I am becoming quite fond of my little corner of Schiphol airport. I have put up my Christmas cards and a few bits of tinsel. I now have a boarding card for the 0800 to Manchester. This is the sixth boarding card I have had. It is very hard to understand why, time after time, they don’t know a flight is cancelled until some time after it was due to leave and all the passengers have queued at the gate for hours.
Of course, Manchester is a lot further from Ramsgate than Schiphol is, so even if the flight atually goes, this represents rather dubious progress.
Happy New Year everybody.
Remarkably, KLM delivered my lost luggage, including my laptop, at 9.30 pm on New Year’s Eve. At that time a pretty lively party was already in full swing,much improved by the presence of a great many beautiful young women, mostly from Latvia. I am not sure why; my life as ever consists of a bewildering succession of chance encounters with really nice people. I am in the fortunate position of being able to say that Nadira was the most lovely of all, without indulging in dutiful hyperbole.
It was an extremely happy Christmas. Having my mum, both my brothers and all my three chidren together was as great as it was rare.
We have been through the laptop in lost luggage discussion before. The problem is that my shoulders dislocate at the drop of a hat, and I travel without hand luggage to avoid an accident.
2011 is going to be a very important year for me. particularly the first quarter. A number of crucial events are going either to set me up financially for the rest of my life, or result in real distress and failure. At present I have reason to be very optimistic. I am also very absorbed in my life of Alexander Burnes, which I hope will help establish a serious academic reputation.
The Portuguese edition of Murder in Samarkand has sold unexpectedly well in Brazil. The translation of the Turkish edition has just been finished.
I hope to do a Wikileaks retrospective in the next couple of days. Just a quick thought on the case of the poor young gardener in Bristol. Of the Jill Dando case, long before Barry Bulsara’s succesful appeal I blogged that this appeared to be a miscarriage of justice in which the police had fitted up the local weirdo.
Despite not being enamoured of landlords in general, I fear the same dynamic is at work in Bristol, albeit Chris Jefferies is much more intellectually capable than Bulsara. My instinct is that the police have picked up on Jefferies for being camper than a boy scout jamboree and archer than Trajan.
Jefferies’ release on bail has me worried that there was nothing against him other than the “He’s a weird one, guv” instinct of some not very bright cop. The case needs to be closely watched as history shows that the powers of the police to make the evidence fit the suspect are considerable.
Oh no, larry is still here.
I am not a fan of RAWA, and I wasn’t refering to them when I said girl’s schools existed.
I know people personally who set up girl’s schools there during the Taliban.
And I know medical Universities in Afghanistan have more female students than males during the taliban.
This is a fact, meaning the propagander about Afghan girls being able to go to school for the first time are lies.
The reason why education is so bad there is poverty and war, bombs and mines. People are too busy starving and dying to study. So White people going over there, killing and starving a lot more people isn’t the way to get more girls in to school.
technicolour at 5:52pm: Exactly.
jon
I dont know who that Naomi is.
What I was really refering to was the imperialist mentality.
Of brown people needing superior white people to liberate lesser races from themselves. That helpless brown females, need whites to come rushing to their resque to save them from their evil relatives. The mentality that states brown women are to thick, too ignorant to realise their own way of life is primitive. The helpless brown females are too ignorant to realise they are being oppressed by the way they dress, so they need whites to come to their rescue and kill their evil male family members who force them to dress in ways different from white people. They need white people to tear of their vails, because helpless brown women are to weak to do it for themselves, and then tear of more of their clothes and kill more brown men until one day Brown become liberated enough to dress as the whites do, or should that be undressed as whites?
Modern war kills mostly women and children. Therefore, by definition, anyone who supports war cannot be feminist.
No, the trolls posting as ‘whatever’ and ‘whatever’ don’t give a monkey’s about women or about justice. They just want to blow the trumpet for the MI complex and specifically here to get at Craig Murray.
Hey technicolour:
No, I didn’t mean that at all. I was responding to AB’s position that political correctness has carried out an unwitting elite agenda, and that the deliberate teaching of equality is counterproductive to fighting that agenda. @tungsten agreed with the OP, asserting that this teaching was “foisting political agendas” onto children.
I disagreed, and in order to break down what equalities AB was referring to, I went through race, gender and sexuality in turn. The counter-position to gender equality is to belief that genders have pre-assigned roles, or that one should be subservient (or is inferior to) the other. So I posited that *if* the traditional/sexist role assigned to women was the natural order of things, it would happen of its own accord. It was devil’s advocacy, I guess – I had wondered if the OP was in favour of teaching the sexist view in schools!
