My last post did not signal a return to blogging but rather explained why I need a few days’ break. But I have to share with you my joy at the release of the Brazilian edition of Murder in Samarkand, translated from the US edition and entitled Diplomacia Suja.
This is the first foreign language edition and I am childishly excited to hold it in my hands. I was actually jumping up and down a few minutes ago. There seems something magical about seeing your work in a tongue which is mysterious to you. Many thanks to Companhia Das Letras and especially to the translator, Berilo Vargas, whom I am yet to meet.
http://www.companhiadasletras.com.br/detalhe.php?codigo=12648
Good progress is being made on a Turkish translation.
The crescendo of cries of “national security” are such obvious nonsense. The ‘enemy’ *already know* all this stuff, they live there and experience it first-hand. This is about what the global public are allowed to know.
‘as if they expected Iran to just sit put and take it as it comes.’
Are we still talking about Wikileaks and if do, did you mean Afghanistan?
Live feed from the Frontline Club just ceased.
I was eulogising about the revelations that Iran has supported the Taliban with various measures and that some today make a big deal out of it trying to avert from their failings.
Versus the fact that the US has been instigating this by their own actions in Iran.
in a nutshell.
Personally I have no doubt that many of my moral judgements are informed by the Christian teaching I received from good people as a child.
I don’t think hostility towards religious belief is necessary.
Please take a moment to sign a petition to release the Wikileaks whistle-blower.
Remember, a GI has risked imprisonment to expose the truth, hoping the truth could stop the war crimes. Currently the Pentagon is holding Specialist Bradley Manning in custody, reportedly in Kuwait, suspected of the leak. If Manning did this, he is not a traitor but a hero to humanity. That these cables are public can help end the war.
http://www.iacenter.org/iraq/freebradleymanning/
Cheers
Craig,
well put. I found some of the comments to Solomon Adeleye overly abrasive. I had a quick look at his website and find a confusing mixture of contradictory material there. I found all the Israeli flags particularly worrying. Maybe a former commenter (whom I shall not name for fear of his reappearance) has made some here a bit over defensive.
Mark Golding,
thanks for the link; I’ve signed.
ok, sorry.
Clark and Mark I just signed and within seconds I had five notices of returned mail from five different sources and in my spam another from an e-mail address beginning mod@ and ending in .eg
wtf????? Have you had the same?
Are we being monitored/censored?
Somebody,
I had something similar. I’d signed the “Free Bradley Manning” petition, and got delivery failures from various places that the petition e-mail had been sent to. I don’t think it’s a problem. It looks as though several of the target Inboxes were either overloaded (by petition responses?) or were out of date and already deactivated. I’d say it’s poor design by lacenter.org. They should have compiled signatures and sent one e-mail to each target, but instead sent an e-mail for each person that signed.
Comrades,
I might have sounded a little harsh on our sermonising Solomon. After all, he only told me the following, by way of quotation, that:
—-
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction”
“He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction.”
“A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.”
With you Glenn. It was the more than a hint of Christian Zionism that got me PLUS the copying of Obomber’s slogans.
All dangerous junk.
This is an unusually named website on which to find a potted history of the politics behind the war in Afghanistan. I have not heard of the author before who is a ‘retired teacher’
http://airlinesearchengine.net/sherman-debrosse-pipeline-politics-and-the-afghanistan-war
Sherman DeBrosse : Pipeline Politics and the Afghanistan War
July 26th, 2010
Worth all the blood?
The Trans Afghanistan Pipeline
Solomon Adeleye’s first few comments here were to congratulate Craig on his book being translated. I second them.
The “website” link that this site makes possible in a signature is for pointing to peoples’ websites. Not everything that anyone might say on their websites is guaranteed to have any relevance here. To pick fights over anything that can be found on them makes this blog into collateral damage, treats it as less important than some other agenda. It’s not like he brought it up, until attacked.
I’m more interested in Brazil, then maybe Turkey; both countries that seem to be noticeably developing their own independent views of the state of things (and making them stick), so perhaps particularly helpful for them to hear that “we” are not a monolith.
Glenn,
I apologise to you. I hadn’t looked up the biblical references. I took a quick look at Solomon Adeleye’s site, and decided not to try to understand it.
The trouble with ‘holy’ books is that people treat them as ‘holy’. They contain very diverse material, but people ignore or forget that they’re making a choice from that material – after all, if it’s all ‘God’s Word’, they don’t need to seriously analyze how they use it, right? Wrong.
The way to change such people’s minds is to quote appropriate biblical passages; any other approach leads to them dismissing one’s argument as ‘man’s word vs God’s’. Personally I can’t be bothered to fish through the Bible for the quotes I’d need; that sort of argument is just not what I visit this site for. But maybe with the apparently increasing use of ‘holy’ material to justify political positions, I should start reading the Bible again.
Many of us here probably bear a grudge against Christianity due to it’s influence over us in our early years; this certainly applies to me. But it would be inconsistent of us to accept or gloss over comments with an Islamic flavour while criticising Christian comments as being superstitious nonsense.
