Craig – could you comment on these below from the previous thread on the perceived lack of applause when you spoke of Palestine.

Indigo 1 Mar, 2013 – 11:54 pm

Mary,

Many thanks for the link to the debate.

Craig got his points across well and seemed to carry the room with him nine times out of ten … but the tenth was notable; Israeli stealing of Palestine land. Not a clap (I don’t think, although I’d have to look at it again to make sure).

Maybe it was my imagination but the atmosphere seemed suddenly strange … almost as if there were a general embarrassment … a fear to applaud?

I found this a bizarre reaction from an audience that apparently accepted his other arguements (and apparently those of his fellow speakers in opposition) and voted in favour of rejecting the motion.

Craig, have I imagined the atmosphere?

Clark 2 Mar, 2013 – 12:52 am

Indigo, 1 Mar, 11:54 pm;

“…but the tenth was notable; Israeli stealing of Palestine land. Not a clap [...] the atmosphere seemed suddenly strange … almost as if there were a general embarrassment … a fear to applaud?.”

No, you didn’t imagine it, I noticed it too. But it may have been partly because Craig lapsed from his humorous and light-hearted presentation to a moment of obviously heartfelt and genuine anger. People are scared of anger these days; public speakers are expected to be “objective”, detached, aloof, especially when describing the suffering of people oppressed by the establishment’s allies.

You can delete this after correction

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spreak

I was going to offer ‘to spreak – to speak whilst wearing a sporran and having consumed a few snifters beforehand.

The results of Oxford Union debates really are something of an irrelvance – they largely reflect the quality of speakers and that is about all. If as Craig did you set up the American dream as a strawman of materialists, climate change deniers and George Bush then it is not too hard to knock it down. On the other hand if you listen to Ray McGovern’s speech or actually spend some time looking at ordinary Americans then you will see that the pursuit of liberty and happiness and many other good things are still deeply engrained in that society – and that the US is a society where eventually the truth will out. I am 100% certain that if Bradley Manning had been a member of the Russian, Chinese, Syrian, Iranian, Israeli, Uzbek etc. armed forces when he leaked his secrets then you wouldn’t have heard anything of him – the fact that we now hear so much is a sign that the American dream still has something going for it.

Greatly enjoyed your speech, Craig. Glad you mentioned the native Americans. You may know the following story already.
Roo­sevelt, at a White House lunch, placed Churchill next to the pub­lisher and ardent cam­paigner for India’s inde­pen­dence, Mrs Ogden Reid, and sat back await­ing the inevitable explosion.

Mrs. Ogden Reid: “What are you going to do about those wretched Indians?”]

Churchill: “Before we pro­ceed fur­ther let us get one thing clear. Are we talk­ing about the brown Indi­ans in India, who have mul­ti­plied alarm­ingly under the benev­o­lent British rule? Or are we speak­ing of the red Indi­ans in Amer­ica who, I under­stand, are almost extinct?” —1943

“I am 100% certain that if Bradley Manning had been a member of the Russian, Chinese, Syrian, Iranian, Israeli, Uzbek etc. armed forces when he leaked his secrets then you wouldn’t have heard anything of him – the fact that we now hear so much is a sign that the American dream still has something going for it.”

Rubbish, there would have been a very public show trial just like the one going on in America. This is just the modern day equivalent of the public hanging and head on a spike. America has deliberately abused Manning’s human rights, kept him naked in solitary confinement watched every minute for prolonged periods and made damn sure everybody knows all about it.

Is there an American dream today, or is it just PR cover, like state dreams of many other states, there to justify political actions. Here in the UK we have our dream of democracy.

I agree that state dreams even at their most noble sadly often ignore many groups, especially those indigenous peoples, who are there when the dreamers first arrive, but I query whether the American dream, of Sir Francis Bacon (The New Atlantis) and more recently of Rolf Alexander (The Voice of Talking Valley) was ever one of consumerism.

The dreams of state are best dreamt by the state’s mystics, philosophers and wise men, but sadly they are perverted and distorted for the business of state and become nightmares. Such is the difference between life and sleep, but which is awake and which is sleep?

“……and that the US is a society where eventually the truth will out.”

The US is the most violent nation on Earth, the most corrupt and unhealthy. Of course the Truth will out, if it ain’t already plainly obvious.

But that is not the issue. The issue is one of awareness and self-awareness. But the level of your sights, those that believe in The So-called American Dream, reveals how your eyes are widely shut and the brain non-vital and confused. But then, i suppose both those ingredients are present for those who feel it necessary to dream rainbows and at the same time, ironically, kill other humans in faraway lands, rape and plunder the planet, let their own live in poverty while gorging on the most unhealthy chemically processed foods, being drip fed with propaganda by the media.

I’d rather live in an alchemical world than a chemical one with Weapons of Mass Distraction.

Tell us more about the Truth ResDiss.

Fred

So the evidence to support your assertion should be freely available – happy searching.

Whistleblowers do sometimes get off in the US – just search for Thomas Drake.

Do you really think that blogs like this one function in China?

Resident Dissident

Didn’t take much searching.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_trial

Villager

why don’t you listen to Ray McGoverns speech and look into his background before mouthing off more of your simplicities and ridiculous generalisations. Or perhaps you should just go and look at a few US political blogs to see that not a few Americans are not as blinkered as you imagine.

Fool Dream, my comment was written slowly amidst distractions (!), hence i didn’t actually read your comment till i had submitted mine. I think we’re saying much the same thing!? Very reassuring.

Its worth posting this brief video of J Krishnamurti patched into Zeitgeist :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BORmMu1quo

and that very beautiful song by Johnny Cash :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf_De4P48c8

A very human anthem indeed.

Dreaming is not good for human Consciousness while deep thinking is (see later post to follow).

resident dissident, I agree that the American Dream is still alive, but its vital signs are fading and the administrators say its insurance doesn’t cover intensive care…

“Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.”

****

“The ugly fallout from the American Dream has been coming down on us at a pretty consistent rate since Sitting Bull’s time — and the only real difference now, with Election Day ’72 only a few weeks away, is that we seem to be on the verge of ratifying the fallout and forgetting the Dream itself.”

Hunter S Thompson.

And resident dissident, remember that according to the Dreamed American Theory, everything should be fine by now in the former USSR since the replacement of the evil communists with a decent free market; it was an outcome that the US sought for decades.

ResDiss : “why don’t you listen to Ray McGoverns speech”

Which one? Why don’t you post the link?

I shall promise to do so if you promise to watch this :

http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-video/the-transformation-of-man-1-full-version.php

and research more into K’s background.

Meantime ResDiss you can respond to my comment directly. We need not have Ray McGov or Krishnamurti or anyone to quote from to stay true to our own originality as human beings. Else we run the risk of becoming second-hand human beings.

resident dissident
2 Mar, 2013 – 12:09 pm

Do you really think that blogs like this one function in China?

你怎么敢这样说，关于中国，你这个混蛋

Can any friendly tech-savvy person here please help me with this one:

While watching a video clip on Press tv my apple macbook went into overdrive with the hard-drive whirring like mad and the battery overheating. I stopped it and restarted the laptop sensing something not quite right. When i switched on Adobe gave me a msg that i needed to re-download their flash player. Curiously, much the same thing happened less than a month ago, i did download so can’t understand what they’re playing at.

It still works with the chrome browser but far prefer safari where now i get a ‘plug-in blocked’ msg!

Sorry to interrupt and thank you!

Des Res

‘Or perhaps you should just go and look at a few US political blogs to see that not a few Americans are not as blinkered as you imagine.’

Quite right, and if the American dream was in part a rejection of everything bad about Europe, Papacy, Imperialism, feudalism, ignorance, then it is worth noting that Europe has not progressed but rather ossified or atrified into a caricature of itself, while the US has clarified and crystalised many intellectual aspects of the American dream.

The dream of self-sufficiency and self-determination is a model which I am going to have to increasingly depend on. Since last week mentioning the stars and stripes of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi savages who are being used to soften up Syria in preparation for the US’ Muslim Brotherhood to take over, the Muslim Brotherhood’s private intelligence agency have taken note of my comments and I have lost a #7,000 contract directly as a result of their spies’ disapproval.

My mother’s family came from Huguenots who were persecuted by the state in France for centuries. They did not become part of the exodus from status quo oppression in Europe to the American dream in the USA. Maybe it would have been better for me if they had been, because my Muslim friends from Middle East or Pakistan are only too aware how to infiltrate the status quo oppression industry in this country and they are fully signed up members of the intelligence community with Baronessdoms and OBE’s rewarded for their services by her Majesty the Queen.

The US and its dream remains, in spite of the prevalence of Zionism, a more fertile soil for Islam, its freedom and its dignity than Europe will ever be. In fact, by the time this country becomes a Muslim country, you will not be able to distinguish the Muslims from abroad from the indigent non-Muslims. They will be calling for drones to protect their drawbridge priveledges and prisons to encarcerate whistle-blowers against their statusquo-ery.

In my book America is still very much the land of the free.

The problem with the American Dream is that it has remained just that, a dream. To make it reality requires wakefulness, effort and dedication.

There’s plenty of effort and dedication in the US, but wakefulness is supplanted by delusion propagated by the corporate media. Over a few decades, the thousands of US media organisations have been taken over such that there are now just a few hugely powerful corporations. Democracy is being subverted by biased feedback of information, and public morality is being degraded by increasingly violent and xenophobic “entertainment”.

So the American Dream propagates globally, but transforms from dream to delusion, while real life for billions of people increasingly resembles nightmare.

Villager, sorry, no help is permitted by Adobe. The Adobe Flash Player is crap, but it’s the only way to play Flash videos due to Adobe’s power within the market; they use legal manoeuvres to stifle all free/GPL alternatives. Your best bet is to e-mail PressTV and ask them to support better formats.

http://rixstep.com/2/20121206,00.shtml

For YouTube etc. you can still use this command-line downloader. presumably, Adobe haven’t litigated it out of existence because they don’t feel threatened by a command-line tool:

http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/download.html

Guano
Please answer my earlier question on the Bradley Manning thread:

guano
1 Mar, 2013 – 11:17 am

“Allah says in the Quran: Kaida shaytana dha’eefa/ Satan’s plan is weak.”

My question:

Which language are you quoting the Quran from here?

You replied:

“Doug Scorbie”
“Google Chrome is getting much much dumber than I remember it being before.”

Not an answer is it?

I replied to you:

“I don’t use Google chrome.
I have a copy of the Quran.
You haven’t answered my question. What language were you using?

I am beginning to suspect that you are not a Muslim at all.”
Why do you not answer my original question?

Perhaps it’s because you are not a Muslim and are here to cause mischief on this blog by saying things like:

guano
2 Mar, 2013 – 12:56 pm

“In fact, by the time this country becomes a Muslim country…”

Hello everyone!

Yes, rather odd title for a debate: “This house still dreams the American Dream”. Sounds like “This house still beats its mother” or how about one on the latest “sex abuse” scandal involving the unseemly behaviour of head Catholic clergyman, Cardinal O’Brien: “This house still bashes the bishop”? (The formulation being that he hasn’t been accused of anything criminal but is still hounded by modern day Puritans, with Puritan hats on). I always find some of these titles to be too subjective. What is the American dream anyway? If it means certain opportunities and some forms of sanctuary then clearly some people do believe in it and vote with their feet. And for some people, sitting on the sofa eating burgers and watching FOX News might actually be their dream. In which case well done to them! There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting consumer goods despite the fact that 1970s ideologues can’t say the words without almost sneering their faces off, and that’s fortunate because there isn’t enough Highland venison to go round.

Cheers!

Interesting recent interview with Julian Assange, by some Norwegian journalist who fancies himself as a thriller writer. But, no matter, some good stuff in there:

“According to Assange’s most recent numbers, there is a WikiLeaks-based article in almost every second issue of The New York Times.”

