NurembergVillan Posted December 8, 2018 Moderator Share Posted December 8, 2018 16 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: But not get to choose which one I watch. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 8, 2018 Share Posted December 8, 2018 27 minutes ago, LondonLax said: Funny how female accuses of sexual assaults should be believed sometimes but not others. Have you read up on the case in question? On the general point, accusations of crimes should be given credence based on the evidence, rather than the sex/gender/race/disability status/attractiveness/presumed IQ/connections of the accuser, no? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 8, 2018 Share Posted December 8, 2018 41 minutes ago, bickster said: So you don't believe WikiLeaks is Organisation 1, I do, therefore from my perspective, it is not without substance it is named in the Steele dossier so there's some substance. We can not believe anything if we want to but I think there's plenty out there, enough for me to believe in my opinion The Steele dossier seems very shaky. Do you actually believe that stuff about pissy-pissy bed antics? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 8, 2018 Moderator Share Posted December 8, 2018 7 minutes ago, peterms said: The Steele dossier seems very shaky. Do you actually believe that stuff about pissy-pissy bed antics? I think it’s a distraction, sounds fanciful. I'm not sure it’s relevant. I think the hold Russia have over Trump is more a financial / business thing than a sex tape tbh. I think that’s a red herring deliberately thrown in 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 8, 2018 Share Posted December 8, 2018 3 minutes ago, bickster said: I think it’s a distraction, sounds fanciful. I'm not sure it’s relevant. I think the hold Russia have over Trump is more a financial / business thing than a sex tape tbh. I think that’s a red herring deliberately thrown in There is very obviously a financial relationship with Russia, and Saudi. I don't understand why the sex nonsense was thrown in. His base don't care, and it's not more damning fhan the stuff that can be evidenced. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted December 9, 2018 Author Moderator Share Posted December 9, 2018 11 hours ago, HanoiVillan said: The radical thought occurs that maybe she could refrain from publishing until she has 'joined the dots'. Not that radical. The sort of thing Trump might say about reporting re Mueller, perhaps? As we know, press (media) reporting has to walk a line between reporting things which for which there is evidence and asserting what that evidence means. SO for example, Farage was caught visiting Assange is a fact. Farage is/was a "mixer" with Trump and the two appeared to be "on the same page" on aspects of politics. A paper might leave it to the reader to join the dots as to whether Farage is/was a conduit between Assange and Trump. Now the Guardian (say) doesn't much like (hates?) Farage and his ilk (with good reason). Just because the subject of some "connections" is someone who might be popular with twitterers or momentum or whoever, doesn't suddenly mean that it's a hatchet job (or that it isn't). cry of "Fake News" about CC's twits on Seamus and Corbyn just seems to me like...well, "it's covering someone(s) we think are great, so it can't be true, it must be a MSM set up". Aside from this particular little aspect, and to stay on topic, CC has uncovered all kinds of links and shenanigans about Brexit funding, Russia, Facebook, Cambridge analytica etc. As people have commented, it's hard to follow, and I'm sure she's made mistakes in some of her direction, looking for more, but I think the general responses from the Brexiteers like Aaron Banks, Andrew Neill, Farage and so on suggest she's got to them, when they thought they'd be clear. Now she's followed a line of enquiry/investigation that wavers towards maybe some in Corbyn's camp, it's a bit much to pull up our skirts and jump on a chair in horror and alarm. The left of Milne and Corbyn are every bit as manipulative as Farage and Banks. The ideology is different, and arguably less malign, but the (some) methods are universal across all politics. My perception is Corbyn and Milne etc. are every bit as susceptible to being manipulated by Russia as are Banks and Trump and Farage. Different weak points, but ultimately same result. Whether it's "Spot of Presidential power interest you, at all?" or "oodles of mining cash any interest?" or whatever, there's always a weak point, particularly with ideologues. Caveat. I have no idea if CC is dizzy on recent accolades and going off on one, or if she's found something else worth picking at, but I just see the responses from supporters of Corbyn on Twitter as exactly what you'd sadly expect and just mirrors of the Trumpites in America. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ml1dch Posted December 9, 2018 Share Posted December 9, 2018 (edited) Quote Long, but an excellent read on how we got to where we are. Tony Connelly has been the best reporter on all this by a mile. Quote On 26 July 2016, just over one month after the Brexit Referendum, Enda Kenny had lunch with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Downing Street. Afterwards, the former taoiseach said: "We are both agreed very firmly there will be no return to a hard border as existed." In the months that followed, Dublin, London and Brussels re-emphasised that determination at every turn. Everyone would protect the peace process and avoid any return to the "borders of the past". So how is it that the hard fought solution to preserve the peace should now be vilified as the "hated" backstop, a "trap" that would keep the UK in the EU "forever", that would "divide" the United Kingdom, and threaten to pitch all of Europe off a cliff edge into a potentially calamitous No Deal scenario? "It is only on reading the Attorney General’s legal advice about the implications of the Northern Ireland 'backstop' in the Brexit deal," intoned the Daily Telegraph this week, "that the true enormity of what the government has agreed to becomes apparent." To understand how we got here, we need to return to the Joint Report, published one year ago this week. The Joint Report contains the embryo of the backstop, but as this blog has pointed out before, it held a fateful ambiguity. Paragraph 49 of the report stated that, if no other solutions were to be found: "The United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement." Was this the UK as a whole aligning? Or was it just the UK aligning on behalf of Northern Ireland? To Dublin and the EU, it was clear. The backstop was for Northern Ireland only. However, to London the UK as a whole could "align" in a backstop scenario. At the time, the ambiguity did not go unnoticed. The London Independent ventured: "The government has offered no detailed explanation of how it could simultaneously leave the single market and customs union and also sign up to UK-wide rules to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland..." Since Paragraph 50 of the Joint Report had promised unfettered trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, this seemed to suggest that the UK as a whole would be aligning. The London Times recognised that this was "contradictory…, given that Theresa May insisted that she would not sign up to UK-wide regulatory alignment with Brussels after Brexit". David Davis, the then Brexit secretary, muddied the waters further when he told the House of Commons: "Alignment isn’t harmonisation, it isn’t having exactly the same rules. It is sometimes having mutually recognised rules, mutually recognised inspection, all of that sort of thing as well."EU and Irish officials were left scratching their heads as to what he meant. full article on link https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2018/1207/1015924-brexit-backstop-uk/ Edited December 10, 2018 by blandy more than an extract was quoted Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 9, 2018 Share Posted December 9, 2018 14 hours ago, bickster said: I think it’s a distraction, sounds fanciful. I'm not sure it’s relevant. I think the hold Russia have over Trump is more a financial / business thing than a sex tape tbh. I think that’s a red herring deliberately thrown in Just on the dossier, I see Comey has told Congress that it wasn't corroborated by the FBI. (The Guardian covered his testimony but I must have missed their mention of that bit). It's mentioned here. Quote He didn’t seem to know that his own FBI was using No. 4 Justice Department official Bruce Ohr as a conduit to keep collecting intelligence from Christopher Steele after the British intel operative was fired by the bureau for leaking and lying. In fact, Comey didn’t seem to remember knowing that Steele had been terminated, according to sources in the room. “His memory was so bad I feared he might not remember how to get out of the room after the interview,” one lawmaker quipped. Lamented another: “It was like he suddenly developed dementia or Alzheimer’s, after conveniently remembering enough facts to sell his book.” Faintness of memory is a common symptom for witnesses under the intense spotlight. But lawmakers were relieved when Comey could remember one fact that is essential to understanding if his FBI acted appropriately in the investigation of Donald Trump and Russia. The towering ex-FBI boss confessed that the FBI had not corroborated much of the Steele dossier before it was submitted as evidence to a secret court to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the final weeks of the election. And Comey admitted much of the dossier remained uncorroborated more than six months later when he was fired by President Trump. (Sorry, getting a bit off topic) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 9, 2018 Share Posted December 9, 2018 (edited) 8 hours ago, blandy said: Not that radical. The sort of thing Trump might say about reporting re Mueller, perhaps? As we know, press (media) reporting has to walk a line between reporting things which for which there is evidence and asserting what that evidence means. SO for example, Farage was caught visiting Assange is a fact. Farage is/was a "mixer" with Trump and the two appeared to be "on the same page" on aspects of politics. A paper might leave it to the reader to join the dots as to whether Farage is/was a conduit between Assange and Trump. Now the Guardian (say) doesn't much like (hates?) Farage and his ilk (with good reason). Just because the subject of some "connections" is someone who might be popular with twitterers or momentum or whoever, doesn't suddenly mean that it's a hatchet job (or that it isn't). cry of "Fake News" about CC's twits on Seamus and Corbyn just seems to me like...well, "it's covering someone(s) we think are great, so it can't be true, it must be a MSM set up". Aside from this particular little aspect, and to stay on topic, CC has