by craig on March 6, 2013 7:05 pm in Uncategorized
Colonial status won’t allow the Scots government to send a representative to Chavez funeral. But presumably they can send someone “privately” if we get up a private subscription to cover the travel costs? How about it Alec?
I should think we could afford it Craig!
Especially when you consider yesterdays GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE & REVENUE SCOTLAND 2011-2012 Report (GERS). http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0041/00415875.pdf
As the ever succinct Stuart Campbell has said;
“the short version is that in 2011-12, for the privilege of having a Tory-led government in Westminster imposing welfare cuts, public-sector job losses, the bedroom tax and the continuing presence of Trident nuclear weapons, Scotland paid £4.3 billion to the rest of the UK.
That’s the difference between the deficit Scotland ran up as its share of UK finances (£7.7bn) and the one it would have had as an independent nation (£3.4bn), assuming the independent nation would have done everything the same as it did inside the UK.
That last bit is kind of important. Because if an independent Scotland was going to do everything exactly the same as the UK, there really wouldn’t be any point in independence. But having control of its own affairs would enable Scotland to make different choices. It could save a billion pounds a year overnight on defence, banishing Trident and slashing the money it sends abroad.”
https://twitter.com/YesScotland/status/309346267203526656/photo/1
CE
Yes I read Stuart Campbell’s excellent piece this afternoon. If we could but get a copy to every voter in Scotland… That is one bit of news the mainstream media is certain to ignore.
“A government of an independent Scotland] could save a billion pounds a year overnight on defence, banishing Trident”
It wouldn’t, though, would it? What, and lose all the kickbacks?
“That is one bit of news the mainstream media is certain to ignore.”
Plan seems to be to direct attention towards this instead.
Whilst it would be nice, and if it could be done without public funds, and if the ghastly squad, the Unionist Triad of the LibDemCon coalition – because there is no such thing as opposition from these three peas in pod – didn’t moan their greeting heads off, about neglecting public duties, and manufacture tautological ‘crises’ in his absence, demanding that he not go swanning off attending funerals of the truly exceptional and brave Chavez.
I can’t help thinking the yanks offed Chavez, spontaneous cancer my foot.
On another tack the BBC Sicks ‘O’ Clock news must have been laying it on with a trowel over Syria, now sending vehicles, and rhetoric from Hague such as even apolitical sheeple are concluding ‘oh it looks like we’ll have to go to war with Syria’ surprise sur-fucking-prize, as if they weren’t providing the rebels with lethal hardware already, as well as bombardin us with vile warmongering propaganda. We really are in the final stages of this governing cliques descent to the abyss, I feel as millions of Germans must have felt as it dawned on them that Adolf was berserk, when contemplating Cameron, Hague and Clegg’s spasms of bloodlust and seeing tired, hungry, weak mothers and children trekking through desert into refugee camps, as our own hired killer scum destroy their country in the onward march of the fascist proxy storm troopers of the American, Israeli and British neo-Nazis entrenched in the Westminster government. England it seems will have to lose a war decisively, to have its hubristic bubble of unreality burst, be invaded or obliterated before these people governing us will stop before the abyss. I haven’t a care if it’s Russians or Chinese but whoever can string up Cameron, Clegg, Hague, Blair and Straw, and let them dangle.
Assassination must surely be re-considered as a humane solution to our national dilemma of having some of the greatest war criminals in control, is there a von Stauffenberg amongst our Coalition cabinet who can make a noble self-sacrifice and terminate this vile clique.
Without doubt Craig. I’m sure you are more than aware that Scotland’s MSM can be just as masterful at obfuscation as her Big Brother’s.
FDR’s famous words should be ringing out all across Scotland upon reading the GERS report and a balanced take on it for laymen such as myself.
We can also expect to see Danny Alexander and Co warning us about the volatility of oil revenues. This volatility hasn’t seemed to harm Venezuela’s public finances or oil revenues over the Chavez years.
That would also be the volatile oil that currently provides 1-2% of UK revenue, and has the potential to provide 10-25% of an independent Scotland’s revenue.
If the oil companies in the North Sea came to the Treasury and said to Dave and Gideon, “We have found 10 times as much oil as we thought there was AND we can pump ten times as much money into the UK economy or you!” Do you honestly believe either of them would say “No thanks guys, it’s way too volatile!”
bah –should be LabDemCon, however they brand themselves, same shit, different packaging.
@ Cryptonym
I Take it you fail to see the irony and dissonance in proudly declaring a group of democratically politicians as ‘vile’, just after promoting the idea of murder as a good thing. Vile indeed.
I also assume you’ve never heard of Godwins Law. Despite my many disagreements with the ConDems to portray them as anything close to the Nazis shows nothing but your own acute sense of historical ignorance.
Watch it, CE, with your use of the word “Nazis”! One of the Eminences will be asking you to define the word if you’re not careful (probably the same chump who asked me to define “fascism”).:)
*******
La vita è bella, life is good!
Lame points CE, the comparisions are valid.
I’d go if someone payed for my ticket.
You know, I’ve never been to scotland but I think my cousin sisters husband’s dad was Scotish.
O/T Please sign this bereaved mum’s petition.
Dear Mary,
My name is Linda. I’m a long-standing 38 Degrees member, and I’m sending this email because I know first-hand why it matters so much to stop the privatisation of our NHS.
On Friday afternoon, I will deliver a copy of the petition against NHS privatisation to the Health Minister. When I hand the petition over, I will tell the minister about what happened to my baby. He died when he was just seven weeks old whilst receiving care from my privatised GP out-of-hours service.
Can you stand behind me when I deliver the petition, by adding your name quickly before Friday afternoon?
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/m/74c05147/2d5e8c20/5f80365c/467b44a1/4103144184/VEsE/
Last week was a hard one for me. It was the inquest into the death of my baby son, Axel. He died last November from pneumonia. His illness went untreated despite repeated calls and visits over the course of five days to my NHS out-of-hours doctors’ service, which had been recently privatised.
I feel the inquest left many of the biggest questions unanswered – like what role NHS privatisation may have played in the mistakes which led to the death of my baby boy.
~~~~~
I thought at first that it was spam but it is a 38 Degrees petition. The mum lost her baby to pneumonia. The privatised out-of-hours service Harmoni had serious shortcomings. Poor girl. This is a report on the babe’s inquest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/02/nhs-commercialisation-bereaved-mother-fight
Harmoni the out-of-hours service was originally a GP led private venture. http://www.harmoni.co.uk/our-history
They were acquired by Care UK.
As of 6th November 2012, Harmoni is a wholly owned subsidiary of Care UK.
For more information about Care UK please visit http://www.careuk.com.
They are owned by now owned by the private equity outfit Bridgepoint Capital. Who is on Bridgepoint’s advisory board? Why Lord Patten of Barnes, Chair BBC Trust.