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14835-resistance-from-a-cage-julian-assange-speaks-to-norwegian-journalist-eirik-vold

Douggie babe

The Qur’an is written in Arabic. Lol. Your fraudie friend, Guano.

Angry

Whilst it’s great that your American dream allows you to stuff your face with goodies, the price of that is often poverty, war and starvation for many others across the planet.

Your dream is their nightmare.

But, not to worry. Keep dreamin.

Herbie! “Whilst it’s great that your American dream allows you to stuff your face with goodies, the price of that is often poverty, war and starvation for many others across the planet. Your dream is their nightmare.”

I never said it was my dream to eat MacDonalds! Here in Japan, I have my pick of raw whale meat or bluefin tuna sashimi. Only the proles eat MacDonalds, so they are the guilty ones, causing all that war and poverty with their ironically-titled Happy Meals.

Doug Scorbie

References from the Qur’an:

Ever feeble indeed is the plan of Satan.” (An-Nisaa’: 76).

“See you not that We have sent the devils against the disbelievers to push them to do evil.” (Mariam: 83).

God: Ever feeble indeed is the plan of Satan

No need to worry about him, then. That’s a relief.

Fancy admitting to eating whale meat. OK for the Greenlanders who have little else to eat but Japan, with sufficient resources not to kill whales, has no justification.

Shame about the Fukushima radiation polluting the land, air and sea though.

Seen this Angry? ’75 whales’. ‘Fewer than usual’. Criminal. They rammed the two Sea Shepherd boats too and have had Captain Watson in jail.

Japanese whalers end hunt, says Sea Shepherd
http://www.theage.com.au/national/japanese-whalers-end-hunt-says-sea-shepherd-20130302-2fdcz.html

Mary: Fancy admitting to eating whale meat. OK for the Greenlanders who have little else to eat but Japan, with sufficient resources not to kill whales, has no justification.

Actually, I was Googling around a bit to find out if MacDonalds is evil, arch-evil or pure evil and discovered that they’re actually not bad. It seems they source a lot of their food from sustainable soya farmers in Brazil and even Greenpeace like them these days. Ironically indeed maybe Happy Meals are just that. I think we need to get McDonalds up to Greenland quick and save the whales. It could be that they will forever be tainted with the unpardonable sin of being Yankee Imperialists and purveyors of that naiive cheerfulness so despised by gritty miserablists, but that’s the American dream for you…

Motion defeated because no guy can resist a natural blonde in a skirt.

Enjoyed the video Craig.

A few things :

1. The much discussed silence of the previously mirthful audience when you mentioned the theft of Palestinian land has been completely misrepresented here by some commentators. It is quite clear to me that when you transitioned from the humourous remarks to a very serious issue, you took your audience by surprise and gave them a reason to pause for thought. Nobody expected your blunt statement of fact. They were momentarily stunned by the starkness between their own comfortable existence and the cruel reality that Palestinians must live through, each and every day. To clap and cheer in response to that miserable thought, would have been most incongruous – almost selfcongratulatory. It was a solemn, fleeting moment, and they observed it as such. As your American Dream President declared – “Mission Accomplished”.

2. What’s the deal with creamy-blonde vs platinum-blonde? What’s wrong with an all-over ‘Assange’? Take it for a test drive for one day and if it doesn’t work out, flip it back. For less than 100 quid, you will know where you stand.

3. Now don’t arc up and get all sensitive on me here. Or send any of your angry flying monkeys after me for observing the obvious. These issues need to be discussed in the open. From the neck down, you look like me. I’m doing something about it – what are you doing?

The Sea Shepherd crews are the ones ramming ships; it is hardly surprising that a self-styled pirate gets locked up for sinking vessels and bragging about it.

Well, Angry.

Whilst we’re obviously now in a state of flux, you’re not disagreeing that the American dream and indeed Western standards of living more generally, were sustained by the poverty, war and starvation that many across the planet had to endure?

Or, are you?

Mary thanks for highlighting that whale article and situation.
—
Angrysoba, that’s good then, you can now become a prole though i doubt very much you will be any less angry. But thank you so much for sharing with us your very enlightened gullet-view of The American Dream.

Clark, thank you for that–helpful, as always.
There’s a lot of technical jargon on that 2nd link youtube-dl Download Page you sent me.
i’m not even clear how the download is triggered. Do you reckon its safe then to go ahead and for me to attempt that?
Appreciate your time.
Best wishes

Villager, the download is free (GPL) and open-source, so it’s at the safest end of the software spectrum. Using the downloader requires a little persistence with the technicalities; you need Python installed (there’s a link on the page in case OS X doesn’t include Python by default). It’s too off-topic for a full discussion here but I’ll help out by e-mail if you like.

But it’s really better to treat Flash videos as a social problem. It’s only Adobe’s commercial power that foists their near-monopoly upon us, Adobe Systems is a good example of how the American Dream tends to eat itself. So it’s best to boycott Flash video as much as you can, and persuade websites to use other formats. Working around the problem doesn’t help to solve it at its source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_player#Criticism

Two very nice essays on the subject from Dissident Voice which is an excellent American website.

The Wizard of Oz: A Man Behind the American Dream
by Nozomi Hayase / October 16th, 2010

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/10/the-wizard-of-oz-a-man-behind-the-american-dream/

and

Blood, Oil, and “The American Dream”
by William Manson / October 10th, 2012

http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/10/blood-oil-and-the-american-dream/

O/T
Please, this small act may give Bradley Manning a much needed boost, and also his supporters…

“Thank Bradley Manning
Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to actions that fulfilled his moral obligations, and for which he has our gratitude…..”
{see link for full details}

http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7433

Villager, the bottom two-thirds of technicalities on that downloader page are about signing and checksums. This enables people with the know-how to verify that what you’re downloading really is what the site is offering, and hasn’t been modified or “infected” in any way. I’ve installed the downloader myself. All the checksums verified properly. The downloader works. It saves target video files in your home folder in whatever format they were in before being “wrapped” in the voodoo Flash container.

Clark, thank you Sir. Am seeing a friend tomorrow who’s clued-up and whose safe oversight should help me to it tomorrow. Appreciate your pointing me in the right direction. Hope you’re keeping well and have a good weekend.

Herbie: Well, Angry.

Or, are you?

That sounds like one of those terrible Oxford debate motions “This House is not in disagreement that the West lives well off the backs of the poor!”

I think no, Western standards of living don’t require poverty, war and starvation and in many cases resulted in the opposite. I think it is too simplistic to think that when one person gains something another person loses something. I probably once did wonder if it was true, but a good book is Guns, Germs and Steel which showed how humans went from being hunter-gatherers to being able to grow far larger amounts of food, freeing up much of the tribes to do other things, develop their technologies, trade with other groups and generally increase their stock of things. I think that around the time when you and I were born there were fewer people living, less food, more famine, more poverty, more disease and people in the West had a lower standard of living. So, how is it that standards of living, longevity etc… have increased while poverty, war and starvation have gone down?

Hope the Japanese are not becoming as obese as the Americans on their diet of Coca Cola and McDonalds.

McLibel, Ken Loach and Franny Armstrong 82 mins
http://thoughtmaybe.com/mclibel/

Villager: Angrysoba, that’s good then, you can now become a prole though i doubt very much you will be any less angry. But thank you so much for sharing with us your very enlightened gullet-view of The American Dream.

Oh, please don’t take my use of the Orwellian epithet seriously. Or my claims to munching on whale. As for the American Dream, the stereotypical view of the clueless Yank munching on MacDonald’s and watching FOX news was that provided by Craig Murray in the debate. All I am saying is that if that kind of lifestyle is what someone wants then I don’t particularly care. It was then that Herbie suggested that lifestyle was very destructive, but I think that’s more dogma than reality.

Villager (and Flash users in general).

Just a bit more info

If you do us Flash YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST KEEP IT UP TO DATE. SAME GOES FOR JAVA. (Caps Over). I’ve seen a few machines infected via Flash and Java exploits recently.

To confuse things further it is possible to be using a different version of Flash Player in Firefox, Chrome, IE. Chrome now has its own version of Flash Player built in.

Check current Flash Version in browser at http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/find-version-flash-player.html

Check Java Plugin at https://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp

Note that both Oracle and Adobe have been releasing security updates every few days like there is no tomorrow recently. Again you absolutely must not ignore these updates if you use them.

Btw, Java latest available update is known to have a security hole currently being exploited. Expect another update for that any day now.

You should update whether you are using Windows, Mac or Linux as all three operating systems have been targeted recently. Apple, facebook and Microsoft are just some of the companies who have admitted infections inside their firewalls recently.

There’s nothing particularly American about the American Dream – it’s a set of quite ordinary aspirations. Americans who are seriously interested in equality of opportunity for all regardless of birth are usually recommended to move to Denmark.

WTF? Insurgents? Aged under 7? Get out now, Obama and Cameron and the rest of ISAF and take all your evil with you.

Nato apologises after two Afghan boys killed

The Nato-led Isaf force has apologised for the deaths of two Afghan boys, killed when a helicopter fired on them, mistaking them for insurgents.

The boys, aged under seven, were killed last month in rural Uruzgan province.

Isaf commander Gen Joseph Dunford said the mission took “full responsibility” for an incident he said was a tragedy.

Analysts say civilian deaths enrage the Afghan people and President Karzai, who recently stopped his troops calling in foreign airstrikes in built-up areas.

That move came after a 13 February incident where a Nato airstrike requested by Afghan forces killed 10 people, including five women and four children.

