The Tony Blair House Journal (editor Alan Rusbridger) reports on Kanye West’s disgusting private performance for the Kazakh dictator and his family, and takes a sideswipe at David Cameron for visiting that country.
But peculiarly they fail to mention that Tony Blair receives US $4 million a year as a consultant to the worker murdering Kazakh dictator, and that Alistair Campbell and Jonathon Powell as well as Blair visit to give this support – which has included a behind the scenes campaign to help Nazarbaev win the Nobel Peace Prize, fortunately with no result to date.
Sofia and Kiboh Noh,
Thanks both for posting, ‘tas been fun. Happy travels, and yes, do pop in please. We all rather need keeping an eye on!
Dearest Sofia, now that you are off on your travels, I will miss your counsel very much and you are right they sure as fuck did not deserve to have me work in FR. However I sincerely thank you for your support when it really counted, and I am going to miss you very much. I will remember what you have told me.
Take care Sofia, and make sure you keep popping into the internet cafe to keep in touch. Good luck Sofia.
“My latest article compares a First World War Concentration Camp (Ruhleben) with Guantanamo Bay. One hundred years ago conditions for prisoners were so much more civilised.”
Except that neither is really a concentration camp and out of 2,415,000 PoWs held in Germany by 1918 nearly 120,000 died from malnutrition, mistreatment and disease.
Very civilised!
By E-Mail
EYEWITNESS SYRIA. HANDS OFF SYRIA!
RAMSEY CLARK & CYNTHIA MCKINNEY LEAD IAC ANTI-WAR DELEGATION TO SYRIA
HEAR DELEGATION MEMBER SARA FLOUNDERS’ FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT (below) IN THE
LEFT VOICES INTERVIEW
The anti-war movement is in a race with the Pentagon to stop the U.S. from its goal — pushed back momentarily — of going to war with Syria.
This urgency is what made the International Action Center (IAC) send a delegation from the United States to Syria.
The IAC’s Sara Flounders gives an audio report (below) on the team’s trip so far, featuring an on-air meeting with members of “Over Our Dead Bodies” — the youth encampment of hundreds of voluntary human shields at Syria’s communications centers.
Leading the trip is former U.S. attorney general and human rights lawyer Ramsey Clark; former six-term Congressperson from Georgia Cynthia McKinney; Dedon Kamathi of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party and Pacifica Radio; and Johnny Achi of Arab Americans 4 Syria in Los Angeles. The International Action Center, which pulled together the delegation, sent key organizers John Parker from Los Angeles and Sara Flounders from New York.
The corporate media shift in tone on Syria, from warlike to congratulatory — falsely applauding the United States for a diplomatic breakthrough — is covering over Washington’s continued war threats.
On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry stated that Washington’s goal is to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power even if all of Syria’s chemical weapons are destroyed.
In an interview with Left Voices’ Andrea Sears, Flounders describes the mood in Syria, explaining that “if anything, support for the government is much stronger now.”
“People in Syria know they face what happened in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Libya,” she said.
“Democracy will not come with American weapons,” says journalist Oagrit Dandash, organizer of “Over Our Dead Bodies,” whose members have formed a voluntary human-shield encampment of 50 tents in Damascus’s Mount Qassioun.
The IAC delegation will bring back reports after talking with and meeting with some of the more than 4 million people displaced by the U.S.-provoked war, as well as documenting the enormous damage created by this war. This will include how the Syrian people have mobilized to resist the war and carry out their everyday life, including providing health care.
Before entering Syria, the IAC delegation also attended in Beirut, Lebanon, the Arab International Forum Against US Aggression on Syria organised by the Arab International Centre for Communication and Solidarity. The forum was organized to counter the threat of a U.S. attack against Syria.
Participants at the forum in Beirut, Lebanon, besides the delegation, included anti-war leader and MP George Galloway from Britain, ambassadors of Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Nicaragua and many leading organizations from Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. Some of the other organizations sending representatives from the U.S. were the International Anti-imperialist Coordinating Committee (IACC), the Answer Coalition and the United National Anti-war Coalition (UNAC) as well as the IAC.
