I learn the interesting news that David Aaronovitch tweeted to Joan Smith and Jenny Jones that I am:
“an angry and dangerous man who could as easily be on the far right as the far left”.
I had no idea I was on the far left, though I suppose it is a matter of perspective, and from where Mr Aaronovitch stands I, and a great many others, look awfully far away to the left. I don’t believe you should bomb people for their own good, I don’t believe the people of Palestine should be crushed, I don’t believe the profit motive should dominate the NHS, I think utilities and railways were better in public ownership, I think education should be free. I guess that makes me Joseph Stalin.
But actually I am very flattered. Apparently I am not just angry – since the invasion of Iraq and the banker bailouts everybody should be angry – but “dangerous”. If I can be a danger to the interests represented by a Rupert Murdoch employee like Aaronovitch, I must have done something right in my life. I fear he sadly overrates me; but it does make me feel a little bit warmer, and hold my head that little bit higher.
Bert, thanks:
I think there’s an elite of all religions that doesn’t believe in the religious stuff they peddle for their own political gain. But the ultra-rich Jewish elite still need a base of ordinary people from which to draw political support – and it is that base that is genuine in its beliefs, and is the target of racism.
Not often that the IDF care about Palestinians being in the firing line. A touch of humanity ?
Unfortunately not. Ethnic cleansing from another piece of Palestine !
http://972mag.com/1500-palestinians-face-expulsion-to-make-way-for-idf-firing-zone-918/54694/
@Jon
“Anti-Islam perspectives tend to be expressed in highlighting the violent parts of its holy books rather than its peaceful parts; drawing attention to holders of radical perspectives as an illustration of the whole of the religion or culture; assuming without evidence that any terrorist action is the work of Islamic operatives; and offering unfair critiques of countries that are primarily Islamic in nature.”
Misleadingly highlighting a part of a religious corpus, unfairness, baseless assumptions, etc., can’t be defended.
The fact remains that most Jews are brought up to think it’s OK to rip off and exploit people who aren’t Jews.
Those who don’t make this their main activity are faced with a choice of keeping quiet about those who do, maybe only helping out occasionally, and, whatever they do, not breaking ethnic ranks (because they mustn’t let a fellow Jew appear to be a shandah fur die goyim) or following a path of radically rejecting the whole business and becoming non-Jewish – a path which some individuals have taken.
There is no Christian or Islamic parallel here.
It is very highly relevant to this cultural fact that the Jewish religion teaches that non-Jews are non-human animals and that the punishment for betraying the ethnic group should be death.
Zionism is an organisation and its network is essentially military: the various tasks such as propaganda, sayan assistance, etc., all fit in with each other smoothly. It is far too late in many countries for the local security services to proscribe the organisation.
I recall a chief rabbi in Britain writing something about there being truth in all religions, getting called on it by fellow Jews who said he’d got it all wrong, and responding by telling them they’d misunderstood where he was coming from, because he was only talking to the damned goyim, so where did truth come into it?
How would you interpret this? Just one guy? Don’t tar everyone with the same brush?
“NATO Official: Don’t Attack Iran
August 14, 2012 • 12:12AM
Retired NATO general Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard warned Israel and the U.S. not to launch a military attack on Iran. Bouchard, who retired from the Royal Canadian Air Force four months ago, and had headed the NATO mission in Libya that overthrew the Gaddafi regime, told Ha’arez that he doesn’t believe Israel would take such an illogical and irresponsible step as to attack Iran without international support, and NATO, he said, won’t unanimously support a military campaign against Iran any time soon, nor will the UN Security Council.
Bouchard believes that Israel’s senior military leadership would not set in motion a process that could lead to chaos in the entire region, by launching a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The military option, he noted, could backfire, uniting the entire Muslim world against Israel. The chance of a 100-percent success rate in a military operation is infinitesimally small, he observed, adding that Israel won’t get a second chance and that it won’t be a quick, lightning strike like the Six-Day War. He added that global jihad would exploit an Israeli military assault and use it to incite against the West, while Islamic fundamentalists can be expected to portray an attack as a Jewish-Christian conspiracy against Islam.
Bouchard called on whoever wins the next U.S. presidential election to look to historic groundbreaking diplomacy for examples of what could be accomplished, such as Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China and Anwar Sadat’s 1977 visit to Jerusalem. The solution, he said, has to be compromise in which each side concedes something. Russia holds the key to securing international support on Iran. The situation around the world, and in the Middle East in particular, needs to settle down first, Bouchard said, warning that Israel must not get itself dragged into hasty and premature actions.”
Source: Ha’aretz, via larouche.com
Posting here for the first time.
Like many writing here I too am most impressed by Craig’s integrity and his eloquent defence of Julian in his hour of need. I am also most impressed and often entertained by the high calibre of contributors to this blog and have already bookmarked this in my favourites.