/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21642531

~~~

Hammond today (remember Pushy Perry is his PPS) is saying Welfare or Defence. The pathetic man is holding a gun to our heads. Gerald Howarth Con Aldershot has just been on Sky News speaking of how bad the defence cuts were when he was in Liam Fox’s department when Fox was minister, and how they are a thousand times worse now. What evil men speaking evil nonsense.

One final bit of Flash Player nonsense for Android users.

Adobe have removed Flash Player for Android from Play Store completely. This means, if you have Flash Player on your Android mobile/tablet, you no longer get automatic security updates even though there are very serious security holes in the last auto-updated version. However Adobe still release security updates and you can still update Flash Player manually by going to http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html – Note there is a different version for download for Ice Cream Sandwich and GingerBread. Not supported on Jelly Bean but the ICS version will work on most Jelly Bean devices.

Bottom line is if you have Flash Player on the phone and the version doesn’t match the latest version listed by Adobe then update it manually.

It has been said that Google manipulate the You Tube viewing figures. When I posted it on the Geneva thread yesterday, it was new and had 13 viewings. I thought it strange that the counter had stayed the same after I watched it through. 24 hrs later it is registering 156. I don’t belive the number. It has been posted on Medialens too. If the video is about a puppy playing or aimilar the numbers zoom up. How do Google do this?

I lived the dream (or nightmare) in the 2009…

Went to see this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Felt_Like_a_Kiss

Truly terrifying – I think Curtis captured the american dream quite well.

you can see the video that was part of the experience here
http://archive.org/details/AdamCurtis-ItFeltLikeAKiss

angrysoba, 4:25 pm

“All I am saying is that if that kind of lifestyle (clueless Yanks munching on MacDonald’s and watching FOX news) is what someone wants then I don’t particularly care.”

There are reasons that you should care. Your “clueless Yank watching FOX news” votes, and poor voting choices, particularly in the US, degrade everything for everyone. Your MacDonald’s-munchers have children; you probably agree that children should be protected from religious indoctrination; they’d be better off protected from corporately promoted products that are specifically designed to be habit-forming, too.

angrysoba, assuming that social problems remain localised is usually a mistake. Such arguments are often used to promote various “wars”, like the “War on Drugs” or the “War on Terror”. Somehow, this can morph into “it only harms those who indulge” depending upon which direction most benefits corporate profits.

“We do not support rampant corruption; we do not support rampant selfishness; we do not support the destruction of international law, and what George Bush did to the United Nations in illegally invading Iraq was just as devastating as what Hitler did to the League of Nations when he invaded Poland.”

I am urged to emphasise the fact we are lumbering if not noctambulating along a route to the final battleground, the showdown with Iran and her allies China and Russia. A road that must lead to to the 21st century extinction of mother earth and her guardians.

Thank-you Craig for your prescience.

http://www.webofdebt.com/

Wizard of Oz

I am just reading the book. Poor old Tin man I know how it feels.

http://reasonradionetwork.com/20120601/the-stark-truth-interview-with-ellen-brown

I have moved on from Of Mice and Men. 3rd time lucky I may get an GCSE to go with the other 2.

My fondest book though is Mr Happy.

Sod the American Dream, I am looking for Happy land!

Occasionally, anti-American derogations arise to direct blame elsewhere. Not all Americans are ignorant and base, munching cheetos while watching Fox news. I have found, every culture, every social order, contains the good and the bad. My anecdotal, non-scientific research leads me to a range of 15-25% of the general population actually exercises their brains and possess curiosity, while developing a healthy distaste for their own narcisssim, and directing energy outward, to a greater or lesser degree within that sub-group. That perspective has led me to believe the same proportions exist in opinions, attitudes and beliefs of the Worldwide community. So maybe you should let up on the bigotry, whether well-meant or not.

Ben Franklin, well said. Remember folks, Bradley Manning was an intelligence analyst for the US military, a member of a much reviled group. That’s just one example; we can all think of plenty more.

Thanks, Clark. I don’t think our Host shares your perspective, however.

“Disliking Americans is a hobby”. I don’t find the tongue-in-cheek self-deprecatory rhetoric takes the sting out of Craigs rant. How is it America has the lead on the avarice? Has the United Kingdom somehow been duped into a lack of self-awareness? I hesitate to speculate how long Craig has harbored such resentment, but he does have his nose in the air quite a bit, lately.

I wonder if he reads the History of British global dominance with a sense of nostalgia and sees the American Colonies with the same pair of eyes as he sees Mohandas, India and Pakistan…

“I told you so…..”

There is a difference between dream as imagination, a seed, and day dreaming; day dreaming is very difficult to avoid – maybe as bad as passively accepting state PR propaganda dreams.

You will remember the Underwear Bomber.

Abdulmutallab was convicted in a U.S. federal court of eight criminal counts, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted murder of 289 people. On February 16, 2012 he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Did you ever know of the evidence of Kurt Haskell an American solicitor who was on the same flight?

He wrote this pre trial. Wonder what he thinks of American justice now.

http://haskellfamily.blogspot.jp/2011/09/colossal-deceit-known-as-underwear.html

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_says_at_l.html Dec 2oo9 slow to load.

Angry

You only have to look at the history of US involvement in South America to see that the US standard of living depended on dictators and poverty for the great mass of people living in its constituent contries.

The same pattern is repeated across the globe.

It’s fairly straightforward stuff.

Anywhere there are resources that the West needs, then the people of that country will not be allowed to enjoy self-determination. It’s as simple as that, to date at least.

‘Its called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it’ – George Carlin. Please watch this clip as George sums up The American Dream in a succinct and very funny way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

Hi Ben, “Disliking Americans is a hobby” – It was a confrontational joke, with some truth in it. I can empathise with how you are prickly about this. You can dredge arguable history in response to criticism of your people to show at least we are all as bad as each other, and then we are arguing over history. To be offended by the confrontational joke with some truth in it, *is* moreso American now too. Great pride and self belief while, at least lately, unsettling and raiding the world and at the highest rate consuming it, all while broadcasting charms and graces. You know how we joked about the Germans – though we were as bad as each other in many senses, but Americans are the Germans lately. Accepting humour or sharing vanity is all that could bridge the situation.

‘“Disliking Americans is a hobby”. I don’t find the tongue-in-cheek self-deprecatory rhetoric takes the sting out of Craigs rant. How is it America has the lead on the avarice? Has the United Kingdom somehow been duped into a lack of self-awareness? I hesitate to speculate how long Craig has harbored such resentment, but he does have his nose in the air quite a bit, lately.’

It was a debate. A debate is sort of like a game, a competition, the aim is to win.

You don’t get to choose what you want to talk about, you are given a subject, the good debaters can take either side and win.

Ben Franklin, Craig didn’t say that disliking all Americans was his hobby. He gets on fine with a fair few.

Craig… to ‘Maty’–this freudian slip thing really works, doesn’t it? One Habitual Babbler here though really seems to have the knife out for her–really beginning to think that he’s a demented schoolmaster turned stalker.

Before you go, i really want to bring this article to your attention:

Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas

http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2902

Its really very encouraging. It means just 1 out of 10 of us needs to actually start living sanely and it could possibly change the whole content of human consciousness. So let us not despair.

Thank you for a very interesting entry here, followed by an equally vibrant soul-searching bunch of comments. Keep up your good work.

Re Craig’s anti-American dig – do look at the work that Chris Hedges does too – wonderful, inspiring journalism.

Daniel Day-Lewis, a great actor and latterly Lincoln, is half Jewish. I was very pleased to receive this account of his visit to Gaza in 2005 from a friend today. Earlier I had read a very tender account by his sister Tamasin on the end of their mother’s life and the wonderful care she received from the staff in a NHS community hospital some years back.

Brother and sister obviously inherited a great measure of humanity. Their father was Cecil Day-Lewis and their mother was Jill Balcon.

Both links here.

“Inside Scarred Minds”
Daniel Day Lewis March 20, 2005 The Sunday Times
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1520278,00.html paywall)
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/_inside_scarred_minds_

TAMASIN DAY-LEWIS: Daniel and I are sure Mama believed she was spending her final days in a five-star hotel, not a hospital
By Tamasin Day-lewis
UPDATED:02:33, 26 October 2009

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1222666/TAMASIN-DAY-LEWIS-Daniel-I-sure-Mama-believed-spending-final-days-star-hotel-hospital.html

Clark, Mark and Jay, please do read that article i posted at 8.39pm–your remarks inspired me to post it here and i think it has seriously important ramifications. Btw, Mark i found it through the WW3 video you linked here very recently–don’t know if it caught your eye.
—
Expat thank you also for the introduction to Adam Curtis. Very interesting style of documentary and very watchable. Great music too, including one of my desert island discs, Lou reed’s song sung by the beautiful Nico

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an9DoVBHHr8

This video is very watchable and should get many views, 100,000 or more ?

The youtube counts are supposedly delayed by upto around 2 weeks, in order to catch spammers and terms of service. Im not convinced but i expect they would have been systematically detected by now if fiddling peoples SEO/counts.

Mary, DDLs article on Gaza strip is stark and truthful.

@ Dougie :

We haven’t heard your apology to Guano yet.

Re. Arabic/Koran/doubting he’s Muslim, if you remember!

Banksie, thanks for that link–good one and knocking on to 4 million hits! The word is definitely getting out there. Something good will come out of all the listening to their hearts that people are doing these days. I think the river is running deeper now than in those flower children days propelled by drugs as they were.
—
Anon thank you also for your earlier guidance on Adobe–thats what happened…i rejected updates that started arriving within 2 frickin days of installing the ‘latest’ version. Stay well!

Babbler, fuck off to the underbelly where you belong and don’t disrupt this thread you socially-challenged jerk.

You just gotta laugh at how annoying that turd is “Wee still..”

I meant “We havent…” mehh.

This is a couple of years old but i came across it recently. An online flash game simulating drone piloting “unmanned”

http://unmanned.molleindustria.org/

Apologies to all on behalf of Villager, who is disrupting this thread because he’s peeved with me from a previous one.

And also on behalf of Crab, who could not resist rushing to the support of Villager, who in turn felt obligated to excuse Dougie (it’s very incestuous, isn’t it)

I read today that the HSBC Chief executive was getting a £2m bonus for 2012 to be taken when he retires.

‘The chief executive of HSBC will reportedly receive a bonus package of around £2 million, despite the bank being forced to set aside £950 million last year following exposure for money laundering and mis-selling.’

‘The bonus is for 2012 – a year in which the bank’s head of compliance resigned in front of a US Senate sub-committee.

The bank exposed the US to billions of dollars worth of money laundering, drug trafficking and terrorist financing.’

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/02/hsbc-chief-executive-stuart-gulliver-bonus_n_2797532.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

Cf

DOJ Urges Federal Court to Approve Sweetheart Deal with Drug-Tainted HSBC

by Tom Burghardt / March 2nd, 2013
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/03/doj-urges-federal-court-to-approve-sweetheart-deal-with-drug-tainted-hsbc/

@villager welcome mate

Try to watch his documentaries – all on youtube – perhaps start with The Trap.

@mark golding

The article you posted re WW3 was the best I have read in recent years Thank you

@Habbabkuk – you are a barnacle on the ship of humanity

You mean this one Expat: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/02/nuclear-negotiations-with-iran/#comment-396447

Craig does not hate Americans, he merely likes to observe them with great amusement from a distance, apart when he is invited over there to recieve awards, and then has to waste a large amount of his time educating them on the difference between Single Malt and Burbon…I fear that Craig will have to recieve countless awards in the future over in the good old USA before he will even begin to scratch the surface on that one !

In the 1960s/70s/80s anti-Americanism used to be much much more common in Europe and the English speaking counties than it is today, and in our mainstream media and governments too.

It wasn’t ever about all Americans, as such. It was about US govt foreign policy and American culture, and that was shared too by many young Americans.

The main change has been that Western govts and media have become so much more pro-America, and indeed Israel.

That’s the big change over the past 30 years.

A good and witty speech, drunk or not!
I wondered how one would counter it. The people who said that the American dream consisted in each generation having a higher standard of living than the previous one did set themselves up.
If I had to support the motion I would define the American dream by something that could be sustainable, but I would want to study American history and the aspirations of the historic emigrants there first as a background. So the dream would include an escape from poverty (not the same thing as greater pots of gold for all succeeding generations), religious amd other freedoms.
Defined in this way, I suggest that the American dream is not only worth dreaming but that the rest of the world would be a poorer place without it. The destruction of native Americans and destructive imperialism overseas is therefore a distortion of the authentic American dream.
So there’s a acse for the defense. But then again, I am not the kind of VIP that would take part in Oxford Union debates.

The best American articulation of a dream got the beholder shot for it – Typical.

@Ben Franklin,
“I wonder if he reads the History of British global dominance with a sense of nostalgia and sees the American Colonies with the same pair of eyes as he sees Mohandas, India and Pakistan…”
