I am delighted that a new canpaign has started today against the state enforced child slavery in the uzbek cotton industry, especially as this campaign originates in Germany, where a significant portion of society appears to have finally woken up to the reality of the German government’s appalling complicity in the Nazi style regime and atrocities of Karimov.
However in the UK it remains the case that since the coalition government came to power, there has not been one single government statement on the human rights atrocities in Uzbekistan or – even more damning of our sham democracy – one single statement or question from New Labour.
@Uzbek in the UK: “slave labor on cotton fields which if continue might compromise future possible European (and British in particular) investments in that country.”
I think you are suffering from a serious disconnect here. Slave labour is cheap. Cheap labour means bigger profits. Big foreign investors know what they’re doing.
Not sure whether you ever lived in the USSR, but if so, consider the chemical industry there, which was mainly organised into towns entirely based around one enterprise, employing a large amount of convict labour. These concerns often worked very closely with western chemical companies, including from Britain. Indeed often they were practically owned by western companies.
When Thatcher, who was personally close to the chemical sector, was prime minister, I tried to interest Fleet Street in this story, but they weren’t interested.
If anyone wants further details, the convict labour wasn’t quite prison labour, but it was more like prison labour than community service is in the UK. People who weren’t sentenced to pay a fine or go to prison could be sentenced to work ‘on the chemistry’ (на химии). They would be bused in from hostels, and if they weren’t at work by a certain time, or back to the hostel by a certain time, they would be slung into jail without any further trial. Wages were extremely low, conditions were appalling, discipline was savage. Conditions were better than they were in prisons – no doubt about that – but nonetheless, the whole thing was akin to some kind of slavery. I say ‘was’, but that’s because I’ve been out of touch. Things may well still be the same now in the chemical sector in a number of successor countries to the USSR.
What goes on behind the Presidential Inauguration Committee? Here is the info. on the corruption. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/21/exxonmobil-donates-260000-to-obama-inauguration/
I wondered who they were and what they all did and whilst Obomber was droning on, looked up Chuck Schumer who opened the proceedings. He was captioned as the chairman.
He seems to have a very nice way of putting things, such as,
(from W I K I P E D I A btw)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schumer
Gaza statements
Schumer, speaking at an Orthodox Union event in Washington, DC, in June 2010, made comments that were later criticized [114] regarding Israel’s military blockade of the Gaza Strip. He called on Israel to “strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go”. He also said “they don’t believe in the Torah, in David.” He explained that the current Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is justified not only because it keeps weapons out of the Palestinian territory, but also because it shows the Palestinians living there that “when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement.”
Flight attendant incident
After being asked by a flight attendant to turn off his cell phone during take-off of a US Airways flight from New York to Washington D.C. on December 13, 2009, Schumer called the flight attendant a “bitch.” Schumer made the comment to fellow New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who was seated next to him, but was overheard by a Republican House aide who happened to be on the plane. After the story was reported on Politico.com, Schumer issued an apology through a spokesperson for the “off-the-cuff comment”.
Lovely man.
Here are the donors. Pages of them. Look at Microsoft’s contribution. What are they buying with that amount? Baked beans? What a very rotten system and what a very rotten country with a rotten president.
http://www.opensecrets.org/obama/inaug.php
One of this blog’s most eminent posters reports Prince Harry as saying “If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game.”.
Eminently sensible from a soldier’s point of view, I should have thought.
On the ‘fine speech’. LOL
Obama misleads about an end to war
In his inaugural address, the president hailed end to decade of war, while apparatus for perpetual war is cemented
In his inauguration address Monday, President Obama proclaimed that a “decade of war is now ending.” Mere hours earlier, a U.S. drone dropped missiles over Yemen, killing two al-Qaida militants as part of an intensified airstrike campaign which began last month.
/..
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/21/obama_misleads_about_an_end_to_war/
“Eminently sensible from a soldier’s point of view, I should have thought.”
Yes, if you are a soldier and someone goes half way round the world to invade your country and do bad things to you that is sensible.
But in Harry’s case, he is the one went there to do bad things to them, they never even considered coming here to do bad things to him.
no Fred, I think it’s sensible for any soldier.
And now, pipe down, there’s a good chap.
and, Fred, keep off the foul language.
From one of our most eminent posters :
“In his inauguration address Monday, President Obama proclaimed that “a decade of war is now ending”. Mere hours earlier, a US drone dropped missiles over Yemen…etc”.
