Honoured to give the keynote speech at Amnesty’s conference on torture in London yesterday. Then dashed back to Edinburgh for a very romantic evening with Nadira – and Cameron!
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RobG
“Habba, what you no doubt purposely neglect to mention is that this Act gives ‘private companies’ the power to decide whether a demonstration is legal or not.”
_________________
You must not impute your own characteristics and motivations to other people, Rob.
I had not noticed what you assert. But you have obviously seen that in the Act – otherwise you would not be making the claim – so, in order to save time, could you please refer me to the right place in the Act (eg, section number, clause or schedule number or whatever).
If you are right and I can check it, I’ll be happy to concede the point.
Phil
“Habbakuk
I will enjoy it. I never wear a mask.”
_______________
I hope you do, Phil. You will find it more comfortable without a mask and in any case yo do not need to wear a mask because you have no intention of doing anything other than demonstrate peacefully, which is your right. You are clearly not one of the “casseurs” (the meaning of which Herbie pretends not to understand).
If the Ukrainian army has capitulated history has repeated itself because the station in Debaltsevo was liberated from the Nazis by the Russian army as depicted in this painting by Ivan Ryzhkov.
http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/zinur/post353817902/
Herbie
“Unless you provide convincing evidence to the contrary, it’d be safe to assume it’s little more than a media distraction neo word for what are in fact no more than age old govt employed agents provocateur, trying to make peaceful protestors look bad so that the police can knock their heads about.”
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It would be highly unsafe to assume that, Herbie.
You seem to be saying that all casseurs are agents provocateur, which is plainly nonsensical. On the contrary, t is well known that demonstrations tend – unfortunately – to attract a fringe of violent yobbos and a fringe of people who believe in expressing their political views through violence. One solution would of course be if the organisers of demonstrations and the mass of people who are there to demonstrate peacefully were themselves to take action to self-police the demonstration.
The noun “casseur” comes from the verb “casser” – to break, smash, etc. As, for example, the noun “menteur” (I’m sure you know what a liar is, Herbie) comes from the verb “mentir”. All clear?
Herbie
““The Labour party did great things after WWII”
Yes, but it’s important to remember that this was a bi-partisan approach. Both Tory and Labour followed the same broad economic policy from 1945 to the 1970s.
It’s called the post-war consensus, and a very similar approach was taken throughout the Western world.
Wealth cascaded down through the social classes. The masses had never had it so good.
But once the infrastructure had been built up, the tap was turned off.
This was fought in the 70s and 80s, but by the 90s all that was lost.
Big Bang in the financial markets. Globalization. The cuddly global village.”
______________
I’m jealous of your ability, Herbie, to summarise 70 years of British political, economic and social history in so few lines and to make it so…..understandable and simple.
“1066 and all that” has nothing on you.
Habba, I did a detailed post about this Act on my blog, which I can no longer access. I wonder why.
It just keeps getting madder and madder and madder, and people like you keep popping up (in huge numbers – but hey, who cares, the tax payer’s pick-up the tab!) to tell us that it’s all perfectly normal.
It’s called salami tactics; bit by bit, so as not to frighten the horses.
You lot in Britain now live in a police state.
And you don’t even realise it.
Habby. This is poor, and very evasive:
“The noun “casseur” comes from the verb “casser” – to break, smash, etc. As, for example, the noun “menteur” (I’m sure you know what a liar is, Herbie) comes from the verb “mentir”. All clear?”
I asked about the genesis of the term “casseurs”, as it applies to protests.
For example, is it a recent media invention?
Or has it been habitually used or what.
Simple question, but you seem unable to answer.
Why.
I have no idea how true but there are reports that Porky Poroshenko and his whole family have fled Kiev.
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rtdeutsch.com%2F12083%2Fheadline%2Fporoschenkos-familie-aus-kiew-geflohen-hintergrund-ultimatum-des-rechten-sektors-wegen-kessel-von-debaltsevo%2F&edit-text=&act=url
If true this is what Lavrov predicted that Poroshenko would take the blame for the war and step down in February making way for Yatsenyuk to replace him. Unless the extreme Nazis take over before Yatsenyuk has a chance. If true will he go to the United States who in a Wikileaks cable referred to him as “our man in Kiev”.
@Dave re David Bowie.
Incredible! I’m sure we all admire the courage of the Donbass volunteers who seem to have won through, for the time being at least, against the odds. The writer of lyrics like “Heroes” seems a particularly appropriate person to comment at this time.
@John: A few months ago, the twitter tag #Kiev was full of Patriotic stuff about the Maidan revolution, Banderite heroes, new President, etc… now there is not a good word there about Poroshenko, and many repeats of the suggestion that his family have been evacuated.
This could be bad news though… the real fascists could drive him out and form the next coup/government. Would the US arm them?
Furthermore, John, regarding Ukrainian denial of the cauldron…
“… The good news is that apparently nobody buys that nonsense any more and the mothers and wifes of the men caught in the cauldron are trying everything they can to force the Ukie high command to accept the Novorussian offer of an evacuation corridor. The try to protest in front of the General Staff building in Kiev, then the blocked traffic. In a particularly poignant moment one of these women put a megaphone next to a cellphone to amplify the voice of her son/husband calling from the cauldron and announcing that they had for about 3 hours of supplies left.”
