The United States has now, on the face of it, produced the Diplomatic Note giving the two assurances required by the High Court to allow the extradition of Julian Assange to proceed. The assurance that Julian Assange will be allowed to rely on the First Amendment in his defence is a blatantly weak piece of sophistry.
You can read my analysis on the High Court judgment of Assange’s right to an appeal here.
Let me dispense with the assurance against the death penalty. I am sure it will be accepted by the court. The USA does not need to execute Julian, it can incarcerate him in a tiny concrete tomb for life, under extreme sensory deprivation, as a terrible half living warning to any journalist who might reveal their crimes.
Should that ever become inconvenient, he can be Epsteined or Seth Riched at any moment. Remember this is a government that plotted to kidnap and/or assassinate him, as pled and not denied in court.
The assurance required on First Amendment protection is being misunderstood by almost everybody reporting it, and the US Diplomatic Note seeks to take advantage of the confusion.
The High Court took the view that the First Amendment provides the same protections as Article X of the European Convention on Human Rights, and therefore Assange’s Convention rights will be protected if he is allowed to plead the First Amendment as a defence before a US court. The court did not ask for an assurance that such a plea would succeed. Article X of the ECHR is itself absolutely shot through with authoritarian national security and other exceptions.
The assurance on which the High Court did insist was that such a plea could not be struck down on the grounds of Assange’s nationality. That would contradict the separate ECHR provision against discrimination by nationality. The US Diplomatic Note has failed genuinely to address this point: but it pretends to do so.
The US prosecutor in an affidavit to the UK court had already stated that Assange may be barred from First Amendment protection because he was a foreign national who had acted abroad. Mike Pompeo had also stated this officially. The principle is plainly articulated by the Supreme Court in the case of USAID vs Open Society:
THE CRUCIAL “SEEK TO”
The United States was therefore simply unable to state that Julian Assange will be able to make a First Amendment defence, because the judge, following the Supreme Court precedent, is almost certainly going to disallow it on grounds of nationality.
The Diplomatic Note therefore states that Assange may seek to raise a First Amendment defence without prohibition on grounds of nationality. This means precisely that his lawyers are permitted to say:
“My client wishes to claim the protection of the First Amendment for freedom of speech”
This is “seeking to raise” it.
The judge will immediately reply:
“The First Amendment does not apply to your client as a foreign national acting abroad, as established by the US Supreme Court in USAID vs Open Society”.
That is consistent with the actual operative phrase in the US Diplomatic Note: “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is entirely within the purview of the US Courts”.
On 20 May there will be a hearing to determine whether this non-assurance is adequate to protect Julian Assange from discrimination on grounds of nationality and permit the extradition to proceed.
Now being a reasonable person, you doubtless are thinking that it is impossible that such a flimsy confection of legal sleight of hand could ever be accepted. But if so, dear reader, you have no idea of the corruption of the stool pigeons disguised as British judges.
Who would think that they could have ruled that the UK/US Treaty has legal force to extradite Julian Assange, but that Article IV of the Treaty excluding political offences strangely does not have legal force?
Who would have thought that they could have ruled that the US government spying on his attorney/client legal conferences and seizing his legal papers did not invalidate the proceedings?
Who would have thought they could have ruled that the US government plot to kidnap or murder him is irrelevant, because if he is extradited the US government will have no further need to kidnap or murder him?
I could go on. I shall be very surprised if the High Court judges following the 20 May hearing do not rule that the right to ask not to be discriminated against on grounds of nationality (and be denied) is sufficient protection against discrimination by nationality.
They really are that shameless.
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How long does it take to consider a request from the Australian Government to drop the prosecution?! Was Biden just playing with our emotions – Julian’s supporters – to amuse himself and his buddies. Anyway, just came across the following when I did a search to ascertain how widely the MSM are covering this:
Julian Assange’s wife accuses US of ‘weasel words’ after providing assurances in extradition bid
https://news.sky.com/story/julian-assanges-wife-accuses-us-of-weasel-words-after-providing-assurances-in-extradition-bid-13116835
Another question, to which we have the answer: How long did it take the Australian Parliament to pass a motion calling for an end to Julian’s prosecution. After years of MPs from PMs down vilifying him, then ignoring him. An utter disgrace.
For generations chauvinists have lauded the superiority of British law and justice.
Yet in front of the whole world a succession of top British justices have repeatedly dismissed every one of the glaring disqualifying factors in the Assange extradition case.
A more high profile mockery of British law and justice could hardly have been devised.
And for what important reason have these judges done it?
In order to brutally punish a journalist for exposing the war crimes of another nation.
The extradition of Julian Assange is basically a requiem for British justice and for British Establishment self respect.
“In order to brutally punish a journalist for exposing the war crimes of another nation.”
Indeed, but not just any ‘other nation’, but the nation of which the UK is nothing more than a crawling supine vassal. Like Germany, under US domination since 1945.
Exactly, John, but they love it. Note how liberal establishment Remainers never try to ‘own’ #TakeBackControl ‘sovereignty ‘ frauds by reminding them of Britain’s vassalage to Washington.
Nonsense, Brian. I – for one – take every opportunity to do so, what makes you think others that understand the sheer pointlessness and stupidity of Brexit would fail to do so? You seem to be under the impression there’s a ‘gotcha’ in there.
Calm down, Glenn, there’s a good lad. You seem very nervous and irritable of late. Things not going well?
That’s kind of you, Doc… perhaps I should take it more easy 😀
No. If you genuinely believed it was nonsense you’d have cited at least one well known People’s Vote charlatan who has chided Brexiteers in the past 8 years about Britain’s continued servitude to Washington. The most glaring open goal by which they can decisively frame ‘sovereignty’ foghorns in the public mind as obvious frauds.
You know quite as well as I do why you couldn’t summon one establishment liberal to mind that has said this at any time since 2016.
Because they are equally as pleased with British vassalage to the USA (and to Israel) as the ‘sovereignty’ foghorns are. A pride that is fundamental to establishment liberal identity in the UK.
Glenn I’m not sure Freud is a medical doctor more likely one of those “brain shrinker’s”
On this occasion I agree with his prescription though, in fact on most occasions his advice holds good for most of us.
I hope you haven’t come to a “crossroads”, they can be tricky, and l was reminded of this recently when I came to one – l couldn’t go forward yet equally I could not go back. I find the general rule in these environments is either, the way one dealt with it before is not applicable or that one can’t quite remember how one dealt with it before so a cessation of movement is necessary whilst one waits for memory or chance and instinct to show one the way. I always find something mystical about these times, as if “the strands of fate” we are encompassed by as storytellers become clearer and more sharply defined than any other of our moments.
“You can find the answer
The solution lies within the problem
The answer is in every question
Dig it?
An attitude is all you need to rise and walk away
Inspire yourself
Your life is yours
It fits you like your skin”
good thoughts, bad thoughts – Funkadelic
@Will Moon –
That all rings pretty true, actually.
Thanks.
You lost the only democratic vote in British history, deal with it.
Bastards, utter conniving back scratching bastards.
Lol Fast but True…We said
Welcome to the Banana Republic that is the UK today.
With apologies to all Bananas and Republics for associating you with this pile of fetid corruption.
No-no, it’s quite apt.