See the management team of Care UK.
http://www.careuk.com/who-are-we/management-team
You will not find a doctor there. In the CVs you can see a miscellany of corporate names such as Centrica, Whitbread PLC, Thomson Travel Group, The Gillette Company, International Distillers & Vintners, McLeod Russel Holdings PLC, Wellcome Foundation, Kellogg’s, Cheshire Building Society, J Sainsbury and Great Universal Stores. The last member of the team has this in hers – ‘MD of Prisons and Immigration Services, and MD of International Service Development for GSL (now G4S) advising in Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and the UAE on prison design and operations’. How nice.
“Watch it, CE, with your use of the word “Nazis”! One of the Eminences will be asking you to define the word if you’re not careful (probably the same chump who asked me to define “fascism”).:)”
That’s easily defined, it’s short for National Socialist.
So people who are Nationalist and Socialist are Nazis.
OT
Revealed. #Petraeus ‘hand-in-hand’ with the ‘most terrible kinds of #torture’
http://is.gd/nmUKtF #iraq #warOnTerror
WHY THE 1% HATE CHAVEZ
Chavez shows the way not only for Venezuela but also for South and Central America. Not only for Venezuela but the for entire Neo-bamboozled world that the 1% rule with their rigged corrupt system.
_That’s_ why Hugo Chavez is so laughably misrepresented in the fake liberal Western press – like the Grauniad.
Chavez has demonstrated actual social democracy instead of (now fake) Western ‘democracy.’ And the 1% fear nothing so much as a good example.
Norwegian peace activist Johan Galtung and Hugo Chavez are saying the same thing.
As in Venezuela, so in Scotland? Fraternal greetings to our Scottish brothers under the English quisling / US Imperial jackboot. One day you too may know “Tiocfaidh ár lá.” ; ) (*1)
JOHAN GALTUNG
It’s about the money, stupid.
PARTYOCRACY – TECHNOCRACY – AUTOCRACY – BANKOCRACY
“There is a crisis in the Western or more particularly the Indo-European political system –for reasons to be made clear. The system is referred to as “democracy”, meaning rule with the consent of the ruled; of, by and for the people. In practice this is interpreted as multi-party national elections for a national assembly, and majority rule in its two major forms, presidential and parliamentary democracy. The minority is given the role as “loyal opposition”.
“The sovereign, people, are given choices not between positions on issues, but “platforms”, issue-bundles; and not between candidates, but candidate-bundles, “lists”, designed not by the parties, but by executive committees, officers, even by one officer, the boss. And this choice the sovereign can make only once every four years when a power window opens one or two days, 8-10 hours, called elections.”
The system is better referred to as partyocracy than democracy, a reason that we often talk about “political class”, “political elites”, etc. There is one exception, Switzerland, voting in referenda on single issues; and in parliament on a single cabinet candidate.
The system does not work. One country after the other–USA-Greece-Italy-Spain-France-India-Nepal to mention a few, fail to come to grips with key problems of economic crisis–be that “fiscal cliff”, “sequestration”, “austerity”, debt–in ways acceptable to people. New parties with new ways of cutting the issues arise, some populist in the sense of promising much more than they can ever deliver. People go to the streets, “occupy movements”, huge “indignant” demonstrations (praise to Stéphane Hessel who just passed away at the age of 95), long on words, short on ideas.
CLERGY, ARISTOCRATS, MERCHANTS
“The deep structure generating these anomalies in the political formation is in the social formation: the millennia old caste-class system with clergy, aristocrats, merchants on top, ruling with words, bullets and money respectively; trying to convince, coerce, corrupt; using their cultural, military, economic power as the key component to political power. They compete, they circulate–maybe in the order military-cultural-economic, we now live in the Age of the Merchant–they cooperate. They have one shared goal: prevail over the people, like Tocqueville praised Democracy in America because it was not.”
“YEAH, BABY” !
“The way out is what the three on top fear most: local production directly to the consumers, at a fair price making both equals.”
- ‘Partyocracy – Technocracy – Autocracy – Bankocracy,’ by Johan Galtung – 4th March, 2013 – Editorial – Transcend Peace Organization –
- http://www.transcend.org/tms/2013/03/partyocracy-technocracy-autocracy-bankocracy/
(*1) (Truth in advertising. The local middle class, ER, ‘across your water,’ might prefer those determined to boot the 1% as a (very) ‘strong opposition,’ rather than ‘our new masters.’ ymmv.
Presbyterians would never be corrupted by the Sassenach / US Empire. No son of the manse would ever take the US Imperial shilling. ER, Oops! Gordon Bennett! (ER, Brown? Ed.) No change there, then! )
Good one from Cockney Mystic on Medialens. I have just watched the segment he refers to.
Emilio Cardenas on Newsnight re. Chavez
Posted by cockneymystic on March 6, 2013, 10:55 pm
I notice newsnight introduced this guest as the former Argentinian ambassador to the UN rather than the former executive director of HSBC Argentina. Strange for somebody from everyone’s favourite drug money laundering banksters to express such concerns about the rule of law and subversion of democracy under Chavez.
Bio below
http://www.law.umich.edu/FacultyBio/Pages/FacultyBio.aspx?FacID=emicarde
There are many instances on Medialens on how the corporate media and the stenographers-to-power have treated the event. The Independent carried a poll – Do you think that Chavez was a brutal dictator!!!! or Do you think he was a hero of the poor and oppressed. The latter is reading 69%.
o
“We can also expect to see Danny Alexander and Co warning us about the volatility of oil revenues. This volatility hasn’t seemed to harm Venezuela’s public finances or oil revenues over the Chavez years.”
No their inflation rate is only running at 22%, below average for them, in 1996 it was 115% and they have more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.
WHY THE 1% HATE CHAVEZ – 2
CHAVEZ BOLIVARIAN REFORM
When oil-rich countries use their resources to boot the Imperialists and introduce Norwegian-style social democracy the US / Sassenach Imperialists’ rage gets murderous. See Muammar Gaddafi, Gamel Abdel Nasser and Hugo Chavez for details.
“What’s our Imperial oil doing under their desert sands?” – Our brave Sassenach / US Empire boys delivering aid to Libya. (ER, Shome mistake Shurely? Ed (*2) ) –
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdBXApgTWz0
As Johan Galtung says, a system that eliminates (*1) the 1%’s corrupt control is the answer.
And Hugo Chavez shows the way. No wonder the Arab Street mourns Hugo Chavez as ‘another Nasser.’ Or ‘another Gaddafi.’ Both anti-Imperialists. Both towering examples of kicking the bums out of their countries.
“(Chavez) was becoming increasingly critical of the corruption in both the army and in the civilian government, coming to believe that despite the wealth being produced by the country’s oil reserves, Venezuela’s poor masses were not receiving their share, something he felt to be inherently un-democratic.”
“Chávez and his followers described their aim as “laying the foundations of a new republic” to replace the existing one, which they cast as “party-dominated”; the current constitution, they argued, was no more than the “legal-political embodiment of puntofijismo”, the country’s traditional two-party patronage system.”
“Chávez’s promises of widespread social and economic reforms won the trust and favor of a primarily poor and working class following.”
