I apologise for the break in articles. There is only one of me and I have been taking a little time to recharge my batteries and give my wonderful family some of the attention they deserve. I shall be back to the mill in another week.
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We all need time to regenerate. The work you do will mean you need it even more than most of us.
thanks for all the work you do, and the amount you accomplish despite being targeted by the government.
Hang in there, brother. Recharge and refresh yourself as much as you need to.
Slappe av!
Enjoy your recharge and family time. Sounds good to me.
Maybe take in a bit of tennis today? Even if Murray loses, he has put up such a tremendous fight and encouraged those who are getting on a bit and feeling the weight of the years!
good panel
“Death of Journalism”
July 6, 2023
Chris Hedges, Stella Assange and Matt Kennard discuss the implications of the Julian Assange case and the demise of mainstream journalism.
100 min.
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/07/06/watch-the-death-of-journalism/
Take care Craig. By the way, I used to keep an eye on whether you had any recent insights via twitter. Now twitter is blocked for people without accounts. I could make a temporary account, but that might draw me in more, and there is so much unhealthy stuff on there. So I’ve decided to stay off twitter and not look at it at all. I do appreciate the public updates here on this blog.
twitter makes me very uncomfortable, it’s a toxic addiction (glad I’m not hooked on it!).
Enjoy the well-earned rest, Craig.
Craig,
Riots in France – war in Sudan – African migrants into Europe – on-going war in Ukraine – strikes in the UK – BRICS efforts to establish an alternative currency to the US dollar etc. – just to remind as you may have been resting and forgetting what is happening in the world. Looking forward to your resumed commentaries.
Thanks for your work.
Blood on the rooftops, Venice in the Spring
Streets of San Francisco, word from Peking
The trouble was started by a young Errol Flynn
Better in my day, oh Lord
For when we got bored we’d have a World War, happy but poor
So let’s skip the news boy, I’ll go make that tea
Blood on the rooftops, too much for me.
Brilliant!
That or the better known Land of Confusion, or possibly the second part of Domino.
No need for apologies – enjoy your break and be with those you love and who love you.
Take your time.
Meanwhile, interesting developments with the SNP showing flickering signs of their earlier radicalism, now that they’re actually coming under some political pressure. Firstly, by reviving the pledge to treat the next general election as a de facto referendum. And now, demands to be allowed to pursue an evidence-based, Portuguese style drugs policy, one favouring treatment over punishment (far too sensible for the reactionary UK and Daily Mail readers).
How genuine they are being remains an open question. For it looks like they’re tilting at windmills, knowing the first, an SNP GE success scenario, looks increasingly unlikely, and the second, the drugs policy changes, have already been flatly rejected by London. Bizarrely, I read it’s not a devolved matter, even though ‘justice and policing’ are, as is health and social services?
Hope you and all enjoy your summer holidays. ;O)
Nothing is more important than your own health and to be around the family during the summer holidays.
One must simply step back and recharge in this crazy world.
A tip is to skip watching any news for a couple of days, especially in the morning:
The Science of Why You Really Shouldn’t Start Your Day With the Headlines:
You suspected it, now research has confirmed it: Starting your day with bad news is terrible for your mental health.
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-science-of-why-you-really-shouldnt-start-your-day-with-headlines.html
Internet/news is a wonderful thing… but the more the years pass by I reckon there are quite a few heavy downsides to it, I really hate the hermit aspect to it – everyone is caught up in their smartphone or on their computer while the world/life is passing by instead of engage with people, in real life, our only life! I think this new technology/social media have a huge huge part on depression/anxiety issues in our society.
Have a good break!
Enjoy a wee break Craig you’ve earned it.
No need to apologise Craig.
Understandable.
SoD Austin’s gaffe from his April 3d speech was finally discovered by Russians, so now everyone jokes about “Putin’s war is not the result of NATO enlargement—it is the cause of NATO enlargement.”
Everyone needs a break from time to time Craig, enjoy the sunshine and watch some Cricket would be my suggestion!
no problemo mr. Murray, certain things must be prioritised. be well, warm regards (the Netherlands).
Have you seen this?
Assange SUING the CIA? – Redacted (7 Jul 2023) – YouTube, 23m 54s
Lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are suing the US Central Intelligence Agency and its former director Mike Pompeo for recording their conversations with Assange and copying data from their devices. Two journalists have also joined this case. Redacted correspondent Dan Cohen spoke with one of the lawyers, Richard Roth. He is here to tell us about it.
Old news.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/aug/16/julian-assange-lawyers-sue-cia-over-alleged-spying
Rest easy Craig, I’m pretty sure most here have got your back.
Robert F Kennedy Jr this evening has said that as President he will/would pardon Julian Assange on Day 1.
Watch from 21:20 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tIs-JBOdQc
Thanks for this pointer to the RFK Jr interview. The first thing I like about him, having listened to several interviews over the past few weeks, is the no-waffle straight-talking. It is clear where he stands on all the issues. There is no one we would agree with 100%; the most important thing for me in a politician is integrity and clarity. That way mistakes can be corrected. This is why I like Craig Murray so much – not that I agree with every one of his views but he is honest and clear in what he writes.
Thanks for link to RFK Jr interview.
Totally OK. It is quality not quantity that matters. Best wishes to you and family.
Thanks for looking after yourself. Even the best need a rest now and then, Craig. Our best wishes to you from Norfolk.
Yesterday Mrs. Justice Thornton rejected Dr. Andrew Boswell’s case that all new road projects should be planned and assessed by the Government’s own Transport decarbonisation plans, before any moves to create more pollution, run-off into vital chalk rivers and destruction of the existing wildlife habitats should take place.
She is siding with ignorant liars, siding with more degradation future generations will have to deal with.
When is the time to start ‘doing different’? When thousands of concerned scientists warned us for decades we must act now.
Please support the appeal in the High court if you are able to; it will set a precedent for all future development plans.