After all, the term “Banana Republic” originally referred to US capital (specifically in the original case of Honduras, fruit companies dominating banana business) exerting so much pressure on the local government it was completely subjugated, or getting overthrown if it tried to do anything against it.
As Steve Bell, I think it was, put it, “Britain, the only banana republic that imports its bananas”.
Fnar! England-Britain has been a republic since 1688, with or without bananas.
The High Court Judges will do exactly as they are instructed by proxies probably, of the US intelligence agencies.
That’s not quite how it works. They don’t need to be instructed; you don’t get to be a High Court judge unless and until you have shown that you’re “sound”, i.e. aligned with the priorities of the rulers.
There’s an instructive clip on youtube somewhere, of some typical hectoring BBC personality interviewing Noam Chomsky. Chomsky points out that the BBC’s commenters and interviewers generally toe the Establishment line. The BBC drone then asks whether Chomsky thinks the drone has been told what to say. Chomsky’s response is in effect “No, I think you sincerely hold the opinions you are expressing. My point is that if you believed anything else, you wouldn’t be sitting where you are today”.
https://youtu.be/GjENnyQupow?si=W1J3r4eDjOocvNiG
It was Andrew Marr getting his pants taken down by Chomsky.
As soon as I saw the diplomatic assurances as detailed on the BBC website I was going to denounce the same on this site as “half baked sophistry.” Craig has beaten me to it. However, as our host intimates, such sophistry can have disastrous consequences for innocent plaintiffs and defendants in British courts, as anyone who followed the garbled reasoning deployed to such effect in the case of the Birmingham six and other victims of injustice must have seen. That the matter of the First amendment will remain in the purview of the US courts is a flagrant affront to the British courts insistence that Julian be granted the same constitutional rights as any other defendant in a US court, for, as Craig notes, for him to be merely granted the right to petition the court for such protection is almost certainly for the said petition to fall on deaf ears, as any contrary ruling would set a precedent which would greatly restrict the power of the US state to punish its critics. It may well be that it is this last consideration which prompted Joe Biden to float the idea of dropping the prosecution of Julian, and indeed no other
In USAID v. Alliance for Open Society, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that non-U.S. citizens outside the U.S. don’t possess constitutional rights. Both former C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo and Gordon Kromberg, Assange’s U.S. prosecutor, have said Assange does not have First Amendment protection.
Because of the separation of powers in the United States, the executive branch’s Justice Department can’t guarantee to the British courts what the U.S. judicial branch decides about the rights of a non-U.S. citizen in court, said Marjorie Cohn, law professor and former president of the National Lawyers’ Guild.
“Let’s assume that … the Biden administration, does give assurances that he would be able to raise the First Amendment and that the [High] Court found that those were significant assurances,” Cohn told Consortium News‘ webcast CN Live! last month.
“That really doesn’t mean anything, because one of the things that the British courts don’t understand is the U.S. doctrine of separation of powers,” she said.
“The prosecutors can give all the assurances they want, but the judiciary, another [one] .. of these three branches of government in the U.S., doesn’t have to abide by the executive branch claim or assurance,” Cohn said.
In other words, whether Assange can rely on the First Amendment in his defense in a U.S. court is up to that court not Kromberg or the Department of Justice, which issued the assurance on Tuesday. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/16/us-issues-assurances-assange/
Like so many others here I feel impotent anger.
And another “Who would have thought” from the first extradition hearing – to Sweden – of Julian Assange:
Who would have thought that Julian Assange could be extradited pursuant to an European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued solely by a prosecutor, and not by a judge – when he had not even been charged with any crime?
Although the UK parliament thought this idea so dastardly that they later explicitly ruled it out by statute (but did not backdate the effect to cover Assange), the Supreme Court at the time found that, by using the FRENCH version of the FrameWork Decision (rather than the ENGLISH version) re the definition of the “issuing judicial authority”, the extradtion of Assange could take place in such circumstances.
See https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2011-0264-judgment.pdf
Indeed Fleur, even though the notion that the French “autorite judiciaire” had a different meaning to the English “judicial authority” was itself total nonsense!
The Pogues – Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six (with lyrics) (YouTube, 4m 24)
Shane et al. comment on British “justice”….
The title of your article says it all, Mr Murray.
It is nothing but a farce (a very sad one), and everyone involved is perfectly aware of it. To the extent that it appears extremely futile to discuss the legal points presented by the prosecution or the defense. Everybody knows, including Julian Assange, that the final decision – whatever it is – will be made by the US administration, and that the UK will obediently follow.
This has been clear from the very beginning. Assange is being charged for political reasons, and both US and UK justice departments are perfectly aware of it. But reason of state prevails, and judges follow.
It so happens that this year elections in both nations will be just a few weeks apart. I have this funny feeling that both governments will be happy to kick the can down the road until after the main event. So much easier, so much safer…
On top of this, when the day comes that extradition is denied, Mr Assange will potentially face a new jeopardy. Release from a British jail is great, but then, unless charges are formally dropped by the USA, he could once again fear kidnapping or assassination in most countries, except perhaps in Australia. And dropping charges is not something that easily happens in favor of a defendant facing a federal criminal prosecution.
May Julian Assange soon recover freedom, he has suffered a zillion times too much. He will remain as a real hero of our times.
The fact that the various judges in this case have had to seek one assurance after another from the USA should of itself raise questions about the fairness of the judicial process that will be followed. After all, Julian Assange will be standing trial in a country the “has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/prison-population-by-state
— About 25% of the world’s total prison population is in the United States, which holds about 1.21 million prisoners as of 2020, a 15% decrease since 2019. Mass incarceration in the United States has led to several problems. Among these are overcrowded prisons, which lead to increased health risks and decreased psychological well-being”.
But with the UK government being so complicit in the genocide of thousands of Palestinians, kowtowing to an America that is also so keen to bang people up and use the death penalty, perhaps we should not be surprised that it gives short shrift to the plight of one individual.
Does Biden really want to antagonise his Australian partners who are best placed to respond to China?
Surely his mistakes in Gaza and Israel can’t make him feel so omnipotent to ignore Australia’s wishes.
The Australians aren’t “partners”. Australia’s politicians will do as they’re told.
USA Partners = Poodles; Lackeys; Patsies; Gentiles; Untermenschen; Asswipes; Criminals.
I don’t think so Nevermind…The Propaganda Blizts is Huge in Asuis – Huge As Caitlin Says:
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/if-you-buy-into-the-anti-china-propaganda-youre-just-a-stupid-asshole-3f7c7695ec02
BTW Craig, did you see the transcript now available for your blog entry 1 April 2024 “An Urgent Message About the Situation in Gaza”?
If you wanted, you could just copy and paste the text into your blog.
Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h0C2UQPGZa03_4xcS7kJD5mFyIzOFQaMHrgtQ0i9_v4/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you for that
Why are British judges so corrupt, then? What are the systemic conditions that cause and sustain this corruption? Who designs the system and protects it from change? How are any anti-corruption efforts contained or thwarted? When did this kind of USAmerican-leaning corruption begin?
And what will it take to end it?
I don’t know the answer(s) to your question(s).
I first became aware of the thorough rottenness of the British judicial system when I followed the prosecution of Megrahi and Fhimah for the PA103 mass murder generally referred to as Lockerbie.