- from Hugo Chavez – Wikip –
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chávez
MORE USUK WW2 “ALLIES” MALARKEY
“How dare you mention my strings.” – The Toy Patient – @ 2.30
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0KZa9ER9Bg#t=01m48s
(*1) And if they don’t go willingly they will go unwillingly. But go they will.
SHIRLEY !
(*2) “Surely you can’t be serious?” you say? You _were_ awake for the last ten years we hope. In which case your mind had better be on ‘Permanent Suspicion Of Everybody. Except Yourself. And Sometimes You Wonder About Yourself.’ –
“I am serious and don’t call me Shirley.” – Airplane –
Howz about if Craig, and / or Alex S, get in touch with Sir Sean Connery. Surely the msm wont ignore that. Wouldn’t that be kool, But it might have to be kept hush hush..you know how history has treated supporters Peace
And before anyone starts, i know sir Sean hasn’t lived Here ( Scotland ) for many a year, he aint the only one ( Scottish person ) To live where they so choose, remain active with the SNP
@ All,
Being from the Caribbean, I can attest, that while I agree with Craig that there are legitimate points of criticism that can be raised about Hugo Chavez, if one views the political and economic stance that he took then there is much to be praised.
Chavez’s ‘Pertrocraibe’ oil deal for the Caribbean islands has saved the entire region from impending economic collapse. That is because nations such as Jamaica, are in debt so deep, that the debt in perpetuity borrowing processes between the World Bank and IMF had assured that the life blood of the Caribbean people would be financially sucked out, under compelled terms of borrowing that absolutely ensures that the borrower will remain debtor. Now add to that the price of otherwise unaffordable oil importation – then what? That is confirmed by the direct testimony of John Perkins (“Economic Hit Man”). Any leader who points to what the empirical evidence confirms is to be demonised. Consider the economist president of Ecuador who has given refuge to Julian Assange. What is so wrong with trying to direct the benefits of a country’s natural resources to the upliftment of its people. Well – absolutely ¬nothing – that is precisely what honest leaders should do for their country and for their people.
It is so sad when the real bullies, dictators of impoverishment to the world at large, militarist and fascists try to discredit what honest people set out to do.
The world appears to be reverting to ol’ style imperialism and colonialism and Obama with his smooth tongue – does not fool discering people that his foreign is an extension of GWB 11 ( only with a slippery golden tongue).
Ex Pat That second You Tube (Shirley Airplane) has been corrupted in some way. Just a few seconds in there was this deafening noise. I could not shut the machine down and had to use the off switch and then reboot. Weird ???? Do you get the same?
@ All,
Correction:-
” The world appears to be reverting to ol’ style imperialism and colonialism and Obama with his smooth tongue – does not fool discering people that his foreign is an extension of GWB 11 ( only with a slippery golden tongue).”
Should now read:-
The world appears to be reverting to ol’ style imperialism and colonialism and Obama with his smooth tongue – does not fool discerning people that his foreign policy is not an extension of GWB 11 ( only with a slippery golden tongue).
P.S. Unfortunately – my slippery fingers in typing are not as smooth as Obama’s golden tongue – hence my correction.
Brilliant Post Ex Pat
Mary – For Truth and Justice…Petition Signed. and coppied to my facebook for all my NHS friends. Thank you
Only now watched the Guardian documentary department’s film in full. It’s clear a fuller précis (see above) is required; he print edition understates the gravamen of its own evidence. A more accurate summary would read:
Exposed thanks to Bradley Manning: devastating evidence that the
White House initiated nation-wide death squads in Iraq—and the ‘bloodiest kinds of torture.’
If you haven’t, I urge you to watch this film:
http://is.gd/Brodoi
OT. Today the barely-in-the-closet homosexual and well known protector of senior Tory paedophiles announced material support for Al Qaeda in Syria. About 5 hours later they kidnap 21 UN peacekeepers. How insane is this? The fact that this sordid shameful little creep holds a ministerial role makes me feel physically sick. He is utterly destitute of any ability or capability other than to kiss the ass of a foreign power that is presumably keeping him in line with a stick and carrot approach.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)
6 Mar, 2013 – 9:10 pm
“Watch it, CE, with your use of the word “Nazis”! One of the Eminences will be asking you to define the word if you’re not careful (probably the same chump who asked me to define “fascism”)”
Habbabkuk, did you ever get round to defining fascism?
No. You brought the subject up about people using the word fascist in an inappropriate way but you refuse to define the word as you interoperate it yourself.
It is you that is the chump.
Mr Hester is having problems again with his subsidiary bank NatWest.
NatWest customers face fresh problems NatWest is owned by Royal Bank of Scotland
NatWest bank is having fresh problems with its IT systems, less than a year after millions of customers were unable to move money or pay bills for days.
Customers reported problems with online and telephone banking, cash withdrawals and debit card payments.
A spokesperson said: “We are aware of the problems our customers are having – we apologise and we’ll provide more information as soon as we have it.”
The Twitter accounts of RBS and Ulster Bank released the same statement.
Both NatWest and Ulster Bank are owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) group, which is 81% owned by the government
~~~
Yet they think they can flog it off.
Video: RBS boss Stephen Hester defends bankers’ bonuses in face …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk › Finance
6 days ago – Despite RBS posting losses of £5.2bn, Chief Executive Stephen Hester defends the pay awards being made to staff, saying the country should …
BBC News – RBS lost £5.2bn in ‘chastening’ year
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21612261
7 days ago – RBS boss Stephen Hester says restructuring has “defused an … Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has reported its fifth annual loss since it was …
Comrades – today on The Majority Report we have a long-form interview :
Nikolas Kozloff, author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S, explained the complex legacy of Hugo Chavez, Chavez’s political history, how Chavez changed the political psychology of Venezuela, where Chavez was innovative and where he failed, how Bush helped create Chavez and the future of the Chavez model.
http://majority.fm/2013/03/06/36-nikolas-kozloff-hugo-chavezs-death-political-legacy/
The interview starts about 21 minutes into the show.
Majority.fm is worth listening to every weekday – Seder is independent, and one of the exceedingly few US-based journalists unafraid of telling the truth.
OT
Put another way:
Latest Assange crime. How the White House ran death squads across Iraq—& the ‘bloodiest kinds of torture’ (vid): http://is.gd/Brodoi
Well here’s something Chavezs DIDN’T have Roaming around Venezuela, Nor did Gaddafi have these things to police the people, but they are out already for duty on us soil – anti mine armour – wtf. windows to put the fucking Trieste to shame. OMG
Shit Again……
The Link For Demon wheels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pS9aw5pcJo&feature=player_embedded
WHY THE 1% HATE CHAVEZ – 3
Introduce Norwegian social democracy and the US / Sassenach Imperialists’ rage gets murderous. See Hugo Chavez for details.
VENEZUELA
‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.’ Except that it was! The coup that attempted to overthrow Hugo Chavez and failed because of ‘People Power’. –
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZajyVas4Jg
John Pilger showed that the Venezuelan Reich wing TV and radio stations – barking mad / lying-through-their-teeth – were blaming Chavez supporters for firing on the crowd.