A delegation of anti-war and human rights activists from the United States is in Syria on a fact-finding trip. We spoke with Sarah Flounders of the International Action Center and the United National Anti-War Coalition as she joined journalist Oagrit Dandash and Syrian civilians who have gathered on Mount Qassioun in Damascus to serve as a human shield against an American attack.
http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/leftvoices/id/2475812 (Audio)
http://www.iacenter.org/
As per Washington Post there are 500,000 Muslims, that is one half of one million Muslims incarcerated across the globe, in black prions, which there is no information about. The ruthlessness of the fourth Reich lies in its stealth and clever propaganda. This in turn has meant the numbers of Muslims killed due to direct or indirect actions/wars/sanctions/drones/proxy mercernaires is mounting to millions dead Muslims, millions more maimed Muslims, and many millions more Muslims made refugees.
However, this does not count, and all that we always talk about; what happened in fucking twentieth century; seventy eighty years ago. Evidently as Gilad puts it “Angry Victims” have not exacted enough revenge as yet, and there is room for many many years more of avenging the wrongs of the past.
John I will have to read your article, can you link it here please?
“Russia Denounces U.N. Chemical Report on Syria
“MOSCOW — Russia sharply criticized the new United Nations report on Syria’s chemical arms use on Wednesday as biased and incomplete, hardening the Kremlin’s defense of the Syrian government even while pressing ahead with a plan to disarm its arsenal of the internationally banned weapons …
continues
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/world/middleeast/syria.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
There’ll be skin and hair flying next!
“The United States will keep approximately 20,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan who will reside in nine bases in different parts of the war-torn country, a top Pakistani senator said on Friday on the conclusion of his visit to Afghanistan.
“Chairman of the Pakistani Senate Committee on Defense, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, said on his return from a four-day visit that he was informed in Kabul that within the next two months, a bilateral security agreement between Kabul and Washington will be signed, allowing foreign troops to remain in Afghanistan.
“Speaking at a news conference, he also said according to informed sources in Kabul, there were over 100,000 U.S. contractors who were engaged in various security and other related responsibilities for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-09/14/c_125386855.htm
My blood pressure just goes higher and higher … They have around 1,000 bases around the world now, and they need to BRING THE WHOLE DAMN LOT OF THEIR PERSONNEL HOME!
nightnight
Everything was going well and then Kempe arrived on the scene. I don’t want to be rude but your knowledge of First World War history is weak to say the least. Any war-prison-camp where there is a concentration of prisoners is a concentration camp. Even if your figures are right, and I am sure you are only here to disrupt, you do not take into account the blockade on Germany where everybody was starving.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/spotlights/blockade.htm
Life expectancy was much lower in general. Why should I be trying to teach you basic common sense history. I’m busy. Who’s paying you?
Bernanke continues to print QE dollars at the rate of $85m per month.
http://news.sky.com/story/1143532/stock-market-highs-as-fed-continues-stimulus
Cleggover paints himself as the champion of everything that’s wonderful in British politics, forgetting that he assisted the Tory demolition of the NHS by supporting the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and was also at the aide of Cameron in the plan to attack Syria and even wound up the debate that night. Fortunately the MPs saw sense.
http://news.sky.com/story/1143300/clegg-lib-dems-can-keep-uk-on-right-path
Cameron meanwhile had an evening with the Holocaust Education Trust, promised more money for secondary schoolchildren to visit Auschwitz and extra funding for the Trust and said he would be visiting Auschwitz next year.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/111510/david-cameron-announces-cash-boost-holocaust-education
He even drew a comparison to the Holocaust when speaking of CW in Syria.
“And let’s not forget, these chemical weapons also pose a massive potential threat to Israel. So there I was facing this reality. The evidence before our eyes. The flagrant breach of an international taboo against the use of chemical weapons. The refugee crisis of our time. And a man-made humanitarian catastrophe where 6.8 million in Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance.”
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/111509/syria-vote-ignored-lesson-holocaust-says-cameron
The late Howard Zinn said:
‘Some years ago, when I was teaching at Boston University, I was asked by a Jewish group to give a talk on the Holocaust. I spoke that evening, but not about the Holocaust of World War II, not about the genocide of six million Jews. It was the mid-Eighties, and the United States government was supporting death squad governments in Central America, so I spoke of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants in Guatemala and El Salvador, victims of American policy. My point was that the memory of the Jewish Holocaust should not be encircled by barbed wire, morally ghettoized, kept isolated from other genocides in history. It seemed to me that to remember what happened to Jews served no important purpose unless it aroused indignation, anger, action against all atrocities, anywhere in the world.’