Sadly I don’t have mod tools on my side, but I live in reasonable hope. Still, things seem to have calmed down recently.
Feminists are confused.
In the past they had a purpuse because many white countries denied white women a lot of rights. Once white countries gave white women those rights, feminists started running around everywhere in a confused state not knowing what they should be calling for.
I use the word white, because many Non-white countries have always given women those rights.
So when they say they need to invade nations to liberate brown women from brown men, we need to tell them to go liberate themselves.
And we will liberate ourselves.
Suhayl I’m thinking about writing a story, in a type of wiki leaks fashion.
But I really think I can’t be bothered because i am too lazy.
The women for justice are an obvious wind up and if they are not then they are sad. As for the poor tragic girl killed I agree with craig and I know the police love to arrest witnesses it makes it easier for them. And ticks the right boxes. Can you imagine what its like to have an arrest on your record for murder regardless if you did it or not? I dont know enough about the Soham case to comment but as a result of it all arrests are recorded regardless of conviction and will haunt you for the rest of your life. Big Brother is watching you!
“things seem to have calmed down”: yes, and often thanks to you, cheers, Jon.
(the OP? otherwise, thanks for clarifying!)
“No, just recognising the power dynamic behind one particular version.”
Yes, just like the power dynamic behind the theory of evolution. For instance, 99% of biologists subscribe to evolution as the best explanation for the origin of species.
But I suppose you would also want to give equal time to the creationist explanation.
steve it is true feminists are very sad people.
It all starts with facial hair.
When they start getting it, they notice males are not intrusted in them. So then they start blaiming men, all men.
They start hating men, and becoming very bitter and twisted.
Have you ever seen a happy feminist?
No, why?
Because they are all bitter and twisted.
Have you ever seen a femists wearing a T-shirt with “This is what a feminist looks like”, written on it?
Not very pretty, ehh?
And generally, I already knew that is what they look like before I read the T-Shirt, the mustach gave it away.
What people must realise is women can get laser on the NHS. A lot of people don’t know this, and think it isn’t free but it is. And if you see a young lady with a mustach who has not become bitter and twisted yet, please tell her to speak to her GP about it before it becomes too late and she becomes a bitter twisted feminist.
“.. By attacking both[Iraq, Afghanistan] the West has increased the discrimination and violence it claims to hate. But everyone knows that, just as they all know the West funded the original Taliban extremists, in the guise of Hesb i Islami, instead of the moderate mujahedeen.
Totally agree Tech and the West has now become so ‘sensitised’ to allegations of torture and civilian deaths it now extensively employs ‘sub-contracted’ torture and assassinations according to Iranian intelligence:
Iranian ‘scientist’ Shahram Amiri, was a double agent, whose role was to entice abduction by U.S. secret service agents while in Saudi.
He successfully planned to get close to the Americans by professing knowledge on Iran’s nuclear program. A preplanned role was that he would be transferred to the United States for questioning by the CIA and US Secret Service.
Amiri in fact contacted the United States during his trip to Saudi Arabia with the coordination of Iranian secret services. After false confessions while being tortured, U.S. secret agents transferred him to the United States, thinking he would be of value.
Intense questioning while being observed by nuclear experts in America confirmed he had NO important nuclear information and was eventually allowed to return to Iran as widely reported.
During his stay in the United States he remained in contact with Iran’s secret services vis a Farsi blog site.
Iran has now gained first-hand knowledge of U.S. interrogation methods, information contained in questioning about Iran’s nuclear program and confirmation of continuing torture using Saudi secret service agents.
Saudi torture:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7407186
The idea that you people have got some God-given right to point at others who don’t share your politically illiterate PC agenda and call them “racist” or “anti-semite” is risible.
You humourless arseholes have got some bloody nerve.
You know fuck all re-black culture or black aesthetics and think you can denounce anybody who does as a racist-get a life you sad fucks!
Lay off, steelback/apostate/freeborn/tungsten! You do yourself no good when you lash out and call people names like that. If Jon ends up moderating, that kind of thing is a good reason to ban you.
I see Craig has posted again and said nothing about registration/moderation.