Instead Pilger’s video shows the truth. Coup elements in the police – paid for by the US – were assassinating civilians – Chavez supporters – by shooting them in the head and blaming the Chavez side. Meanwhile the Reich wing media cut the footage to show the opposite and were broadcasting the lies over and over, non-stop!
No change there, then! As seen in every US coup since forever … (Teheran’s Neda for one). – @ 23.00
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeHzc1h8k7o#t=22m20s
SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE
And why the Sassenach 1% may not be too keen on Scottish independence. Sets a bad example. Gives the natives ideas (above their station?). OR. It’s the money, stupid!
The, ER, traditional method – GPO 1916 – Michael Collins -
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq7bcY9tuao#t=01m52s
PERFIDIOUS ALBION
Followed by three years of British Imperialist death squads – the ‘Black and Tans.’
- The Wind That Shakes The Barley – Youtube –
the death of Chavez is a tragedy for South America and a bit convenient for the USA.
hopefully Chavezs social revolution will continue.
The western political system is called “Representative Democracy”
its represents democracy in the same way a transvestite represents a woman.
It is in fact just an elected dictatorship.
Political parties are the cheerleaders of the dictatorship
Once every 4 years we get to choose the colour of the curtains and pom poms
The social system this represents is State Capitalism.
State capitalism has various different meanings, but is usually described as a society wherein the productive forces are controlled and directed by the state in a capitalist manner, even if such a state calls itself socialist. Corporatized state agencies and states that own controlling shares of publicly-listed firms, and thus acting as a capitalist itself, are two examples of state capitalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
OF COURSE THIS IS JUST FASCISM!!
Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy (1922-1943)
Now I wonder if hundreds of thousands of grown men and women would be crying openly in the streets if the seed of prescott bush or the seed of the irgun,haganah,stern gang that rule israel today were to die?! VIVA CHAVEZ !!
ZBC this morning, referred to the Golan Heights, where the Syrian rabble rebels have taken UN peacekeepers hostage, as a ‘terribly sensitive area’. That was Naughtie on Radio 4 Today just now. He knows damned well that it is an area that is illegally occupied by Israel.
Secondly, the SNP were rubbished over and over, particularly John Sweeney for one of his quotes about the state of the economy which they described as jargon.
Thirdly they have Bliar! WTF on their website saying that history is on the side of the Union. Who cares what this discredited war criminal says or thinks.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-21686240
He was speaking to the National Association of Pension Funds (another speaking fee!) and the SNP’s Christina McKelvie MSP said -
“This is a good development for the ‘yes’ campaign, because the 10th anniversary of Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq on false pretences is a compelling illustration of the need for Scotland’s parliament to have the full powers of independence.
“Scotland needs a parliament with the ability to speak with our own voice in the world, get rid of nuclear weapons and build a fair society and strong economy.
“That is why we need an independent Scotland – and the more often Tory Blair argues for ‘no’, the stronger the ‘yes’ vote will become.”
Well said Ms McKelvie!
This is what the BBC don’t like. The fact that the Scottish debt is proportionately lower than the UK’s.
6 March 2013 Last updated at 15:04
Gers figures show Scotland’s debt ‘lower than UK level’
Scotland’s debt represents 2.3% of Scottish GPD, while the UK deficit is 6.0% of GDP
Go-alone Scotland ‘faces challenges’
Credit rating cut ‘shows UK failure’
Scottish economy out of recession
Scotland spent more cash than it raised last year, although debt levels were lower than the UK as a whole, official figures have suggested.
Scotland had debt of £3.4bn, or 2.3% of Gross Domestic Product, if a geographical share of North Sea oil was included.
Equivalent numbers for the UK showed a deficit of £92.3bn, or 6.0% of GDP.
The Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (Gers) figures for 2011-12 set out actual levels of tax and spending.
Scottish ministers, who will stage an independence referendum in 2014, said the UK figures showed Scotland “more than pays her way”.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-21684684
Just as they shill for Israel, they are doing the same for Cameron’s Koalition on Scotland.
How bloody outrageous. Don’t pay your licence fee.
BBC executive’s £4,000 flight on expenses AFTER leaving the job: Corporation’s taxi claims also rocket by 19% despite drive to slash spending
Claims for taxi fares have shot up by almost a fifth in the space of a year
Chief operating officer Caroline Thomson claimed £1,178 fares in last quarter
But overall expense claims are down eight per cent on last year’s figures
No wonder the troughers’ expenses are down. The main culprits, Thomson and Thompson have left! In his last year, he had freebies at Glyndebourne, the Royal Opera and the opening of the Limp Ics amongst others.
Speaking of the Royal Opera, that of course is the current place of work for the incoming DG. All very cosy isn’t it?
Thomson is the wife of Rod Liddle, one time advisor to Bliar and now Lord Liddle, and is also the daughter of the late Lord Thomson of Monifieth one time Labour MP.
Did Lady Liddle get her prime position in the BBC on merit or was the NuLabour establishment network in play? She is now finding herself other sources of income although I am sure she does not need to use food banks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Thomson,_Baron_Thomson_of_Monifieth
Another placement. http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/media/news/a438408/caroline-thomson-out-of-bbc-dg-running-joins-digital-uk.html which has presumably now expired as we all have access to Freeview now with its endless shopping channels and Desmond’s mucky adult section.
She also lined this one up. http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/people/caroline-thomson-joins-cn-group-board/5049564.article
I see some links why Bliar was chosen to speak to the National Association of Pension Funds. Just saying…..
This individual is on its main board.
Michael O’Brien J.P. Morgan
Vice Chairman, Investment Council NAPF
Mike J O’Brien, Managing Director, is the global head of J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s Institutional Client Group, based in London. An employee since 2010, he is responsible for overseeing the firm’s institutional client business and is a member of the JPMorgan Chase & Co. Executive Committee and the Asset Management Division Operating Committee. Previously he worked at BlackRock where he was head of Institutional Business for Europe, the Middle East & Africa. During his decade-long tenure at BlackRock, he led a team of institutional client advisors responsible for some of the firm’s largest clients located across 12 regional markets. Prior to that, Mike worked at Towers Perrin for 14 years where he oversaw their UK and European investment consulting practice, managing all aspects of pension planning financial management, and developing new products and service offerings, such as pension financial risk modelling for UK and US corporations.
Mike holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Limerick University in Ireland. He is an Actuary (FIA) and a CFA Charterholder.
http://www.napf.co.uk/AboutNAPF/WhoIsWhoAtNAPF/NAPF_Board.aspx
Also there is Darren Philp ex UK Treasury for 13 years and Joanne Segars CEO who ‘held the pensions brief at the Trades Union Congress for 13 years’.
In Bliar’s case, it’s not what you know but whom you know!
@ Dougie Scourge (23h58 yesterday) :
So you have at last come as near as you can to admitting that some people on this blog were using the word “fascist” in an inappropriate way.