The Indictment was quite certainly drafted by the US Department of Justice and was parrotted by the Crown Office. The charge against them alleged that they “conspired together to cause the explosion which destroyed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie”. The then Lord Advocate was to be the Chief Prosecutor in the juryless trial. You can find his name by Googling “Scotland’s worst judge”. Incredibly, he was allowed to hand-pick his own judges whom he could trust to deliver him his chosen verdict. Other than Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s, no country other than Scotland allowed this to happen in the 20th century.
In the perverse verdict they found Fhimah Not Guilty of conspiring with Megrahi and Megrahi Guilty of conspiring with Fhimah. That pair of verdicts can only be described as a mind-fuck.
Actually, neither one of them in any way involved in the atrocity. Iran paid $10,000,000 to a Damascus-based group of Palestinian terrorists to avenge the shootdown of IranAir Flight 655 by USS Vincennes. All of this was well known the UK/US intelligence agencies, but Bush41 was putting together his coalition for the ‘first’ Gulf War and didn’t want piss off the Iranians, so he had the CIA cobble together a bullshit ‘case’ against Libya. The CIA guy in charge of contriving the bullshit was Vincent Cannistraro. He’d been the guy who wrote the position paper which persuaded Ronald Reagan to bomb the two cities in Libya.
It was only the jury system which prevented Alex Salmond from being falsely convicted for alleged sexual offences of which he was quite certainly innocent.
I see some significance that the judge in his trial, Lady Dorrian, is known to be pressing for trials involving sexual allegations to be juryless. I would also remind readers that it was she who judged Craig Murray to be guilty of Contempt of Court in a juryless trial. He appealed both her verdict and her sentence. To my jaw-dropped astonishment, she was allowed to adjudicate his Appeal. No surprise that she rejected his Appeal.
North and South of the Border, the UK legal system(s) are fucked beyond all repair.
Lord Denning was for me a rare exception among English judges. When the case of the Birmingham six came before him on appeal, though sympathetic and perhaps inclined to agree with the defence case (which I had followed and supported for years)), he was unable to accept it because it would have implied the rottenness of the entire system of prosecution and policing. In this he was largely correct, but unable to take on board the full horror of this implication for his life’s work.
I am forced to disagree here. Denning’s position, as stated in a 1990 interview with Dominic Lawson of the Spectator, was that it was better for innocent men to be put to death than that the judicial system be brought into public disrepute, no matter, apparently, that this disrepute be richly deserved.
Denning was a coward and a hypocrite; “let justice be done whatever the consequence”? Not a chance mate. The pretensions of British liberals have always been undone by their crimes in Ireland.
Ebenezer, with regard to the Lockerbie disaster there’s also the matter of the clothes shop owner, Tony Gauci and his brother being paid a few million dollars to put Abdul Baset in the frame so to speak, despite his initial description of the customer/purchaser being totally different, iirc they described a younger and taller man. I believe the Gaucis eventually relocated to Australia and that Tony has since died, as has the wrongly accused and convicted Mr Megrahi.
Yes. Gauchi initially described the clothes buyer as a man who was a perfect fit to Palestinian Abu Talb of the PFLP-GC. He subsequently changed his description to fit that of Megrahi.
On the day of the purchase, as confirmed by the Luqa Met Office and the purchase of an umbrella and a major football fixture and the lighting of the Christmas lights, Abu Talb was present in Malta and Megrahi was not.
Gauchi was brought to Scotland to be coached in his evidence and was given lavish accomodation and salmon-fishing lessons on the most expensive beats in the Highlands.. All expenses paid. Abu Talb was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for his silence on the matter of who actually bought those clothes. Abu Talb later changed his nom de guerre to Abu Intehkam. The Iranian funded operation was called Operation Intehkam (Revenge). Talb’s desk diary was found to have 21st of December ringed in red ink. The only day to have that distinction. That, of course, was the day of the bombing. He lives in Sweden now and knows that he will never be implicated in the atrocity by either the UK or the US.
The bomb maker was a Jordanian by the name of Marwan Khreesat. He made four or five such bombs and was paid $30,000 by the PFLP-GC for doing so. Actually, he was playing both ends against the middle. He was a double agent who was also in the pay of the Jordanian Mukhabarat. He informed his Jordanian paymasters of the details of the bombs and they passed the intelligence on to the Israeli Mossad and to the West German Criminal Police who raided the PFLP-GC safe house in Isar Strasse, Neuss. They recovered four of the five bombs, included one in a Toshiba Bombeat ghetto blaster type cassette radio. Germany’s top bomb disposal expert was killed when trying to defuse one of the bombs. The timer was a resistive-capacitor type which was potted in resin, about the size of an Oxo cube. Nothing at all like the completely different Mebo MST13 timer produced by Edwin Bollier. The timer PCB fragment which was adduced as evidence in the trial was quite certainly a fake.
After the trial, it became known that a letter had been received by the British government from a very high level of a friendly nation and that the letter completely exonerated Libya from complicity in the crime. HMG slapped a Public Interest Immunity certificate on the letter which seals its secrecy forever. In Kenny McAskill’s memoirs he blurts that the letter was from, and signed by, His Majesty King Hussein of Jordan. Hussein was also the titular head of Jordan’s Mukhabarat and would quite certain have been in the loop and quite certainly knew that Khreesat had worked for the PFLP-GC and not for Libya.
The prosecution and conviction in the most massive murder trial in Scottish history was a travesty. A bloody disgrace to Scottish jurisprudence.
“Why are British judges so corrupt, then?”
For the same motives that induce most people to commit crimes: money and respect.
Define corruption then maybe you’ll find that the judiciary have always been corrupt, eg. they are there to protect the establishment and not necessarily to protect the rights of the ordinary person.
1066 and all that bollox.
Surely the British lawyers on his case will not stand for this? If they put their foot down and called it out publicly, the press would be on it; the judges would be exposed. As it is, Assange’s lawyers legitimize this legal charade in jumping through all the hoops set out for them, again and again… They should have caught onto this years ago — that it’s rigged, that all their arguments fall on deaf ears. Is it strange or wrong to call this into question? Because I never see anyone ask. Stella, and Jennifer Robinson, and others have been amazing, but the British lawyers need to step up now, and protest the blatant refusal of the judges to give fair hearing to this case.
The press are quite aware of all the discrepancies in this case. Their role throughout (and that of the politicians) has been to ignore and suppress. To pretend that the case is being judged quite properly.
It would help if the lawyers stood up to condemn the many abuses of process, here. Because they don’t, the press can assure themselves that this is a ‘legal’ process, which it plainly is not. I wonder what it’s like for lawyers to hone their legal arguments to such a fine edge, only to have hundreds of pages dismissed without consideration. There is no rule of law here. They should declare this. How must they feel about a long career in the complex practice of law that carries no weight in the face of a biased judge who simply rules ‘because he or she can’?
The term that you may be looking for is “moral figleaf”, that is pretending to have it both ways while making no mistake whose side you really are on.