Presidential addresses are usually very carefully crafted. Thus, with regard to the words “a decade of war is now ending”, the following two questions could be asked:
1/. is it a decade (=10 years) which is now ending, or is it a war?
2/. “is ending” the continuous tense and is used to indicate an ongoing process (a process started but still underway).
So can we be certain that the President is “misleading” us?
“and, Fred, keep off the foul language.”
Don’t tell me what to do Sunshine.
We invaded them, they didn’t invade us. They have the right to claim self defence to justify what they do, we don’t.
All I did was say you were stupid, if you can’t see that then all you are doing is proving it.
@Villager, Thanks for the new Krishnamurti recommendation; I will clear some more time soon so I can watch it in peace !
I don’t know too much about him, the little I know are through encountering the work, some years ago, of Joseph Campbell, normally described as a Mythologist. So it’s a bit of a rusty memory now, but I remember Campbell trying to explain that in the course of researching myths all over the World, he kept noticing the same recurring motifs, which eventually lead him to the realization that all religions, all myths are true, because they are projections of our inner selfs, trying to connect with a universal consciousness, by trying to rationalise the Paradox of the Human Condition, in which we humans are equipped with enough intelligence to know that we cannot know the most fundamental questions concerning of our very existence.
From the little I know of K, and now reinforced in that UN speech you linked to, I believe that his position was that World Peace (the theme of the UN speech) cannot be a reality until we learn to de-program ourselves from such things as religions, ideologies, “glorified tribalism” (ie Nationalism), because these are the things that divide us and cause conflicts. His solution to achieve this de-programming echoes what Campbell kept emphasising, namely that we all have to seek to profoundly understand our inner selfs, to understand & evolve our own psychological nature.
Anyhow all this resonates with me because I also believe that the self-inflicted problems that besets & keeps dividing us as a species , are exactly these things, religions , ideologies, & nationalisms. The common characteristic of these various beliefs systems are that they provide a certainty, that gives some sort of meaning to the people who hold them, a meaning that the human mind needs to rationalise its inability to handle the Paradox of the Human Condition. For the Nationalist , the supremacy of his ethnic group is the most important consideration that gives meaning to life, from the American with his Manifest Destiny, to the Brit with his White Man’s Burden, to the Zionist with his Choseness, to Hitler with his dream of a thousand year reich, etc. For the Ideologues, their Cause, be it Atheism, Socialism, Communism, Capitalism, etc, is what gives that a meaning to their lives, something worth living for, or even dying for, as example the Idealist who believes for instance in sacrificing their life for the Cause of Freedom. For the Religious it both oblivious, yet more complex as to how they derive a Certainty /Explanation for their existence ( I can explore this further in another Post).
Anyhow to cut it short, it is these derived “Certainties”, which are psychological responses to the Paradox of the Human Condition, that are what divides us humans, and inevitably causes conflict. None of these “Certainties” are true apart from them all being true, so when somebody believes that something must be done or tolerated for the “Greater Good” of their particular Certainty, it is a conceit in the same sense that having a “Certainty” is an arrogant substitute for not accepting the truth of the Paradox of the Human Condition, ie that we are incapable of understanding our existence, or as Socrates put it, “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance”
I’m Thinking that Craig’s Encouragement to String along for entertainment value, is a failed idea.
Whilst it beats watching u.k tv..( wouldn’t be hard ) It just gets Boring and a Fucking waste of time reading it. theres only so much one can take of Trolls
“Eminently sensible from a soldier’s point of view, I should have thought.”
Habbab, is war the ultimate eminent “game”? Is that what soldiers shooting real bullets killing other humans are taught? Its all just a game?…
And the limited human mind makes it easy to assemble all that into eminent sense. Oh yes you’ll say, but i said from a soldier’s point of view. But of course from your grasp of life, human life and the world, are soldiers not human beings?
And of course you know fully well Mary was not referring to an ordinary soldier. One would expect a more nuanced perspective from a member of royalty. But then, i wonder why?
Einstein’s thoughts come to mind:
“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has
been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This
disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless
brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
—
Btw good advice “and, Fred, keep off the foul language.”
To your credit, you can say that with a degree of moral authority. For all your shortcomings and stuff heaped on you, including by myself, you haven’t brought it down to that lowly level.
Yes it is obvious that you and some regular, respected commenters have widely varying viewpoints. But lets not try to reconcile them FORCIBLY, if one doesn’t wish to engage in a debate.