Vineyard of the Saker, earlier today.
Sky News still faithfully reporting the Ukrainian gov story, last I heard.
Good news: UNSC Resolution unanimous. Once Debaltsevo is resolved, there could yet be peace.
@Herbie: The rot set in after Harold Wilson resigned, with Callaghan/Healy taking that “cut your public spending” IMF loan.
Thanks for the additional information Peacewisher. I still hope for peace. But there are a lot of questions to be asked about the genocide.
@John: McCain and Graham screaming at the US Senate to arm Ukraine. However, can’t see the Senate agreeing now the UNSC resolution has been unanimously passed.
What next?
Hope the separatists satisfy themselves with regaining Debaltsevo, and don’t go after Mariupol. They’ll need to consolidate their new kingdom, and make it a worthy model for their brothers and sisters in the rest of Ukraine to emulate. That way Ukraine can still be Ukraine, Russia can still be Russia, and the US can leave them all alone.
Re 9 / 11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YehuX9B868k#t=873
Science
Habbabkuk “… yo do not need to wear a mask because you have no intention of doing anything other than demonstrate peacefully, which is your right. ”
Yes, I entirely agree that peaceful protest is a right. Not one that’s respected in this country any longer, though, by a very long way.
Peacefully protesting is now a crime, and you can be charged by horses, baton-wielding thugs, beaten up, “kettled”, water-cannoned, and/or charged with any number of spurious offences.
If you were in a group, and a policeman came up and demanded your papers, would you meekly oblige? Would you think his taking notes of you, your location, your personal details, was a bit intimidating? After all, why would a policeman note down car number-plates, your details, and take your photograph before demanding to see your papers, and noting down all the people you happened to be with, when you hadn’t even done anything _but_ protest peacefully.
Do you not agree that such zealousness in information taking is excessive?
Now please consider this. Such obvious collection of identity is unnecessary. Just photographs of the crowd will do, all the other details can be garnered by machine not long afterwards. You might find yourself explaining why you have been associating with friends of known terrorists, because someone else in that crowd happened to be on an extensive e-mail circular shared by someone who sympathises with animal rights campaigners. But that’s more that enough – “We know you associate with terrorists” – to put the sweats on someone in custody, to harass and most definitely chill their enthusiasm to protest again. Or to put them off taking the police to court for brutality, or violation of their civil rights. Together with anyone who gets familiar with the tactic, which is of course, the entire point.
Just a picture is all it takes, because we’ve pretty much all provided – at our expense, and under penalty of heavy fines – photographic ID to the government. Those are used to identify us through all the IT services our taxpayer money has expensively bought. None of us asked for this. Failure to have our papers on us is not supposed to be crime, but our face in a crowd will do these days. To express bafflement as to why someone does not like showing their face at a protest, is to not be aware of genuine concerns.
No – hiding identity isn’t evidence of crime. Failure to show one’s face – in public, while peacefully protesting – is not a crime.
*
Demonstrations. What demonstrations?
Editorial
The Guardian view on the right to march: protest must be beyond price
Police efforts to charge protest groups before they can demonstrate are an affront to freedom and civil liberty. They should be disowned and abandoned
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/10/guardian-view-right-to-march-protest-must-be-beyond-price
Couple that with this from Fahy.
17 February 2015
Sir Peter Fahy offers frightening glimpse of policing under more cuts
http://www.itv.com/news/2015-02-17/sir-peter-fahy-offers-frightening-glimpse-of-policing-under-more-cuts/
It’s the austerity don’t you know!
Feel great shame that these yobs are part of us.
‘We’re racists. We’re racists and that’s the way we like it.’
Amateur footage shows Chelsea football fans preventing a black man from boarding a Paris metro train shortly before the Champions League fixture between Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday. The unidentified passenger attempts to squeeze on to the train, only to be pushed forcefully back on to the platform at the Richelieu-Drouot station. The fans then chant: ‘We’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it’
http://www.theguardian.com/football/video/2015/feb/17/chelsea-fans-prevent-black-man-boarding-paris-metro-video
‘A period of relative calm in the anti-government demonstrations ended abruptly on 18 February 2014, when protesters and police clashed. At least 82 people were killed over the following few days, including 13 policemen; more than 1,100 people were injured.
Burning of the Euromaidan headquarters in the Trade Unions Building.
The initial riots began on 18 February 2014 when some 20,000 Euromaidan protesters in Kiev advanced on Ukraine’s parliament in support of restoring the Constitution of Ukraine to its 2004 form, which had been repealed by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine shortly after Viktor Yanukovych was elected president in 2010. Police blocked their path. The confrontation turned violent; the BBC, citing correspondents, stated that both sides blamed the other. Police fired guns, with both rubber bullets and, later, live ammunition (including automatic weapons and sniper rifles), while also using tear gas and flash grenades in an attempt to repel thousands of demonstrators, who fought back with crude weapons, firearms, and improvised explosives. Protesters broke into the headquarters of the Party of Regions. There were no party members there at the time. Police stormed the main protest camp on Maidan Nezalezhnosti and overran parts of the square. The Trade Unions Building, the Euromaidan headquarters, burned down. Political commentators suggested that Ukraine was on the brink of a civil war. Some areas, including Lviv Oblast, declared themselves politically independent from the central government.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution
The shocking treatment of refugees in Ukraine;
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/ukraine-receives-eu-funds-to-block-asylum-seekers-from-reaching-europe-a-1018907.html
Herbie
“I asked about the genesis of the term “casseurs”, as it applies to protests.