Ethical and philosophical reactions to past evil probably do not surface at Eton. So Cameron, another psychopath like B.Liar, was not helped there. He was relishing giving the command to send those Cruise missiles and cared not for the little ones. It was the same in Libya. John Pilger calls our ‘public’ schools -‘schools for killers’. And he is right.
“John Pilger calls our ‘public’ schools -’schools for killers’. And he is right.”
“Now lets see how representative tomorrow’s QT will be:
KEN CLARK……………Cambridge
SHIRLEY WILIAMS………Oxford
LAURIE PENNY……….. Oxford
ANTHONY WORRALL THOMPSON….PUBLIC SCHOOL”
“Chair: David Dimbleby, (Charterhouse, Christ Church Oxford… and the Bullingdon club)”
http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/question-time-watch-75-oxbridge-and-100-public-school/
Hi Mary, hope you enjoyed some comfy days off. The eastern Med is about as volatile as a blue touch paper.
Why is this escalation happening? why is the dis proportionality and the increase in fire power not an issue of discussion in the MSM? now that the two super powers are talking and that Rouhani is making friendly noises.
HOW DARE ARE WE THE WEST NOT ENGAGING IN MULTIPLOMACY?
sorry a made up term, its vital that people are talking at all levels.
sorry, just heard an indistinguishable fart, the first concentration camps were introduced by the British in the Boor wars, all others were copy cats, it!
Kempe, a page or so ago you provided the following;
“The term chemical weapon is applied to “any toxic chemical or its precursor that can cause death, injury, temporary incapacitation or sensory irritation through its chemical action. ” So the MK77 is not a chemical weapon, it’s an incendiary. The position on WP is more complex, if it’s used as an incendiary or to produce smoke it’s OK but if intended to kill or incapacitate by toxicity then it is illegal. The use of either against civilians or in areas where there is a significant civilian population is outlawed.”
I then asked you if you considered Israel use of WP during their turkey shoot of Palestinians in Gaza over the X-mas period of 2008/9, an illegal breach iro that last sentence of your quote: I’m still awaiting the courtesy of a reply.
I think an exorcist is needed, we seem to be haunted by the spirit of the Evil Dead !
“Last week I contacted Islam asking her to explain why she did not alert viewers to her Lockheed connections. I also asked her Euronews interviewer, Rudolf Herbert, if he was aware that Islam is, to all intents and purposes, a lobbyist for the arms industry. Neither replied.”
http://blogs.euobserver.com/cronin/2013/09/17/serving-americas-war-machine/
“Having been a soldier for 42 years, weapons have been his “stock and trade” and he has been on both the firing end and the receiving end of many of them. That is why he has chosen to focus on the weapons used in the Israeli incursion into Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. At the LSE he mentioned four in particular: white phosphorus, tungsten, DIME and flechettes.”
http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/europe/757-while-desmond-travers-argues-for-prohibition-of-certain-weapons-ex-head-of-shin-bet-says-forget-the-past-and-move-on
The successful economic fuckups, have resulted in robbing the poor to pay the banksters and now there are 50,000 people facing eviction . That is One in three council tenants.
However all the “savings” made through paying peanuts to the workforce, and whatever little they are paid then is taken away in taxes. As well as reduction in levels of services needed by the said workforce, have resulted in lower productivity in UK. Evidently the lessons that farmers have learnt; “a happy cow will give more milk”, is not as yet taught to our dear leaders who are there to protect their bankster masters interests.
This of course means the only alternative left for improving productivity, solving the traffic congestions, and housing shortages, as well as clearing up the unemployed figures and getting the malingering sick off the sickness benefit is; reintroduction of the fucking slavery and reconstitution of the workhouses.
The positive would be at least people will not be going hungry and homeless, they would be fed, and have a bunk to sleep on. Is the final scenario of the neo fucking conservatism lies in freedom of choice for we the people to willingly accept slavery and chose a fucking benevolent salve owner?
Macky mate, it is a shameless fuckwit with no sense of pride or self worth to intrude despite having been kicked out. However as Ben Franklin put it: Economic necessity motivates a steeper learning curve!
‘weapons have been his “stock and trade”
who wrote that?
I keep seeing warped and distorted versions of long-standing expressions come up in media. (I even saw someone writing about a ‘non-prophet org’ tonight.)
The expression is ‘stock in trade’
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/stock-in-trade
The language is disintegrating and it’s largely because of sloppy American influence.