I interpret Craig’s recent nod to you to say that you can be a respected commenter in your own right, but, i really don’t see the point of your comparing yourself with other commenters however eminent they may or may not be.
I note your current conversation with Glenn, who is a fine example of civility. He also had tried to tip you off re M earlier, advice you didn’t heed. The tone between you now is refreshingly civilised–lets keep it that way, so we can really flush out the true dim-wits who have to resort to abuse.
Hello Macky and thanks for your message which i would like to come back to and respond to. In the meantime, i have cut-n-paste this, which will give you reassurance of your own path of thinking, which i find very refreshing.
The Core of the Teachings
Written by Krishnamurti in 1980 at the request of his biographer Mary Lutyens.
The core of Krishnamurti’s teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said, “Truth is a pathless land”. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.
Man has built in himself images as a fence of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man’s thinking, his relationships, and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all humanity. So he is not an individual.
Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not choice. It is man’s pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.
Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution. When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts, he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation in the mind.
Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence.
Copyright ©1980 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd.
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/about-krishnamurti/the-core-of-the-teachings.php
More later and thank you for taking the time!
Mary,
With the inauguration jamboree, i was reminded of how quickly the last time round, ‘The Committee’ decided to award Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
Puzzled, i drilled into the reasons therefor deeper. From Wiki (!):
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award on October 9, 2009, citing Obama’s promotion of nuclear nonproliferation[2] and a “new climate” in international relations fostered by Obama, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world.[3][4]”
He certainly has been reaching out to the Muslim World hasn’t he?!!!
Hope the dog’s better–keep him warm, perhaps a hot-water bottle and a coat outside will help reduce the pain. If you can find this Ayurvedic oil ‘VATARIN’ on the web, it is amazing for all muscular/bone/joints aches and pains. Stay well!
@ Villager : I read your post above with considerable interest – and will reserve my position on some pf your thoughts and suggestions.
May I just comment on a couple of things?
Of course war isn’t a game, and I don’t think soldiers are taught to think of it as such. If individual soldiers do think of war as a game (and I’m not suggesting they do, I just don’t know) then I could imagine it might be as a defensive/distancing mechanism (in the same way that we on occasion joke about death or illness). The use of that particular word, whether by Prince Harry or any other soldier, is surely also as a euphemism: you either use that euphemism (or others) or you say “..,then we’ll kill them”. As to the basic idea that a soldier tries to kill those who are trying to kill his comrades, well, I still think that’s eminently sensible and unaffected by considerations of whether the war he’s fighting may be considered a just or unjust one (this is a point our Freddy can’t seem to grasp).
I was going to say something about willingness or not to enter into a debate, but I’m tired and want to go to bed. Nor, believe it or not, do I want to be a bully and offend (well, offend beyond reasonable limits anyway) 🙂
Good night to all!
@ Villager : of course the award of the Nobel to President Obama was farcical. But the Peace Prize follows a rather different, surely more subjective and political path than the others. I think it was awarded against former President Bush rather than to President Obama.
Habbab thanks for your responses.
On the latter antithetical Dubya point, its a good one. I wonder also if they were applauding the Americans to choose a black President while being PC in not saying so.
On your earlier point about “game” being a euphemism, i’m not so sure. There was in the time of the Empire ‘The Great Game’, but the Americans have turned it into an art, even though ironically they have failed miserably in Afghanistan and are in retreat as we speak. I think its more to do with an imperialistic mindset.
More tomorrow. Sleep well. Its the sensible thing to do.
To all whom it may concern
With great sorrow and a deep pain in my heart I am obliged to inform you that our great friend (un amico magnifico dei amici), the father and son as well as uncle and aunt, the magnificent habbabba has peacefully passed away after receiving a head shot while assisting in freeing the hostages in the treacherous desert of Algeria.
From now on, we shall be deprived of his regular contributions, the profundity thereof has been greatly admired by every tom, dick and harry, i.e. the commentators of this blog. Our hearts are shattered by this tragedy and we shall all miss his intellectual firepower that he used daily to blast our stupid brains out of their sculls.
From what I heard, habbabba was not fond of artificial flowers or wreaths. if any grateful soul, touched by the enormity of this tragedy, wants to commemorate his death, please send a contribution, no matter how small, to the ADL. They will know what to do with it.