For example, is it a recent media invention?
Or has it been habitually used or what.”
_________________
You’re still trying to divert away from the question of whether people should be allowed to mask themselves when on demonstrations but, hey, I don’t mind going along with you for once. I’m a good sport, you know.
I’ve no idea of when the term (the meaning of which I’ve explained – cf above) was first used in France but it certainly goes back several years if memory serves.
As to whether it’s a media “invention” – or whether, for instance, it was first used by politicians or police as a shorthand term to replace something somewhat longer – eg, “people who attend peaceful demonstrations in order not to protest peacefully but to smash shop windows, burn cars, hurl missiles at those policing the demonstration..etc, etc..” is an open question but hardly seems very important.
Well now, Herbie, your turn to answer the following (thrid time lucky, what!):
1/. do you think people should wear face masks on demonstrations and if so, why
2/. do you deny the existence of violent elements which attach themselves to otherwise peaceful demonsrations (or are they perhaps mere hologrammes….)
3/. do you maintain your claim that “casseurs” at demonstrations are agents provocateur acting on behalf of the authorities in order to discredit the peaceful demonstrators.
Feel free to answer at leisure.
Not forgetting of course Ukrainian refugees;
http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2015/2/ukraine-idps.html
Cloak and daggers. Smoke and mirrors. Iraqi chemical weapons from 1980s sold to CIA by a seller known only to CIA.
http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/feb/17/cia-said-have-bought-iraqi-chemical-weapons-2005-0/
G4S rears its ugly head again. It operates Oakwood Prison.
18 February 2015
HMP Oakwood bullying and use of force highlighted in report
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-31509244
21 January 2014
HM Prison Oakwood: Ambulance called nearly every day
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25809660
http://www.hmpoakwood.co.uk/
Reminder: G4S operate in Israel.
STOP G4S
http://www.bdsmovement.net/activecamps/g4s
RobG
You wrote:
“Habba, what you no doubt purposely neglect to mention is that this Act gives ‘private companies’ the power to decide whether a demonstration is legal or not.”
_________________
Not entirely convinced (but willing to be), I replied:
” so, in order to save time, could you please refer me to the right place in the Act (eg, section number, clause or schedule number or whatever).”
__________________
You have now come back with the following:
“Habba, I did a detailed post about this Act on my blog, which I can no longer access. I wonder why.”
and carried on with the following diversion:
“It just keeps getting madder and madder and madder, and people like you keep popping up (in huge numbers – but hey, who cares, the tax payer’s pick-up the tab!) to tell us that it’s all perfectly normal.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s pretty feeble, isn’t it.
Here’s a second and final chance to back up your claim, by referring us to the relevant sections of the Act you’ve complained about, that the Act
1/. effectively makes peaceful protest illegal (you claimed this at 19h21 yesterday)
2/. gives ‘private companies’ the power to decide whether a demonstration is legal or not (you claimed this at 21h56 yesterday).
I hope you take the opportunity to back up your claims and thereby establish yourself as a serious commenter.
Thank you.
Further to my comment at 17 Feb, 2015 – 11:14 pm regarding how the US is going to control Ukraine if the peace holds, here is another means by which Monsanto is going to destroy the beautiful rich loam with chemicals and GM crops.
https://www.popularresistance.org/ukraine-agrees-to-monsanto-land-grab-for-17-billion-imf-loan/
I don’t see how that could be molten granite, the WTC wasn’t built on granite, the bed rock was sedimentary mica schist.
More accurately, metamorphic. Otherwise A+. I’m sick of posting pictures of the Manhattan Schist, which underlies much of NYC, for the benefit of the 9/11-thermonuclear-woo brigade. Unfortunately letting facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory is not allowed. And no, it wasn’t a conventional explosive either. That would have blown the base floors apart before the collapse started. Which didn’t happen. In any case, what would be the possible point of rigging the buildings AND flying aircraft into them? OK, ok, you know why that was. It was in case the planes didn’t work. What planes? They were holograms.
Actually, it was done with a super-destructive pocket laser cannon, like Flight MH317. And that activated the fault running just under the twin towers. And….
Jesus.
I’m happy to state that I’m enjoying Baal more and more! And have removed him from the list of Eminences.
The troll is desperate to receive replies and is obviously lonely on this lovely sunny day. Suggest he has a brisk walk and engages with any people he encounters.
Please don’t encourage him.
“Mass retreat from #Debaltseve. #Poroshenko says it’s a ‘planned withdrawal’, and there was ‘no encirclement’.”
Rory Challands
@rorychallandsAJ
Russia reporter for Al Jazeera English.