I love that expression. Meanwhile, they don’t have much to hide…
Yes, the US government undertaking is worthless and it is extraordinarily naive to believe in it. It reveals a peculiar ignorance by the UK judiciary of the principal of the separation of powers in the US to think otherwise. The US executive cannot limit the authority of the judiciary without violating the constitution and it has only done this in times of conflict using emergency powers. The only way a president could overrule the judgement of a court is to grant a pardon, and since it was the president who gave the go ahead to proceed with the extradition request that seems highly unlikely. Clearly this whole extradition case is nothing more than political theatre to demonstrate the power of our legal authorities to ignore natural justice, together with contempt for legitimate reportage of war crimes such as those demonstrated by the release by Mr Assange of the Collateral Damage footage. But we are not powerless and we can comment of this whole process which has brought the most senior high courts into disrepute, and we must therefore express our displeasure in whatever way we can, and by any reasonable and rational way that we can conceive of, whether the courts may approve of it or not.
“Yes, the US government undertaking is worthless and it is extraordinarily naive to believe in it. It reveals a peculiar ignorance by the UK judiciary of the principal of the separation of powers in the US to think otherwise”.
Pete, while I think your reaction is perfectly logical and understandable, it misses a couple of important facts.
No one in power believes, or even pretends to believe the US government’s statements. The whole point is that they claim to believe it, and demand that everyone else (we, the pond life) must also pretend to believe it – even though we don’t, and they know we don’t, and we know that they know that we don’t.
Just as in “1984”, the price of being allowed to stay alive and more or less free is to pretend, most thoroughly and sincerely, to believe things that you know to be false, that everyone else knows to be false, and that everyone else knows that you know to be false.
Thus, if the programme is allowed to run to completion, we all wind up like Winston Smith and Julia – each painfully aware of his or her utter weakness, inauthenticity, and unreliability, and of having fundamentally betrayed the other in the worst possible way. When they meet at the end, there is absolutely no fight or even scepticism left in them. Ingsoc can leave them to meet and talk in perfect safety, as they have no stuffing left.
The worst part of it, and what makes “1984” such a true classic, is that it really is possible to do that to human beings – no matter how strong, brave, and resolute they are to begin with.
The only way to resist is to stand up and be counted, thus giving others the courage to do so too. The enemy relies on dividing to conquer, so if we stick together they can’t make much progress.
“1984” is an anatomy of the middle class.
Squeeth, what is your assessment of Orwell’s links to the Security Services?
There is a analysis that I have read concerning the locus of attention set for the reader by the author, using carefully selected thematic elements based on class ie he pulled his punches,
In “Homage to Catalonia” he mentions a flower seller – prior to the Revolution she is cowed person, yet after the Revolution she exposes Orwell to her opinions, becoming loquacious even. A very working class person with a clear view of events – she falls silent after several months due to changes in the political situation
I’m no expert but he was an anti-Stalinist and that towards the end of the war, when the magnitude of the Soviet victory became manifest and the dirty dealings of the USuk were not, such as the percentages agreement he made more noise about it. The Polish second republic was not a liberal utopia in the 30s and no-one should mourn its passing but Stalin sold out the Greek communists as much as the USuk sold out Polish liberals. Grassing on people to the secret shows was unforgiveable.
No me neither but that sounds fair enough.
He has become ineluctably associated with “Brand Totalitarianism” – Big Brother, Room 101, Two Minute Hate etc, with even those who have not read that book, vaguely aware of these themes. To some degree he has become like Glastonbury lol – a symbol of the profitable “rebellion” industry. Do you see any value in his writings?
In Guy de Bordes “Society of the Spectacle”, de Bordes postulates that the various secret shows take over their societies and use their special skill set to manufacture spectacular events and then govern by the ramifications of these productions. It was written in the late sixties and for me is far less flattering yet more accurate portrayal of the true “nature” or “essence” of totalitarianism. He identifies OCGs/mafias as the model which corporations aspire to and evolve towards’ and states these criminal groups are an integral part of the society of the spectacle as are the “intelligence” services
Blair (no connection with Tony) also wrote:
“ No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.”
“..it really is possible to do that to human beings – no matter how strong, brave, and resolute they are to begin with.”
Tom, to supply the exception that supports the rule, I read recently of a case, I think in Bagram during the US occupation of Afghanistan, where a detainee was “interrogated”for several years and then died – never in all that time did this murdered torture victim ever give their captors any information whatsoever, I don’t think (from memory) the captive ever spoke. The interrogators were dumbfounded.
I would imagine if it were me, the dialogue might go like this
Me – ”You don’t need to torture me, I’ll tell you everything and give you everyone.”
Torturer – “That’s not how this works”
There certainly may be exceptions. But I am inclined to think that the US torturers are not as good at their trade as some others. Cruel and spiteful, but not efficient.
They’ll do for me.
Me – “What do you mean? How does it work?”
Torturer – “You’re going to die eventually and until that moment I have nothing to offer you except blood, sweat and tears with some rectal feeding to lighten the mood”
@will moon, the point that our host (and others) has made repeatedly, and correctly, is that as long as you let your target audience know you are torturing people, you are also conducting terrorism. And that might be for deterrence, to enforce obedience, quietism, cooperation etc.
Torture is an euphemism for terrorism.
“Counter-terror” is a euphemism for terror – so many euphemisms, so much terror Squeeth
Well put Sleeping Dog – a subtle point, easy to forget.
When I was a little kid of say ten, a bigger kid used to bully me. For a while I was hunted. When he caught me he would physically overwhelm me, slap me about and then pin me to floor. Then, with incredible slowness, he would dribble his saliva on my face, watching my reaction intently – it when on for about 6 months, then he lost interest. He rarely marked me, the whole thing was about domination – the episode completely terrified me, putting me in a lonely place beyond the help of siblings and even parents or friendly adults
Many years later, when the Abu Gharib and so many other scandals became common knowledge, I had moment to recall those childhood memories, not for the violence, which was slight but remembering the helplessness of being under a sadist’s physical control – immobilised, a piece of suffering meat just lying there – suffering
“Me – ”You don’t need to torture me, I’ll tell you everything and give you everyone.”
I would think that a more effective starting point would be, “Tell me what you want me to say and I will say it”. That’s the problem with torture, eventually, or, sometimes, very quickly the victim works out the information that the torturers want and provides it, whether or not they know it or know it to be true.
Torture is immoral and inefficient but gets the results the perpetrators want. The effects of anything demonstrate the intent of those who command it. A “mistake” that lasts longer than two weeks is a policy.
Bayard, I wasn’t speaking generally, just moi – maybe to suggest my own brand of moral squalor and lack of moral fibre in the face of a red hot poker lol
You’re probably right – it seems to me one enters a hall of mirrors once torture is introduced into the interrogative relationship but maybe that is the point, there is no truth not measured in suffering – the finest terrorist making machine money can buy.
1984 is often presented as “what if Stalinism comes to Britain” novel. Such view allows for using Orwell’s novel in anti-Soviet propaganda.
However, the totalitarian nightmare of 1984 could, of course, come from within England in Orwell’s mind.
1st, Orwell did not see much difference between Stalin’s type of socialism and European fascism and believed they were on converging course to form some kind of “oligarchial collectivism”, as he called it.
2nd, I do not think one can really understand 1984 without 1st reading his Burmese Days. Once you’ve read this novel, you realise that these disgusting English men and women Orwell caricatured in Burmese Days were the human matetial that he later used to build the world of 1984.
I am not surprised at all that Burmese Days were never made into a movie and to this day this novel remains mostly ignored by critics and pundits. Naturally, they prefer to talk about Animal Farm, which WAS about Soviet Union, and 1984, that they PRETEND (with a little help from CIA) was about Soviet Union. However, the novel is quite revealing. Maybe, if people have read it in high school they won’t ask here why British judges are so corrupted.