Crowd Justice: Stop road building that wrecks the climate and nature (A47BNB/Norfolk)
Piggybacking on your roadbuilding theme nevermind here in London we have been gaslit for years that our mayor is one of Europe’s leading anti-car, clean air politicians. That’s despite him greenlighting the Silvertown Tunnel which is going to funnel 25 000 more HGVs & cars a day past homes & schools in what is London’s poorest, most-polluted borough. Old Sadiq has been supplied with voluminous evidence of the toxic effect his tunnel will have on air quality and health for generations to come. However for Labour Right ghouls like him that is meaningless compared to bribes received from banks & construction companies.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/24/doctors-urge-sadiq-khan-cancel-london-silvertown-tunnel-pollution
Would love to see Craig place this diminutive fraud under his microscope at some point in the future. For the time being I hope he (Amb M) has much fun with the family, abandoning all thought of the sociopathtic charlatans who preside over us.
You lost me with “diminutive fraud”. I hate people who decide that along with any other grievances they might have with an individual, some unchosen, unalterable physical characteristic is also a problem for them. Whether that be ethnicity, skin colour, height, sexual orientation or eye colour – it’s pure bigotry, and shame on you for demonstrating that you’re a bigot on a human rights activist’s blog.
Corrupt, child-killing fraud, sacrificing the lives of the poor for backhanders.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/sadiq-khan-says-voters-got-it-right-by-not-backing-labour-at-general-election
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/01/sadiq-khan-green-mayor-silvertown-tunnel
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/05/31/sadiq-khans-pollution-paradox-on-the-silvertown-tunnel-and-when-rhetoric-doesnt-match-action/
Hold on though. His stature was referenced in a shocking act of pure bigotry, so forget all that. The mayor himself is the important victim. Something Craig too must accept if he is genuinely a human rights activist.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/22/sadiq-khan-hits-back-at-donald-trump-calling-him-six-foot-three-child
Someone isn’t a victim because they are tall, short, black or gay. The only problem they have on such fronts – when they are victims, if you like – is on occasion that they’re taken to task about it by bigots like you.
That fact doesn’t make them a hero either, you seem to have difficulty grasping a rather simple point here.
Presumably you feel Johnson’s statue is a mitigating factor in his otherwise all-round wretchedness as a human being? If not, why not?
Sadiq Khan said the electorate did “the right thing” in making Johnson prime minister rather than an “antisemitic” Corbyn.
You’ve seen he’s very content to poison generations of London’s poorest people.
Far worse, by your own terms, he demonstrated pure bigotry with heightest remarks against Donald Trump. No interest in any of this from glenn-nl.
I remember you angrily defending some ridiculous Biden corruption on here too not long ago. So I think my appreciation of your ethics is complete. You’ll forgive me if I just laugh at any more self-righteous efforts to scold & shame.
You’re confused, Jay. Just because someone isn’t very likable for any number of reasons, it’s not OK to denigrate them on account of the colour of their skin.
By the way – I’m talking to you, not Sadiq Khan. Next time I speak with Khan, perhaps I’ll ask him to clarify the point. But it seems obvious enough – he was taking your mate Trump to task for acting like a big baby. It was not a slur against anyone 6’3″.
Besides, you invoked a classic ‘tu quoque’ logical fallacy, a couple of times, in one post.
You keep adding to the list of things Khan has done, as if that justifies your denigrating his Pakistani heritage. It doesn’t. It’s not OK to be bigoted to someone like that regardless of how long the charge sheet might be.
I knew you were a venal centrist fraud but it did not take much for you to put it on full display. You think yourself & centrist-lib politicians are the Good Guys because umm, umm .. because Jay denigrated Sadiq Khan’s skin cour & Pakistani heritage! Because Jay said he is a Trump supporter! Doesn’t matter if I said no such things & everyone can see I didn’t, centrist-libs are the Goodies so if Glenn says Jay said that then he just did, so there!
Gentlemen*, if I may butt in:
If the left is ever to regain ascendency in British politics within most people’s lifetimes, then people on the left need to start trying to persuade the millions that don’t vote in elections (mainly the poor) to vote for parties that might act in their interests – be that Alba, the Greens, Aspire, a reconstituted left-leaning Labour party, whatever – rather than, say, getting into protracted fights on blogs about petty trifles.
* I assume you’re both gentlemen – apologies if I’m wrong.
You’re right to some extent, LA.
Unfortunately, if you point out to some people an element of their bigotry, all they seem to manage is an incoherent jumble of personal attacks, ending up in the meltdown that Jay manifests just above.
Shame the actual point cannot be addressed. That would be the grown up thing to do. If I appear bigoted, let me know – I’ll discuss it and work on it, not attack the person pointing it out.
To illustrate – I didn’t even bother asking where it was that I had been “angrily defending some ridiculous Biden corruption”, (his accusation) because I know it existed solely in Jay’s fevered imagination – the same place which conjured up lunatic paranoid conspiracy theories about vaccines, Covid-19 being a hoax, and doctors all being out to kill us. And Lord only knows what other hysterical nonsense.
I wouldn’t agree that Jay is of the left either. Too much in the way of conspiracy crankiness and unaddressed bigotry for that.
What are you talking about? Glenn supports establishment crooks like Joe Biden & Sadiq Khan. He is no more in the business of persuading poor people to vote against such people than you are. My contribution to that end today was to post links exposing how nefarious the mayor of our capital city is. Might have enlightened a few who are reachable. Who knows? I suspect you lean more towards Glenn’s establishment-centrist worldview, where any objectors are rightwing conspiracy theorists, covid deniers, Pakistan heritage denigrators etc.
Jay : “Glenn supports establishment crooks like Joe Biden & Sadiq Khan […]”
Evidence for this? I’m sure you’re not lying, just badly mistaken… right?
Thanks for your replies gentlemen, and thanks for the compliment Glenn – I’ll take any on offer. I don’t think you’re bigoted at all, but I also don’t think it was particularly constructive to have a go at Jay for using the word ‘diminutive’, not least because it may have been meant in the sense of lacking in moral stature and/or political gravitas.
I may be broadly a centrist, Jay (in the true sense of word, rather than its economically centre-right/right, socially far-left bordering on 80’s loony-left current incarnation), but I don’t want poor people to be poor unless they want to be – that’s one reason why I support land value taxes and universal basic income. As far as I know, the only parties standing on those platforms at the last UK general election were the Greens (who I’ll probably be voting for at the next election) and the Young People’s Party (now known as Shared Ground).