It can’t be that the Brits were not mariginally less brutal than the American Empire – could it be that the US just has not had as many years to steal as much land, occupy, rape, enslave, pillage? Huh – ‘ol Ben Franklin?
There is in the US – a book entitled, “A People’s History of the United States” and it is a 1980 book by Howard Zinn which honestly states the other side of America’s less than pleasant and loving history.
As a young man, I watched the film, “Soldier Blue” – it was not a pleasant and loving history. I have a cousin who was a foot soldier in Vietnam – and the horrors do haunt – him – not me – but I understand.
Man – get real – rape – slaughter – drones – war profiteering – on and on and on – over a million Iraqis dead because the US President, good ‘ol Colin and Blair got another good war going. Have you seen pictures of the monster babies born because of the debilitating effects of depleted uranium on the Iraqi mothers?
The US has far exceeded any death, torture and/or destruction that Saddam ever inflicted. In fact, consider the US manipulated 8 years war with Iran – Iran’s fault of course.
As the African- American lady was saying, quite eloquently – Americans – wake up from your delusions and slumber and look at the horrible deeds and history as it really and truly, honestly is!
Frankly ( pun intended) Murray was somewhat tame and dipolmatic in his justified and verifiable criticisms.

@ Ben Franklin,

Actually it was two cousins from the same Aunt.

The one most impacted after Vietnam, became a recluse and withdrew into North Carolina. He died a couple years ago – a broken, recluse derilict of the Vietnam war.

So – today the US trades freely with commuinist China and the same Vietnam where between them, Laos and Cambodia – well let’s count – for starters – Asian lives lost – 500,000 plus, plus, plus dead and on and on and on.

At the same time, the small Caribbean island of Cuba, is embraced by the entire Caribbean and Soouth America, while the US still maintains an economic embargo for some 50 years.

If you open your eyes Ben Franklin, you will understand that what people of conscience are motivated by is not hate – but genuine concerns about double standards and concerns about a US totally misguided sense of “exceptionalism” embraced and believed in by some persons born in the United States of America.

Maybe ol’ Ben Franklin is included – who knows?

“As a young man, I watched the film, “Soldier Blue” – it was not a pleasant and loving history.”

Yes, i remember falling in love with Candy ‘Iceberger’ in that film–what a woman!
—
Anyway i’ve had an o/d of this american dream stuff today, so lets not forget we’re in a Global Village however much bullying the US does outside its shores, We Are The World (and we shall overcome):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2W4-0qUdHY

@ Villager,

“..lets not forget we’re in a Global Village however much bullying the US does”

So we are and the process shall intensify. Yet there are different versions of the construction and nature of the “village”. One motivated by war -war – war – and more war. Or – maybe just an alterntive civilised, reasoned, reasonable, and sensible way forward.

Obviously, the warriors are motivated by raw profit and greed and want war. War is actually good for business and fuck humanity. Then label anyone who dares to question the illogicality of the extant global architecture as – a “terrorist”. Orwell must be laughing in his grave as he reads my post.

Cheers!

Much enjoyed Craig’s rant, and Ray McGovern’s idiosyncratic speech in favour of the motion.Ray is a true patriot, defending the ideals of his country in a foreign forum, despite quite recently getting the Walter Wolfgang treatment at the behest of the then Secretary of State-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My29YT1T4R4

@ Old Mark,
As George Galloway so eloquently said, “two cheeks of the same arse hole”
May I give my interpretation:-
On one side there is the Secretary of State saying that all is well.
One the other side is the President who is by way of Executive orders – authorising droning.
Are we a crazed and/or insane species – or- is there some sanity left in the world?
Ray McGovern – an analyst in the CIA. Intellectual type, not the kind of shoot and kill guy – just a person who is willing to tell the system, after analysis, what it is, on best assessment – needs to be done.
Then when he finally discovers that he has been working for corruption all those years – he turns. Now – hell! – how do we deal with a brilliant analyst?
What a dirty world we live in.

Courtenay Barrett: Obviously, the warriors are motivated by raw profit and greed and want war. War is actually good for business and fuck humanity. Then label anyone who dares to question the illogicality of the extant global architecture as – a “terrorist”. Orwell must be laughing in his grave as he reads my post.

An interesting point of view which I fear is mistaken. First of all, if Orwell were to read your post, despite being dead and despite probably having better things to do if he weren’t, he might be laughing at it rather than with it, because it is you who is distorting reality here by saying “anyone who dares to question” is a terrorist. I think it is a rather grotesque stretching of the concept “to question” to include the actions of flying planes into buildings, don’t you? I mean, I have to ask that in all seriousness, because I seem to remember a few years back you expressed a wish for a couple of hundred passengers to be “offed” when you heard about the underpant bomber. Was he another example of a tough interrogator?

Anyway, we can know a little about what Orwell might have thought from his actual words: Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China.

Clark: There are reasons that you should care. Your “clueless Yank watching FOX news” votes, and poor voting choices, particularly in the US, degrade everything for everyone. Your MacDonald’s-munchers have children; you probably agree that children should be protected from religious indoctrination; they’d be better off protected from corporately promoted products that are specifically designed to be habit-forming, too.

Hi Clark, I have to respectfully disagree here. For example, I have never said that parents should not raise their children to be religious. As for protection against “corporately-promoted products”, I find the term to vague to be of any use. Do you mean to say that all advertising should be banned? I can’t go along with that.

Also, given that only about 40-50% of eligible voters actually cast a ballot in the US there is a good chance that our hypothetical couch potato doesn’t even vote.

angrysoba, assuming that social problems remain localised is usually a mistake. Such arguments are often used to promote various “wars”, like the “War on Drugs” or the “War on Terror”. Somehow, this can morph into “it only harms those who indulge” depending upon which direction most benefits corporate profits.

I am afraid I don’t really understand this either. What assumptions are you assuming I am making? And how is the “war on drugs” or the “war on terror” (often referred to as the “global war on terror”) argued to be local?

Does it make any sense to engage in an argument about who is/was more brutal/corrupt, the US or the UK?

Our counties/governments are controlled not by ‘us’ but by people with no national loyalties.

If the USA is presently taking the lead in subjugating the world, that is just because it suits the strategy of those shadowy controllers. Before that, it suited them to use Britain in the same role. It is not the fault of Americans any more than the atrocities of the British Empire were the fault of ordinary Brits.

99% of the people in the world are chess pieces in a game being played over centuries, where a typical move is selling a slogan like ‘The American Dream’ to a whole generation in order to increase selfishness and greed in the next, and thus make them more controllable.

Individual nations are like slaves tossed into an arena and ordered to fight to the death. You’re going to see a lot of brutality and dirty fighting, but is there any point in saying the winner is ‘worse’ than the loser?

One of the main shills for war in 2003 is still at his keyboard churning out the poison.

Ten years on, the case for invading Iraq is still valid
A decade after Saddam was overthrown, why are some progressives still loath to celebrate his demise?

Nick Cohen The Observer, Sunday 3 March 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/03/10-years-right-invaded-iraq

The same organ gives houseroom for the war criminal to produce some self aggrandisement and some puffery for his stooges Geldof and Bono. Wonder why he misses out his best mates Clinton and Gates? Are they not, too, saviours of the planet?

Aid has transformed Africa. Now is the time for growth and governance
Africa has made huge advances since the 2005 Glenagles summit – but it still needs our support

Tony Blair The Observer, Saturday 2 March 2013 21.30 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/02/aid-africa-growth-tony-blair?INTCMP=SRCH

Some other items referring to the Iraq War in today’s Observer.

Don’t mention the Iraq war, William Hague tells cabinet
Tory foreign secretary’s directive not to discuss legality of war ahead of 10th anniversary sparks anger from Liberal Democrats
::
Katharine Gun: Ten years on, what happened to the woman who revealed dirty tricks on the UN Iraq war vote?
::
Kayla Williams: Occupying Iraq: a US army veteran’s ambivalence
I didn’t support the war, but it was my job to serve. And despite the huge costs, I can never accept my comrades died ‘in vain’
::
Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson: How the Bush administration sold the war – and we bought it

I always had the figure of 3% in my mind for the percentage of anti-war coverage in the media.

Not so it appears. It was 10%, although this entry states that in the US the figure was 3%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War

In 2003, a study released by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting stated the network news disproportionately focused on pro-war sources and left out many anti-war sources. According to the study, 64% of total sources were in favor of the Iraq War while total anti-war sources made up 10% of the media (only 3% of US sources were anti-war). The study stated that “viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1.”[21]

FAIR also conducted a similar study in February 2004. According to the study, which took place during October 2003, current or former government or military officials accounted for 76 percent of all 319 sources for news stories about Iraq which aired on network news channels.[22]

After the invasion, the editors of the New York Times apologized for its coverage of Hussein’s alleged weapons programs, acknowledging that “we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims (related to Iraqi weapons programs) as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.”[23]

Macky/Mary, have you read this article:

Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas
http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2902

Very interesting, revealing and encouraging! (to those who’ve spotted it earlier, i apologise for the repeat)

But, equally those who haven’t seen this video on the Road to WW3 Mark Golding posted earlier, here it is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HP7L8bw5QF4

Spread the word!

Julian Assange says “………polls show that I have the support of about 55 percent of the Swedish people. That is right in the middle compared to other countries, and better than in the US and Great Britain”

Resistance From a Cage: Julian Assange Speaks to Norwegian Journalist Eirik Vold

More:
Assange wants to make a deeper point. WikiLeaks, he says, is about more than just scandalous revelations and splashy headlines.
“In the same way that the ability to solve physical problems is limited by our understanding of physical laws, the ability to solve societal problems depends on our insight into human institutions. All political theories on how the world is and how it should be are built on such an understanding.”
By “institutions” Assange means governments, private companies and other networks of power groups. The problem, he explains, is that while institutions constantly change as they absorb new technology and make old theories outdated, the information about how they actually work is concealed, kept secret.
“Much of what we are being presented, and upon which we build our understanding of the world, is designed to make these institutions palatable for the outside world.”
“This is why only by knowing the internal communications of these institutions can we understand how they really work. So, if we want to make the world more just, if we want humanity to reach its heights and not its lows, then the first step is to get access to that information,” he says.

Read the whole article:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14835-resistance-from-a-cage-julian-assange-speaks-to-norwegian-journalist-eirik-vold

WikiLeaks News:
Revolución published an in-depth interview with WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson, in which he discusses the current status of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and Bradley Manning. The video is in English with Spanish subtitles.
http://revoluciontrespuntocero.com/kristinn-hrafnsson/

Link provided courtesy http://www.thisdayinwikileaks.org (Thank you!)

If some one wishes to be updated with latest technologies after
that he must be visit this web site and be up to
date all the time.

Yes Villager I did read it last night. The name of the institution was unfamiliar and I don’t know how to pronounce it. The concept is very interesting and has been tested to work. I wish dearly it would start happening and in this country in particular.

I have been listening to Claire Short, Jude Kelly and Iain Dale reviewing the papers with Sophie Raworth (the Head Girl of Upper VI) standing in for Marr who returns later in the year I read having left hospital. He was another who carried the Iraq war propaganda for Blair of course.

Anyway the foursome came to Assad and his interview. The words ‘softly spoken like all dictators’, ‘another Hitler’, ‘secret security state’, ‘masses killed and masses of refugees’ etc. They could not however quite bring themselves to call for all out war. Ghastly people.

Jude Kelly runs the South Bank complex and spoke of the festival that she is putting on for women’s rights celebrating International Women’s Day. Malala’s father is speaking. Jolly good Jude but there was no mention of the women and their children killed by ISAF drones and by Predator O’Drone’s kill policy, is there? I bet she has been through the Common Purpose machine.

Back to the Spring cleaning and to move the dust around. Cobwebs galore.

A coffee break. Housework is so boring.

PS I looked Jude Kelly up,. She is CP and quite blatant about it. CP International now!

http://www.commonpurpose.org/info/biographies/dishaaag/jude-kelly

http://www.ukcolumn.org/article/government-common-purpose near the bottom

I have just realized it is my late mother’s birthday. She was born in 1911. Left an orphan at a young age with her older sister and younger brother. In spite of that deprivation she became a loving and caring mother to my three brothers and myself.

Ooops! Missed this one:
Angry
You only have to look at the history of US involvement in South America to see that the US standard of living depended on dictators and poverty for the great mass of people living in its constituent contries.
The same pattern is repeated across the globe.
It’s fairly straightforward stuff.
Anywhere there are resources that the West needs, then the people of that country will not be allowed to enjoy self-determination. It’s as simple as that, to date at least.