I’d like to comment on the “Juniper” creation. I read it the first time and smiled. I even said here that it made me smile. It seemed to me to be a lilting rendition of an accent and style of speech that I love. People may forget that so-called Irish and so-called Scottish accents are rendered all over the web, generally very badly, and I don’t see many folk talking about racism in regard to those. When I got online, in the year 2000, I could not find one e-card for St Patrick’s Day that didn’t include drunken leprechauns and clutches of shamrock liberally sprinkled with Bejaysuses and Begorrahs (neither of which we say, by the way.) It took some time for the Celtic crosses and Cliffs of Moher etc to appear, often from Irish sites. But the net is littered with “Irish jokes” where one sees Hiberno-English written very badly by people who know no better. If I see one that’s well done, it’s a relief.
Back to Juniper: I may not be the best person to judge, but Juniper seemed to me to be taking the piss out of Larry, in a fairly authentic idiom which I found both lilting and amusing. Racism didn’t occur to me. (New Orleans did.)
My NON-racism is unquestioned and unquestionable. For good measure, I am part of what is probably the most multi-racial, multi-cultural, mult-coloured family in my city. And yes, since Islam comes up here so often, I have Muslim relatives too. By processes of both adoption and marriage (in different generations), we have every skin shade under the sun in our family, and so many (originating) nationalities you wouldn’t believe. So, is Juniper racist, while all those Begorrahs and Bejaysuses are not? Or, if a comedian is on-stange and wants to portray, say, an Iranian talking to an Irishman in the middle of New Orleans, is he not allowed to use any accents?
I suppose it boils down to Juniper’s motivation. But I don’t believe one can guess at that, necessarily. (If on the other hand, I missed something in the text that was obviously racist, please point it out to me.)
dreoilin
That’s it! I’m a novelist with a knack for authentic dialect voices after all!
I’m so relieved at least you have got a sense of humour.
The original idea was to have Juniper set up home with Larry’s wife while he was looking after one of Larry Silverstein’s brothels. Of course Juniper drank all Larry’s liquor while he was away!
Think I need to work on the narrative a bit. It’s probably a little unsavoury currently,n’est pas?
Top of the Year to you….begorrah!
Alan Campbell
Perhaps, like Craig, you are still aspiring to be in the David Cameron world of English privelege and Zionist connections. As an effete public school toff, he can always rely on Zionist gangsters to reassure him when he goes outside his comfort zone, with racist bigots from Southport comprehensives.
Blair is now living in Israel after seeing the reality of where those Zionist friends directed him. Maybe Gordon Brown will receive a directorship of one of their banks for his loyal support.
I heard politicians on Radio 4 blathering today about the deficit that has been run up. It was not run up by New Labour, it was run up by the banks. Of course Gordon Brown was ultimately responsible for allowing himself to be conned. We were all ultimately responsible for marrying the shite that used to be our wives.
I rejected what you aspire to. I have the same right in this country as you do, of free speech, which is a very great priveledge. I also have made it clear that I believe Muslim clerics to be as Macchiavellian as Christian and Jewish.
You maybe think that everyone who goes to a public school turns out to be like Nick Clegg? You sell the country to the Tories and their Zionist Banking friends and then claim you are achieving Liberal policies?
If you knew what these scum were really like, you would not be siding with the Zionists, by attacking Islam. You would be running towards Islam as the only viable force of commonsense in a world of UK politics where three main parties, with the same policies, all lost at the last election, because the voters were saying, A plague on all your houses.
When there is a vacuum of democratic authority, you have to be careful where you lend your support. Politics is a kind of multi-partied orgy, in which all parties are equally self-seeking. For all I know the British and US armies are shagging the Taliban and Muslim scholars want to destroy their secular governments using Western force. Who knows what games all the players are playing.
I defend my religion against insulting bigotry, but you are welcome to criticise the Muslims, if there is something specific you think they may be doing wrong.
Read “applied” not “allied”
Larry,
You are a lawyer – right.
Just consider English jurisprudence as allied under the European Convention on Human Rights.
In reply to “Mr. Barnett:
How silly it is for you to attempt to graft common law legal concepts onto the Swedish legal system.”
No, Courtenay, the ECHR didn’t in any way meld the respective European legal systems, particularly in respect of burden of proof issues in rape cases.
We were no match for their untamed wit…
nah, dreoilin, that’s not you. you wouldn’t have found ‘juniper’ ‘funny’
give it a rest boys. go and write that novel instead?
Jon
you say,
“I see Suhayl as entirely well motivated, and his persistence comes from – I think – a notion that you harbour ideas of racialism or genetics, but prefer to be coy about them.”
Yeah, he’s motivated by his “notions”: sheer prejudice, in other words, which is why this will be my last post here. A decision which, it is quite clear from Dr.Saadi’s most recent comments about me conforms to his desire.
“Try not to take offence at this, as you have done in the past!”