Thank you.
(As a reminder, the claim was that the USA, the EU and Australia were either fascist or on the way to fascism).
*********
La vit è bella, life is good! (and Dougie is improving)
UNHCR are running an appeal on Sky News for funds to ‘help a Syrian family’.
Suggest they apply to William J Hague, Esquire, c/o HM FCO, King Charles Street, London SW1A 2AH
After all he has some £millions at his disposal.
‘The UK is to provide armoured vehicles and body armour to opposition forces in Syria “to help save lives”, Foreign Secretary William Hague has said.
It will offer millions of pounds in “non-lethal” equipment, including search and rescue, communications, and disease-prevention materials.
Mr Hague said it was a “necessary, proportionate and lawful” response to “extreme human suffering”.
But some MPs said they feared being drawn into a military intervention.’
Some MPs are spot on.
” he aint the only one ( Scottish person ) To live where they so choose, remain active with the SNP”
There’s a London branch of the SNP. It’s the only branch campaigning to have nuclear weapons in its back yard.
Fred
6 Mar, 2013 – 11:11 pm
“No their inflation rate is only running at 22%, below average for them, in 1996 it was 115% and they have more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.”
Thanks for that Fred. Venezuela’s oil reserves stand at the TOP of the table–that was an eye opener for me! And with a population of just 29m, all the country need’s is good management and fairness to all!
Here are the links to the Oil Reserve and Population tables:
Browsing through them makes some interesting comparisons, as also the usual reminder of America’s motives and pursuits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population
Jonangus Mackay, 11.53pm
The Guardian says its investigation of Steele and Patraeus’ complicity in Iraqi torture centres derives from Wikileaks’ release of the Iraq War Logs, but there’s an even older antecedent. The genesis of Steele and Patraeus’ “dirty war” methods in El Salvador was on Wikileaks’ radar as long ago as 2008.
US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual analysis
Wikileaks has obtained the “Petraeus doctrine” the Pentagon didn’t want to show you.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/US_Special_Forces_counterinsurgency_manual_analysis
This document also makes handy background reading to William Hague’s latest pronouncement of UK “aid” to the Syrian opposition forces.
Teresa Smith’s documentary is excellent. She also did a fantastic one a couple of years ago about the situation in Palestine, but I can’t find it now.
Quibbling over the meaning of fascist. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s almost certainly a duck. Strictly speaking, by these contorted self-serving definitions, the Nazis weren’t fascists either, not being members of Mussolini’s Fascist Party proper. The meaning of fascist long ago changed, it has come to mean, corporatist and authoritarian. Throw in war-mongering and epic scale mass murder and no room for doubt remains. It certainly applies to the US, UK and many more superficially democratic countries.
Vronsky
I guess I am the Ramsgate branch!
I was annoyed to find that, resident outside Scotland, I can’t vote or speak at the SNP conference. Not vote I can understand, but I can’t see why I (and others) couldn’t take part in debate.
I bet they’d let Sean speak!
Habbabkuk (a.k.a. ‘ONEIL’)
I see you haven’t submit your homework yet. Feel free to practice the copy ‘n paste trick from Glenn’s tutorial of yesterday, which i recommended for you as a valuable time-saving technique.
But make certain its submitted by end today. Else there will be detention, in addition to six of the best.
Some nasty stuff about Hugo Chavez from Crawford ex Amb. At least he has stopped titling his blog a blogoir which I used to jeer at. Blogoir! Moi? Pretentious?
So. Farewell then, Hugo Chavez
http://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/so-farewell-then-hugo-chavez
and some similarly knocking copy earlier about Craig.
Murray v Crawford – Blog Rankings
http://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/murray-v-crawford-blog-rankings
I see the banner has a shining star. Must be how he sees himself.
Craig,
Not sure if you are hinting that Alec Salmond should sanction sending someone (yersel?)
.
I don’t think Alec would sanction any such thing as he is a privvy councillor & therefore he does what he is told to…
.
A representative from Scotland would be a great idea & I’d put in for any such travel fund…
WHY THE 1% HATE CHAVEZ – 4
PERFIDIOUS ALBION
Why the Scots _might_ assume that the Sassenach 1% are almost certain to use their murderous methods against Scottish independence – Tradition! ; )
1974 – THE IRISH 911
‘Course history did a repeat, sort of, on the 17th of May, 1974, when multiple bombs exploded in Dublin and Monaghan, killing thirty three women and children and men.
A smart Garda (Irish policeman) followed the driver of a suspicious van whom he saw observing the Talbot Street explosion. He detained the driver at Dublin port as he waited to board the ferry to Liverpool. Who was the driver? A captain in the British army. On leave. What a coincidence! – Shocked, Shocked! to find gambling going on!
There is no truth to the rumour that he was the UVF bombers’s SAS UK army handler. There is no evidence to suggest that the egg crate found in the back of the van was used to hold the detonators, though it would have been ideal and it was empty. It was purely a coincidence – one of oh so many!
(UH-Huh. How stupid do they think we are? Wait! Don’t answer that!!! Ed.)
The Irish police investigation was called off, and still is, to this day. Well, why not? Everybody in the country knows who did it. And it isn’t the UVF. Or the tooth fairy.
Thirty three women and children and men were blown to smithereens. Which would be 3,000 in a population of 300m, were it 911. The Irish Republic didn’t invade anywhere. The Irish Republic didn’t murder 1.4m Iraqis (ORB study). But we digress.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_and_Monaghan_bombings
NORTHERN IRELAND
UK death squads, state-sponsored assassinations, false flag attacks and terror. No change there, then! –
“On the Spinwatch site there is an interesting study of the British Army’s use of undercover military units in Northern Ireland in the first half of the 1970s: essentially Brigadier Frank Kitson’s attempt to use the methods developed in Kenya and Malaya – pseudogangs, assassination and false flag attacks – against the IRA. What comes through most strikingly in this account are: the sheer incompetence of it all – again and again these units shot the wrong people and the rest of the state had to cover-up the mess they’d made; and the almost complete absence of curiosity about these events shown by the major media in Britain at the time.”
- ‘Countergangs – A history of undercover military units in Northern Ireland 1971-1976′ – pdf – by Margaret Urwin, published 2012 – Spinwatch –
- http://www.spinwatch.org/images/Countergangs1971-76.pdf
From ‘Dealing with the Bog-Wogs,’ by Robin Ramsay, from ‘The View from the Bridge,’ – Work in Progress – Lobster 65 -
- http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster65/lob65-view-from-the-bridge.pdf
Lobster magazine –
Greg Palast’s site has a link leading to a free (for a few days) download of his BBC doc titled: The Assasination of Hugo Chavez
http://www.gregpalast.com/vaya-con-dios-hugo-chavez-mi-amigo/
WHY THE 1% HATE CHAVEZ – 5
CHAVEZ FOR SCOTLAND !
But that was then. They’d never do that today. (ER, Malaya, Aden, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Somalia, Aden again!, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Mali, on and on and on. Ed.)