(yes, I’m supposed to be in bed)
Hats off to the Education Ministry of the Flemish Region of Belgium. Too late, you missed it.
http://www.redressonline.com/2013/09/belgian-ministrys-fleeting-moments-of-truth-about-israel/
Nevermind:- The Spanish were the first to use concentration camps during a revolt on Cuba in the late 19th Century. Not that that lessens the horror of what happened during the Boer war. But that leads on to the basic difference between a concentration camp (primarily intended to hold civilians) and a PoW camp for captured enemy combatants. If nothing else the latter is covered by rules laid down in the Geneva convention.
I’ve no figures for the death rate amongst what would otherwise have been fit young men in the early years of the 20th century but despite what Mr Goss might think of my knowledge of the Great War I do know that PoWs were housed in overcrowded conditions, worked hard in dangerous conditions (coal mines that were considered too dangerous for German miners is one notable example) and underfed even before the blockade began to bite. All of these facts can be verified by anyone wishing to bother.
Sorry to disrupt the lazy flow of consnsus on this blog John but if nobody does it it gets a bit boring. You also have to get out of the mindset that anybody who disagrees with the consenus must be a paid troll. I’m doing this for free. You should be grateful!
“I then asked you if you considered Israel use of WP during their turkey shoot of Palestinians in Gaza over the X-mas period of 2008/9, an illegal breach ”
I’m sorry, I’ve been rather busy.
It would appear that it was indeed illegal, something the Israelis must’ve realised when the took the decision not to use WP anymore in April of this year, although they claimed it was simply a PR move.
Concentration camp definition from Wikipedia.
“The people who are locked away in such a prison, are not usually yet found guilty of a crime, but may be politically against the leaders of a region, people who are of a certain race or religion, or non-military prisoners of war.”
Does that not fit both Ruhleben and Guantanamo?
The likes of Kempe and Habbabkuk are just here to disrupt. They rarely, if ever give facts, but just try to denigrate those who do give facts. Bedtime methinks.
John, I don’t take the view that Kempe is here to disrupt. I’ve read much of his/her posting, and I don’t recall when those contributions have been uncivil, or were intended to provoke conflict. Disagreement where it is honestly held is a good thing, in my opinion; it allows us to hone our thoughts, which should be a process of constant refinement.
(Side note: for the record, deleted three items from banned Habbbabkuk just now).
Macky and Fedup
The apparition has been exorcised by Jon, confirming it really was the ghost of our recently departed unlamented shit-stirrer.
He will return and he will target you two and Jeeves and Doug Scorgie and one or two others I can’t bring to mind.
He will concentrate his ‘intellectual firepower’ on you bunch, because you will reply, over and over again, and this temporal oasis of calm and rationality will be over, and the pages of the blog will once again be filled with, yes Habbabkuk’s provocations, but to a far larger degree, your protestations.
It doesn’t have to be this way. I promise you, I absolutely copper-bottom guarantee you, that you will annoy Habbabkuk far more, and combat his attempted disruption more effectively, if you just ignore his goading.
He wants you to respond. If you do, he wins, if you don’t, everybody else does.
FWIW, I’d always assumed a concentration camp to be a PoW camp used for slave labour, sometimes set up with the intention of killing the inmates with exhaustion.
In comparing Nazi camps with Guantanamo, there is an interesting question of who operated/operates them whilst “knowingly doing wrong”. The propaganda environment then and now would have in both cases persuaded young and impressionable camp guards that they are “contributing to the war effort” and “helping protect American/German lives”, etc. I’m not saying that in either case it is excusable, just that it is complicated. The discussion of culpability and knowledge about the Holocaust still goes on, of course, both inside and outside of Germany.
The big difference between the two camps is that these days we have a much better mechanism for information dissemination (the Internet) which keeps people somewhat more honest. Also, our understanding of human rights and the international legal mechanisms that protect them are a great deal more advanced, and so it is at least harder for abominations like Guantanamo to do as they please.
Dreoilin, I think Richard Dawkins operates a non-prophet organisation.
I’ll get me coat 😉
Thanks and G’night Jon 🙂
(I’m really gone now)
“FWIW, I’d always assumed a concentration camp to be a PoW camp used for slave labour, sometimes set up with the intention of killing the inmates with exhaustion.”
Me too, Jon It seems minimum-wage jobs and section 8 housing qualifies.
Fedup; 🙂