Why not? The son of a bitch repeatedly insults me.
And he is an Aglophobic racist who very warmly encouraged contributions from the lunatic Avatar Singh who both on this web site and elsewhere repeatedly called for murder and genocide of the “Anglosaxon bastards.”
Goes perfectly with Dr. Saadi’s whining about six million dead brown people murdered by white Europeans. That’s just stirring race hatred, as if there never was violence in the world except perpetrated by white people against colored people. (If you think that take a look at the several dozen wars that are actually taking place now (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/28/next_years_wars?page=full)).
You say,
“My thesis is that there is a percentage of the human population, which I understand to be about 5%, who are naturally/genetically gay.”
You could be right. Several percent at least have X-Y chromosome abnormalities. But what has this to do with indoctrination by the state?
“My liberal perspective leads me to believe that such persons are sound of mind and rational, consenting adults, and so no law can be proposed to limit this behaviour.”
My sentiment, exactly, as long as they “don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses,” as Mrs. Patrick Campbell is supposed to have said. But again, this has nothing to do with indoctrination. The liberal live and let live attitude to homosexuality prevailed in England long before it was thought fit to teach five-year-olds about sex or what their attitude toward it should be.
But to a realist, it is clear that the democratic age is over. A new feudalism is emerging and the politically correct, people like Dr. Saadi and his co-activist, Technicolor, will prosper, while decent rational people are put in their places. Condemned without trial or the presentation of evidence as bigots, racists and homophobes.
You say,
“Furthermore, yes, I am in favour of teaching tolerance, since where this isn’t talked about at all, bigotry and homophobia grow naturally.”
I am certainly not in favor of teaching intolerance, but I question what business the state has in teaching morals. And what credibility does the state have?
Moral education used to be a matter for families and churches, and for schools only insofar as they presented the teachings of the state church, i.e., the precepts of Christianity. I don’t recall that Jesus was a homophobe or an advocate of intolerance for sinners. And I see nothing but harm from substituting the ethics of Tony Blair, Jack Straw and a bunch of sociology-trained “educators” for the teachings of the state church.
You ask
“Was Blairism fascist?”
and conclude
“Not in the same way as C20th facism, if we’re referring to symbols of outright propaganda, deliberate generation of obedient political hysteria, police thuggery, state liquidations and disappearances, and so forth!”
Fascism in the 20’s and 30’s did not develop overnight. Blair like Mussolini and Hitler before him made the government subservient to the corporate interest. That was the first step, which cemented the anti-democratic forces in power.
I don’t know what you mean by the “symbols of outright propaganda” but if your talking about militias and swastikas, obviously, no modern fascist is going to goose-step around like a Brown Shirt. That’s last century’s fashion. In fact what better camouflage is there for a modern fascist than to label all enemies as Hitler’s and fascists?
And techniques of propaganda have advanced a long way in the last 60 years, so there’s no need now for rallies and hysteria. The message is beamed directly into your living room day after day, via the Tel, video games, Hollywood crap on DVD.
But the really serious business of brainwashing takes place in the schools and universities. Here most of the population are under the tutelage of the state for 12, 16 20 years. If you cannot make serfs of them during that time, what kind of weak regime do you have?
I don’t really need to mention 9/11 or 7/7, subjects that gutless radical Dr. Saadi won’t touch with a barge pole.
As for police thuggery, we see it regularly: Ian Tomlinson, the guy they dragged out of his wheelchair, agent provocateurs at public demonstrations (www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow).
As for liquidations, you’ve had those from at least as early as Margaret Thatcher’s government (www.youtube.com/watch?v=naOVuaWIEvA). Then there was David Kelly. And in America, of course, assassination is official.
You say
“The danger of calling someone a fascist of course is that it obeys Godwin’s Law: it is generally understood that Nazi is being meant.”
Well I cannot help that. If I call someone a fascist, I mean that they are a fascist: someone who believes it is the role of the state to create the nation; an opponent of democracy; a proponent of universal indoctrination; a friend of oligarchs and plutocrats, e.g.,
Tony Blair, George Bush.
Finally: yes, I do think there is a role for the state to try to expose people to ideas to get them to live in harmony.
There was no non-religious indoctrination when I was at school in England and folks lived far more harmoniously than they do now. The murder rate was 50 a year, there was near universal tolerance of homosexuals — who were expected to act with decorum, not aggressively parade their diffences in public, and of just about everyone else who acted in a sane and decent way.
You say.
“Finally: yes, I do think there is a role for the state to try to expose people to ideas to get them to live in harmony. In a perfect democracy, of course, this would be subject to the will of the people.”