SO. Scottish independence? Tell us again how Scotland is inviolable and Perfidious Albion doesn’t do these things anymore? Because to the rest of the world, it looks like they’ve been working overtime for the last twelve years. Or fifty.
GOT HELP ?
Do you think Scotland will succeed without struggle as those who have gone before you struggled? Since 1707? Or 1603?
“You may not like the IRA but they’re the reason you’re writing from Dublin, Ireland rather than Dublin, United Kingdom.” HA!
- Comment to the War Nerd on the IRA – ‘IRA vs Al Qaeda – I was wrong,’ by the War Nerd, Gary Brecher, 27th April, 2011 – The Exiled –
- http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/
Because nothing says “Sorry, old bean, we’d like our independence NOW!” like 2000 pounds of Semtex? Ah, for the old days – 1920 -
- ‘Get Collins – The Intelligence War for Dublin’ – RTE – Youtube -
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8FFZYJ_hts
‘Course things have moved on. What worked then has been countered – these days Perfidious Albion gets its death-squad / torture-to-death / false-flag bombing digs in first. C’est la guerre. (ER, vie? Ed.) See Iraq, Afghanistan Wikileaks for details.
SO. Good luck with that referendum.
Lets hope that those Presbyterian Scots remember to use a (very) long handled spoon in talks with Perfidious Albion. Never mind the US Empire!
A wise man at the UN commented that the air still smelled of sulphur after the US Empire’s chief oik had been there. Foreign Johnny. Hugo somebody. Hugo Chavez! With his head screwed very firmly on, by lots and lots of experience of Perfidious Imperialists! ; )
Let’s hope the Scots have their heads equally firmly screwed on about Perfidious Albion.
(Like the English???. ‘Course we like them. We just don’t _trust_ them. Not a millimeter. Or a nanometer. Mostly we like being rude about them and given their Imperial history they have to say “Yes, Sorry!” every time. Works a treat. Try it sometime – it’s great! ; ) )
Dictators, despots, terrorists and the death of Hugo Chavez: the BBC sinks to a new low.
‘The new battle lines have been drawn, crude as they are: to criticize the US government is to be on the side of the terrorists and their evil goals’.
By The Editors
News Unspun
7 March 2013
“Not sure if you are hinting that Alec Salmond should sanction sending someone”
If there’s a junket in the offing Wee Eck would go himself.
“I was annoyed to find that, resident outside Scotland, I can’t vote or speak at the SNP conference.”
Huh? I’ve heard several speeches delivered by members of London branch – that’s where I got the joke about them being the only branch that wanted nukes in their back yard. Check again. There’s also the Donaldson Lecture, usually a high point of the conference. Offer to deliver that.
You can’t vote unless you’re a delegate put forward by a Constituency Association(CA) – doesn’t matter where you live. I guess you’re a ‘Head Office’ member. Affiliate yourself to a branch or CA instead of HQ. And there’s utterly nothing wrong with trying to start Ramsgate Branch – you might be surprised at the result. Why not have some fun?
Just checked as I have no knowledge about the Scottish press.
About HeraldScotland
HeraldScotland.com is published by the Herald & Times Group, one of Scotland’s most successful and oldest media companies.
Our newspaper division publishes The Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald. Founded in 1783 The Herald is one of the oldest newspapers in the world, whilst the Sunday Herald is Scotland’s youngest (born 1999). The Evening Times proudly and justifiably boasts that no one knows Glasgow better.
Our magazine stable includes The Scottish Farmer and the popular outdoor specialist publication TGO.
The group’s printing press at Cambuslang, just outside Glasgow, is one of the most efficient in the UK and produces more than 300,000 newspapers every day.
The Herald & Times Group is owned by Newsquest, one of the UK’s biggest newspaper and website publishers.
~~~
Oh the old Gannett lot I see under the wing of the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts outfit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsquest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg_Kravis_Roberts
How independent does that leave Gannett and Newsquest? What input is made or control exerted?
Not a happy ship, Many links to strikes, NUJ walkouts, protests on pay etc but as in so many companies in this country, OK if you’re at the top of the heap.
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/02/28/nuj-criticises-13bn-gannett-shareholder-payout
That comment about the Herald Scotland should have been on the Propaganda against Scotland thread.
I wondered how far the anti Chavez smears would go. This is a good one. Was Chavez worth $1billion? Well demolished by Ken Waldron on Medialens.
Was Chavez worth $1 billion?
Posted by tarik on March 7, 2013, 8:43 pm
Hello people!! Can any of you wise folk tell me if there’s any truth in some of these reports that are coming out in the mainstream press regarding his personal fortune? This figure is being touted by Criminal Justice International Associates whoever they are?
~~~
Re: Was Chavez worth $1 billion?
Posted by Ken Waldron on March 7, 2013, 9:05 pm, in reply to “Was Chavez worth $1 billion?”
Spooks.
Jerry Brewer, Sr.President/CEO at Criminal Justice International Associates:
Over thirty years of professional managerial and leadership experience in the field of Criminal Justice; fifteen (15) years as Chief of Police (3 states); U.S. Congressional and State Senate and House, honors.
Published Author and Columnist on extensive criminal Justice topics: Intelligence; terrorism/counterterrorism; transnational organized crime; international Border security; domestic and international Policing, and related world events- published archives: (www.scribd.com/jbrewer31 and http://www.mexidata.info).
U.S. Government-trained counterterrorism specialist and senior trainer, with extensive operational activity in Latin America and the Middle East as an Intelligence Community operative. Fluency in Spanish (Castilian).
Consultant and Court certified Expert Witness in Police Management/Leadership; Police Liability/Use Of Force; Police Procedures; Major Case/Criminal Investigation Management; Death/Homicide/Cold Case, and Intelligence-led policing. Fifteen (15) Years- Chief of Police (3 states).
Training specialization in domestic and international policing transition into confronting narcoterrorism and other transnational organized criminal threats. Perspectives in applying advanced law enforcement role in countering intelligence applied tradecraft issues. Consultants on the investigative direction in complex criminal and related transnational threats-:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/110637819/CJIA-Intl-and-Domestic-Policing-Consultants
Practitioner/Senior Trainer: Surveillance Detection; Countersurveillance; Counterterrorism; Site/Route Analysis; Threat Assessment/Analysis; Operational Security (OPSEC); Force Protection; Counter-Criminal Operations; Narcoterrorism; and counter-espionage/tradecraft issues. http://www.cjiausa.org
Specialties:International Counterterrorism/Global Threat Mitigation, Policing infrastructure and operational readiness/audit.
Practictioners, Consultants, Senior Trainers. Speakers.
PUBLISHED Op-Eds: http://www.scribd.com/jbrewer31 and http://www.mexidata.info
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1362688992.html
Some more dissing of the independence movement by the BBC.
Scottish independence: Pension and welfare plans to be published
Welfare and pension plans for an independent Scotland are expected to be published by the Scottish government in the next few months.
Experts have been considering the “affordability of state pensions” in the event of a “Yes” vote in the 2014 referendum.