Yuri, a while ago I came across a trove of pamphlets, printed by various tea planters etc in British Far Eastern possessions, mainly Malaya and Burma – they were from the late 1920s and the early 1930s. These mags were produced with print runs of a few hundred to maybe a thousand and were distributed through the various “colonial” clubs to the owners of the various remote commercial operations that the Empire brought to the region
The racism present was startling – mainly directed against the Japanese but the locals non-whites were not exempt. I don’t think I have seem more vicious murderous bile anywhere, including KKK literature, Nazi publications etc. These British colonies must have sinkholes of moral depravity, if these tea planter publications are any form of indicator. When talking about Japanese people, the articles presented stressed to a bizarre and monomaniacal degree how short the Japanese, amongst the slew of racially motivated invective.
When Singapore fell, General Yamashita sent the Imperial Guards division in to parade through the. captured city – this unit had a minimum height requirement of six foot one or so and was apparently quite a sight for surrendering General Percival and the elite whites and for the despised browns and yellows.
Those were probably the same kind of people – mostly men, I suppose – who argued that the Japanese could never exercise air power, as their eyesight was too poor. With all the thick spectacles they had to wear, you know.
It was all tied up with the horrible nonsense of “Social Darwinism”. Some “races” were thought to have primitive “blood” (which is how people talked about genes before genes were discovered). The very best “blood” was that of the authentic “white Aryan race”.
I have always thought it very funny that, as far as they ever had any real existence, the Aryan peoples seem to have come from what is now Russia – and the very name “Iran” is cognate with “Aryan”.
@will moon, well, yes, Elizabeth Kolsky analyses 150 years of violent crime in Colonial Justice in British India: White Violence and the Rule of Law, writing that indigo and tea plantation workers were terrorised by planters’ endemic violence, as noted by campaigner Reverend Charles Dowding. The book opens with the case of William Orby Hunter, an indigo planter found by Calcutta Court to have tortured and mutilated three female servants, let off with a nominal fine c1794. As you’d imagine, many cases didn’t get to court in the first place. The book covers as far as earthy 20th century CE. From p2:
There can’t have been many people over six foot one in forties Japan, Will. I used to tower over most of them when I was there briefly in the noughties – after more than half a century of more Western-style, high-protein diets – and I wasn’t even in heels.
I’m of the view that General Yamashita didn’t deserve to be hanged for war crimes but, if he did, then so do the entire top brasses of the US, UK, Israeli & Russian militaries – and many others besides.
Maybe the Guards Division wore covert heels as a “new and terrible weapon”, LA?
John Wayne – who was a tall American film star of the period – wore high heeled boots of 3–4 inches at all times when in public, making his six foot two height into six and a half foot. As the Guards Division entered Singapore, Wayne was yomping in his boots shooting “Flying Tigers”. The movie depicts the vertically boosted Wayne and the Tigers fighting the Japanese in China before Pearl Harbour, which was not true – it was all just Hollywood “make believe”.
Whilst reading some recent archeological data concerning one of the conquerors in Babylon, an inscription had been found celebrating his great victory, the sack of a rival city. It read something like” the chariots [driving] round the city shake the walls, now the soldiers attack. I am gigantic”
Size, it seems, does matter to some, despite the inclusive words of this people’s WW2 anthem popularised by the unique George Formby (a movie star who didn’t wear heels, apparently):
“Bless ’em all, bless ’em all, bless ’em all, the long and the short and the tall
Bless all the sergeants and W. O. ones
Bless all the corporals and their blinking sons
‘Cause we’re saying goodbye to them all, as back to their billets they crawl
You’ll get no promotion this side of the ocean, so cheer up my lads, bless’em all”
Bless ‘Em All – F Godfrey (1917)
Thanks for your reply Will. Wiki says John Wayne was six foot four and a half – if that was true, in four-inch heels he’d have stood over six foot eight. I’m about five ten so, unlike La Kuenssberg et al, I tend to save heels for the bedroom.
Torsten Veblen, Norwegian-America sociologist discussed the height of heels and many other similar social phenomena in his work ”The Theory of the Leisure Class”. He coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to broadly describe this behaviour, tracing it to European feudal institutions and the formation of a modern class-based society
Glancing at the piece recently, it struck me it was as if it was from a thousand years ago – it was written a hundred years ago or so in 1898 – at some point we were people even citizens or subjects, now we are consumers.
Since bedrooms are private, could we call this a case on “inconspicuous consumption”?
Thanks for your reply Will. As usual, you raise some interesting points. I’ve never read The Theory of the Leisure Class (its author was Thorstein Veblen by the way), but I’m reasonably familiar with the term ‘conspicuous consumption’ which, to be fair, probably dates back to the dawn of the Neolithic period in the Fertile Crescent. In this age of webcams, many bedrooms are a good deal less private than they once were – as, inter alia, can be seen by (unintentional or otherwise) viewings of certain accounts on TwitterX dot com. I don’t go in for that sort of thing myself – though for £100k+ I might think about it.
You are probably correct when you mention the distant past but I have one reservation – conspicuous consumption probably took place back then but we must owe recognition to Veblen for his provision of the term?
You mentioned you had a relationship with lab work – surely you would be the first to recognise that the subset of language that emerges when specialists working together face and solve the various environmental and process related problems that such organised science activities face and without such rigorous and applied terminology the task would be significantly more complex for all those involved
Terminology is of more import than one might think – you remember the term “sacades” don’t you? I heard something recently that the platform you mention, had announced it’s intention to legally own the eye sacades of the watchers of their feeds – apparently in attempt to boost ad revenue amongst other “unspecified” uses
“ “The progressive intellectualization of language, its progressive conversion by the work of grammar and logic into a scientific symbolism, … represents not a progressive drying-up of emotion, but its progressive articulation and specialization. … We are acquiring new emotions and new means of expressing them.”
― R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art
The lack of decency and elementary respect towards other human beings as put on display by the US intelligence services is a fucking nightmare. Caitlin Johnstone with a crisp piece:
“Assange Extradition Case Moves Forward While The CIA Covers Its Tracks”
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/04/17/assange-extradition-case-moves-forward-while-the-cia-covers-its-tracks/
“(…)
CIA Director William Burns has filed a State Secrets Privilege demand to withhold information in a lawsuit against the agency by four American journalists and attorneys who were spied on during their visits to Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
(…)
Burns argues:
“I am asserting the state secrets and statutory privileges in this case as I have determined that either admitting or denying that CIA has information implicated by the remaining allegations in the Amended Complaint reasonably could be expected to cause serious — and in some cases, exceptionally grave — damage to the national security of the United States. After deliberation and personal consideration, I have determined that the complete factual bases for my privilege assertions cannot be set forth on the public record without confirming or denying whether CIA has information relating to this matter and therefore risking the very harm to U.S. national security that I seek to protect.”
Which is obviously a load of horse shit.
(…)”
right.
But what are you gonna do?
Unless you call a bunch of WMDs in your backyard your own these people are going to shit on your rights.
p.s.
many years ago I had a conversation with a former advisor of Hugo Chavez. The advisor had told me that he had suggested to Chavez to acquire an SSBN [nuclear ballistic missile submarine] for the Venezuelan Navy, violating the decree to keep South America a WMD-free zone.