Both of you appear to be accusing each other of not being properly ‘left’. I don’t think it’s particularly helpful in attracting people to the left-wing cause.
LA: ” […] I also don’t think it was particularly constructive to have a go at Jay for using the word ‘diminutive’, not least because it may have been meant in the sense of lacking in moral stature and/or political gravitas.”
If that is indeed what Jay meant, I wish he had said so and clarified the point immediately (instead of making increasingly desperate attacks).
Had he done so, I would have apologised for an incorrect assumption on my part, and agreed fully with the assessment of Khan.
Indeed, I did make it absolutely clear in my first reply, that he (Jay) had me right up to the point of denigrating a person for the unchangeable physical characteristics they were born with. Whether Jay missed that, ignored that, didn’t understand it, or chose to pretend otherwise, I couldn’t say.
Thanks for your reply Glenn. Even if Jay did mean it in the physical sense, there’s a long-standing tradition in British politics of mocking minor flaws in politicians’ appearances, and that’s often more apparent on the left than the right: think of Steve Bell and Martin Rowson in the Graun (they go back to its Wikileaks-publishing halcyon days and beyond). Most politicians accept that it comes with the territory. Have you ever bought the Guardian? I know I have. Anyway, the vast majority of people don’t care until they start drawing characters with stereotypical Jewish features:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/may/04/antisemitic-cartoon-was-appalling-and-avoidable
LA: I appreciate your reply in return.
While fun at physical appearance is indeed, as you say, a long standing tradition (which always made Spitting Image so entertaining), I feel there are rather sinister implications in drawing attention to a particular characteristic, implying it adds to the list of other crimes attendant to an individual.
I didn’t see the cartoon referred to in your reference above, and unfortunately the Graud didn’t reference it. I’m sure it was all in the best possible taste.
But consider the propriety of describing some crook who just happened to be of a Jewish persuasion, who had, say, swindled a number of people out of their life savings, as “the hook-nosed” conman. Or even the Jewish conman. And then going on to say “the Jew did this”, and “The Jew did that…”, “This money-loving Jew…” and so on.
We would recognise straight away what’s going on here. It’s a clear attempt to denigrate the individual further for being a Jew. The framing is clear – a list of charges is made, and being a Jew is added to it, by inference, that must be a crime too (or at least, something very negative). It also draws all Jews into a negative framing because of the crimes of this one particular individual.
It is inviting further condemnation – and discrimination – of an entire class of people, for nothing more than a coincidence of a particular physical characteristic.
This is what Jay was doing (in fairness – probably rather mindlessly) in pulling Khan’s height into the mix, as if that was yet another problem for which he ought to be held accountable, or at least denigrated for. And by soft extension, all those of a similar disposition, through no choice of their own whatsoever.
That, LA, is what I feel we should be on the watch for. Bigotry, in all its forms (and Lord knows, there are many of them). Admittedly, I should have put the point to someone of such a thin-skinned and delicate – I hesitate to use the term ‘snowflake’, less still ‘unbalanced’ – disposition rather more diplomatically.
Lapsed Agnostic
I remember my only previous interaction with you ended with you defending the US invasions of Vietnam & Afghanistan. I’m pretty baffled therefore why you reappear expecting me to treat you as some kind of arbiter of what is or isn’t leftwing. Or to acquiesce in this weird insistence that Glenn-nl is my ally in fighting establishment centrism.
How also do you expect me to take you seriously as sober meticulous judge of my exchange with Glenn? The only noteworthy aspect of the exchange was how his defence of the Corbyn-hating, child killing Khan suddenly accelerated into a brazen bare faced lie that I denigrated Khan for his skin colour & Pakistani heritage. I guess some things the sober judge must simply ignore when he decides to try & bolster the likes of Glenn and other unscrupulous centrists on this site.
Thanks for your reply Glenn. The Graun removed the offending cartoon from its site pretty quickly, and Rowson offered a grovelling apology – probably on pain of losing his job – even though he claims that he didn’t know that Richard Sharp was Jewish. It has however been preserved elsewhere:
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/opinion-rowsons-cartoon-should-be-a-teachable-moment/
As you can see, Sharp’s features (stereotypically Jewish or otherwise) aren’t particularly exaggerated: unlike a lot of Rowson’s work, it’s actually a fairly good likeness (it’s the severed head of Rishi Sunak in the box that’s been given the oversized schnozz). By the way, portraying him carrying a box with ‘Goldman Sachs’ written on it isn’t necessarily an anti-Semitic trope, since Sharp is an ex-banker who, like my cousin, used to work for them.
Thanks for your reply Jay. First of all, I have never defended the War in Afghanistan – so if we were commenting under our real names, I would be entitled to sue you for libel. I would have supported the US intervention in Vietnam at the outset since the South Vietnamese government appealed to them for assistance in quelling the Viet Cong insurgency (which was aided by the North), just as I’m of the opinion that Russia has a right to intervene in Syria at the behest of the Syrian regime. People living in South Vietnam who wanted to be governed by Communists had a ten-month window to move to the North after the Geneva Accords were signed (note: by the North, but not the South). It’s fair comment that to state that, since 1945, US governments have been responsible for the deaths of more foreigners than the CCP – but the latter has been responsible for the deaths of far, far more of its own citizens (see The Great Leap Forward etc).
Sadiq Khan may have his faults, but he did introduce the Toxicity Charge on the most polluting vehicles in 2017, then brought forward the introduction of the ULEZ by 18 months – this was shown to have reduced the levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) across Inner London by over 20% three months later. To accuse him of ‘child-killing’ because he’s green-lit the construction of a single road tunnel seems a bit much. Anyway, far more kids are killed by vehicles running them over than by the (much-reduced) pollution they cause. Have you anything to say about the British politicians that have recently been directly involved in green-lighting child-killing (see the UK contribution to Operation Inherent Resolve for example)? Not that I’ve seen – you seem more pre-occupied with wars that happened half a century ago.