Like many all over the world, I too am fearful of the future of democracy when the rule of law is under threat and the norms of International Law are regarded with such cynicism by certain politicians.
Shooting the messenger or smearing him or her with the tainted brush of sexual misbehaviour or other ad hoc character attacks is now, as Craig pointed out during the Newsnight interview, standard treatment for whistleblowers. Fortunately, Craig’s essential defence of Julian was not drowned out by either the almost theatrical protestations of Joan Smith and the rude interjections of Esler, who as interviewer showed signs of deplorable partiality, totally unacceptable on a publicly funded TV channel.
We are passing through dark times. The shadow of War has fallen across the planet and we are all to blame. I believe we must discover the meaning of “Active Peace” and strain to practice this in our daily lives. We need to discover the enormous power of compassion when joined with wisdom and how this practice can terraform the darkest areas of our psyches. Defeating War really starts within ourselves.
Thanks for all your dedication and hard work, Craig. You are a star.
GAIA
Lord Slime of Ichor opines:
how “we come to grips with the fact that the internet is giving public access to uncorroborated, undigested and unmediated news, all in the name of free speech, is becoming one of the defining issues of the 21st century”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/29/prince-harry-naked-pictures-mandelson
Right on, spitball. And would you be volunteering to corroborate, digest and mediate the news for us proles? Thought so.
Now get Mandrax having a go at non-corporate globalism (corporate’s fine):
“The bigger question is how the domestic media market can be made economic and subject to any form of regulation in an era when, a click away, there is access to information that respects no national boundaries and the laws of no single national parliament or the basic standards of conventional journalism,” he wrote in a letter to today’s Financial Times*.”
*Behind a paywall, if you didn’t know….
Mohamed Morsi (who is a product of the University of Southern California) has ‘stunned’ Tehran by backing the ‘rebels’ in Syria:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/30/egyptian-leader-iran-syrian-rebels?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
Komodo- I guess the Navy SEAL’s sales will triple now. Bad move, Obama. Especially as you were not so long ago taking the credit for personally slotting bin Laden yourself….
Did he? I don’t remember that. Some people on here have a very active imagination.
He deservedly took some credit for taking the decision to storm the compound, but ‘personally slotting him’?
You’re funny, @CE. You like asking questions, but you don’t like debate per se.
Komodo, thanks for posting the Haaretz article on Bouchard.
Bouchard’s analysis is all over the place.
Is he considering the possibility of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran, or one merely without support from the UN Security Council and unanimous support from NATO?
I don’t reckon either NATO or the UN Security Council are of much importance here: the Canadian, Norwegian, Polish, or Greek votes, and so on. The US, however, is important – but then the question straightaway goes to Zionist influence over the US, and the extent and kind of US ‘support’ that Israel would wish for, in respect of Iran, and whether it could be delivered. Sadly Bouchard doesn’t get to that point.
Bearing in mind that the US have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan for Israel already (or for ‘neocon’ reasons, to put it in a misleading way), it’s not out of the question that they might invade Iran too. Clearly if Israel nuked the crap out of Iran, but one Iranian chemical warhead managed to get through Israel’s shield and hit Tel Aviv, or a tactical short-range nuke got fired from Gaza, or whatever, it would be Israel’s opponents, and not the Israelis themselves, who would be portrayed throughout the western media as the most dangerous enemies of peace in the world. Of course, invasion could be considered as insufficiently asymmetric, but since when have the Pentagon cared much about US troop losses?
I am firmly in the ‘apocalyptic’ camp, and expect a major financial meltdown and, er, ‘population reduction’, but I don’t necessarily buy whatever the current view is of the ‘timetable’ for attacking Iran. For the last 20 years, long-term propaganda regarding Iran has served partly to take western audiences to a new level.
Above all, that propaganda has normalised the expectation of nuclear war.
After the 2005 terror attacks in London, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy called for world war, which he said would require “profound cultural changes”. These include the institutionalisation of permanent mass surveillance, and a permanent ban on questioning anything anywhere near as deep as what needs to be questioned, throughout the media and academia.
The scenario presented in the media goes from an Israeli-US attack, to an Israeli attack, to a US attack on behalf of the Israelis, to an Israeli attack with US and UK RAF involvement, and so on. Which will it be? I don’t know. But I do know that Iran is much richer than Iraq, and that in 1987, it was the sinking of much of the Iranian navy by the US, and rumours of a US invasion, which triggered the stockmarket crash.
The timetable this time is surely a secret and I don’t particularly believe anything I hear about it. What’s for sure, though, is that big financial events will occur simultaneously, which will make Lehmans and Iceland look tiny in comparison.
That’s be funny bizarre, not funny ha-ha. There are a few here like that …
Anyway, I’m travelling soon. See you later. (Maybe even in my dreams!)