I argued heavily against this.
I would still do.
But it increasingly becomes difficult since ultimate destructive force appears more and more as the only pendant to what the Black Panthers exercised as necessary self-defense against FBI assassination commandos.
When Ghandi was asked whether he would have advised the Jews in Nazi Germany to practice non-violent resistance he said, what a stupid question. Of course NOT!
US foreign policy can be summed up in two statements:
The only thing we respect is military force and
We will not allow any country that is not the US or under its control to use such force.
Quite right, Bayard. As Max Weber wrote (over a century ago) in “Politics Is My Vocation”, “Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”.
Thus, the US government aspires to be the sole and unique world government; and thus the only authority with the right to use violence within its territory (which would thus be the whole world – soon to be expanded to include space). It is always entitled to use any degree of armed force against anyone, from killing an individual with a drone (or by imprisoning him for life on false charges) to massive wars designed to subvert and destroy entire nations.
But any similar violence used by anyone else against the USA and its “rules-based order” is seen as pure criminal terrorism, and utterly unjustified.
Seen in that light, the various claims that the USA is the “unique”, “exceptional”, and “indispensable” nation are perfectly logical. With Israel as a US colony, inheriting some of the parent’s rights and privileges – certainly head and shoulders above all other peoples.
this of course makes civil resistance and protest in the West really hard work. I am aware that there is no direct visible line between protest in year A and political progress in the year XYZ. But you ask yourself how will we ever get off this nuclear merry-go-round. Where is the pogress towards true peace???
Because as statistics go we are not extinct due to luck only, and not thanks to control or intact chains of command. That´s what´s so flawed with the realist school of Mearsheimer and friends, and also with many WMD experts who are in favour of a nuclear arsenal.
As of now if the other one demands exceptionalism and you own something that exceptional other wants, what else can you do but arm yourself knowing that negotiations won´t be answered.
Mearsheimer therefore argues in favour of alliances. But those too only work so far with one peer at the top who can challenge the hegemon.
p.s. Weber was one for the powerful. Just like most known academics today, they put down their scholarship to justify what is not justifiable by their own alleged moral standards.
Right. Putin’s real sin is that he violated the US monopoly of violence.
Put so simply Yuri, you make it sound very persuasive
yes. the best 1-phrase analysis.
p.s. I usually went with the wisdom it´ s now a rematch for losing out in the Russian Civil War against the Commies.
But Mearsheimer´s point I gotta respect which argues that any nation bigger than the US is automatically considered a problem. I assume regardless of political conviction. (May be the 1917 loss of Russia was a reason for hatred in particular for the Europeans. Who took issue with the “leftism”.)
I seem to recall an instance where a group of protestors stopped the extradition of a convicted Middle Eastern criminal by simply blocking the police from putting him on the aircraft. If there was ever a case for mass action this is it. I doubt the British plod will do better than their French counterparts in dealing with the yellow vest protestors. This may be a last resort to consider.
The big crime in the Julian Assange story stems from the fact that the criminals are the ones prosecuting the case against him. He exposed war-crimes. The criminals did not like it and wanted to be free to commit these crimes over and over with impunity. Julian Assange poses a threat to this agenda. So through globalist connections, through the WEF, through their puppet governments throughout the world, Sweden, UK, Australia, they have found ways of pinning him down, removing his freedom, stopping his voice.
What really worries me is that more and more people are being imprisoned and kept there. It has happened to Reiner Fuellmich in Germany, who was arrested in Mexico and extradited to Germany though his home is in the US. It has happened to Alexandra Skochilenko in Russia, a poet with Celiac Disease, who got 7 years for posting western propaganda on supermarket labels. 7 years! It’s unbelievable! It happened to Craig Murray for reporting on the Julian Assange case.
The root cause, as I see it, was 9/11. This event – whoever did it – enabled countries all over the planet to create dubious parliamentary acts to combat a non existent threat which vilified Muslims, and in the so-called “war on terror” people could be arrested and imprisoned without trial. These statutes never go away while central offices of main political parties select compliant candidates who never question these laws – or perhaps ask the odd question but still vote with the Whip to remove public freedoms.
I fully agree with the point you’re making.
For the record though, I think that Craig Murray served time following his conviction for contempt of court related to the Alex Salmond case. Nothing to do with Julian Assange…
Jig saw reminiscing again Melrose?
The record was clearly laid out in the past by our host, no thanks to your efforts here.
You’re always welcome.
Jigsaw was something else…
for the record, I think his support for Assange had a good deal to do with him being targeted in the first place, not least by the Scottish version of neoliberals.
Every ‘disaster’ is an opportunity for the corrupt: 9/11; 7th Oct; Ukraine; Gaza; etc.
An interesting consequence of the earlier proceedings is that it is now established British law, confirmed in a decision of the High Court, that you can be extradited from Britain to the United States if charged with a political offence.
I was under the impression that this was unusual. A US resident can’t be extradited to Britain for a political offence, for example. Within the EU, you can be extradited to another EU country for a political offence, but not to a non-EU country.
How common is it for countries to allow extradition for political offences, as Britain does?
As a sovereign state, the USA can do what it pleases. No assurance by the Executive branch of its government can bind the Judicial branch.
“Who would think that they could have ruled that the UK/US Treaty has legal force to extradite Julian Assange, but that Article IV of the Treaty excluding political offences strangely does not have legal force?
Who would have thought that they could have ruled that the US government spying on his attorney/client legal conferences and seizing his legal papers did not invalidate the proceedings?
Who would have thought they could have ruled that the US government plot to kidnap or murder him is irrelevant, because if he is extradited the US government will have no further need to kidnap or murder him?
I could go on. I shall be very surprised if the High Court judges following the 20 May hearing do not rule that the right to ask not to be discriminated against on grounds of nationality (and be denied) is sufficient protection against discrimination by nationality.”
Indeed shameful, and you have the likes of Lord Cameron denouncing Iran and Russia as being very undemocratic countries, which are strict and authoritarian, yet in England Assange is being railroaded by a bent judiciary and deeply corrupt government.
For me this is the best interview in recent weeks:
Abu Khalil, who I think “Laguerre” talked about too, ripping apart – finally someone does it – the idiotic lies of the left in the West:
he mentions the genocidal pro-Israeli stance of people like Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden (yes who died), Amos Oz – who btw is a saint in Germany – or Bernie Sanders in the 1980s.
As well making clear the antisemitism of people like Anwar Sadat and Mahmud Abbas. (Which at least here is never mentioned because they are the good guys. So antisemites are those who resist – regardless of what they really do and say politically.)
TC: 20:00-53:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R7ly-ZIse4
He speaks about the Israeli crimes of the 1980s, which surely many here will remember, albeit committed before the internet age.
This phenomenon is a real problem btw. On that – also from today´s “news digest”, recommended by Matt Taibbi – frm Wikimedia CEO Maher in a gruesome interview, about integrity vs. free speech!
TC 10:00-12:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JRPJnVvOU&t=683s
sry but this was one I wanted to share:
“Our veto against Palestinian statehood does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood.”
Tweet on US-UN-Ambassador´s veto
That is the level of Western double standard on about anything politically meaningful put in a nutshell.