If we assume that the centre ground in British politics is somewhere between Rishi Sunak and Keith Starmer, then I’d say that both you and Glenn are on the left. Am I not entitled to my views of what is and what is not left-wing? If not, should a professor of politics who’s written extensive, well-researched articles on left-wing movements in Latin America have an entire body of work retracted by the journals just because he’s admitted to voting Tory? (I’ve only done that once, in the 2019 European Parliament elections, but only because I thought that Theresa May’s proposed Brexit deal wasn’t too bad – not that it did her any good).
Both of you have accused the other of doing things that, as far as I know, you haven’t done: Glenn has accused you of denigrating Khan’s skin colour. You have accused Glenn of ‘angrily defending some ridiculous Biden corruption’. Unless you can prove otherwise, I think both of you owe each other an apology.
LA: Thanks again for the reply.
I had no idea that Sharp was Jewish, and wouldn’t have guessed it from that cartoon either. There is nothing to suggest negative inferences about Jews in it, as far as I can see.
You are right about my comments about Jay – and I unreservedly apologise to him for suggesting he made negative comments about Khan’s skin colour or his Pakistani origins.
No – it was a different physical attribute of Khan on which Jay demonstrated inexcusable bigotry, an attribute which Khan had no say over – no more so than his skin colour. A physical attribute which has absolutely zero to do with his work or personality, and was only mentioned by Jay in order to promote discrimination and negativity about an entire class of people. People who do not share the wondrous attribute of Johnson and Trump, in this particular respect.
I trust Jay will fully accept my retraction and clarification on the point. I must have confused his bigotry over one physical aspect with another.
I look forward to hearing Jay either substantiate or retract his own accusations in turn.
Thanks for your reply Glenn. I guess the take-home message from the Rowson affair is that, as with the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), all Jewish people are now off-limits for cartoonists. Big of you to apologise to Jay. Let’s see if he responds in kind.
Unrelated: A BBC presenter has just been suspended after the Sun reported that he allegedly paid thousands of pounds to a 17-year-old for nude photos. I’m old enough to remember when the Sun was paying thousands of pounds to 17-year-olds for (semi)-nude photos (and 16-year olds as well), knowing exactly how old they were – and then printing millions of copies of them for the delectation of the unwashed masses.
Enjoy what’s left of the weekend.
It took me a while to work out what Jay was on about because I initially thought that ‘diminutive’ referred to some minor fraudulent act rather than a putative fraudster :-/
Short People by Randy Newman, 1977. YouTube, three minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8UVBgUd9GE
– Short people got no reason to live.
– They got little hand, little eyes,
– They walk around telling great big lies..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_newman
– Newman’s parents were non-observant Jews: Newman himself is an atheist. He has said that religion or any sense of religious identity was completely absent in his childhood. To illustrate this, he has often recounted in interviews an antisemitic incident that occurred when he was young: he was invited by a classmate to be her date to a cotillion at her Los Angeles country club, the Riviera Country Club. He accepted the invitation but was subsequently disinvited by the girl’s father, who told Newman that his daughter should never have invited him because Jews were not allowed at the club. Newman hung up the phone, then went to ask his own father what a “Jew” was.
Reminds me of that joke about Stevie Wonder that I can never work whether it’s racist or not:
Interviewer: “Do you think being blind has disadvantaged your career?”
S. Wonder: “Oh it could have been worse; I could have been black.”
Thanks for your comment, Clark. According to Wiki, Isaiah Dixon Jr, who was a member of Maryland’s House of Delegates from 1975 to 1982, tried to get ‘Short People’ banned from radio playlists in the state until he was told that that would violate the First Amendment. His height is listed as 5’5″ – though that’s still two inches taller than (Maryland-born-and-bred) Muggsy Bogues, the shortest player ever in the NBA:
With reference to NOx (see above comments), I still need to get back to you and Natasha in detail on the renewable energy forum about thermal NOx, generated from nitrogen gas in the air at high temperatures. However, I can tell you here that at typical combustion temperatures, such as that at which hydrogen burns, it is utterly negligible. The vast majority of the NOx generated by combustion comes from nitrogen-containing compounds in the fuel.
Lapsed Agnostic, thanks. I hadn’t read the whole Wiki article and I was wondering if anyone had tried to ban that song, which is obviously satirical.
Dunno if you’ve been watching any climate graphs, but things are getting scary, and some folk are saying that the current geological age should be renamed from the recently proposed anthropocene to the pyrocene.
Jay, on July 8 at 16:19 you wrote “forget all that” etc. This seems to be what caused the ensuing argument. Glenn_nl’s no centrist.
No far from it. But what about you? You’re another with a lot to say about everything apart from Sadiq’s polluting tunnel. Another Greta- Nordstream moment?
Thanks for your reply Clark. I haven’t seen any recent climate graphs, but I have seen reports on the news about overall global temperature records being broken with much increased frequency – though it’s worth mentioning that we are in an El Nino year. I’m not sure what’s behind the sudden spike, but hypothesize that it may have something to do with methane emissions from fracking in the US.
————–
I will say something about the proposed Silvertown tunnel, Jay. Do you have any evidence that the London mayor has taken bribes or ‘backhanders’ to permit its construction? If you don’t, I would ask that you kindly withdraw some of your earlier statements in case this site gets sued for defamation. It wouldn’t be the first time that a Scottish website has been sued by a Labour politician over remarks made in its comments section and, in view of his current financial situation, I’m sure our host would rather not have to hand over £25k or more (plus legal expenses – that’s the killer) to Sadiq:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/may/31/pressandpublishing2
Jay, I’m not a centrist, and I oppose all the centrist wars. I think ‘economic growth’ in the rich countries has gone far too far. London doesn’t need a new tunnel, it needs less effin traffic!! We need to relocalise, spend less time in traffic jams pursuing business so we can conserve resources for pleasure – which is the important thing in life, as opposed to money.
I hadn’t mentioned the tunnel because I knew nothing about it. As per this post’s title, I’m only human, and in this ever accelerating world there is only so much I can keep up with.
I’ve no idea what a “Greta- Nordstream moment” is, but I regard the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines as economic and climate vandalism. Pipelined gas from Russia was Europe’s transition fuel, while lower emission infrastructure was being expanded. Europe has consequently increased emissions by burning far more coal, and by importing vast quantities of liquefied natural gas (which overall emits as much as coal), to the benefit mostly of US and Qatari companies. European purchases have further made LNG too expensive for countries such as India and Pakistan, so they’re burning more coal as well.