Sorry, N_ cross posted
@ Nuid -CE found a nit to pick. CE’s happy.
After the 2005 terror attacks in London, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy called for world war, which he said would require “profound cultural changes”. These include the institutionalisation of permanent mass surveillance, and a permanent ban on questioning anything anywhere near as deep as what needs to be questioned, throughout the media and academia.
I’d be interested in seeing the original, as with anything else attributed but not cited. Halevy’s public stance is that we are already, and have been for a decade, engaged in WW3. His view embraces the concept of wars for resources. I can’t find him advocating Armageddon. Eg:
http://www.jewishtimesasia.org/one-to-one-topmenu-45/efraim-halevy-issue-november
http://store.micgadget.com/action-figures/305-obama-and-bin-laden-figurine.html
WARNING: Contains graphic depiction of all-American hero.
This clip shows why Israel will never attack Iran.
http://www.imemc.org/article/64155
they are the bully boys of the Med.
Unarmed fishermen of Gaza ——— No Problem
Iran have weapons and can fight back.
Komodo,
I take it that’s your way of withdrawing your unfounded slur on President Obama. Thank you.
Jon,
You are fully aware that:
Indeed, there are paid disinformation agents, propaganda shills, born-again Evangelists, Israel-firsters, Megaphone users and GIYUS subscribers. There is probably no point in persuading this crowd with reasonable, repeated arguments for justice.
However, you believe:
But these are, I think, quite a small group – certainly compared to the number of ordinary (and perhaps conservative-minded) people in the world
Therefore, you then decide to leap into the defence of the “ordinary people”, whom are evidently getting attacked by the “nutters” like I:
you are making the sweeping generalisation that all Israelis/Jews are as bad as each other. I suspect this is an unresolvable point of our disagreement – I think B’Tselem and thousands of tiny other human rights groups are great, and deserve moral/financial support.
Alas this line of thinking has been the very obstacle to any kind of a resolution of the protracted mass murder politics of the ziofcukwits. These reliant on taboos, and the imperatives construct surrounding this subject matter, have skilfully exploited the situation for their own ends, effectively hijacking the very language of dissent itself and ultimately gaming the whole of system.
As already mentioned, any talk about these ziofcukwits immediately is met by the harangues of “antisemite”, “anti Jew”, Jew hater”, “right wing extremist”, ad nauseum. That in turn requires a careful word play with a list of taboo words, and list of permitted words, along with a list of mandated acknowledgements, and obligatory recantation of long list of the wrongs done to the Jewish tribe as a whole. Alas language not being the best medium of communication, to further convolute the already contorted and obfuscated issues surrounding the shitty strip of land, results in unending confusion and muddling of the populace at large who are fed a diet of; “Muslim/Arab terrorist”, “poor little plucky israel”, with a never ending archives of carnage that the consumer news is padded with. In fact surprisingly many people are unaware of the reasons for the protracted war, and were it not for the internet the percentages of the those aware would have been far lower still.
However, because of your earlier assumptions;
I think B’Tselem and thousands of tiny other human rights groups are great, and deserve moral/financial support.
This then leads to an undue expectation that the solution for the mass murder politics is in further making people aware of the ongoing struggle, and actively encouraging others to join in pushing for reforms. This line of thought is good enough for a peaceful transition of modalities of governance. However when one side is engaged in a continual expansion of its occupation, that further strips any right of resistance from any of the populace of the areas under the occupation; ferocious and deadly response dishing out collective penalties, for any act of resistance.
Finally you round off;
if your undiplomatic approach could be shown to reduce the chances of Palestinian peace and security, would you change it
Further highlighting the degrees of disconnect from the actualities; there can be no peace to be experienced by any Palestinian. The war that is waged on the Palestinians is a war of genocide, and an ongoing attrition of the numbers of the Palestinians, that will eventually become law enough to be absorbed by eretz ysreal. This in turn would mean a life as second class citizenry for those Palestinians who managed to survive the war of genocide waged upon them, living their lives in a Yiddish apartheid.
There are terms which brand the user as an easily-dismissable stereotype. They include ‘Zionazi’, ‘Ziofcukwit’ (sic), ‘sheeple’ and ‘bankster’ among other comic coinages. They do not IMO add to the debate, any more than ‘treehugger’, ‘towelhead’ or ‘libtard’ do, from the other side. Actually, they polarise the argument further.
No, CE, I was just drawing attention to the very poor taste of some American goods.
‘Ziofcukwit’ (sic),
Failing all else there is always the spelling to pick on, because of the semantics of the fuckwit somehow not understood by some ziofuckwits.
,
,
,
very poor taste of some American goods.