Macky, by Jove, i think you’ve really got it! I am impressed and can see the wider common cause that brought us to engage in dialogue. Everyone here is aware that the world is on fire. And lots of people take lots of time to ‘analyse’ events in the world. This is the way of the media stream we live in in our Information Society in this Information Age. In actual fact, we are moving farther and farther away from our essential nature as humans (as distinct from other animal species). It is language and words that separate us from other animals, yet we have every right to despair even in this innocuous blog how human beings communicate and create conflict with each other. Relationship is life and it is in that mirror that we can truly see ourselves and become whole so that we can live in a holistic way. So we spend more and more time looking at events outside and little time to study ourselves–to be aware of our own patterns, conditioning, prejudices, and lack of originality. So human beings have seemingly adopted a destructive path, rather than living in constant creation. We have restricted our own ability to respond, to be responsible, in desisting another conflict. and so on and on it goes.
Well K shows us that there is another way(s). Yes if we can get beyond every ‘ism of religion, nationality and ideologies. They are all paradoxes set up by humans ostensibly for security but actually are the drivers in the creation of conflict and insecurity. But then lets go on from that big picture. You and i are society, society is not something out there apart from us. We have created this society. So it becomes one’s responsibility to see the Outer and then ‘see’ the Inner, which is where all true change and understanding must spring from. This is where it all gets very intricate and most people stay asleep.
The thing i appreciate about K is that he really thought it all through, reasoned with logic reaching into the profound roots of man’s conditioning and the process of life. So i don’t reinvent the wheel, but get guidance from the man who had it all figured. I suspect like Einstein K had a special brain but ours is also capable of mutation if we are able to figure things out for ourselves as an actuality so that it becomes part of one and for you, it becomes part of the real you, not just an intellectual game of philosophy.
Hope i’m making sense. More, if you care, tomorrow.
em….Haba…us wars ARE a game, For evey one regared as BIG…
contributions valued by every Tom, Dick,Harry and Charley, surely, Karel?
Focus,focus,focus ladies & gentlemen ! They cannot start a war in Syria before the Scots referendum in 2014 which could turn out to be a gift for Salmond, but the Iraq type spin is already underway (keep a lookout for kempe,habbabkyk posts!). The only troops on the ground in Syria can be Turkish and erdogan may find himself out of office in the 2015 Turkish election, a back to square one scenario for the ziocons. This leaves a narrow window beginning mid 2014 to early 2015. And the deployment and logistical manoeuvring should be easy to spot – even a false flag to start off the proceedings. The pros & cons of the Leveson inquiry may be left on the back burner in the meantime !
Here’s a series of reports very much on topic (Gulnara Karimova/Swedish Telekom etc);
http://www.eurasianet.org/taxonomy/term/2777
(@Villager, Thanks for the reply;hoping to have a chance later today to view that second K video).
Two poems from an American whose work I have come to know and appreciate. He was born in the late 40s to put the second poem into context. I was born in the early 40s so can identify with the theme. In the 50s the media inculcated in the readers and listeners a fear of the Russians and Communism and the possibility of a nuclear war. Thankfully my father brought us up with a healthy scepticism for the establishment and for the lies of its politicians.
Heroes
by Gary Corseri / January 9th, 2012
Do not call them “heroes”
if they have done your killing for you.
Say that they have done your bidding;
say they were your “soldiers.”
Say that you have trained them well:
They are the oiled machinations of war,
performing as expected.
Refrain from saying “professionals,”
and the usual nonsense about “surgical strikes.”
They were never doctors and nurses
in starched, white linens.
/..
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/01/heroes/
and
Come Home, America!
by Gary Corseri / January 14th, 2013
Come home, America!
The children are in need!
Come home, America!
The Soul of the World is bleeding!
“For purple mountains’ majesty,”
I sang in my pressed, white shirt.
“Above the fruited plains. …”
Ten years before the Kennedys,
before MLK and Vietnam,
during the Cold War
and before the Gulf War—
so many wars I’ve lost track of them all!
Come home, America!
The children are bleeding!
/..
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/01/come-home-america/
Something I never knew – that the beginnings of the Vietnam war came under Eisenhower. You would think he had known of enough killing and bloodshed in WWII.