I suspect there’s really very little fundamental disagreement between yourself, glenn_nl, Lapsed Agnostic and/or me. Just admit that you shouldn’t criticise people for being short, because it’s something they don’t have any choice about..
Clark: You see the position here very clearly. My single objection to Jay’s diatribe against Khan was that slur concerning a physical characteristic.
Jay doesn’t see it like that, though. To him, and many like him, it’s “Oh! Oh! So you’re defending and sticking up for the enemy! That makes you the enemy too!”
They are fanatics. Everything is totally either black or white. Like his fellow traveller Dubbya Bush, he thinks you’re either Good or Evil. You’re either for us or against us. Nothing in between.
It happens with low integrity posters all the time. For instance, about a decade back, RoS said something about Jack Straw’s drug-addled son. I pointed out that it was a tabloid sting operation, where a couple of hotties in a pub told Straw’s son (a student at the time) that cannabis really got them going.. could he get them any…. (wink, wink…)…?
Straw Junior duly complied, got clobbered by the press, and was frog-marched by his old man down to the nick the next day. I pointed out that, in all fairness, that hardly made him a drug addict.
RepublicOfScotland crowed, “Oh, oh, so you like your cannabis do you Glenn? You’re a suck-up to Jack Straw, are you?” – and so on, and on, to exceedingly tedious length. RoS has never had the integrity or decency to apologise for it either, even to this day, and shame on him/her for it.
*
The point being, you’re either fully on-side, or you’re the enemy. Not a Rizla paper to be slid between the two.
So when Covid denialists say covid doesn’t exist, and it does but it’s not harmful, and it was also made in a lab to kill everyone but it’s still all a hoax, you’re not supposed to say this isn’t exactly consistent.
Masks are useless, and they kill you too (CO2 poisoning, you know), and they’re for control, and vaccines will kill everyone, but masks also concentrate the virus…. let’s not even get started on vaccines… it doesn’t matter how risible these self-contradictory statements are, you _must not_ dispute any point. Doing so makes you The Enemy.
That was my crime here. Saying it’s not nice to denigrate half the population that falls below the average height in any given demographic is wrong – because it’s useful to do so against this particular Official Enemy!
*
The upshot being, you cannot reason with fanatics. They also have absolutely zero sense of humour, have you noticed?
Clark, it was the sole subject of my post! I pointed out rather clearly who this tunnel is going to poison for generations to come. How the mayor could hardly be better informed on who it will poison. Also provided several links. It ought to have provoked a scintilla of interest from a passionate environmentalist/ clean-air advocate regardless where they live in the country. It didn’t. That’s why I liken it to a Greta-Nordstream moment.
Glenn-nl, everyone can see that wasn’t your only objection. You were also outraged, disgusted, absolutely sickened by me denigrating Sadiq’s Pakistani heritage & skin colour. The scruplulous Clark & Lapsed Agnostic had nothing to say about that either, so maybe it didn’t happen. Even if it did however there is literally zero chance in this place of it affecting your status as the site’s unfanatical?, humorous(!) lib witchfinder. It will just be denied, unremembered. The usual.
Meantime Lapsed Agnostic, another leftist Green, finally has found something to say on Khan’s tunnel. Guess what’s upset him..
Jay, on July 11 at 06:52 you wrote:
– “Clark, it…” [the Silvertown tunnel] “was the sole subject of my post!”
Surely, the Silvertown tunnel was the object of your post, wasn’t it? Or am I getting grammatical structure wrong all these decade after being taught it? Subject, verb, object. “The cat sat on the mat”. The cat’s the subject, to sit is the verb, and the mat is the object. That would make Sadiq Khan the subject of your post, wouldn’t it?
Jay: “Glenn-nl, everyone can see that wasn’t your only objection. You were also outraged, disgusted, absolutely sickened by me denigrating Sadiq’s Pakistani heritage & skin colour”
Yes. That was a little trick to get you to see that bigotry about one physical, unchangeable aspect of an individual is as bad as any other.
Are you genuinely too daft to understand this simple point, despite having it explained to you multiple times – is that your excuse?
Also, does criticising your use of a heightist slur.(on general principles) amount to complete and full support for Khan and all he does, in your strange binary world?
__
ps I really would knock it off with that “child-killer” hysterical nonsense too. It’s BS, smacks of desperation, and adds nothing to whatever point you were trying to make.
– Surely, the Silvertown tunnel was the object of your post, wasn’t it? Or am I getting grammatical structure wrong all these decade after being taught it?
The word “subject” has a range of legitimate meanings depending on context, and there’s no reason to insist on the grammatical one unless the discussion specifically concerns sentence structure.
In general usage, a subject is “the thing that is being discussed, considered, or studied” (Cambridge dictionary), alternatively termed a “topic“. The standard meaning in the context of education is much broader, referring to an entire discipline or “area of knowledge that is studied in school, college, or university” (ibid.)
The narrow grammatical meaning refers to an active noun or pronoun: i.e. “the person or thing that performs the action of a verb, or is joined to a description by a verb” (ibid.). It would only be the preferred meaning in a discussion of sentence construction. There’s no more reason to choose the grammatical sense outside of that context than another alternative meaning such as “a person who lives in or who has the right to live in a particular country, especially a country with a king or queen” (ibid.).
– The King asked his subjects which subject one should study if the subject of interest was the subject of a verb; they replied that it was quite subjective and may be subject to change depending on the main subject to which one had been subjected at school.
Thanks for your reply Jay. I see I’ve now switched from being an establishment centrist to a leftist Green. I suppose there have been bigger political transformations*.
Re: ‘Lapsed Agnostic had nothing to say about [Glenn’s false accusations that you’d denigrated Sadiq Khan’s skin colour and Pakistani heritage] either’
I refer you to this in one of my earlier comments:
‘Both of you have accused the other of doing things that, as far as I know, you haven’t done: Glenn has accused you of denigrating Khan’s skin colour….I think both of you owe each other an apology.’