Herb, it certainly sounds like standard dogma, although you haven’t demonstrated your claim.

Quango.
Chinese proverb.
I watch you watch me from camera in my backside

@ Villager

“ResDiss : “why don’t you listen to Ray McGoverns speech”

Which one? Why don’t you post the link?”

I don’t need to as Craig has already done so – unlike you I listen to both sides of a debate before spouting off.

@Mary

“Anyway the foursome came to Assad and his interview. The words ‘softly spoken like all dictators’, ‘another Hitler’, ‘secret security state’, ‘masses killed and masses of refugees’ etc. They could not however quite bring themselves to call for all out war. Ghastly people.”

And can we presume that you see Assad as something less than “ghastly” and not worthy of snide comments like that attributed to Sophie Raworth?

@ResDis

Your fellow crypto Kerry spent a year and a half of personal charm, upto early 2011 (there are rumsfeldy pictures too),trying to break Assads connections with the Iranians. All whilst Assad was ‘softly spoken like all dictators’, ‘another Hitler’, ‘secret security state’!! Yiddery yet again !!

Fake Muslims who spy on other Muslims through their fancy mobile phones would be well to remember the all-seeing eye of Allah who has stated in the Qur’an that spying is haram/forbidden. Fake sheikhs and mad mullahs abound.

The writeup on “the tipping point of ideas” is just hype, im only commenting on it because its been repeated at least 3 times and im grumpy. Its wide eyed hypertheory which completely ignores the substance of any ideas it might concern.

A Node
‘Our counties/governments are controlled not by ‘us’ but by people with no national loyalties.

If the USA is presently taking the lead in subjugating the world, that is just because it suits the strategy of those shadowy controllers. Before that, it suited them to use Britain in the same role. It is not the fault of Americans any more than the atrocities of the British Empire were the fault of ordinary Brits.’

I don’t think the Global CEOs run the world, and I’m quite sure it isn’t Whague and Cameron. So to whom are you referring? The usual unmentionables, Zionists, bankers, Saudi princes,? Or unmentionable unmentionables we don’t already know?

English Knight

I’m not a cypto anything – just like you and Guano are not a crypto anti semites.

O/T for this thread (well, I suppose the Swedish extradition of Assange could be said to be one American Dream )

The good folk from the Swedish forum Flashback have been making excellent use of the fact that Craig’s thread on Why I’m Convinced Anna Ardin is a Liar is still open and have caught Goran Rudling AND Anna Ardin in a rather clever Gotcha!

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/09/why-i-am-convinced-that-anna-ardin-is-a-liar/comment-page-6/#comment-396803

The comment below that one explains the context of it a bit more. Despite claiming that his Samtycke Ne (Consent Now) campaign aims to get the concept of consent introduced into Sweden’s sex crimes laws Goran Rudling has been silent on the issue throughout a 4-month debate on proposed amendments/expansion of sex crimes legislation. Flashback seem to have uncovered some sort of working relationship between Ardin and Rudling.

On the point of Sweden’s frankly crazy ideas about sex crimes, the latest seems to be a case of “webcam rape” in which the ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim’ have never actually met in real life! Having had an early set-back in the District courts (they threw it out) the prosecutor of this particular case is now placing the matter in the hands of Marianne Ny’s Sex Crimes Development Unit in Gotenberg (yes, that is the name of the department she heads).

http://allehanda.se/blaljus/brott/1.5582163-aklagare-jag-kommer-att-overklaga- (use Google translate)

So, rape is no longer even a physical act in the minds of Swedish prosecutors? Heaven help us.

O/T but here’s the best news of the weekend-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21647937

This will puncture some of the bluster extruding from Cameron & Osborne; they can no longer argue that London bankers will decamp to Zurich to escape EU wide restrictions on bankers bonuses (should they be implemented). It will also put Farage on the spot- does he really believe we should opt for Swiss style independence, or is he simply a city spiv in Eurosceptic clothing ?

As for the Ed Miller Band, he could argue for Westminster legislation based on either the Swiss or the EU model. He could even say that a ‘bankers exodus’ (to Alpha Centauri perhaps?) might even be beneficial to the overheated London housing market, as demand at the top end recedes. But I doubt if he has the guts to do either.

The American Jews who lobby for Israel really take the biscuit. Me, me, me first!

AIPAC lobbies Congress to protect aid to Israel

With the sequester about to take a big bite out of the Pentagon’s budget, the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is lobbying Congress to exempt US military aid to Israel, reports “The New York Jewish Week” correspondent Douglas Bloomfield, a AIPAC chief lobbyist for ten years, and now an independent consultant.

The New York Jewish Week” says that AIPAC will send thousands of its citizen lobbyists, who are participating in its annual policy conference, which begins on Sunday, to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to promote the organization’s agenda, including exempting US military aid to Israel from the sequester.

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000826476&fid=1725

Villager and Mary. I have some problems with this article: “Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas”
http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2902.

(1) The theory is based purely upon a computer model, therefore its accuracy depends on how closely it’s parameters reflect society.

“Each of these individuals held a view, but were also, importantly, open minded to other views.”

That parameter doesn’t reflect society.
(2) A very powerful influence on society’s beliefs is the mainstream media, which contradicts and discredits the 10% while re-enforcing the beliefs of the 90%. There is no corresponding parameter in the models.
(3) What if two different factions of society hold mutually contradictory opinions, for example believers in two different religions. The theory is categoric:

“Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. “

According to the theory, there should never be a society containing two religions each of which is composed of 10% or more of the population
(4) From the point of view of the theory, the mainstream media is itself one of these “10% of committed opinion holders”.
As the most vocal and best connected ’10%’, their opinions would surely prevail over other opinion groups. Again there is a contradiction as in (3) above.
(5) Even their example is dodgy : “…. the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt appear to exhibit a similar process ….”. Not very convincing if, like me, you believe that the ‘Arab Spring’ was engineered rather than spontaneous.

Bad science? Bad journalism? Deliberate introduction of a false meme?

“So, rape is no longer even a physical act in the minds of Swedish prosecutors? Heaven help us.”

Does it matter what they call it? The arsehole was talking under-age girls into exposing themselves on webcam then using the pictures to blackmail them into doing things they would rather not have done.

Lock him up and throw away the key on any charges they can make stick I say.

guano to me:

“I don’t think the Global CEOs run the world, and I’m quite sure it isn’t Whague and Cameron. So to whom are you referring? The usual unmentionables, Zionists, bankers, Saudi princes,? Or unmentionable unmentionables we don’t already know?”

The more I learn, the longer the list of things I don’t know gets. My world model is constantly evolving, but I guess at the moment, the answer to your question is both of the above. Very probably the usual unmentionables and almost certainly some unknowns too.

I am sure of who is not running the world – the people we are told are.

Fred, nobody is disputing that what this under-age boy did was wrong. I am not condoning what he did but would like to ask you whether you made any discoveries of members of the opposite sex when you were young? Anyway you completely miss the point that Arbed made. It is a matter of law and changing the law to the point of stupidity.

From your response it seems like you would have the law changed so that a charge of ‘rape’ could eventually be applied to any male who was sexually attracted to a female, or played out his fantasies at home. This might be a crime, but it is not rape. There is an old story about the Scotsman who had a whiskey still in his back garden. He was arrested and charged even though he was not distilling whiskey. He asked on what grounds he was being charged. “For having the equipment to distil whiskey”. “Well then” said the Scot “I would also like to plead guilty to rape, because I have the equipment.” So perhaps you would like to see all boys emasculated at birth! I could think of a few warmongers!

@ Angry,
You say:-
“I think it is a rather grotesque stretching of the concept “to question” to include the actions of flying planes into buildings, don’t you? I mean, I have to ask that in all seriousness, because I seem to remember a few years back you expressed a wish for a couple of hundred passengers to be “offed” when you heard about the underpant bomber. Was he another example of a tough interrogator?”

It is quite obvious that there is a lot more to 9/11 than first meets the eye. Consider:-

http://www.911truth.org/

Makes sense to bomb an already devastated Afghanistan after the then Soviet Union was defeated. Which brings me to your other point:-
“The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China”

It is a given that big powers have a tendency to do bad things in the world. Yes – that is so. It is a question of degree and which ones do the worst things.

Hey Angry, you’re back!

Eating whale meat, huh? You be careful, my friend, some of the ‘value’ lines contain sea horse

“Fred, nobody is disputing that what this under-age boy did was wrong. I am not condoning what he did but would like to ask you whether you made any discoveries of members of the opposite sex when you were young? Anyway you completely miss the point that Arbed made. It is a matter of law and changing the law to the point of stupidity.”

I had a normal youth in which I did not take compromising photos of young girls then threaten to make them public if they didn’t do as I said.

How would you feel if your daughter was being blackmailed over the internet by a pervert?

Fred. To answer your question I would feel devastated. Very angry. Vengeful. He is not a pleasant 17 year old. And has not been for years if my understanding of the Google translation is right. But the charge should be blackmail, not rape. There are enough changes in law militating against the general public, (especially if you are a Muslim). We do not need any more like “rape by proxy”.

Fred, 1.57pm

Just to be clear, I have no argument that the behaviour of this 17-year-old was wrong and should be punished. However, it’s not ‘rape’ as the term is understood the world over. Procurement or ‘grooming’ charges? Sexual coercion charges? Sexual molestation maybe or, as Villager suggests, perhaps it fits a charge of blackmail? Cyber-bullying perhaps (it sounds a lot like what some of the nastier internet trolls get up to)? But not rape. That’s all I’m saying.

How old were the girls, btw, anyone know? Given his young age, their ages would also be a crucial factor in deciding to what level and under which laws he should be punished.

@ a Node :

I would like to echo Guano’s question and also ask you to state who in your opinion are these mysterious individuals or bodies who run the world?

Amoung the more outlandish candidates frequently mentioned are the Illuminati and the Bilderberg group. David Icke, I believe, has identified a hetergenous collection of eminent personalities who may, or may not, be lizards from outer space. Clark is apparently more down to earth and points the finger at the “corporations”.

Who is/are your candidate(s)?

I didn’t find the 17 year olds actions terribly serious. Pubescent Kids together unsupervised, on webcams are quite often going to be naughty. So this one kid (15 to 17 years old) worries, harangues and manipulates 9 other kids he was naughty with on unsupervised cams – into doing what? meeting him and giving him more naughty cams. Big deal. Naughty kid > catch > tell off > scare > lessons learnt all round, no harm done. He didnt touch any of his quarry – so hes a naughty boy but he knows some respectable limits. Hes been convicted with blackmail now, and has 170,000 dollars damages to pay for TEENAGE KICKS.

I think its hysterical and bloody useless distraction from the real monsterous sex and abuse crime cases which are going on unpunished and uninvestigated.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/03/this-week?commentpage=1

Here Glenn’s given the commenters carte blanche to use the comment section to talk about whatever you want, Glenn’s requested that his articles are less strictly moderated, so might be a rare oppurtunity to discuss certain topics on CiF that usually get modded.

The Queen has been admitted to KE VII hospital with gastroenteritis.

And let us all wish her a speedy recovery.

“Just to be clear, I have no argument that the behaviour of this 17-year-old was wrong and should be punished. However, it’s not ‘rape’ as the term is understood the world over.”

That’s just the point, rape isn’t the same the world over, in Sweden it carries a two to six year sentence while in Britain you can get life. It didn’t say the exact circumstances in the article but as the charge of rape was only being sought in a few of the cases it’s looking to me like an offence was committed which would certainly count as rape in Germany.

But I’m not interested in the semantics, to my mind this is the embodiment of rape. Rapists get their gratification not from the intercourse but from the control, the power, the abuse. This is the US soldier at Abu Ghraib or the Israeli soldier humiliating a Palestinian. This was someone deliberately getting power over another person just so they could abuse them for their gratification. This was one hell of a lot closer to rape than anything Julian Assange did so if they can call that rape they most certainly should be calling this rape as well.

Arbed

And from what I understand from Google Mistranslate he was found guilty of sexual exploitation of children and was given a sentence of community service and a large fine most of which is payable to his victims – which all seems about right to me, although the less liberal would like a custodial sentence. And the district judge – at the end of the article specifically says that they couldn’t make a case for rape when there is no physical presence. The prosecutor may not like this – but that doesn’t mean that they can change Swedish Law. Sounds like Swedish justice will probably get the right answer on thsi one.

Habbabkuk to me:

I would like to echo Guano’s question and also ask you to state who in your opinion are these mysterious individuals or bodies who run the world?

Pay attention, Habbabkuk …
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/03/the-american-dream/#comment-396883

At least the royal news will take the disgusting media’s mind off war mongering in Syria and immigration.

The young couple will be hurrying home from Switzerland. They have more ‘breaks’ than the rest of us have hot dinners.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287371/Kate-Middleton-Pregnant-Pregnant-Kate-goes-sledging-Swiss-Alps-instead-strapping-skis-winter-break-Wills.html