‘Every sentence in this dialogue is historically inaccurate, yet the idea of a young, idealistic leader cut down by a cabal of detached suits allows the myth of the Vietnam War to endure. Many who visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC are surprised to notice the timeline begins on November 1, 1955, when President Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train South Vietnam’s secret police, but the real invasion began, under Kennedy, in 1962 and the violence was directed against the rural population of the South. The destruction of the country, for the crime of working toward their independence, was dished out with unparalleled levels of aggressions to virtually no criticism in the United States. Protests didn’t start gripping America until thousands were dead, thousands of troops were occupying Southeast Asia, and conscription decimated the public’s ability to overlook the horror being carried out in their name. Over 50,000 American soldiers were killed and, although we will never know exactly how many Vietnamese were killed, but most speculate that the number hovers around 3 million. In 1967, in a letter to President Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote, “The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.”’
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/21/what-did-hagel-and-kerry-really-learn-from-vietnam/
Hagel and Kerry have five Purple Hearts from Vietnam between them.
Mark:
“No one outside a small group has access to raw intelligence except in edited form and I know the SIS tap phones illegally.”
There are many spy networks run by Muslim Institutions like the Muslim Brotherhood which gather their own information about the personal lives of Muslims through mobile phone tapping and share it with the much more sophisticated government spy institutions.
This mirrors the blurred edges of love/hate rhetoric between Western intelligence services and Al-Qaida. These deliberate confusions allow government services to break down the trust which Muslims inevitably have for their Islamic institutions. It also allows the Islamic institutions to increase their power by being able to demonstrate a more comprehensive grip on their followers.
The point I want to make is that if ordinaryMuslims do not kow-tow to the mosque power they will find their own personal lives exposed to the community in this country. In Egypt, they would be exposed to the scrutiny of Mursi’s American version of shari’ah.
In other words, the first purpose of espionage is to detect disloyalty to the spier and the second purpose is to expose that independent thought in order to control it by state/mosque authority.
Spying is illegal in both Western systems and Islam except for the purpose of security. It appears to me that there is more in common between the two systems than between either system’s public and leaders. Mursi gained power by selling out to the US. But when he tried to use that power, he was told he would be removed by the US funded army and he found he wasn’t the Pharaoh of Moses but merely one of those bandaged mummy Pharaohs kept in Western Museums, one of those countless Muslim political dummies who have fallen prey to the lies of Western colonial powers.
“I still think that’s eminently sensible and unaffected by considerations of whether the war he’s fighting may be considered a just or unjust one (this is a point our Freddy can’t seem to grasp).”
I know that in a statement of cause and effect the cause always comes before the effect.
I ain’t that stupid.
“To your credit, you can say that with a degree of moral authority. For all your shortcomings and stuff heaped on you, including by myself, you haven’t brought it down to that lowly level.”
So who the hell died and made you three fuckwits guardians of our morals then?
Bunch of haven’t got a clue control freaks.
Borrowing, again an unprecedented sum of 14.7 billion during December, has overshadowed the little murdering Prince’s heroic’s.
From great hight he swooped down on Taliban and unsuspecting civilian, emptying his big modern gun, but we should ask ourself, why he was not allowed to fly the multi million air tank?
Could it have been that his blood tests showed certain substances he smoked during leave? Does Harry enjoy his cannabis? Something he not much talked about.
In my view he should have been thrown out of the forces, he is the first to put himself on the same level as his fellow soldiers, naive young man, so maybe he wants to leave the forces now, because anybody who would have been seen or caught with cannabis in their bloodstream, its stays there for up to a month before dissipating, would have been long gone, without pay or pension rights with a dishonourable discharge and jail to follow.
Maybe the flight controller could not handle a giggling Harry at then controls and he was put on the ‘smile and kill rota’. Time will tell, but for me, he’s a fraught and a sucker.
It’s not just that ‘Prince’ Harry is dimwitted enough, and dissociated enough from the reality that the illegal invaders have caused in Afghanistan, to call war a “game”.
He’s also so dimwitted and dissociated that he doesn’t even have a thought to appreciate what it’s like being in the British armed forces, for those of lower ranks who’ve been sent to Afghanistan, hundreds of whom have been killed.
His own army experience sounds akin to being in the royal enclosure at Ascot. Referring to when he was photographed in an extremely expensive Las Vegas hotel (owned by Steve Wynn, billionaire owner of casinos in Vegas and Macau, a friend of his, who supplied everything free of charge), taking part in an orgy with several other people of the topmost social caste and with a group of prostitutes laid on for the occasion (as if he had managed to get to university and were in the Bullingdon Club or something!), he says “It was probably a classic example of me probably being too much army, and not enough prince.”
So that’s what it’s like in the army, is it? Because that’s what this stupid super-rich parasitic brat has just said.