I take it that you don’t have any evidence that Sadiq Khan has been taking backhanders. I don’t have any evidence either. (Polite notice to the London mayor and his lawyers, if they happen to be reading: Please, please don’t sue this site).
P.S. He/him – not my pronouns. Thanks in advance.
* If reports of shadow cabinet meetings are to be believed, Keith Starmzy seems to have gone from being a left-libertarian (unpaid) defender of violent deviants in his youth (look up Operation Spanner on Wiki, if you dare) to being on the authoritarian wing of Oakeshottian conservatism in late middle age: “I’m not interested in hope and change”. Well if it’s good enough for Barry O, it’s good enough for him.
Yes Justin, yes, but Jay’s post was about Sadiq Khan, wasn’t it? Sadiq Khan was indeed the subject, wouldn’t you say? More so than the Silvertown Tunnel. And it was then Sadiq Khan that Jay continued to bang on about, and that we’re all traitors to some cause unless we denigrate him for his height.
Clark, it’s the cause by which you ostentatiously define yourself. I never told you to be Mr Environmentalist/ King Green. That’s a persona you adopted yourself. I don’t care if you live up in Scotland, any ultra environmentalist/ clean-air advocate would have heard over the past few years of the Silvertown Tunnel & its impact upon the poorest, most polluted borough in the country. When you did finally hear about it through my post & attached articles your reaction was not even silence, ala Greta & Nordstream. It was to try & discredit & deflect.
Jay, I don’t even regard myself as an environmentalist. My background is engineering and physics. My activism is about trying to avert oncoming, foreseeable, and accelerating disaster. It doesn’t matter to me what specific form that disaster happens to take; if it was an incoming asteroid I’d be campaigning about that.
It’s so obvious that it shouldn’t need saying, but humanity is dependent upon the world’s natural, evolved biosphere. It’s not something we can just trash and replace with a new one from China. As it collapses, which it is doing ever faster, we will fall with it, and as apex predatory exploiters, we will presumably fall early, and from very a great height.
– “King Green”, “discredit & deflect”, “Greta-Nordstream” etc. etc…
Do you ever consider alternatives to trolling? Like, it’s an open thread, no particular topic; you could just ask why I’ve been active with XR rather than attempting to lob ridicule. Or you could have opened a forum thread whenever you wished. Maybe your own knowledge is also less than complete, mmm? Maybe the ongoing and accelerating mass extinction matters more than, er, attempting to drive, er, short people out of politics?
J: “When you did finally hear about [the tunnel] … your reaction was not even silence, ala Greta & Nordstream. It was to try & discredit & deflect.”
Actually, you deflected with your silly prejudices about height – which even now you cannot admit has nothing to do with the character of the man you were attacking, and still less to do with the issue.
You also brought discredit upon yourself, by lashing out at everyone not in lockstep, with evidence-free accusations of being a ‘centrist’, Biden supporter, Khan supporter etc. etc., just like you usually do, instead of admitting perhaps you were wrong, and allowing the discussion to proceed.
Brilliant job, you have promoted your cause well and added a lot of support to it, wouldn’t you say?
Talking about discrimination and prejudices, I was struck at how quickly Sunak was attacked – almost exclusively from the left (as far as I could see) for not being as tall as his predecessors.
Unless the job of PM involves picking items off high shelves unaided, I really don’t see what that has to do with it.
Given Sunak has an Indian background, and Khan Pakistani, that they’re not as tall as the average white European shouldn’t be a complete surprise. There is something of a racist element to that mockery, even if it mattered at all.
Johnson, Blair, Dubbya Bush, Trump… all really great guys, right? After all, they’re over six foot, so they must be.
Glenn-nl, I thought you would want to just disappear after publicly posting this..
glenn_nl
July 8, 2023 at 17:41
“You’re confused, Jay. Just because someone isn’t very likable for any number of reasons, it’s not OK to denigrate them on account of the colour of their skin.
You keep adding to the list of things Khan has done, as if that justifies your denigrating his Pakistani heritage. It doesn’t. It’s not OK to be bigoted to someone like that regardless of how long the charge sheet might be.”
Why do you think I should treat you as a serious interlocutor?
How are those words trolling, Clark? You did respond to my post on the Silvertown Tunnel by trying to deflect & discredit, while your latest response only further attests to your self image as King Green.
You don’t offer any opinion about Greta’s silence on the biggest act of environmental terrorism in modern times, now approaching a year, except to suggest it should not be referred to. It’s caused me to look more closely at the words & actions of people representing themselves as climate-change activists. Who do they not want to see criticised? That’s why I termed your reaction to learning of the Silvertown Tunnel a Greta-Nordstream moment.
J: “Why do you think I should treat you as a serious interlocutor?”
I’ve repeatedly pointed out to you how stupid and bigoted it is to denigrate someone due to their inherent physical characteristics, with numerous examples and comparisons of similar racial prejudices which you were very quick and shrill in denying.
But your heightist bullshit – which we all know is what my initial comment was all about – nah, nah, nah…. you won’t address that one will you?
Jay, it seems very important to you that others should have supported what you wrote, right? Even if your denigration and unfounded accusations might make some uncomfortable, any properly committed environmentalists would have leaped to support you. You think it’s highly suspicious that they instead criticised you, so you now distrust environmentalists as a group even more than you did already. Is that about right?
Jay? I had hoped, having hopefully at last understood you, that the conversation might get interesting. But you seem to have dropped out…
Or course not, Clark. Jay’s ran away, which is pretty consistent on past form. Jay runs away whenever things get a bit awkward.
He likes attacking the character of others, and making accusations. Not so good at answering awkward questions concerning these accusations.
You must remember this from all his crazed nonsense around how Covid was nothing but a hoax, and how vaccines were a Big Plot to kill everyone. Never stuck around to actually discuss any of his arguments/accusations to any depth.
You or anyone else can comb this site from top the bottom, beginning to end, & you will not find any comment from me saying Covid is a hoax or vaccines are a big plot to kill everyone. If I offered any comment at all on here re Covid or vaccines it would have been stating the exact opposite. I certainly never entered into debate on the topic with you. What is it with you mate? You expose yourself as a profoundly dishonest, nasty piece of work & instead of just going away you double down with more lies to try & redeem yourself? Who on earth do you think you are kidding, other than Clark.