Do the unions copy each other’s debates?

A variation on the theme. The 10th anniversary of the Iraq war.

This House Regret The Consequences of U.S. Dominance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YOJZXwR_jgQ

@ Angry,
You said:-
“I think it is a rather grotesque stretching of the concept “to question” to include the actions of flying planes into buildings, don’t you? I mean, I have to ask that in all seriousness, because I seem to remember a few years back you expressed a wish for a couple of hundred passengers to be “offed” when you heard about the underpant bomber.”

Rather strong allegation there about “offed”. So – where is your proof that I said this?

BREAKING NEWS:Cardinal Keith O’Brian admits at ‘times my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal’

Apologies to Scottish people, Catholic church etc but I did not hear if he has apologized to the clerics. Retiring out of public life.

Fred,

“Rapists get their gratification not from the intercourse but from the control, the power, the abuse”

Yes, I agree with you – that’s why I find it so odd (in another thread) that Swedish rape law doesn’t include the concept of consent. To me, what makes the crime of rape so horrendous is the utter violation of someone else’s will, their right to decide what happens to them sexually and to their own bodies. From this it follows that where I part company with your view is that, for me, ‘rape’ does have involve some sort of violation of the physical body, and have an element of sexual humiliation.

Resident Dissident,

“And the district judge – at the end of the article specifically says that they couldn’t make a case for rape when there is no physical presence. The prosecutor may not like this – but that doesn’t mean that they can change Swedish Law.”

Yes, that was the point I was making. The lower courts have treated this case quite appropriately as far as I can see. They have found this 17-year-old guilty of a variety of offenses, given him a supervision order and fined him. What I was getting at is the case has been referred to Marianne Ny (Assange’s prosecutor) because the Swedish prosecutor was unhappy the courts turned down defining his crimes as ‘rape’ and it is Ny’s specific job – she heads the Sex Crimes Development Unit – to stretch the boundaries of what Swedish sex crimes legislation can cover.

Statement of ex Cardinal O’Brien

“In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

“However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

“To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness. To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.

“I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

Rather bad timing with the conclave about to atart but better said than not. I always rather admired him for some of his outspokenness.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21649475

“the control, the power, the abuse”

Lots of people are turned on by controlling or being controlled, being powerful or overpowered. Even.. by being abusive and being abused (“sweet dreams are made of these”).
These instincts can all be naturally and healthily expressed in a mature consensual relationship, of course people differ about extent of masochistic play acceptable.

Rape could be motivated by different things in different instances, by lust, by anger, by despair, even by insane affection. Why do people reduce the subject of rape to a single archetype?

And I second Resident Dissident in wishing our Queen a good and speedy recovery. Long may she continue to reign over us.

**********

La vita è bella, life is good (Long live the Queen!)

“Rape could be motivated by different things in different instances, by lust, by anger, by despair, even by insane affection. Why do people reduce the subject of rape to a single archetype?”

Rape always involves one person having power and control over another, one person forcing another to commit sexual acts against their will.

The internet along with webcams and realtime communication are a new thing and I don’t think the laws have yet caught up with technology. The fact that the two people are not in the same location no longer has the same importance as it once had. To my mind this case is a modern day equivalent of rape and I think the person committing it had the same motivations as the conventional serial rapist. This is an entirely different thing to the Assange case.

La vita è bella, life is good (Long live the Queen!)

Just for you Here is a bit of history for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIukrdRhnpw

Habba, I’m a Republican but the present Queen has done nothing that would deserve wishing her anything other than a good and speedy recovery. And it certainly isn’t a time for Mr Lawton’s bad taste videos.

Craig Murray 1983 University Challenge.

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/pressreleases/prmay02/unichallenge.htm

I think we can draw equivalence very loosely depending on our emotions. And when we do deny distinguishing details that is fanatical rightly or wrongly.
I dont think this kid felt like he was raping the other kids, or that the trauma of the girls should be framed that way (for anyones sake). These were teenagers exploring and falling foul of sexual instinct, but that it never went as far as physical molestation is a big mitigating factor which shouldnt be de~virtualised out of relevance.

–

There was a funny little aside joking about our rulers on the tellybox last week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIseKpjoIYY&list=ELg7AGqo-yoig#t=8m00s

The Astonishing Hush-hush Of Methods One Could Rule scrapebox
vps Without Practical experience!

@ Resident Dissident :

The poster calling himself David Lawton feels impelled to respond to my wishes for the current Queen’s speedy recovery by linking to a spoof-satirical video on the “criminal history” of the British monarchy.

An ungracious, ill-mannered lout and a prize chump with it. He’d probably prefer a people’s President in the form of Ken Loach or Georgeous George.

“I dont think this kid felt like he was raping the other kids, or that the trauma of the girls should be framed that way (for anyones sake). These were teenagers exploring and falling foul of sexual instinct, but that it never went as far as physical molestation is a big mitigating factor which shouldnt be de~virtualised out of relevance.”

I think you are wrong, I think he knew exactly what he was doing. That he deliberately set out with the intention of doing it. That he had learnt how to go about it from others.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21314585

Well done Craig on an truth-dense 10 minutes of speaking! To Ben: I dislike British people as a hobby, but I’m quite fond of Craig.

Resident Dissident 3 Mar, 2013 – 8:28 pm
“I’m a Republican but the present Queen has done nothing that would deserve wishing her anything other than a good and speedy recovery.”

Royalty are the top dogs of an entrenched class system that belittles us all and literally kills the poor. Under such attack, under the endless barrage of royal propaganda, for us to say anything that forgives these idle rich bastards is spineless.

The queen is a pox. A pox on the queen.

Fred,
“I think he knew exactly what he was doing. That he deliberately set out with the intention of doing it. That he had learnt how to go about it from others.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21314585 ”

From the sensational BBC -
“Children are increasingly being groomed over the internet for the sole purpose of online sexual abuse, research by a child protection watchdog suggests.
(…)
The growth area seems to be grooming, contact, and then sexual abuse purely online. We really need to make sure that young people are target hardened [sic] against that.
We can talk to young people and educate them on staying safe online just as we do about stranger danger or drugs”
Claire Lilly NSPCC
(…)
Mr Davies said the “devastation” caused to young people’s lives through online grooming could be seen on a daily basis.
“UK children can be targeted from anywhere and offenders will cast their net widely to target large numbers of children,” he said.
‘Trick victims’
She said: “What is apparent is that parents and carers can make that vital difference in whether or not a child becomes a victim of these ruthless predators online.
”

Just consider, what “devastates” children today, being spooked and tricked into doing dirty webcaming online? By predatory men – its no doubt corrupting, disturbing. But by another 16 year old? The child is only going to be “devastated”, or even get into the situation if their family and peer culture is so poor as to leave them very naive, manipulable and then very ashamed. That is the foundation of the devastation proclaimed – shame.

We are ready to ramp up the anxiety levels and unleash a new wave of ‘target hardening’ professionals, and imprison wayward teenagers for playing dirty games.

Let kids be kids. Discipline them, teach them yes -but demonise and worry them over transient smut No. Children are abused by culture of fear and repression which would equate a dirty webcam trick with being physically molested. Putting an evil face on musty adolescent misadventure, its neo-puritanism. A culture rife to cause emotional devastation.

Mary @ 2nd March. 2 ; 40.. The Japanese have been doing the same on a grander scale with Dolphins, and Porpoises, there is a devastating documentary called ‘The Cove’ which shows this Horrific Slaughter being carried out…some of this stuff is hard to watch

Here’s a few mins of the documentary, i’Ve seen the full thing, very brave people filming it. a Short description first.

The Cove exposes the slaughter of more than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises off the coast of Japan every year, and how their meat, containing toxic levels of mercury, is sold as food in Japan and other parts of Asia, often labeled as whale meat. The majority of the world is not aware this is happening.

http://www.takepart.com/cove

Craig,
I want the american dream for everybody “but first send the marines”. This witty song, sang by Tom Lehrer, can be found on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhZF66C1Dc

King of Welsh Noir: Hey Angry, you’re back!

Eating whale meat, huh? You be careful, my friend, some of the ‘value’ lines contain sea horse

Mmmmmmm…sea horse!

But as someone upthread points out, apparently mercury-rich dolphin meat is sometimes passed off as whale meat, but it isn’t promoted, as you might think, as being good brain food, unlike fish. These days I buy all my organic non-GM whalemeat from local Greenlandgrocers. As long as those pesky corporation supermarkets don’t close them down with their instant ramen!!! Grrrr…don’t get me started!

So, does one draw the conclusion that all righteous causes, even escaping the tyranny of European religious totalitarianism, will dissolve themselves into other forms of totalitarianism. The pain of being oppressed will in turn fuel the act of oppressing others and logically reversed all oppressors come from a history of being oppressed themselves.

If logic was involved the US would fear the backlash from the war on terror, which will eventually teach it humility, as the two world wars taught the UK humility not to oppress its own people or its near neighbours or its far neighbours – for one generation – before Mrs Thatcher came along and said this ain’t working, we have to go back to sh***ing on people like the old days.

People say that socialism and withdrawing from imperialism had brought us to 50 mph speed limits and the 3 day week. Being nice to people doesn’t work. That’s the problem. Being nice to people does work, but it doesn’t satisfy the malice, greed, lust for power of a small group of people I identify as bankers who artificially squeeze the resulting benefits of altruism in order to flip society back into selfishness and oppressing others.

Those bankers who were trusted to manage the boom of resulting from altruism as honest brokers, abused that trust for ulterior reasons, principally to build a Zionist power in the Western world. Furthermore, the bankers who are at present the honest brokers of the Asian booming economies will probably artificially flip those economies back into disfunction and tension and war, when it suits them.

When Obama states that he is going to focus his foreign policy on the Pacific he means that Asia is a user-friendly zone to survive in while the Zionists continue to dismantle and weaken our Western world until Israel becomes its central controlling intellectual engine and political power. The subjugation of that Protestant drive for freedom which created America is to be achieved through ‘fast food and Fox news’ in the whole Western hemisphere, and the Islamic instinct for freedom and justice will be put in the prison of the Muslim Brotherhood thought police both in Muslim countries and here, in London.

We are being softened up with recession until we go begging like President Mursi to the Zionists in Washington for a little relief. We have been de-industrialised to drive us to submission, just as Syria and Libya have been de-stabilised by violent dictators. If you are not forked-tongue and competent in lying, you will not find work in this country. No-one will be valued for skill and integrity here. If you do not submit to the spying thought control of government agencies, you will be blocked from finding employment under the Muslim Brotherhood.

The only place you’ll be able to find honour and justice in Europe will be in the utterly rejected religion of Judaism. The only place you will be able to find religious freedom or satisfaction as a teacher or an engineer will be in the Pacific region. They want to make Europe a Biblical zombie-land like a greater Israel, a museum or mausoleum to a dead idea, and the Middle East into a divided ghetto run by mad mullahs or worse.

while the Zionists continue to dismantle and weaken our Western world until Israel becomes its central controlling intellectual engine and political power

Thats already the truth, FFKS

“Does it matter what they call it?….

“Lock him up and throw away the key on any charges they can make stick I say.”

Now there is real debauchery compared with which the silly tricks of teenagers with webcams are bagatelle: do you have any idea, Fred, of what throwing away the key to a prison means?

And is it not obscene to talk of justice in terms of making charges stick, regardless of the law.

You are hiding a truly disgusting lust for vengeance and punishment behind a pretended concern for young women. As to whom nothing could be a greater threat to their lifelong well being than to be fated to live among lynch mobs in a society in which a sadistic appetite for punishment co-exists with contempt for justice and indifference to the suffering of convicts.

I really have to wonder if some of the people on this blog who spout about Zionists every chance they get actually talk like this in real life. It reads like the paranoid fantasies of the deranged. Now fast food is a Zionist plot? Do you blame anything at all you don’t like on Zionists, Guano? Oh, look, it’s raining! That’ll be the Zionists! My football team lost! Damn Zionists! The roof is leaking! Must have been the Zionist Federation of Carpenters trying to get me to pay to have it fixed! The dog’s let off a nasty pong! What are those Zionists feeding it???!?

Craig. The stoney silence at the “election fix in Florida” tells me they don’t have have clue.
I wish you would speak more often in public, that way I’d actually have something good to watch.

And for the “Israel”-Palestine comparison to not get a sinlge clap was very sad – was there house rules not to clap? I hope so.

Angeysoba… don’t forget:
That boy’s been shot while playing football – That’ll be the Zionists!
The roof is leaking – That’ll be the Zionist Federations bomb which destroyed it and the whole tower block at the back