What is, is not and what is not, is and if you don’t believe it we’ll snatch you then we’ll snuff you, wiping out your nearest and dearest in an applied example of the term “collateral damage”
AG, this shit is starting to sound like a passage from “the Book of Revelations”. That was written by a monk, maybe even an anchorite (lives in a cave), tripping on some kind of powerful hallucinogen and tacked on to end of the New Testament.
It is the story of the end of the world. It is an unfolding narrative, with layer upon layer of doom, with a succession of broken seals and trumpeting angels, each heralding the Divine stages of the Apocalypse – some of the imagery is really quite striking, with the “Ten-horned Beast” and the “Whore of Babylon” putting in appearances, stand-outs in a narrative packed with A-list celebrities. I think Ingmar Bergmann used the text to generate the script for his film “The Seventh Seal”
“ The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, rose upon the earth – the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.”
Revelation 8-10
Interestingly, one of the translation of “Chernobyl” into English is “Wormwood”. I think “Wormwood” is a powerful demon in Revelations who instantiates as a toxic “mini-sun” , to help his master fulfill his rebellious schemes, not knowing that he and his master are merely pawns helping fulfill God’s Plan. The faithful are preserved and the Hosts of God break through the Hosts of Evil, routing them and a just kingdom apparently is established and endures – a happy end – according to Altman the only element needed to market a film successfully lol!
Which is why you brought up “Manichean” into a conversation some time 2022, I assume,
and why I feel so enraged and estranged for well 2 years now, being in “The West”.
The Wormwood-think is coming from the deeps of European history, long before the Europeans discovered and enforced the various precursors of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
“Wormwood” is now archaic wisdom, however instrumentalized by people who barely have known the “Iron Curtain”, people so young who – to quote an old-fashioned German literary critic – believe Giraudoux is the name of a French cheese. They really think that Europe today is benign just because they talk “recycling” and EVs, sex changes and computers for everyone at school and open-source intelligence and AI-help.
So two ideologies which usually would exclude each other have been married and eventually brought to light that nothing has changed since the genocidal convictions of 1492.
p.s. I haven´t checked myself but they say that in his first letter to Queen Isabella of Spain, Columbus, asking for her financial backing to search the New World, he mentioned the word “God” 26 times, the word “gold” however 114 times. They used to be killers but at least they were honest. Today they still are murderers but lack the honesty. The worst of the age of “light” and the age of “darkness”.
will moon
I hope you don’t mind some linguistic and cultural exercise this nice Saturday morning.
Slavic word Чернобыль consists of 2 roots Черн- (black) and быль- (grass). It describes one of Artemisia Vulgaris plants, with dark stems. Unlike Artemisia Absinthium, aka Bitter Wormwood, which is silverly and fluffy.
Well, in a less pedantic mood – if you lack a religious-mystical component in your life, then how do you look at me as a Good Angel? I dare to believe that I could write no less exciting story, just need to come up with a more impressive name for me, and perhaps hire a couple of monks to “unexpectedly find” a couple of records about me…
Yes, I definitely wouldn’t mind people praising me and donating for me in special buildings dedicated to me decorated with my images 🙂 And a book with my story would be the best selling in the world!
This is a business idea worthy of attention, Will Moon! If you support me today, I promise to mention you in my story multiple times, with the honorary title of “the First Follower”! What do you think?
Gentlemen wishing to join a new startup – we only have 12 places, hurry up! I will even be as generous as to grant the first 12 followers of My Cult exclusive rights to write a story about me! In this way, the reflection of My Angelic Holiness will fall on you and you will also be able to monetize your status. Of course we’ll haggle whether it will be a franchise or assignment.
Thanks for the information, Tatyana!
You’re welcome, Tom 🙂
Join my startup, we’ll write a chapter on your behalf. Imagine the “Revelation from Tom”: – then I saw another Angel coming from the east, rising from the basement, covered in silver dust, having the torch in her hand …
If I resuade you to print a “cave” sign and hang it above your front door? Then we will be able to say that you live in a cave, without lying! It is important. People believe your stories more easily if you live in caves 🙂
I do live in a “man cave”. Does that count? Many books, much (classical) music, several computers, some file cabinets, photographs, model tanks and aircraft…
I love the idea of partaking of your Angelic Holiness.
Tom, of course it counts! Oh, you have a wonderful cave, I could be perfectly comfortable there. I also find it to be a lucky match for my goals! Because the first commandment of my cult will be “thou shalt not lie.”
I plan to be a real Good Angel and promise to do without poisoning the water or mass extermination of people.
We will preach peace, care, friendship, cooperation and all sorts of good things. I thought I will probably have to put on snow-white clothes, craft some kind of crown and a sword, and perhaps borrow a pair of wings from the designers for Victoria Secrets. Otherwise, unfortunately, it’s impossible to get people to listen. People like ‘impressive impression’, smth beautiful, smth luxury, or smth powerful.
I could of course save on expensive costumes, and simply invent a story like, I’m a virgin with a son… But the first commandment has already been announced, so, well, I like wings and swords and crowns, too.
—
Do you make models or buy them? Asking because I’m wondering whether to make the second commandment “thou shalt craft” 🙂
Sorry to admit, Tatyana, I just buy them nowadays. 65 years ago I had a period of assembling models, but I was very hamfisted and the results were poor.
My tanks are mostly 1:72 scale, of WW2 vintage. One might say “the golden age of tanks”, before they became prey. I haven’t been able to get a good model of the Soviet SU152/ISU152 “Sverboi” (known to the German infantry as “black pigs”). I find its sheer functional ugliness inspiring. But of course the T34 is the all-time classic; first with the 76.2 mm main gun, which was mostly “good enough”; then with the far more powerful 85 mm, which was capable of destroying any German armoured vehicle with skill and luck.
Dear moderators, I hugely apologise for writing here things that are foolish and childish. I cannot even closely explain how much I appreciate your patience and your willingness to keep this website as a place for real live conversation of real live people from far distanced corners of our planet! Thank you! Thank you much! I hope you know I’not going to undermine anything that moderation considers important, I do try my best to keep to the rules and to avoid violating them.
This long introduction because the next is O/T, and sure I understand if you decide to delete it.
Tom, is it what you’re missing?
https://ozon.ru/t/q7pVXr8
I’m a good angel, and if you need it I can arrange the shipping to your destination.
Btw, about the sword.
We probably need a specialist in this type of weapons. I’m powerless here because my ideas have gone astray again. Last night I was thinking about what weapon an Angel might use to punish the lying sinners, and the only thing that popped into my head was – Do you know how poor guy Smitty from ‘the Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ has died?
The image of an angel in white robes with 15-inch black rubber errr… sword… in a hand is more comical than spectacular, I believe. Too creative for most of humans 🙂
Yet, those guys from the Capitol who filmed gay porn in one of the chambers, they also came to my mind. I thought that such a weapon would not scare them, but rather encourage them. While true Angels shouldn’t tempt humans.
What do you think?
Dear Tatyana, thanks ever so much for the ISU-152 link. I didn’t expect you to go to such trouble. But actually it seems to be a “kit” – in other words, requiring assembly. I think I shall remain content with my SU-90 tank destroyer – much more elegant in any case!
If anyone were making such models of modern tanks today – T-90, T-72, Abrams, Challenger, or whatever – they could combine two popular product ideas by making the tanks out of candle wax, with wicks. Then, at the brief touch of a lit wand in the shape of an FPV drone, the tank would go up in flames and burn for some time.