Clark, I didn’t respond because you have seen my thoughts stated in clear English. There is no reason to restate them. For the record though on one particular point, I never accepted for an instant that the support for Sadiq Kahn is based on seeing him termed diminutive. Least of all from someone who represents as a passionate environmentalist. That insults my intelligence.
Support? I haven’t supported Sadiq Khan. I don’t know enough about him to either support or criticise him, apart from what you have posted, from which he sounds like a typical centrist.
It’s your own problem, Jay. You just posted accusations of corruption and fraud, but with no evidence, apparently hoping someone else would find some and post it for you. When no one did you cut loose at three other commenters. I only posted at all because you’d reminded me of that Randy Newman song which I’d heard only once, decades ago.
And no you haven’t been clear at all; mostly you seem to stereotype other commenters and drop unsubstantiated hints. What do you think Greta Thunberg should have said, and what do you read into her not having said it? What are you suspecting you’ll find in “the words & actions of people representing themselves as climate-change activists”, and why? That’s four simple questions, in direct response to points you raised yourself. Let’s have some direct, plain answers rather than hints and muttering. You seem pretty pissed off with anyone you deem an environmentalist, and you suggest they’re not to be trusted. But it’s all vague bluster; what exactly are you saying?
Jay, actually, no one on this sub-thread has supported Sadiq Khan. They have criticised you, but that isn’t the same thing!
Jay, another comprehension check. You disapprove of leftists, liberals, centrists, and environmentalists. Have I got that right? In the spirit of stating things plainly rather than by negation of everything else, who do you approve of?
Glenn_nl, I don’t remember discussing covid with Jay. I don’t remember having any previous discussion with Jay.
Ah! Jay, I think I’ve found something you approve of. It’s actually below, on July 13 at 11:59 – “But you know you can’t behave like that in the real world of work & society”.
Actually I find the “real world of work & society” increasingly inundated by bullshit.
C:“Glenn_nl, I don’t remember discussing covid with Jay. I don’t remember having any previous discussion with Jay.”
Yikes, that must have been a different ‘Jay’.In that case, I completely withdraw my comments about _this_ Jay and anything to do with Covid and vaccines, and also about _this_ Jay’s behaviour when it comes to running away from arguments.
Glenn_nl, it may well have been another Jay. New commenters came thick and fast during the lockdowns, and I don’t suppose I paid much attention to their names. I was just refuting the same six or so fallacies over and over again; it didn’t really matter who to. It’s all for the silent readers really in any case.
Glenn, this would finish you as a lib witchfinder in the real world. Even Labour centrists & their media knew they could not accuse somebody of denigrating someone’s skin colour or Pakistani heritage immediately below posts where they had clearly not referenced those things in any way. But this place is different. You know you can just brazenly deny what you have written in plain sight & it will be tolerated, treated by some as the serious words of a serious man. But you know you can’t behave like that in the real world of work & society, Glenn? I hope for your sake you do.
glenn_nl
July 8, 2023 at 17:41
“You’re confused, Jay. Just because someone isn’t very likable for any number of reasons, it’s not OK to denigrate them on account of the colour of their skin.
You keep adding to the list of things Khan has done, as if that justifies your denigrating his Pakistani heritage. It doesn’t. It’s not OK to be bigoted to someone like that regardless of how long the charge sheet might be.”
Answered this just above.
Any ‘confusion’ is a transparent falsehood on your part.
Perhaps you are incapable of anything but personal attacks? You think trying to discredit an individual is all you need to do?
You’re getting boring now, Jay. Address your heightism bigotry right away, or let it remain embarrassingly obvious you’re scared to do so.
The answer you gave above suggests you think that was an admirable, responsible thing to write.
The Labour Party are just doing their job – making people of medium or low incomes poorer, and helping the Tories and/or the rich stay in power. Their stated reasons of ‘climate change’ or covid or ‘antisemitism’ are just some of their covers Same with the SNP, by the way. That’s why on the lockdowns, climate change and the American wars they’re all in lockstep with the Tories.
Help me out here, Tom.
Why would Tories want lockdowns, when that badly damages the bottom lines of big business? Tories like rich people, remember. Rich people want business to continue as usual. Disrupting that with lockdowns (and climate mitigation action, for that matter) causes them to stop making so much.
The “get back to work!” crowd was strongly on the right – the boss class.
So why would they work what you appear to believe is a hoax (covid, climate change, gravity etc.) when that is 100% against the monied classes interests? You haven’t thought this through at all, have you?
“Why would Tories want lockdowns, when that badly damages the bottom lines of big business? ”
Only in theory, though.
In practice the bottom lines of big business were subsidised by various government schemes. The Covid Furlough scheme cost over £50bn according to many estimates.
“CEO Paychecks in 2020 Were 351 Times Fatter Than Those of Typical Workers”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/ceo-pay-2020-351-times-typical-workers/
“Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years”
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly-twice-much-wealth-rest-world-put-together-over-past-two-years
“Billionaires’ wealth rises to $10.2 trillion amid Covid crisis”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/07/covid-19-crisis-boosts-the-fortunes-of-worlds-billionaires
‘Billionaires got 54% richer during pandemic, sparking calls for “wealth tax”‘
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/billionaire-wealth-covid-pandemic-12-trillion-jeff-bezos-wealth-tax/
I could continue this list for some time, but I couldn’t be bothered. Try it yourself.
The economies of all countries went into recession during the lockdowns.
Of course some companies, particularly those involved in delivery services, were going to do better. But I hope you’re not suggesting that the likes of Holland, Germany and Australia went into lockdown with the specific goal of making Bezos even richer?
Of course the very rich take advantage of any crisis – try reading “The shock doctrine” by Naomi Klein sometime. It doesn’t mean the crisis was manufactured. That is baseless conspiracy theory, and hopelessly confusing cause and effect.
Billionaires are becoming increasingly rich. They were before the pandemic, and still doing so now. The idea that all this was done as a hoax to help them out is plain silly.