Opposition parties accused the government of planning to cut pensioner payments, a claim denied by ministers.
The plans emerged after a draft cabinet paper was leaked to the BBC.
Earlier, it emerged that the Fiscal Commission working group had been asked to look at the issue of state pensions.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-21696862
It seems to originate from a report drawn up by the SNP.
Nationalists can’t go on forever simply dismissing bad news as “anti-Scottish propaganda”. Despite what some people would have you believe independence isn’t going to be a bed of roses. It won’t mark the end of all of Scotland’s problems but a whole set of new ones which will have to be faced sooner or later.
Operation Condor Trial Tackles Coordinated Campaign by Latin American Dictatorships to Kill Leftists
A historic trial underway in Argentina is set to reveal new details about how Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and ’80s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign known as “Operation Condor” involved military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. They worked together to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as terrorists: leftist activists, labor organizers, students, priests, journalists, guerrilla fighters and their families. The campaign was launched by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and evidence shows the CIA and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were complicit from its outset. We’re joined by John Dinges, author of “The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.” The book brings together interviews and declassified intelligence records to reconstruct the once-secret events. [includes rush transcript]
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/7/operation_condor_trial_tackles_coordinated_campaign
Un lameculos de los norteamericanos – a toad for the North Americans.
Aaronovitch (the shill for the NWO and their war on Iraq) produces some poison about President Chavez.
Copied from the paywall. Excuse length. Aa likes the sound of his own voice.
The US was midwife to Comandante Chávez;
Venezuela’s message is that all people desire liberty, dignity and democracy. Treat them as you would be treated
David Aaronovitch
March 7, 2013, The Times
Pablo Neruda is a poet for the young; a poet for love and politics. Sometime in the late 1940s he wrote a poem about how the Americans treated his continent of South America.
The United Fruit Co began: “When the trumpet sounded everything was prepared on earth, and Jehovah gave the world to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda, Ford Motors, and other corporations. The United Fruit Company reserved for itself the most juicy piece, the central coast of my world, the delicate waist of America.”
Neruda, a Chilean, described the “dictatorship of flies” that ruled over the countries of the region, making it fertile for the great US companies. And he contrasted the treasured fruit that went back to America in the big ships, to the condition of the miserable workers who grew and picked it: “Meanwhile the Indians fall into the sugared depths of the harbors and are buried in the morning mists; a corpse rolls, a thing without name, a discarded number, a bunch of rotten fruit thrown on the garbage heap.”
Anyone from the political West trying to understand how someone like Hugo Chávez could be elected and re-elected by Venezuela’s voters should read that poem. When the “Comandante” recast all politics and all decisions as being about the war of poor versus rich and patriots against Yanquis, those lines, or something like them, were running through the heads of his listeners.
In the interwar years, the United States conceived an isolationist foreign policy based on its own self-interest. It would not be entangled in foreign alliances, but would work to make the US safer and more prosperous. Isolationism was replaced by war and war by Cold War. When America looked at the developing world it did not see a battle for democracy, but a fight against communism. If Anastasio Somoza was the strong man in Nicaragua and was America’s sonofab###h, then his denial of basic rights to his countrymen was of concern only to bleeding heart liberals. If, in 1954, the elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz was deemed (wrongly) pro-communist, it was the CIA’s job to help plotters to oust him. What came next was their own affair.
That was realpolitik before 1989.
Though America did not organise the Chilean coup of 1973, it connived at it, and no South American of Chávez’s generation could or would ever forget the stadium full of peaceful dissidents and the executions that followed.
So, after a period of imprisonment for his own coup attempt in 1992, the charismatic soldier Hugo Chávez won the 1998 presidential election. His promise was to get rid of poverty, indignity and corruption. Chávez nationalised industries, confiscated land and gave it to co-operatives, used oil revenues to fund social programmes and significantly reduced extreme poverty in Venezuela. For those reasons he became a fifth head on the posters of the Left: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, Chávez.
In his own head too. The journalist Rory Carroll recounts how, in edition 351 of Chávez’s interminable TV programme, Alo Presidente!, he walked round part of Caracas where once his hero Simón Bolívar had stayed. The mayor was by his side and an audience of admirers went with him. Suddenly Chávez switched from crooning songs and, pointing to buildings containing high-end shops and employing 2,000 people, ordered the mayor to expropriate them and build a cultural centre. A year later Carroll went to the place. It was boarded up and empty. The shops had gone, the centre had never materialised.
Bit by bit Venezuela has become Zimbabwe with oil: 90 per cent of the co-operatives have failed. Inflation is high, there has just been another devaluation, bureaucracy hampers enterprise and there are food shortages and power cuts. Every time his often badly thought-out and impulsive reforms created opposition, Chávez used anti-Americanism to squelch opponents. They were “agents” of the imperialist enemy. Dissenting judges could be imprisoned, newspapers fined and journalists incarcerated for works of satire. Human rights bodies were prevented from receiving money or help from abroad.
Chávez reverted to the old populist autocrat’s trick of using plebiscites to remove constitutional checks on his power. He abolished term limits, though, ironically, the fates set his greater term limit at almost exactly the same place as the old constitution had.
Round the world, if he discovered a dictator or a pariah calling itself socialist or anti-imperialist, Chávez embraced it. One of the funniest yet most disgraceful interviews given in the wake of his death was by Ken Livingstone on BBC radio yesterday. What, Ken was asked, about Chávez’s predilection for anti-democrats such as Mugabe, Gaddafi, Assad and Lukashenko, of Belarus.
Well, said the former mayor, as if teaching a class in Statesmanship 101 to idiots, “the simple fact is that if you’re a government in power you have to deal with regimes that are pretty unpleasant … if presidents are only going to meet nice people they’re not going to have a very busy calendar”.
Actually Chávez, having described successive US presidents as “a donkey” and “a clown”, discovered in Assad “one of the liberators of the new world”. In Gaddafi he perceived a Libyan Bolívar, in Mugabe “a true freedom fighter” and Lukashenko’s repressive Belarus was “a model social state like the one we are beginning to create”. Not just filling his calendar, Ken, as you know perfectly well.
Yet Chávez (who, unlike his heroes, executed no one and created no concentration camps) was re-elected in what have rightly been called “free, not entirely fair elections”. Millions of Venezuelans found his rhetoric preferable to becoming again the “thing without name” of Neruda’s poem.
That to me is a lesson. Whatever has happened in Venezuela (and I fear for its immediate future now the Chávistas have been deprived of their icon) might have been different if, for decades before, the US had behaved better. America was unwitting midwife to Chávez, and the abused neocons, I think, are right where the realpolitikers are wrong. Treat people in other lands as you want to be treated in yours; as people desiring and deserving dignity, liberty and democracy. Such a sense of responsibility may not be a sufficient condition for peace and mutual prosperity, but it is a necessary one. The alternative is often to send a desperate people into the arms of those who simply want to rule. And rule. And rule.