As for the weapons of angels, I am sure St Michael and others wielded swords. And St. Alexander Nevsky, of course. But I wonder if a real angel would need anything more than the sheer dread and awe of its presence.
When I was about 9, I dreamed that as I lay in my bed one night I awoke and saw an angel standing in the doorway. It just looked down at me, and I felt myself shrivelling up under the merciless justice of its scrutiny. Although I had nothing in particular to feel guilty about, I was terrified.
Not at all like Alan Rickman in “Dogma”.
@ AG
“That is the level of Western double standard on about anything politically meaningful put in a nutshell.”
The US-UN ambassador’s tweet does not indicate a double standard; rather, it appears to contain a contradiction.
But the contradiction is apparent rather than real, because you fail to mention what she said at the Security Council, which was that Palestinian statehood could only be accepted within the context of a peace agreement between the two sides. In other words, as far as the US is concerned, the recognition of Palestinian statehood can only follow – and not precede – satisfactory (and peaceful) relations between each side.
Please note I’m only reacting to what I consider to be inadequate drafting on your part and that you (along with others on this forum) should not assume I support the US position on this matter.
Yes, I reacted only superficially to that UN-SC case…even if you were to support the US position you would have the right to do so. (In fact where I live that is considered standard wisdom. You might have heard that Yanis Varoufakis was kept from entering this country out of fear for his speech!)
Do you recognise any double standard in them genociding Palestinians?
it is blatant hypocrisy, though, surely? The US is financing the genocide.
(Formerly Bob (not OG), to avoid any confusion with original Bob.)
“the waters turned bitter, and many people died”. That reminds me of an Al-Jazeera documentary shown yesterday about Agent Orange, the herbicide used to deforest large areas of Vietnam to remove cover from ‘insurgents’.
This chemical had a very nasty contaminant, a dioxin, which caused horrific birth defects, cancers, and mutations of all kinds. The government comandeered all US chemical factories to produce only Agent Orange for the war. They approved the use of the stuff with an even higer level of dioxin.
When it became clear that it was killing and mutating people, the evidence was shut away (‘classified’) and they kept on using it. They sprayed 20 million gallons of it over Vietnam. Its effects are still being felt:
https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/agent-orange-continues-to-pollute-vietnam-environment-study-finds/
They also used it domestically, in the forestry and logging industry. Eventually, locals figured out it was causing a huge increase in miscarriges, birth defects etc. and campaigned to ban its use. They were intimidated by shadowy figures linked to the corporations. One high profile campaigning woman’s house was set on fire and all four of her children were killed.
Judges repeatedly dismissed the mounting evidence about the chemical’s effects, sometimes refusing to even hear the case. Dow, and Bayer (Monsanto) were a couple of the manufacturers involved.
That’s just one example of the behaviour of the world’s most rogue state, the USA. There are countless others (anyone who’s studied the history of the CIA will know).
The point is, which people who froth about all conspiracies being bollocks fail to recognise, evil exists.
Large organisations, from corporations to governments, become evil. Judiciaries are integral to this system.
Many people live shielded from this reality. Talking to a young person in work the other day I said something like: “if this [the UK] is supposed to be a free and fair democracy, how come Julian Assange has been in prison for ten years for exposing state crimes?” The answer came back: “Who’s Julian Assange?”.
When you get this in your inbox from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office you know that the idea of “Diplomatic Assurance” is indeed a farce. The two countries simply sleep in the same bed.
“Update to the UK Sanctions List: Iran Regime
Today, 18 April 2024, the UK Government in a coordinated effort with the US, has announced sanctions on 13 individuals/entities under the Iran Sanctions Regime 2023. Those designated have enabled Iran to conduct destabilising regional activity, including its direct attack on Israel, adding to the 400 sanctions already imposed on Iran”.
Keep it up, fellows! Every extra sanction encourages – perhaps even forces – Iranians to buy from sources outside the golden billion. Very nearly 90 million people, with a PPP GDP of $1.8 trillion. What products and services – apart from those it can provide for itself – do you think it can get from China, India, Russia…?
“But if so, dear reader, you have no idea of the corruption of the stool pigeons disguised as British judges.”
Nonsense, I think it will be definitely going to appeal on this basis. Although whether that is ACTUALLY in Assange’s interests or not, is another question. After the appeal goes ahead, it will take perhaps another 18 months? Then assuming he wins (not impossible) the US will simply drop the last three charges and the extradition goes ahead – pending an appeal to the ECHR.
The ECHR takes another 2 years……
I wonder if Julian Assange’s new next door neighbour in Belmarsh is the unnamed “man in the grey tracksuit” detained since April 10th and now charged under the new National Security Act with undefined offences that are “benefiting Russia”. Otherwise no names, no pack drill allowed. Will there be others who just disappear under these new frightening laws?
Frightening indeed.
WTF does “benefiting Russia” even mean ?
People can openly ‘benefit Israel’ or ‘benefit the USA’ or ‘benefit the Ukraine’, to the detriment of the UK. We are not, to my knowledge, actually at war with Russia – yet, so apart from ‘spying’ where/what is the crime ?
I see that in other news, Aiden Minnis from Chippenham, has been branded a traitor for fighting for Russia in the Ukraine. No mention of the legality of all those who travelled to fight in Libya, Syria and Nazi Ukraine, let alone the special forces currently deployed in Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, Africa.
Also, Trudi Warner is currently under threat of a two year prison sentence for standing outside Inner London Crown Court holding a placard which said “Jurors: You have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.”
The open hypocrisy is astounding, and the stench of corruption and decay in the UK is overpowering.
I read with interest that Sir Michael Ellis, Attorney-General for England and Wales until 2022, has stated that the UK Statistics Office should examine the casualty figures produced by the Gaza ministry of health because he feels that the figures emanating from that body should not be automatically accepted as valid.
In reality, of course, Sir Michael is hinting that the 32,000 plus figures for deaths is exaggerated (perhaps he feels that, say, 22,000 deaths would be OK).
Funnily enough, the newspaper in question omitted to tell readers Sir Michael’s faith.
I wonder why.
Problem is he could as well suggest that them numbers are too low. But I never heard any of these clones say such a thing. (unlike with Ukraine.)
1.5 years ago in Germany there was a petition to end the war in Ukr. Which was great considering the general atmosphere and agenda. But the petition seriously spoke about 50,000 dead civilians. Even though the official UN figure was about 8000 back then, I believe, the petition writers chose the number offered by – ta-taaa – the US Armed Forces.
I have never heard that number again since which must have been total baloney. But publicly nobody intervened. The only criticism was the usual. Which were rather insults not “criticism” towards the petition authors. Eventually the petition was signed by about 1 Mio. people.
None of these 1 Mio. cared or realised what those 50,000 would have meant. Same goes for Gaza. People don´t look that much into facts. They know enough to know it´s a crime. So Sir Ellis has lost already.
Well he’s right, in one respect, the numbers aren’t correct, they are almost certainly too low by many orders.
However, since many have been vaporised, crushed and buried, or dissappeared, then it’s all the gazan authorities can do.
And, the last people I’d get involved in factually checking numbers is the UK statistics office, given their role in events of the last four years they are just state puppets.