Glenn, try finding it in you to look at who creates hope in a Labour party that calls its young concerned future or current taxpayers eco terrorists.
Stasi Starmer is saying that ‘he hates tree huggers’. He is dangerously deluded and fascinated with ME child killers, who helped him to get on the champagne soaked red sofa.
This tunnel will channel pollution and building it without any consideration for one’s transport decarbonisation plans, as much as other road project, is inconsiderate ignorant and not worthy of a flip-flopping mayor whose only interest is to stay in his self-serving power position.
Frankly I’m surprised that people are so removed from the idea of responsible forward-planning policies/politics that they cheer on a Tory party supportive clone supporting ignorant and dangerous politics dripping with racism and hate for the people they dare to indebt.
We are unwilling and are being criminalised for daring to protest, for daring to point to the aspirations and lies we have been told non stop, since the oil schock in the early 1970s.
Young people need a future that is different and more sustainable, waiting until the Thames barrier is breached and London’s tunnels slowly fill up with water, as a ‘we told you so’ alternative response to this crass ignorance will not wash with them; they will get rightfully angry at this incompetent shit show.
Wishing everyone a hot, sunny and thunderous day.
glenn_nl, do feel free to respond to something I HAVE written one of these days.
Tom74 and Tom Welsh, I’d find it hopeful if you’d work out what conspiracy theory is, and how it serves the Establishment rather than undermines it. Tom Welsh in particular, you repeatedly post this sort of nonsense [1][2], helping to spread delusion and cloud other people’s minds.
Conspiracy theory seems to offer simple explanations, but it’s wrong. For instance, if I were to claim that a car would run just as well on water as it would on hydrocarbon fuel, you’d dismiss that as daft. But then I could claim you’d been misled by a conspiracy of scientists, engineers, mechanics, and “the MSM”, all orchestrated via their pay cheques by the likes of Karl Rove.
Is there any direct way to check which is more plausible? Yes! Liquid hydrocarbons burn vigorously, whereas water does not, so attempting to ignite water-air mix in a closed cylinder will not produce propulsion.
Covid made big peaks in the overall death rate and the polar icecaps are disappearing fast. These two facts do not imply that any particular government’s policies are or were correct. This means that one must think longer and harder than it takes to simply blame someone, unless it’s God you’d like to blame for making reality too damn complicated, and human brains too damn puny to understand it at a glance.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/258:_Conspiracy_Theories
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hkBp6a5RCDNedo6Wy/the-9-11-meta-truther-conspiracy-theory
@nevermind: Are you sure you’re not confusing me with someone else, someone who has been speaking in support of that miserable corporate centrist, authoritarian, unprincipled, Tory-loving, oligarch serving stooge, the turncoat and utterly unprincipled pledge-breaking bastard Starmer?
Because that certainly wasn’t me. Regardless of the fact that I might not be afraid to point out, now and then, that _some_ attacks on individuals are unjustified, whatever one might think of their politics. Particularly when it comes to physical characteristics they have no say over.
TW: “glenn_nl, do feel free to respond to something I HAVE written one of these days. “
I did. My reply was exactly to that bunch of disjointed “Oh! Oh! Did you see some rich people just got richer?” references of yours.
It’s probably pointless to explain it further, because you won’t accept anything more complicated than “You’re right! You’re so right! It’s all just a hoax to make them richer, everyone is in on it, and it’s all a massive conspiracy!” {Fill in the particular disaster in question here}
You don’t want to know about Disaster Capitalism, because it’s so inconvenient to conspiracy theory.
*
It is probably comforting to believe there is a massive conspiracy, that it is limited and understandable (at least to really clever people like you, who are “in the know”).
It’s a lot more unsettling to realise that everything is rather chaotic, nobody knows what’s going on, everything is in unpredictable flux, and no Grand Master is really working some massive game at all. It is all really desperate, and nobody is actually in charge.
So I do actually sympathise with your need for these quite comforting conspiracy theories, it helps if you can believe that at least _something_ is governing this utter mess.
Good luck with your crazed conspiracy theories…”whatever gets you through the night”, as John Lenon rightly said.
glenn_nl: nobody is in charge
Not for lack of trying. And the more billionaire forums they hold and plan for our future, the less in charge they will be according to the philosophy of ignoramuses. We allow them their wealth, so when a global disaster hits, they can buzz off to their yachts and bunkers and wonder how to capitalize further off the crises, for fear not there are countless unlucky to-be-billionaires to defend their integrity online.
Offtopic, but I totally loved your new miss nederlands. barf
Nevemind: “Glenn, try finding it in you to look at who creates hope in a Labour party that calls its young concerned future or current taxpayers eco terrorists.”
I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Perhaps its my sloppy writing, but nothing I have said should have given the impression that ‘New’ Labour under the utterly unprincipled Stürmer is any better at all than it was under the war criminal Blair.
It might actually be even worse – Blair did at least allow dissenting voices in the party. Stürmer allows for nobody to have – or ever have had – an opinion different to his own!
Of course, even New Labour would be better than the Tories. But that’s like saying one concentration camp was a bit better than another – not being as bad as Tories is hardly a high bar to clear.
Was it Jay’s evidence-free pronouncements that people like myself, Lapsed Agnostic etc. are ‘centrists’, for reasons best known to himself?
Don’t worry about it Craig. Don’t take too much notice of those who would insist on you writing an informative article every day. We do understand that you have family and other private priorities.
Have a decent break, and we will all look forward to you return whenever you have had a great relaxing time.
And there I was, absolutely sure you were an AI
Have a nice one
I doubt whether AIs drink (or at least enjoy) single malt! 😎
Keep well
Dude: write when you have something to say. Quality not quantity.
we are on vacation and it fits the entry title
the first trailer on British director Ridley Scott´s blockbuster biopic “Napoleon”
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2829829913/?listId=ls053181649&ref_=hp_hp_e_3
(Why this ongoing obsession with him, I dont know. I was obsessed with Bonaparte as a kid myself. The best book on him however that I have read was French satirist François Cavanna´s book “Napoleon” from 1988, beautifully vulgar and appropriately disrespectful. Napoleon himself though wasn´t a bad writer at all. Better he had become a novelist.)
Only super-human you mean!