alanjjohnstone
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I'm a little puzzled.Why is the UN Inspection ending on Saturday. I thought the purpose was to visit earlier alleged chemical weapon attack sites which they appear no longer interested in visiting?If it is because they are under the threat of attack from American missiles and bombs then the media should be high-lighting this. It also highlights the so-called accuracy if the Americans cannot guarantee they won't hit their hotel!Or are they are simply abandoning their original mandate and not fulfilling their duty to investigate and report.
Connell had wanted it sung to the tune of a pro-Jacobite anthem, "The White Cockade", a more cheery tune http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab1KBgrCq08
i just saw the Sept SS cover, the raised fist. Invariably this is the male fist not the dainty hand of a woman which reminds me of the blackadder scenehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EfW9znJYjw
The Starry Plough , flag of the Irish Citizens Army, was green and yellow. Connolly said the significance of the banner was that a free Ireland would control its own destiny from the plough to the stars.It later changed to blue in the 1930s nd bcame the flag of the Irish labour movement.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starry_Plough_(flag) The dark blue and white Southern Cross was the flag of the Eureka strikers in Australia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Flag The British Chartists had several flags but favoured the horizontal tricolour which was considered by the authorities as subversivehttp://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/gb_chart.html There is enough precedents not to get fixated over the colour red. Then there is the red starhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_star
BBC Scotland reports that the charity Positive Action in Housing has described the poster campaign as racist. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-23897533 The Glasgow-based charity's director Robina Qureshi said: "As we all should know, 'go home' is a well-known racist taunt that has been used for decades in this country by fascists and racists against those of us from immigrant communities. That a government agency should decide to take up the same racist and xenophobic refrain while processing would-be refugees to this country, is shameful and deeply offensive." SNP MSP for Glasgow Cathcart, James Dornan, said he had written to Home Secretary Theresa May demanding that the poster campaign be stopped immediately."There is no room for this type of abhorrent xenophobic campaign which will only serve to make already vulnerable people feel unwelcome and fans the flames of racial bigotry," he said. "The Home Office has absolutely no idea about how modern Scotland treats vulnerable people – regardless of where they are from. Their campaign in Brand Street must stop immediately."Immigration policy was currently reserved to the UK government.
If branches produce their own leaflets and they aren't on the web , the blog will happily publish them for wider dissemination.
No 10 and the Foreign Office think Miliband is a fucking cunt and a copper-bottomed shit. Oh, we could have told them that long ago and why such restrained language!! The war of words from “open source intelligence” “However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.” “They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses-of-gas-attack-say-saudis-supplied-rebels-with-chemical-weapons/168135/ If the rebels are logistically incapable, the Saudis are not. I have seen several articles and interviews where the claim that there is no evidence that it was the rebels but in fact as the above plus and the actual discovery of those chemical weapon supplies have simply been dismissed as irrelevant pro-Assad propaganda. As i earlier posted we have only the hard evidence of an Israeli radio inception which keeps re-surfacing in reports but with little added to it, and even if genuine, it can easily be miscontrued as were similar radio messages claimed about the hiding of WMDs during the Iraq war build-up . Let us hear it and let the translators release the text.
Socialist Platform meetingSaturday September 14, 1pm. The Meeting Place, 2 Langley Lane, London SW8.Will we have an open letter or leaflet available to circulate at it. Something a bit meatier than ALB's WW letter, which was short and to the point, but we are dealing with Leftists quite accustomed to polemical writing and we should give them that respect of full explaining our position.
A good day for democracy. Perhaps a leaflet handed on on Saturday can make the reference that it is political power that is primary, not sentiment. But be rest assured we can expect the supplies of arms and equipment to the rebels to increase. Of course, the Americans don't need Cameron's assistance for an air attack but hopefully the call to arms goes unheeded in other countries and acts to stop a possible attack. I note from one contribution to the debate that Assad has been elevated to the ranks of the "mad" leaders.
WhodunnitAP reporter, Matt Lee: Right. But you don't have some kind of smoking gun clear – there is – if there is any doubt left, it is only about who might have used them, not whether they were used at all. Is that correct?State Department Deputy Spokesperson MS. HARF: I think that you can, I guess, use those words.
