The alleged Foreign Secretary is speaking somewhere - trailed purely as 'Margaret Beckett Is To Speak On The Continuing Threat From Islamist Terrorism'. I'll blog it live, or at least half-dead.
blah plots disruputed blah 87% of security service resources devoted to terrorism blah safe prosperous and just world blah extremists *talks bollocks*
I can't make out what she's on about at this point, the grammar makes no sense and her flat delivery with odd pauses makes it hard to work out.
pseudo-religious vision...cult...impressionable...tolerant, democratic British society (yer what?)...falsehoods...no western deliberate attack on Islam...instead powerful record of support for Muslims...Darfur [yer what?]...tsunami [yer what again]. Israel/Palestinians..UK portrayed as hostile to Palestinians
At this point her papers were sticking together. Explains the halting delivery
Raised concerns with government of Israel [doubtless with a note attached to the latest shipment of bombs]. Horrified by large numbers of women and children among the casualties [of the Israeli tank attack]. Committed to a political solution. Committed £30m to the Palestinian people [bet that's bollocks, particularly when the EU and US cut off funding because of Hamas]
Yawn. She's trying to combat the strongly held belief in that Muslim world that because we keep killing them we somehow want them dead.
Foreign policy based on our values [torture, murder] and our strategic interests [oil].
It's just unlucky that so many Muslims get in the way, isn't it?
Tolerant, diverse and open society
Pigs heads, fires in mosques, race riots, BNP elected on racist platform in East London, Melanie Philips allowed to roam the streets (OK, I'm not opposed to that on freedom of speech grounds, but the fact that she isn't laughed into retirement is indicative of a powerful movement away from tolerance towards narrow minded bigotry in the UK. See Nick Cohen while you're at it).
Vast majority of their victims are Muslim
Vast majority of *our* victims are Muslim, too, of course.
Getting message across [to young Muslims] isn't easy
That's because it's full of bullshit, Margaret, and they know that.
Delegations to various Muslim countries...work with media...terrorists adept at manipulating mass media [how dare they, that's Ali Campbell's job]...recruiting a regional Arabic spokesman [a UK spin doctor in Dubai]. Qater..al-Jazeera..English channel...[Blunkett threatening to bomb it, oh but she didn't mention that]...standing up for moderation [except when talking to George Bush, when the British position is more likely to be bending over for fanaticism]
Goes onto Afghanistan:
We walked away [twice, actually, once to go and invade Iraq]. We, on behalf of the International Community, went into Afghanistan [and declared victory, and lost focus, and gave the Taliban time to regroup and a great new recruiting tool in the Iraq mess]. Media is flourishing, girls are back in schools [except when they've been blown up or the teachers murdered]
Radio Five lost interest at that point. I'm nearly asleep too. She really did talk a bunch of crap if you have a modicum of knowledge on the real facts.
*UPDATE*
Maggie's back on the case and onto Iraq.
Can't make foreign policy by ignoring the facts on the ground [we did when we went in]...great risk of instability and bloodshot...we will stay as long as the government of Iraq wants us [which, since we guard them from people who want to kill them, is forever]. Must not let country turn into a base for terrorism
Well, that's the Bush line, of course, who's the only man in the world who thinks that withdrawing US troops will lead to al-Qaeda taking over the whole country. It's bollocks of course.
Tom - you're a bloody
Tom - you're a bloody hero.
How many of us would jeopardize our sanity for the sake of the blogosphere, by enduring and relaying the ass-faced one's barmy bleatings.
Now have a lie down in a quiet, darkened room.
Mags Beckett, eh? Ain't she
Mags Beckett, eh? Ain't she brilliant? I especially love the line `we will stay as long as the government of Iraq wants us` - I mean, sod whatever the actualy people of Iraq want! Let's stick a bunch of compromised no-hopers in a cosy building in the Green Zone (with loads of OUR armed troops everywhere), assign advisors to their frail bureaucracies at every level (until its basically doing what we want it to do), then turn around and make preachy, smug noises about staying as long as the Iraqi government want.
Reality? We don' need no steenking reality!
"..tsunami.." Blimey! Was
"..tsunami.."
Blimey! Was that Bin Liner's fault too..?
May I second that. You're a
May I second that. You're a brave, brave man. Probably the only chap brave enough in the entire country to sit through it. Did you have to chain yourself to your chair? I by chance set out to listen to it with a much decorated veteran of Arnhem, yet the second she started to speak he was out of his wheel chair and out the door even faster to me.