But for now it’s the will of the government and don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
You say, The … the monarchy and the church, are in my view quite backwards on these things, and have shown themselves repeatedly to be motivated by self-interest, access to political power and empowered by traditional forms of discrimination.”
You think Jack Straw is not a self-serving bastard. LOL. Everyone is self-serving. But the more you concentrate power in the hands of the already powerful, the more devastating the damage they cause is likely to be.
You say,
“I don’t think you’re a paid agent, by the way!”
Well thanks very much. And I don’t think you’re a serial rapist.
So the Taliban are defenders of women’s rights now? Jesus, you are delusional. Tell that to the young lady who had her nose cut off for going to school. I’d also recommend a viewing of the Afghan film “Osama”.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D00EFDF103BF935A35751C0A9629C8B63
this person lies about another poster, and lies again:
“And he is an Aglophobic (sic) racist who very warmly encouraged contributions from the lunatic Avatar Singh”
why would anyone do that?
why would anyone put up with it?
Feminists and people who strangle women are about the same category of criminal, in my opinion. Why? Because feminists fuck up their children by reversing common morality and justice. Unfortunately, for a vast majority of divorced men the law is on their side. A woman has only got to tell the police that her husband who objects to her constant unfaithfulness is a violent pervert and that’s the last chance he gets to protect his children from the real perverts who live with his ex and children again.
@arsalan – I have quite a bit of facial hair, and I am a perfectly happy feminist. I don’t blame men, nor hate them.
Come to think of it, I’ve no intention of ‘getting laser’ on my moustache, nor procuring a T-shirt that reads “This is what a feminist looks like”. You reckon I should?
@technicolour – OP, it’s a discussion forum term. Original Poster, i.e. someone who started a new thread/topic.
@AB – your tone is needlessly aggressive. I said I didn’t think you were a paid agent, because I thought Clark had judged you unfairly, and – heh! – it was meant to be humorous and light-hearted. It didn’t cheer you up, then?
= sigh =
Sometimes this board isn’t as much fun as it used to be.
@jon
Well, each to there own. I heard somewhere that in South India it is seen as very attractive?
T-Shirt? Bad idea!
@alan
You do know that, Afghanistan is under American rule now don’t you?
And the lady was carved up by American puppets don’t you?
So that your lady having her face carved up is an example of what the American brang not of how Afghanistan was before white people came to save poor brown females.
Alan Campbell
I utterly condemn the crime you mentioned. Do you think it is part of Islam to intimidate practising Muslims by violent crime? The Taliban cannot even claim that this was done by wrongdoers in their name.
They cannot write it down to collateral damage of a war situation either.
So who created this appalling situation? The Taliban originated from a geo-political war, invasion by the USSR which the British had been fantasising about for generations, and which they finally achieved in the 1980s through their Zionist connections. Ideally, Jihad is the culmination of self-correction and explanation to your opponents of the meaning of Islam. Both the conflict in Palestine and Afghanistan have been converted by the enemies into Islam into geo-political conflicts. That might sound like the wrong kind of snow argument.
The Taliban are engaged in a war of defense, a Jihad against first the invasion by our forces on the pretext of the false-flag 9/11 operation. The fitna, or chaos of war, that has ensued, was not originated by them.
Secondly, the ancient colonial trick was used by the British in India to create war in order to identify and murder the Muslims who take up their defence against you. The weakened rump of the Muslim population can then easily be diverted from real Islam to Sufism, capitalism or nationalism.
What has happened in Afghanistan is not the result of war brutalisation over the last sixty years, but because of the previous experience of the Muslims of their brutal enemy under the British Raj. The Muslim leaders have chosen to take a lower profile, to avoid extermination. Crimes like these are the result of ignorant and un-religious people. The problem has been caused by the previous hiustory of the total ruthlessness of the enemies of Islam, not by the Muslims.
It’s easy to point the finger at obvious crimes, but the gutter press and the shameless trolls like Alan Campbell omit to mention the extraordinary history of determined evil and violence by us and the other enemies of Islam.
Alan, what i am saying is what ever bad things the taliban did. One good thing about them was law and order. Law and other means preventing stuff like this from happening. With them gone, people were free to carve up that young ladies face, and America and its puppet government weren’t willing to stop it from happening or punish the guilty.
Afghan ladies being carved by by Karzia’s rule, is an example of the freedom America brought to Afghanistan, not what America removed from Afghanistan. It happened now, under american rule, not under Taliban rule.