uncovered all kinds of links and shenanigans about Brexit funding, Russia, Facebook, Cambridge analytica etc. As people have commented, it's hard to follow, and I'm sure she's made mistakes in some of her direction, looking for more, but I think the general responses from the Brexiteers like Aaron Banks, Andrew Neill, Farage and so on suggest she's got to them, when they thought they'd be clear. Now she's followed a line of enquiry/investigation that wavers towards maybe some in Corbyn's camp, it's a bit much to pull up our skirts and jump on a chair in horror and alarm. The left of Milne and Corbyn are every bit as manipulative as Farage and Banks. The ideology is different, and arguably less malign, but the (some) methods are universal across all politics. My perception is Corbyn and Milne etc. are every bit as susceptible to being manipulated by Russia as are Banks and Trump and Farage. Different weak points, but ultimately same result. Whether it's "Spot of Presidential power interest you, at all?" or "oodles of mining cash any interest?" or whatever, there's always a weak point, particularly with ideologues. Caveat. I have no idea if CC is dizzy on recent accolades and going off on one, or if she's found something else worth picking at, but I just see the responses from supporters of Corbyn on Twitter as exactly what you'd sadly expect and just mirrors of the Trumpites in America. Needless to say I completely and utterly disagree, and find the Donald Trump jab at the start to be a cheap shot that's not worthy of you. The 'line of enquiry/investigation that wavers towards maybe some in Corbyn's camp' is accusing his communications director, as indirectly as possible so as not to accidentally say something that might be libelous, of being a Kremlin stooge who is masterminding Labour's Brexit strategy. Her 'evidence' for the former is completely circumstantial, and he probably isn't in the top 50 most influential people when it comes to creating Labour's Brexit strategy, but I'm not going to repeat everything I said above. People can make their own conclusions. Edited December 9, 2018 by HanoiVillan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted December 9, 2018 Author Moderator Share Posted December 9, 2018 13 minutes ago, peterms said: Just on the dossier, I see Comey has told Congress that it wasn't corroborated by the FBI. (The Guardian covered his testimony but I must have missed their mention of that bit). It's mentioned here. (Sorry, getting a bit off topic) I’m not big on US politics, but two things strike me about that contribution. Firstly it’s partisan to Republicans and Trump and secondly when it says much of the dossier want corroborated by the FBI, that’s potentially missing the point completely. If some of it was corroborated that may have been sufficient for the system to agree to further action. Without going completely OT, enough of it has since been found correct to be of real alarm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted December 9, 2018 Author Moderator Share Posted December 9, 2018 6 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: Needless to say I completely and utterly disagree, and find the Donald Trump jab at the start to be a cheap shot that's not worthy of you...... People can make their own conclusions. No offence or cheap shot was intended. I mean it genuinely. Sorry. They can indeed join the dots themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 9, 2018 Moderator Share Posted December 9, 2018 7 hours ago, ml1dch said: The one constituency in which Theresa May’s ill-fated deal has been going down the best, according to a UK source, is in Northern Ireland. I think this line is a little off and sends the wrong message, there was a poll this week conducted by a company based in NI which was a sample of 5,000 and it was all adjusted and whatnot to reflect the cultural make-up of NI, nationalist, loyalist and neither. The result was that pretty much all the nationalists, all the neithers and 20% of the loyalists wanted no Brexit al all, it amounted to 55% of the population, so whilst it may be the area that wants May's deal the most, it still isn't a majority opinion and it's pretty much a very poor second place Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 9, 2018 Moderator Share Posted December 9, 2018 Oh and going back to Cadwalladr and Milne. Milne was an associate editor at the Guardian until he took the Corbyn job full time, journalists from the Guardian / Observer pool will only too aware of what his politics are 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 9, 2018 Moderator Share Posted December 9, 2018 Quote But the question in 1989 wasn't whether the old system had to change; it was how it would change. The political force that had turned the Soviet Union into a superpower, industrialised half of Europe and sent the first human being into space had exhausted itself. There were, however, alternative routes out of its crisis. What the protesters in first Gdansk and then Leipzigwere mostly demanding was not capitalism, of course, but a different kind of socialism. Even given a restoration of capitalism, there were softer landings that could have been negotiated by Mikhail Gorbachev and guaranteed by the United States and its allies. Instead, 1989 unleashed across the region and then the former Soviet Union free-market shock therapy, mass robbery as privatisation, vast increases in inequality, and poverty and joblessness for tens of