Also many can't understand why UK gives aid to India who have a expensive space programme costing millions instead of housing the poor of Bombay. "It's an important market, and for our children and grandchildren, it will be an even more important market," Mitchell told journalists in Delhi. Asked about the strategic goals of Britain's aid programme to India, Mitchell said: "It's about everything I have just mentioned. The focus… is also about seeking to sell Typhoon. The relationship is a relationship you have to take in the round." – deal that was worth over 6 billion pounds. British capitalists don't understand the word altruism, just the same as Indian rich don't know the word welfare
Foreign aid and corrupt politicians go together but little is said about those who are thego-betweens – the multi nationals and the banks. A sixth of Angola's entire annual budget – $6 billion – flowed illicitly out of the country in 2009, for instance , into the pockets of the trans-nationals. $71 billion went 'missing' from Angola between 1985 and 2008 . From 1970 to 2008, Nigeria lost a staggering $296 billion Estimates for the African continent is of illicit capital outflows range from $854 billion to $1.8 trillion between 1970 and 2008. Zambia Sugar, recently posted record pre-tax profits and its huge plantation is increasing its capacity to produce more sugar for markets in Europe and Africa. Yet it paid less than 0.5% of its $123m pre-tax profits in corporation tax between 2007 and 2012. In the last four decades: Côte d'Ivoire ($45 billion), the DRC ($31 billion), Cameroon ($24 billion), the Republic of Congo ($24 billion), and Sudan ($18 billion). The BBC Radio 4's File on 4 learned that almost £100 billion a year is taken out of Africa through accounting practices , both legal and illegal , – several times more than what the continent receives in aid. Kenya's official export statistics say almost 50 million kilos of tea left there in 2005 bound for Britain. But the British import statistics showed 75 million kilos – one and a half times as much – arriving here from Kenya. Companies shipping tea to the UK were under-reporting exports in order to avoid paying tax. There is a practice known as "transfer pricing" – the means by which firms value their goods for tax purposes when they move them across international borders. In effect, this allows companies to undervalue their products. Tax avoidance, secret mining deals and financial transfers are depriving Africa of the benefits of its resources boom, ex-UN chief Kofi Annan has said.Firms that shift profits to lower tax jurisdictions cost Africa $38bn (£25bn) a year, says a report produced by a panel he heads.Africa lost up to $1.4tn in illicit financial flows in 1980-2009, far exceeding money coming in over the same period. The joint report from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a US research organisation, says the continent has been a long-term net creditor to the rest of the world. "The traditional thinking has always been that the west is pouring money into Africa through foreign aid and other private-sector flows, without receiving much in return. Our report turns that logic upside down – Africa has been a net creditor to the rest of the world for decades," said Raymond Baker, president of GFI. The resource drain from Africa over the last 30 years is almost equivalent to Africa's current GDP "Africa loses twice as much money through these loopholes as it gets from donors," Mr Annan told the BBC. It was like taking food off the tables of the poor, he said.Between 2010 and 2012 five under-priced mining concessions were sold in "highly opaque and secretive deals" in the Democratic Republic of Congo, depriving the country of $1.3bn in revenues, double DR Congo's health and education budgets combined.In Zambia between 2005 and 2009, 500,000 copper mine workers were paying a higher rate of tax than major multinational mining firms. The Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo are losing at least $12m annually in tax avoidance by logging companies, Greenpeace says.The environmental group says it has evidence showing how firms like German-owned Danzer group have set up "elaborate profit-laundering schemes". In its report, Conning the Congo, Greenpeace alleges the amount of tax lost each year is 50 times the DR Congo's Ministry of Environment's annual operating budget. I can go on and demonstrate further with the connivance of local politicians and the mediation oftax havens what is spent on foreign aid to 3rd world is dwarved by the amount cheated from the people. In addition much of the so-called aid are mega-developments that don't benefit the poor and only line the pockets of the local rich elite and the international companies involved. Try reading this article debunking foreign aid as a means of aid http://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-aid-is-no-first-aid.html
We had the student's essay dodgy dossier. Now we have the YouTube dodgy dossier. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23862114 "The government has published a summary of legal advice from the attorney general, which says military action without UN Security Council backing would be legal, as there is "convincing evidence" of the use of chemical weapons and "there is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved". But any action must be "necessary and proportionate to the aim of relief of humanitarian need and must be strictly limited in time and scope to this aim".It also published a letter from John Day, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, to the prime minister, saying that the judgement of the Britain's intelligence chiefs is that it is "highly likely" that a chemical attack occurred last week and that the Syrian regime was behind it."There is no credible intelligence or other evidence to substantiate the claims or the possession of CW (chemaical weapons) by the opposition. "The JIC has therefore concluded that there are no plausible alternative scenarios to regime responsibility."We also have a limited but growing body of intelligence which supports the judgement that the regime was responsible for the attacks and that they were conducted to help clear the Opposition from strategic parts of Damascus."The judgement is based on expert analysis of "open source" intelligence, such as the YouTube clips seen on television news bulletins and secret intelligence reports."Duh!! I wonder if the MSM pick up on that . The BBC doesn't seem concerned that the convincing evidence is rebel supplied videoes, nor does the Independent or Guardian from what i have also read
Obama, Biden, Hagel – we are sure….American intelligence, we don't actually know very much….http://news.yahoo.com/ap-sources-intelligence-weapons-no-slam-dunk-070731192.html "U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad's orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said."
Is the Left war-weary? Here in the UK and the US ( http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/08/28/anti-war-groups-plead-poverty-as-reason-theyre-not-protesting-syria-intervention/ ) the anti-war movement appears to be slow in arising. Several hundred on Wednesday for the Downing St. Just 5000 expected for Saturdays demo. “The Democrats are missing in action because of course the president is a Democrat,” said David Swanson, a longtime antiwar activist and author of War Is a Lie and When the World Outlawed War, who works with Roots Action, a progressive nonprofit. “That’s the biggest factor, I think. What’s tamping down the activism is partisanship.” But that reasoning doesn’t apply to the UK, and many of the more outspoken opposition has come from the right wing and their press. The Daily Mirror, for instance was strongly against the Iraq war but is very hawkish in the Syrian war. Is it perhaps a case of the realisation that simple protest changes little? Anyways even if it is short notice, i hope the London branches can get a leaflet out and distribute it at Saturdays march.