A particularly nasty piece of reporting here from Matt Frei, ex BBC America correspondent and Newsnight, and now on Channel 4, who reports on the funeral of President Chavez in Caracas. In his clipped South African accent, he spits out the poison jeering at the world leaders who attended, using phrases like ‘the axis of evil’ and belittling Chavez’s memory. Vile.
The video is slow to load.
http://www.channel4.com/news/crowds-gather-for-funeral-of-hugo-chavez
Once, Channel 4 News was a sane alternative to the BBC propaganda. No longer.
Great blog post thanks for posting
One down. Several more thousand of his type to follow.
Argentine court convicts ex-leader Menem
An appeals court in Buenos Aires convicts ex-President Carlos Menem of illegally selling 6,500 tonnes of arms to Croatia and Ecuador during the 1990s.
An appeals court in Buenos Aires has convicted ex-President Carlos Menem of illegally selling 6,500 tonnes of arms to Croatia and Ecuador in the 1990s.
Both countries were at war and under arms embargoes at the time they bought the Argentine weapons.
Menem was originally acquitted of the charges in 2011.
Defence Minister Oscar Camilion and 10 other officials who had been acquitted along with him were also found guilty by the appeals court on Friday.
The 82-year-old, who was in office from 1989 to 1999, will be sentenced by a different court.
His lawyers said earlier they would appeal against his conviction, for which he faces between four and 12 years’ imprisonment.
As a senator, he enjoys immunity from imprisonment but could be stripped of his status by parliament or jailed when his term expires next year, correspondents say.
News Corp will start its new life with $2.6bn after split
News Corporation’s UK newspapers will be separated from its TV and film interests
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp will start its new life primarily as a publishing company with no debt and $2.6bn (£1.7bn) in cash when it is spun off.
The company, which is splitting from its TV and film interests, said in a regulatory filing that it would have assets worth $18.6bn.
These include the Wall Street Journal, Times and Sun newspapers, and book publisher HarperCollins.
Analysts expect News Corp to use some cash to expand digital operations.
News Corp’s other operations, including US news channel Fox News and the 20th Century Fox film studio, will be renamed Fox Group. The split is expected to be completed in June.
Mr Murdoch will remain chairman and chief executive of the Fox Group, and will be chairman of the new News Corp.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21720220#
I expect you heard that Farage and Murdoch have been sliming round each other
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/9916636/Farage-suggests-Conservative-pact-at-secret-dinner-with-Murdoch.html
and that Mrs Brooks and Mr Coulson popped in and and straight out of court this week.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/08/rebekah-brooks-and-andy-coulson-in-court-_n_2836145.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
Latest offering from the Glasgow Herald. An independent Scotland would be the third wealthiest country in the EU – but that’s a bad thing.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/warning-over-scots-eu-costs.20449228
@ Vronsky
> Latest offering from the Glasgow Herald. An independent Scotland would be the third wealthiest country in the EU – but that’s a bad thing.
“(Hollow) Laughter in court!” –
You couldn’t make it up!
EUROPE
Where then is sane? Europe – A progressive land of milk and honey, where the crazy right wing is ‘Norwegian conservative guy.’ (Apart from USUK Neo-Con Nazi Quisling ‘Bonkers’ Breivik, naturally).
@ 1.20. From Michael Moore’s Sicko.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svSUCbClg8E
SASSENACH SUBSERVIENCE TO THE US EMPIRE
“Ecuador’s move to grant Julian Assange political asylum has shown the true face of the current world order, highlighting more clearly than ever the line between the American Empire and the rest of the world, former CIA officer Ray McGovern told RT.”
‘Not even in the Cold War’s darkest days: International law scrapped in anti-Assange crusade,’ – Ray McGovern with RT, 16th August 2012 –
- http://rt.com/news/assange-asylum-cold-war-883/
Previously -
Robin Ramsay of UK Lobster points out that as the UK is now utterly subservient to the US, it has become absolutely taboo to mention this reality. But there is _no_ independent British government, there are _no_ independent government ministers and there will be no independent British government, or independent government ministers.
The UK is as absolutely and completely occupied by the US Empire – whether by the US Empire Nazis of Obama or by the US Empire Nazis of Cheney – as France was in WW2, with almost no troops required!
“Tell them we’re ‘Allies’ and they, apparently, just roll over!”
- On Craig Murray interfering with the US War of Terror in Uzbekistan by pointing out that relying on the confessions of muslims being boiled to death on Tony Blair’s say so might not provide sound intelligence. And/or be illegal under British law! …
- On Lockerbie and the release of Libyan patsy al-Megrahi, rather than confim English and Scottish judicial integrity to be the utter farce that it is under the US Neo-Con Nazi Empire. Which fact was about to shouted from the rooftops to the world via al-Megrahi’s appeal.
See Lobster #58, ‘The meaning of subservience to America’ – Page 87, Issue #58 -
- http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue58.php
UP THE SASSENACH QUISLING / US NEO-CON NAZI NONCE EMPIRE !
Just say “Up yours” to US Sassenach Quisling Empire (Neo-Con?) Nazi mass psychosis! –
US Sassenach Quisling Empire (Neo-Con?) Nazism made mainstream by ‘Biggus Dickus,’ (of Wome on the Potomac) — Big Oil tool and US Torture promoter – brought to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Aden, Syria, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Poland, Lithuania and many, many more —
- ‘Welease Woger’ and ‘He Wanks as high as any in Wome’. A hidden ‘Biggus Dickus’ Cheney reference? –
Venezuelan Economic and Social Performance Under Hugo Chávez, in Graphs
Written by Jake Johnston and Sara Kozameh
Thursday, 07 March 2013 17:26
On Tuesday, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez passed away after 14 years in office. Below is a series of graphs that illustrate the economic and social changes that have taken place in Venezuela during this time period.
Death Of A Bogeyman – The Corporate Media Bury Hugo Chávez
Following the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on March 5, the BBC reported from the funeral:
‘More than 30 world leaders attended the ceremony, including Cuban President Raul Castro, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.
‘A message was read out from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.’
A rogues’ gallery of the West’s ‘bad guys’, in other words. To the side of the main article, the BBC quietly noted that, in fact, ‘Most Latin American and Caribbean Presidents’ attended the funeral, not just the Bond villains.
Following the same theme, a BBC article appeared beneath a grim photo montage of Osama bin Laden, Chávez, Kim Jong-il, Muammar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein. The report asked: ‘Is the era of the anti-American bogeymen at an end?’
Like many independent nationalists, Chávez was not ‘anti-American’, although he was anti-empire. US foreign policy, on the other hand, was certainly anti-Chávez, ‘variously portrayed as a six-times elected champion of the people or a constitution-fiddling demagogue’, the BBC piece noted.
Similar ‘balance’ was offered by the Guardian’s Rory Carroll, lead author of the newspaper’s Venezuelan coverage between 2006-2012:
‘To the millions who revered him – a third of the country, according to some polls – a messiah has fallen, and their grief will be visceral. To the millions who detested him as a thug and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.’
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