That is the billions spent on education to aid these discerning citizens of the empire, to differentiate their arse from their elbows. As in their elections, they only remember the -ve, you should know that by now.
Are you attempting to imply that I am a ziof(redacted to spare the feelings of the delicate)wit, Passerby? One of the features of the codeword user is that anyone who does not agree with him or her in every detail, instantly, is automatically a ziof(redacted to spare the feelings of the delicate)wit / libtard (delete as applicable). Or so I have noticed.
It would be nice if everyone could homogenise their opinions on a range of topics so that they fitted neatly into the zio/lib system of things, but unfortunately I can’t. Apologies.
For once I absolutely concur with Komodo.
The throwing around of offensive and inappropriate labels does not automatically strengthen a weak argument, and it does nothing to further any debate. Again you’re correct K, in fact it has the opposite effect and results in polarisation of opinions. But that’s presuming those with a penchant for cheap snide insults are actually interested in any form debate rather than just satisfying their own intellectual smugness.
Mods, I salute your patience and good manners in engaging with some of the ‘lunatic fringe’ that is present on here, but since Craig gave the green light for the more offensive anti-semitic posts to be removed, any chance of this happening?
@Passerby – I am not suggesting you are attacking ordinary people, no. I am saying I think your message is so unpalatable that apolitical folks would prefer to listen to polite suited people who get invited to discussion programmes. Mark Regev may be an amoral neocon but even he doesn’t call his opponents “Palesfuckwits”.
So, answers to my two questions? You’ve avoided them twice now.
@CE – regarding the removal of certain kinds of posts. That’s a tough one, partly because of Craig in fact. His first guideline to me was “be liberal”, and I’ve sort of stuck with that – removing stuff we disagree with isn’t very liberal. Where does one draw the line? We do remove stuff that is openly racist/homophobic etc, as well as sock-puppeteers and disruptors. But in my (very humble) view I think it is best brought out into the sunlight.
Jon, for my part, those poisonous posts are quite a valuable insight into how some think. I think it’s good for people to see how such prejudicial mindsets work – and I don’t think such embittered diatribes will win any converts. The reification of stereotypes is extreme, extending even to the automatic categorisation of any opposition, regardless of core membership criteria. In context, the abusive label (ziofw?) simply means “people who disagree with me”. It’s fascinating, in a slightly disturbing way, but well worth taking note of. Stimulating more rather than disruptive, I think (at least in this instance).
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stereotype
Isn’t it poetic that the title of this thread is “On Being Angry and Dangerous” … ?
I should clarify my last point – Craig is the ultimate arbiter of what comments are permitted, since we are all guests here, and it is his blog 🙂
@Nextus, yes – perhaps very appropriate!
@CE:
Mods, I salute your patience and good manners in engaging with some of the ‘lunatic fringe’ that is present on here, but since Craig gave the green light for the more offensive anti-semitic posts to be removed, any chance of this happening?
Just who do you think you are CE? You come trolling on this blog and then you presume to interpret Craig’s instructions.
If you don’t like the job the moderators are doing then you are free to go elsewhere. Honestly, your contributions will not be missed, not by a long shot.
Viva,
As far as I am aware not 1 of my posts has been removed, so thankfully the mods (who I was praising, not criticising), obviously don’t agree with you that I am trolling. Not everyone who has a different view or opinion to yourself needs to be given a childish label.
Unlike yourself I’m actually open to changing my mind when presented with a rational argument. Some of my discussion with Jon made me realise I was being a touch simplistic in my view of the Assange case.
CE, thanks – much appreciated.
Viva – I guess freedom of speech has to extend to the freedom to advise/praise/criticise mods (one way or the other). But it’s ok, we’re used to it 🙂
FWIW I think we should be pleased if people come here to disagree, if they’re open to debate. One of the great things here is that people are not of homogenous opinions (and if occasionally we agree too much with each other, a lizard will come to shake things up!).
Komodo,
I was not addressing you, otherwise would have put for your lizardness information, I was connecting to your target audience. (rofl at your delicateness)
,
PS I never communicate with trolls waste of time, that I do not have.
,
,
,
Jon
Mark Regev may be an amoral neocon but even he doesn’t call his opponents “Palesfuckwits”.
Instead that ziofuckwit treats the poor Palestinians as total fuckwits.
1- Given that I am not likely to ever be interviewed and if that occasion arose it is improbable that the said interview would be aired even if it was taped, etc. (need not remind you freedom of press means; you can own one).
2- Formulating polite propositions to the likes of that lying son of a bitch regev, is the task of the many friends of isreal kicking around the place. I gladly pass on that.
3- the problem we have is perhaps the fundamental issue that one Lord Balfour decides based on a feeling in his water that he owns the fucking lands that he then gifts to his mate the red shield pawn brokers, and his minions thereof.
Which part of which question do believe has remained unanswered?