The dog’s let off a nasty pong – because the Zionists have flooded Gaza with sewage.

Halibaba,

you may have noticed that an angry zionist sobba has returned with his nasty posts to make life less beautiful for all of us. It seems to me that he is a self-hating antisemite who needs to be cut down. Can you please apply you “intelectual firewpower” to bust the chair under his bum.

aNGRy

Maybe you didn’t listen to Craig’s address to the Union about fast food and Fox news. Have you ever asked the same question to yourself whether Israelis talk amongst themselves in the same poisonous tones of Marg Regev being interviewed in front of a global audience by the BBC?

I travelled with an Australian, Jewish student from Crete to Israel in 1973. I was his guest by chance and I stayed with his family, which was much appreciated. Even then, from their conversations with political journalists who accompanied us on a comprehensive tour, however much they loved their country they took much amusement from the increasing disfunctionality of the lives of the Palestinians.

It was like a foreigner being taken on a tour of the UK by a Tory, and shown with amusement the food banks, closed businesses, and negative equity caused by the bank’s theft of the country’s capital. We know that the politicians will never succeed in borrowing their way out of the problem, and that they do not have the power to prosecute the bankers in order to reclaim what they have stolen.

What I am saying is that intelligent Israelis had no power to prevent their politicians from leading them down the Zionist path, and intelligent UK people have no power to be anything but spectators of the road to ruin the bankers and politicians are taken us down between them.

For the UK to survive we have to:
1/ Take the apology for rendition to Belhadj and prosecute the war criminals of the cabinet of Tony Blair.
2/ re-coup the assets of the banker class and lose it in its entirety in the long grass as far away as possible from the city of London.
3/ dismantle the rhetoric of the war on terror so that intelligent and analytical voices can come forward from the Muslim community instead of its leaders being dominated by the most anti-western menacing voices. Then the work can begin to explain to the UK people what Islam is really and how it can benefit their lives.

I do not believe that the present UK governing parties can apologise for illegal rendition ever. Rendition is continuing under Obama and Cameron, so how can it be apologised for? If the two blonde bits of skirt on the platform of the Oxford Union debate above, i.e. the President and the speaker in the video could pool their experience, her non-Zionist knowledge of Israel and his non-establishment knowledge of the UK, we might be able to make the world a better place through apology and contrition.

Otherwise we are going to drift onto rocks like a cruise ship while the political captain sneaks back to shore.
(BTW There was an apology in there somewhere for my comments made before)

David Ward MP will be further humiliated by the LDs by receiving corrective treatment from their odious Friends of Israel groupies.

http://johnhilley.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/david-ward-now-on-probation-well-teach.html

Their active Gavin Stollar, not an MP, seems bent on making a name for himself much like Ms Fitzsimons who ran the Labour FoI (until she left in a hurry) and was reported for using inappropriate language.

http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/610037.0/

Clearly not too fussy who he brands with the N-word. Language “proportionate and precise”? Hardly.

David Ward should free himself from the clutches of these Zionist supporters and set himself up as an Independent. In any case the party will make sure that he will not stand again. Liberal? Democrat? No way.

Sorry Marg. I meant k for kilt, not g for guilt.

A fine defence of David Ward from Larry Derfner who is a feature writer on the Jerusalem Post and a contributor.

Published March 1, 2013
The Israel lobby at its intimidating worst – in Britain

How the British Board of Jewish Deputies and its allies are smearing a decent critic of Israel as an anti-Semite – and the success they’re having.

http://972mag.com/the-israel-lobby-at-its-intimidating-worst-in-britain/66931/

Just for the record lest he is misquoted or if he is traduced.

Al-Assad: British Leaders ‘Shallow, Immature’

‘We don’t expect an arsonist to be a firefighter,’ Syrian president says

Hala Jaber Interviews President Bashar al-Assad

Video and transcript

Posted March 03, 2013
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34160.htm

Simply put, I passionately believe that all things are solvable by truth-seeking analysis, and all things are made worse by lies and politics. We have to be honest enough to acknowledge the Zionist driving force behind the economic and religious problems facing our world. Zionist bankers are trying to highjack our country for their own fanatical religious purposes, while laying the blame at everyone else’s door.

We in the UK have to re-industrialise and de-financial-servicise. We have to dismantle the ability of the bond-buying speculators to break down the stability of nations. We have to do it. If we don’t do it, remove the power of the zionist banking class, we will be no more than the ruins of Pompei quite soon. That’s why I asked A Node if he had any other contenders for responsibility for the mess we are in. It is stark, staring obvious that we have to weaken this group of individuals who have set our course on the rocks through the war on terror and by embezzlement of our world’s capital. We have to wake up, smell the coffee and move. Now.

@ Karel :

no, actually, I don’t think I want to bust the chair from under Angrysoba’s ass because I think he makes a valid point. Condemning what Zionists are up to in Palestine is one thing, but the the tendency to see everything that goes on on this planet as somehow the manifestation of a Zionist masterplan is just plain silly. There are many examples of this foolishness on this blog.

Chris2

While I understand that there are those who see bullying, blackmail and sexual abuse of children as “character building” I didn’t go to public school and I’m not a Catholic so I’m not one of them.

I don’t believe a crime is any less serious if committed by remote control. Killing someone with a drone is just as much murder as shooting them face to face. Making a girl do things against her will out of fear of what would happen if she didn’t is just as serious over a web link as face to face and if that thing involved penetration with an object then yes I would call it rape.

Sexual experimentation may be OK between consenting young people in a relationship but it is not if forced on several preyed upon victims under duress even if it is done at a distance and under the anonymity of the internet.

Sorry if this disillusions you.

Angry and Habbakuk both claim

“the tendency to see everything that goes on on this planet as somehow the manifestation of a Zionist masterplan is just plain silly. There are many examples of this foolishness on this blog.”

Can either of you provide some substance for this claim?

Or is it little more than paranoid fantasy.

By the way Angry, your claim that:

“Western standards of living don’t require poverty, war and starvation and in many cases resulted in the opposite.”

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/03/the-american-dream/#comment-396760

isn’t supported by the book you cited, Guns, Germs and Steel.

Its author, Jared Diamond, is under no illusions about the impoverishment of others by plunder:

“Europeans could not settle in large numbers, but what they still could do was to extract wealth from Africans, initially slaves, then rubber, diamonds, and copper. Basically that means robbing Africans and setting up legalized institutions for corruption. Colonialism also changed the Africans’ traditional way of life. They moved to cities next to the mines where their immunities no longer provided protection against tropical diseases.” ”

http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2005/07/0706_050706_diamond_2.html

Herb, “Can either of you provide some substance for this claim?

Or is it little more than paranoid fantasy.”

You only have to read Guano’s posts to see that he believes everything bad that happens on this planet is the fault of Zionists. There are plenty of others who have said comparable things too.

Mark Golding really summed up the mindset once with this little gem: “When we get down to the wire politics is now polarised between the grasping Zionist banking New World Order on the one side and conscience and Islam on the other.”

Herb: “Its author, Jared Diamond, is under no illusions about the impoverishment of others by plunder”

Nobody is denying there has been plunder by Europeans. I am saying that high standards of living and increasing standards of living DO NOT require war, poverty and famine. You said something along the lines of “Just look at South America, then” (my paraphrase) but didn’t substantiate it.

@ Herbie :

I think Angrysoba has answered your question rather well.

Although he could have replied, as one of the Eminences of this blog recently said to me in another context, “do your own research”.

Angry

It’s good that you’re not now denying there has been plunder by Europeans, and I’m sure you’ll now agree, Americans too.

And obviously that will impoverish those who are its victims.

Jared Diamond’s argument only goes so far as explaining how Europeans and subsequently Americans managed to get their hands on superior weapons, the better with which to plunder. The vast majority of European and American wealth comes not from domestic agriculture, obviously, but from the exploitation of those with poorer weapons.

The south American experience is one of European exploitation in the first instance and latterly US exploitation through dictator, though they’re now making a go of self determination, with a few exceptions. There’s no serious commentator who disputes that. There are only arguments around whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Angry

So you’ve two instances which you claim support your case.

So your case now is that there are two posters who have said Zionism is responsible for something.

That’s certainly not what Habbakuk was claiming, nor indeed is it quite as comprehensive a claim as you’ve been leading us to believe.

It’s all very well making these grand statements about all posters here, but unless you can support them you’re just making a fool of yourself, as indeed habbakuk regularly does.

I’ve noticed that conspiracy theories are favoured by at least some of the Eminences of this blog and so I thought that I might contribute an occasional series bringing to your attention new, as yet undiscovered conspiracies which you would get your teeth into. Just for the sake of broadeninbg your horizons and understabding a little, because the Zionist world plot is beginning to get rather stale.

So here is N° 1 in this occasional series. It concerns the “horsemeat rather than beef” affair.

If you take into consideration when the news broke, and also the fact that there have apparently been cases in the fresh meat sector where horsemeat has been passed off as beef, it is clear that this is a conspiracy by the Roman Catholic church.

The purpose is to put off people from eating meat as a way of getting them to better observe the precepts of the Church regarding fasting during the Lent period. By turning people off meat, the hope is that fasting will be better observed. More fasting is but the tip of an iceberg intended to tughten the grip of the Church on humanity.

You will have noticed that the Roman Catholic Church has been rather silent about the affair, thus demonstrating its complicity. It is also significant that the Church is a major shareholder in the firms which have been identified as supplying the fraudulent meat.

The Eastern Orthodox Church is of course also involved : at least one of the firms supplying the fraudulent meat is Romanian, which everyone knows is the leading church in that country.

Feel free to comment. I shall reveal other conspiracies as and when circumstances permit.

Have a nice conspiracy day!

Another great up and standing projection of facts, just, thank you Craig, I hope you have reached some of the synapses present.

Never in the history of belly aches has a Hanoveranian had more global coverage than today.

Today is another good day to bury bad news. Maybe add a bladder problem by the Greek consort and we have enough welling up to start attacking Iran/Gaza/China without much notice here, the MSM will see to it.

@ Mary. Yes it was ‘immature and shallow’, it was heard loud and clear. I’m sure that William bellicose noises, raising the spectre of supplying arms not just hanky’s, on top of the training we have given to Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda mercenaries, will soon be drowned out by Osborne’s budget howls.

Open nomination for County council election is 25th. March-5th. April

You want change?
proved it!

@ Herbie :

“So you’ve two instances which you claim support your case”.

Sloppy reading leads to sloppy answers, Herbie : the instances DO support his case (delete the words “you claim”).

Just to chuck another morsel in your direction, how about Clark with his “it’s all the corporations”?

Now get on with your own research and stop being such a chump.

should read

you want change?
Provide it!

Hi Fred, when you recall your general charges you keep underpinning them by adding “abuse” to the end of the list. But teenagers playing horny webcam are not necessarily abusing each other, unless you are coming from the culture which believes they should all be chaste until courted by “the one” and married. Actually thats the ominous advice i grew up with, it didnt work and it gave me alot of anxiety and made me vulnerable.
You will disturb kids growing up now in what is an overly sexualised culture if you give them a superstitous dread of sexual misdeamer and term every mistake in terms of crime and abuse.
A kid in a position to privately webcam, already has the full breadth of online pornographic media to privately come to terms with – that is extremely confusing and hazardous to isolated childrens developement and nerves and mentality. The original crime is children can be isolated and unaware and have to secretly investigate their urges in an illicit and criminalised atmosphere, because the adults around them are themselves disturbed and repressed about sex, still telling them fairy tales which they dont believe themselves. The more sociable kids can get their understanding from their own peer culture, if their parents cant provide something functional. A peer culture can include dispersed virtual relationships and encounters.
If kids are clued up enough to get online unsupervised, they need to be clued up enough to determine whether and whom they would like to have a virtual wank with. (i have never done that btw, but have come across it and begrudge the idea of it)
If kids aren’t clued up its their cultures fault and they will have difficult experiences with other kids and adults online, and even moreso “away from keyboard” which will always be the least transient place.

Habbakuk

Two instances support a claim to two instances, though I expect greedy people like you always expect more for less.

They simply don’t support your recurring claim of “all” or “most” or variants thereof, which is of course pure paranoia on your part.

I note that in your post at 10.21am above, you’ve now reduced the scope of your claim to “at least some”. I believe this is one of those moments where an LOL is called for.

The boy wonder has gone to Mali to see what else he can do to aid the killing and maiming in North Africa and to meet ‘British personnel’.