I've just been reading
I've just been reading Beckett's speech in full. I wish I hadn't, I think I need a stiff drink and a lie down now. Thankfully I didn't have to listen to her deliver the damn thing.
Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!
Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!
Out! Out! Out!
For your kind words, much
For your kind words, much thanks.
Blimey! Was that Bin Liner's fault too..?
No, but if I read Maggie's logic right:
a) Quite a lot of Muslims drowned
b) We sent a ship
c) This cancels out us helping the US flatten Fallujah, apparently
From Channel 4 News'
From Channel 4 News' Snowmail email:
Kenneth Adelman interview
=========================
We have an extraordinary interview with Kenneth Adelman, Rumsfeld's best friend and a man who worked with him at least three times over the last 40 years, once as the assistant defense secretary at the Pentagon. Adelman was also US ambassador to the United Nations.
He has turned on his friend and accused him of incompetence in his interview with us. But he reserves particular anger for the British, who he says had a grandstand position in Baghdad, in Iraq, and in Washington, both to observe the smash-up of policy in Iraq and to use their unparalleled influence here to get policy changed. He accuses Tony Blair of quite simply not using the influence he had. He said the Brits should have hit the Americans in the face with the realities on the ground instead of deploying their usual charming diplomatic processes.
Watch and read all our reports on the US mid-terms here
Neo-con rats are startinng to turn on each other and Blair, Straw, Hoon and Greenstock are now in the firing line.
So full of shit you just
So full of shit you just cannot believe it!!!
Just in from a morning of editing the profile of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Manningham-Buller
What an amazing pedigree she has. You need to look back in her past, not only at this sorry PR campaign about the threats of terrorism which the BBC is complying fully with. Don't they know that the US election was last week? It's like they've screwed up their timing.
And she defends torture evidence as being reliable, says they don't check if it's torture anyway because that would be inconvenient, and refuses to appear before a Parliamentary committee to answer questions about torture evidence and extraordinary rendition. But plenty of time to make speeches about terrorist nuclear threats from burning smoke alarms.
The f*** BBC reports it all seriously, making the bold assertion that these are specific allegations.
What on earth do you think their playing at? There is no way they don't know that they are laying it on with a trowel, and that it is no longer believed by anyone. Is anyone scared anymore. I'm scared, but only by their incompetance, and how they keep finding nothing more than scrappy bits of note-paper, deleted files on hard disks, and no actual explosives of any kind.
We'd sack the customs agents if they never found any hauls of cocaine, but these guys appear to sit around and smoke this shit.
You can send comments to MI5
You can send comments to MI5 through their webpage:
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page133.html
I nearly did it through their terrorist grass page, which would have been embarrassing. Probably goes to the same desk. I wrote:
"While Eliza Manningham-Buller is taking time to tell us yet again about all the non-specific no-longer believed threats from terrorists with WMD, can anyone there make a statement about all the plots that do get uncovered and puffed up based on nothing more than scraps of note-paper outlining plots that couldn't possibly work and often get thrown out of court. There are a lot of people out here with common sense who view these cases as a tissue of propaganda, and if you wanted to be taken seriously, it would be wise to outline these plots in enough detail to make them look convincing, or cease to support the Government when the play politics with this nonsense, rather than pretend these allegations don't exist."
Beckett and Buller(shit)
Beckett and Buller(shit) What a fine pair they make. Complete tossers treating every tuppeny ha'penny imaginary "threat" as something credible and frightening the whole bloody nation through the co operation of the Blair Bullsit Corporation et al into a state of near hysteria. And how much does this idiocy cost? I read that the police overtime bill alone for the debacle at Forrest Gate was in excess of £1,000,000.
well chaps it should be
well chaps it should be plain to you all now the game the US and its little satellite state the UK are playing now.Psyops on a massive scale.Just look at all the cameras watching you all!!BOOOOOHHHAAA!!!we gonna protect you all from those evil doer MOOOOOssLUMMS! fuckin baloney.
911 was the catalyst(Inside job)don´t let tossers like Cheney here on the board persuade you otherwise.
The war on terror is a replacement for the Cold war.Commie /AlCIAdea under every bed and in every cupboard.
Not to say there are not a lot of extremely pissed of Muslim people out there who would definitely like to kill a few crusaders,but hopefully they have more sense than to fall for this bullshit.
Karma chaps.Thre UK will get it back someday and in some form.