I suppose my point is that ‘religious’ arguments should be engaged on the basis of their morality rather than the validity or otherwise of the religion itself. I couldn’t easily determine the moral direction of Solomon Adeleye’s site, but he may have a worrying confusion between the modern state if Israel and the biblical ‘Twelve Tribes’.
Of course, such confusion is deliberately cultivated for political purposes by the hypocritical Israeli state. But the powerful have always used religious beliefs to manipulate people. That is exactly what Jesus of Nazareth fought against, what got him executed, and why the story of his life and death is so powerful and important.
My typo, 5th para. 11:56 above:
“…modern state OF Israel”.
Glenn,
Somebody,
remember that not everyone who accepts a concept is necessarily a perpetrator. Christian Zionism is on the one hand a belief, and on the other a projected propaganda. Unsurprisingly, some people fall under the influence of such propaganda.
Things were so much simpler in Jesus’ time; the Moneychangers in the Temple were in public sight. Nowadays corporate immorality is hidden behind corporate secrecy, and the corporate mainstream media enables the projection of ‘public images’ that are highly misleading. There are still masses of people that see Obama as a figure of hope, and have little understanding of the power structure within which he is embedded.
So what was the purpose of linking to that website other than to give us his messages?
WAS VICTORIA EXORCISED BY BEATING?
By 19 February 2000 Victoria had become very ill. Kouao took Victoria with her to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God on Seven Sisters Road. Kouao spoke to the minister (Pastor Lima) and told him of the problems she was having with Victoria, particularly with her incontinence. Pastor Lima expressed the view that Victoria was possessed by an evil spirit and advised Kouao to bring Victoria back to the church a week
later. During the week Kouao telephoned the Pastor and reported that Victoria’s behaviour and incontinence was improving. However, later in the week Kouao returned to the church with Victoria where Pastor Lima advised them to go to hospital and called a minicab.
The minicab driver took Victoria and Kouao to the nearby Tottenham Ambulance Station. Victoria was then taken by ambulance to North Middlesex hospital and admitted to casualty. Her temperature on arrival was 27 degrees Celsius (compared with a normal temperature of 36-37C), and attempts to warm her were unsuccessful. The paediatric consultant believed that Victoria needed specialist care, and a place was found for her at St
Mary’s Hospital Paddington. Victoria was transferred to St Mary’s with severe hypothermia and multi-system failure. Her respiratory, cardiac and renal systems all began to shut down and Victoria went into cardiac arrest. Attempts at cardio-pulmonary resuscitation failed and Victoria was declared dead at 3.15 pm on 25 February 2000.
Ironically, this was the very day that Haringey Social Services formally closed her case.
Police covert investigation of a number of churches has demonstrated certain priests carry out acts of “deliverance” for their clients from among their church audience and pocket large sums of money.
One of the victims has reported being sexually abused 21 times at the age of 18 as a guarantee that her family is freed from a curse that caused them problems with another woman saying her husband committed suicide after a London church pastor told him his wife and son were witches.
Bishop Joe Aldred, secretry of minority ethnic Christian affairs at Churches Together in England has criticized the current trend of giving license to people to establish their churches saying “at the moment you can set up a church anywhere, anytime”.
He said “in the same way we wouldn’t tolerate somebody setting themselves up as a lawyer or surgeon without proper training and regulation, we shouldn’t expose the souls of people to anybody who happens to think they can set up a church”.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmhealth/570/570.pdf
I am not saying that Solomon’s site condones or advocates these superstitions.
The case of Victoria Climbie was tragic as is the case with Khyra Ishaq. The review into her death was released this morning. All agencies failed according to Gove. It will be be interesting to see what happens when his ConDems have demolished what is left of our society and the social services.
I see that Khyra Ishaq’s stepfather thought that she too was possessed.
http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2010/02/09/khyra-ishaq-trial-she-was-possessed-by-evil-spirit-stepdad-97319-25790055/
Why babies children are still dying from treatable sanitary diseases in Iraq
Billions of dollars of reconstruction funds have gone missing in Iraq with the US Defense Department saying it no record of how the money was spent.
A newly released audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction suggests that the Pentagon is unable to properly account for USD 8.7 billion out of USD 9.1 billion in Iraqi oil revenue entrusted to it between 2004 and 2007.
Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction blames poor record-keeping and lax oversight for the loss.
“Weak oversight is directly correlated to increased numbers of cases of theft and abuse, with the majority of convictions to date being traceable to the 2003-2004 time-frame where accounting practices were weakest,” he said in an e-mail, according to a Washington Post report on Tuesday.
Much of the money which came from the sale of Iraqi oil and gas were earmarked for reconstruction projects.
The report also said the US military continues to hold over 34 million dollars of the fund, even though it was required to return it to the Iraqi government in 2007.
BBC Panorama video
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7480000/newsid_7484100/7484114.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&ms3=6&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=2
Return the MONEY you ‘get rich quick’ bastards!