~~~

Another name to go down in the book of British war crimes. ‘It did not go quite as I expected’ or words to that effect – Bliar Feb 2013

Al Sweady Inquiry Into Iraq War Abuse Claims

An inquiry is due to start into whether UK troops tortured and killed dozens of Iraqis after the Battle of Danny Boy in 2004.

http://news.sky.com/story/1059629/al-sweady-inquiry-into-iraq-war-abuse-claims

I’m going off at a complete tangent here but think this is worth a few comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/04/libyan-politician-uk-lawsuit-apology

How on earth are they going to answer this? By saying there’s an on-going police enquiry and they can’t comment, I suppose …
As an ex-diplomat Craig probably has more idea than most; although he himself doesn’t use double-speak or issue long official statements tha say absolutely zilch.

http://www.infowars.com/33-conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true-what-every-person-should-know/

Marxism now there is a political dogms of ideals.
Now Conservitism and liberalism with religion and yoi have most of it covered
Add Tribalism, Elitism and Altruism and Nepotism.

Now where is that honey.

I wish to correct this sentence I posted yesterday about O’Brien.

‘Rather bad timing with the conclave about to atart but better said than not. I always rather admired him for some of his outspokenness.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21649475#

I was under a misapprehension that he had made statements sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but apparently not from a search. The statements I can find are condemnatory of homosexual behaviour and same sex marriage. What a hypocrite he has turned out to have been.

He has left the country apparently. There will be a Vatican investigation into his activities but the findings will not be made public. What a surprise.

The final two paragraphs here are chilling.

‘The Obama administration’s hands are awash with the blood of countless innocent Syrians, blood that promises to spill into Lebanon and other neighboring states as the region becomes destabilized along ethnic-religious lines. The “popular revolution” in Syria has long ago been replaced by foreign mercenary terrorists financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Obama administration has overseen this entire process, while actively trying to organize a respectable “public face” for the rebels.

Obama’s recent strides in Syria end with a logical conclusion: U.S. direct military intervention. The stage is still being set, waiting until optimal conditions are met for a Libyan style U.S./NATO mass-bombing mission to finish off the Syrian government. In the eyes of Obama the resulting disaster will be worth the mess, since a non-compliant regime to the U.S. will have been toppled, thus clearing the path for the long term plan of crushing Iran.’

March 04, 2013
Will the U.S. Intervene with Troops?
Obama Wades Deeper Into Syria’s Morass
by SHAMUS COOKE

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/04/obama-wades-deeper-into-syrias-morass/

Apologies for my detatched ot.

Indigo:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/04/libyan-politician-uk-lawsuit-apology

” A Libyan politician who is suing the former foreign secretary Jack Straw and the British government for damages after being kidnapped and taken to one of Gaddafi’s jails has offered to settle the case for just £3, providing he also receives an unreserved apology. ”

A principled stand our politicians greatest anxiety!

Ex cardinal O’ Brian, of retiring and taking a back seat, but not of repentance and leaving the church in disgrace, forthwith to sit in a stone cubbyhole on the Isle of Arran facing west, and in contemplation.

During this mornings Radio 4 today, someone’s who’s name slipped my mind, argued that having sex with priests does not necessarily make him homosexual, a little bit like some Russian male attitudes that belief the same, which gives the whole debate a new leaning, so they say.

I’m off into the garden, spread some muck.

Contributor behind “Habbabkuk”, just to clarify; my beliefs about corporate power are roughly:

* that the power of corporations is overlooked and/or underestimated by the majority of people,

* that when people do consider corporate power, they tend to focus on the personalities of powerful people within corporations, and tend to overlook the structural influences that select such people within corporations,

* that some corporations have power comparable with nation states, and that some corporations are more powerful than some nation states.

* that lack of corporate transparency increases corporate power,

* that transnational corporations benefit from an ability to play nation states off against each other, for instance by moving their operations to countries where government control of corporations is less stringent,

* that in particular, corporate media must be regarded as integral to the world’s power structures due to its overwhelming effects upon voting patterns,

* that an ongoing process of corporate buy-out, take-over and merger are concentrating and thereby accentuating corporate power.

I suppose it is a sort of conspiracy theory, in the weak sense that a corporation is a non-hidden conspiracy. I don’t think that all the world’s problems are the fault of corporations, but I do think that corporate power is grossly underestimated.

I think that someone here recently posted a link to an article by or interview of Julian Assange, where he highlights corporate power and lack of transparency, and argues that revealing internal corporate dynamics and communication is necessary in order to study, understand and evaluate corporate power. Please post it again as I can’t find it.

I posted this a few days ago. This may be it.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/14835-resistance-from-a-cage-julian-assange-speaks-to-norwegian-journalist-eirik-vold

Here’s Bradley Manning’s full statement. Apologies if it’s already been posted;

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34146.htm

Gulnara doesn’t exactly get a good press in the West, nor does her father. If I were them I’d be a bit worried as to the longevity of their operation. It’s almost as if they’re being set up for a future fall.

Apparently she doesn’t like being called a “dictator’s daughter”.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/01/12/songs-of-a-tyrant-meet-googoosha-dictators-daughter-and-pop-star/

Herb: “Jared Diamond’s argument only goes so far as explaining how Europeans and subsequently Americans managed to get their hands on superior weapons, the better with which to plunder. The vast majority of European and American wealth comes not from domestic agriculture, obviously, but from the exploitation of those with poorer weapons.”

This is not what Diamond is arguing. You are giving a very simplistic account of the book, which you haven’t read, by giving a misleading account of an article you appear to have skimmed. Diamond explains the conditions under which certain societies became successful agricultural societies which then enabled these societies to diversify into other technologies. Weapons is only one example. These same conditions also made the Eurasians disease-ridden. The lack of the same conditions meant that Meso-Americans and others didn’t develop those technologies or resistance to disease.

But the point about his book, and the reason why I raised it, is that wealth and lifestyles is not zero-sum where one group becomes wealthy ONLY by dispossessing another. Think about this, in the early post-Pleistocene era there were far fewer people living nastier, more brutal and shorter lives than the majority of the seven billion alive today. How is it possible that more than hundreds of millions, maybe a billion or two of those are living pretty comfortable lives when 10,000 years ago the Earth couldn’t support those lifestyles? Clearly an expansion in actual wealth has occurred.

Angrysoba, an increase in available wealth has indeed occurred, and Guns, Germs and Steel is an excellent book which offers some well argued broad-brush theories as to how, and why such wealth has developed in some areas more then others.

But I think that Herbie is the wrong target. His argument that exploitation has also contributed to wealth inequality is an integral part of Jared Diamond’s arguments, though Diamond adds that some of the damaging effects were not intentional, but were accentuated by diseases that developed in domesticated animals and passed to human populations who subsequently became invaders.

Really, I think you should be pointing the finger at those entities, national and commercial, that continue to exploit, even though theories such as Diamond’s indicate that wealth can be expanded without resorting to exploitation.

Crab

I make no distinction between a boy saying have virtual sex with me or I post these pictures to your Facebook page and a boy saying have sex with me or I will beat you up.

In this case the judge seems to have made allowances for the boy’s age, I have no problems with that. I do have problems with allowances being made for the boy’s proximity.

Well said Clark in all three comments. You have a great command of the English language, if I may say so, which make your comments completely intelligible.

~~~

Like Nevermind I have been digging and spreading, not muck, but the contents of a compost bin. The hens are in their heaven with the worms. I try not to think of the connection between the worm input and the egg output. All good protein I suppose. It is so warm outside that I have had to come in to cool down!

Angry

I well understand the book’s argument in this respect, that the development of agriculture provides for specialization in other areas and so on.

There are problems with this beyond the discussion we’re having here, but let’s leave those aside for the moment.

I don’t disagree that there are marginal increases in wealth as a result, but they’re nothing compared to what came after conquest.

The problem for your argument is that agriculture and the surpluses it provides leading to the creation of other areas of work is not in itself an explanation for the massive wealth of Europe. That didn’t come until a number of those specializations allowed Europeans to develop weapons and technologies of exploitation abroad.

As Diamond says in, “2003 AFTERWORD: Guns, Germs, and Steel Today”:

“The Musket/Potato Wars illustrate the main process running through the history of the last 10,000 years: human groups with guns, germs, and steel, or with earlier technological and military advantages, spreading at the expense of other groups, until either the latter groups became replaced or everyone came to share the new advantages. Recent history furnishes innumerable examples as Europeans expanded to other continents. In many places the non-European locals never got a chance to acquire guns and ended up losing their lives or their freedom”.

Ultimately that’s what produces real wealth.

If you look at the timeline of wealth increase in Europe you’ll see that it explodes as conquest takes off. That’s not even a controversial point at all.

And if we take it right up to the present day it’s not hard to work out that the standard of living in the West is unsustainable other than by continuing conquest and plunder. That process has been ongoing and continuing in Europe and America for hundreds of years.

==============================================

Incidently, and this isn’t a criticism of Diamond, it’s clear too that Ferguson’s efforts owe much to Diamond’s work.

The IDF shake hands with Ku Klux Klan lookalike settlers dressed in white sheets.

Jonathan Cook from the belly of the beast.

http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1362395650.html