millions. Reunification in Germany in fact meant annexation, the takeover and closure of most of its industry, a political purge of more than a million teachers and other white-collar workers, a loss of women's rights, closure of free nurseries and mass unemployment – still double western Germany's rate after 20 years. Guess who wrote this bollocks in the Guardian I have first hand experience of being in Poland just before the Solidarity talks were due to begin, I never met one single person who wanted a different kind of socialism, not one Quote That would be a mistake. Amis's book is in reality only the latest contribution to the rewriting of history that began in the dying days of the Soviet Union and has intensified since its collapse. It has become almost received wisdom to bracket Stalin and Hitler as twin monsters of the past century - Mao and Pol Pot are sometimes thrown in as an afterthought - and commonplace to equate communism and fascism as the two greatest evils of an unprecedentedly sanguinary era. In some versions, communism is even held to be the more vile and bloodier wickedness. The impact of this cold war victors' version of the past has been to relativise the unique crimes of Nazism, bury those of colonialism and feed the idea that any attempt at radical social change will always lead to suffering, killing and failure. That Stalin fella wasn't as bad as people think Just a couple of examples of Milne's pro-Soviet / pro-Russia views, you know, just so we know who we're talking about here Reminds me of the crap I used to read in my Granddad's Morning Star every day (He was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of GB until his dying day) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ml1dch Posted December 9, 2018 Share Posted December 9, 2018 Apparently about three thousand at the "family friendly, Brexit Betrayal march" in that London today. Looks wholesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 9, 2018 Moderator Share Posted December 9, 2018 1 hour ago, ml1dch said: Apparently about three thousand at the "family friendly, Brexit Betrayal march" in that London today. Looks wholesome. That's 3,000 more than turned up at the Liverpool one (for those that couldn't get to London). There were about a 150 at the counter-demonstration, many more would have turned up at the first sight of any dickheads The fascists still haven't managed to organise a successful demo or march in Liverpool, this time they didn't even turn up That Jo Cox False Flag fella in the photo needs a good shoeing There'll be rioting on the streets if we don't leave, there'll be bigger bloody riots if we do, genuine poverty-stricken ones Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted December 9, 2018 Moderator Share Posted December 9, 2018 From the London "event" We can't be... reasoned with 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 9, 2018 Share Posted December 9, 2018 'We will absolutely never stop ever until we get hard' 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 9, 2018 Share Posted December 9, 2018 8 hours ago, blandy said: I’m not big on US politics, but two things strike me about that contribution. Firstly it’s partisan to Republicans and Trump and secondly when it says much of the dossier want corroborated by the FBI, that’s potentially missing the point completely. If some of it was corroborated that may have been sufficient for the system to agree to further action. Without going completely OT, enough of it has since been found correct to be of real alarm. Yes, the article is partisan. I'm not promoting the spin they put on things, simply quoting (what it presents as) the fact that Comey states the dossier was not corroborated. And commenting on the fact that this was deemed unworthy of reporting by the Guardian, which spent half its article on the daft exchanges about whether Comey and Mueller had hugged and kissed - a trivial distraction. Since the dossier is itself deeply partisan - I think it was first commissioned by Republicans opposed to Trump's candidacy, and later taken over by Democrats - that surely suggests more, not less, requirement for verification. Not verifying it, given the importance placed upon it, seems like the most extraordinary decision. Why on earth would you not do that? Imagine such a report were produced about our PM and the intelligence services decided not to attempt to verify it? (Actually, they seem to be going the other way, secretly paying spin factories to create lies about Corbyn, but that's another story). Early reporting in this country, as I recall, stressed Steele's previous career, and supposed good reputation, implying that we should accept the conclusions of the dossier. In fact it seems to be a partisan product, paid for by people who obviously and transparently wanted damning conclusions, which is a big sign to be careful about accepting conclusions, even before the unlikely-sounding pissing prostitutes story. Given that Trump is a corrupt, lying, venal, criminal, serial abuser of relationships, contracts and the law, I'm bemused why it was felt necessary to take this approach rather than something more neutral and therefore more powerful. Probably also not a great idea to include info possibly derived from Sergei Skripal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted December 9, 2018 Share Posted December 9, 2018 Oops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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