“CONSERVATIVE PARTY MEMBERS THAT VOTED TO MURDER, MAIM & GENETICALLY IMPAIR (DEPLETED URANIUM) INNOCENT CHILDREN BY AN ILLEGAL INVASION & WAR AGAINST THE SOVEREIGN COUNTRY IRAQ ”
But that wasn’t what they voted for. What they voted for was continuance of their privileged and protected position in society, their perks and pensions, their comfortable life, and the probable entitlement of their children to the same asymmetrical share of the world’s bounty. It is unlikely to have crossed their minds, even momentarily, that their actions might have tragic consequences for others.
From a purely Machiavellian point of view, they are quite right. Violence to others is abstract and unreal, decently concealed by a civilised and sensitive media. Until the bullets are shattering plaster from their own walls they will remain an unimportant abstraction.
Proverbs 17:28
Proverbs 21:23
Finally Brothers, The Bible Says In
Proverbs 30:5-6
“Every Word Of God Is FLAWLESS; He Is A Shield To Those Who Take Refuge In Him. Do Not Add To His Words Or He Will Rebuke You And Prove You A Liar”
We Should All Behave In A Mature Way,
We Should Respect Our Beliefs
We Should Stop Using Abusive Words Especially Against The Pope.
We Should Agree To Disagree, And Stop Hating Christians
What I Always Say Is That “Christianity Is A Way Of Life” Its Not Religion”.
“Christianity” Has Modeled Morality, Respect, Above All “Love” Into My Life.
I Give Thanks To God For That, I Am Not Here To Convert Anyone.
If I Am Allowed, I Am Here To Share The Love Of God, And:
= To Listen To A Great Man Who Courageously Stood Against Injustice, Irrespective Of The Odds Against Him.
= To Listen To A Great Man Who Single-Handedly Has Done A Lot For Africa, Asking For Nothing In Return.
Jesus Says “You Will Know A Man By His Fruit”.
Craig Murray Is That Man! He Is A Man Of Distinction.
God Bless All
I see there is a link to ‘Pastor John Hagee’ on the above site. A truly evil man…
http://solomonadeleye.blogspot.com/2009/06/pastor-john-hagees-scripture-of-week.html
and mad…
Hagee strongly and vocally supports an American-Israeli pre-emptive military strike on Iran.[21][22][23]
See personal beliefs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagee
Jesus would have cast out all the lot of you.
Heh you 911 conspiracy nuts – doesn’t the continuing existence of Wikileaks pretty much refute every single crazy claim you nutjobs have been making for years?
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/features/wanted-by-the-cia-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-14880073.html#
You am de Zionist trollboi
“You am de Zionist trollboi”
The responses to my query will not get any better.
Somebody,
the Wikipedia article you linked to cites anti-Catholicism from John Hagee, yet Solomon Adeleye says “We Should Respect (all?) Our Beliefs”, “We Should Agree To Disagree”, and “We Should Stop Using Abusive Words Especially Against The Pope”.
I point this out in support of my earlier assertion that Solomon Adeleye is more confused than evil, and has trusted some charismatic people that are unworthy.
I suspect that Solomon Adeleye has not seen Israel’s inhumanity clearly. But you, Somebody, should not be surprised at this, as it is often yourself that points out how widespread and pervasive the Israeli propaganda is.
Ah, so Michael Petek is no longer with us
And Solomon Adeleye hath come among us!
Hail to the glorious power of the Logos!
Hail to the wondrous and glittering range of holy trollery!
Send in the clowns and the spambots and possibly even the dingbats!
And may God (and all the Gods and Goddesses and Demons and Sprites and Nymphs, especially the Nymphs) bless you all!
And let us bless also the Dyson vacuum-cleaner Mark IVa, Model 98630
Solomon Adeleyo is the reincarnation of St Lawrence de Laputa (post-Crucifixion)
And Neil (Mod-the-Rod-the-Northern-Soul) Woof-woof Barker
And the Archangel Mikhail Petek
And the legions of the Great Cerberus
And the Hooded Domini Canis
And know this: that Holy Angel Dust will descendeth ‘pon thee and will maketh thine arm shineth liken e’en unto the Day of the Dome!
Be real!
Get mobile ‘phone!
Be anthropophagy!
Eat Solomon Adeleyo!
Weyo Weyo Weyo!
Now let WE the Chosen-wosen
Post a thousand word post
That shall be a spear
Of Gibber
And Jabber
And Nothing whatsoever to do with
The Spirit or the Matter at hand
Not even samba
Or rumba
Or Mister Nascimento
Or Misses Pentimento
Or Christiano Ronaldo
Or the amazing Amazon anacondas
But yes we can!
Sham-the-lamb
And bam the man!
And so…
Curly-wurly
And verily, merrily, sherrily
Shall We be saved!
Aye
Congratulations, Craig, on having your powerful and groundbreaking book published in Brazil, one of the largest countries on the planet.
Solomon Adeleye,
I really do recommend that you read the Wikipedia article about John Hagee that Somebody links to. John Hagee seems very unchristian.
Suhayl Saadi,
good to hear from you. Have you heard Brian Eno’s ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’? The powerful rhythms of religious and evangelical language illustrated by setting them within music.