in that party for some 34 years, I can tell you there are more Conservative thinking people in it than there are in the Labour Party.
That said, she was part of the consensus to oust the Independent mayoral candidate from debates during the elections, something she loathed when it concerned the Green Party who had to put up with such exclusion from debates for decades.
Completely off any conceivable topic – get a load of this guy, he’s fun. Example:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/UnderstandingEconomics.shtml
Nevermind – there’s a gripping account of a flight in an F-15 there too. Of which several desert-painted examples have been diverting to Marham lately.
@ Jim Larkin
Excellent 🙂
Craig,
I have been reading your blog and the contributions from your posters for the last few days.I would like to thank you for this site,but special thanks to the posters who have dug up amazing info.