What a shame it was Piers Morgan. Better British journalists, like Mishal Hussein or Eddie Mair, would have made mincemeat of him. But then that's Trump: the Art of the Mulligan, for you.
You're right. It was by no means the only factor, and the chief responsibility lies with Cameron, a weak and ineffective leader. But the atmosphere in the run-up to the referendum was poisonous, with the gutter press printing lurid stories about migrants on their front pages almost every day. They haven't stopped since, calling anyone who opposes Brexit, or who even tries to make the government obey the law of the land, enemies of the people, traitors and saboteurs.
There is a similar problem here in the UK, but with our newspapers dominated by the right (indeed, the extreme right) wing. Our TV and radio news outlets are still governed by a doctrine of fairness (of the sort Reagan did away with in the US). That is why there has been such fierce opposition to Rupert Murdoch's attempts to buy the 61% of Sky TV that he does not yet own. Even our right-wing government has baulked at this and ordered an inquiry into it. The right-wing press here has already done huge damage to the nation by promoting the insane campaign to leave the European Union; damage that may never be undone.
I was on a guided tour of Thomas Mann's home town of Lubeck a few years ago. Our German guide told us that, much as he admired Mann's work, his German was so dense and complex that he preferred to read the novels in English translation. But, to your main point, I learned Spanish reasonably well when I lived there in my 20s, but would have learned much better had I studied the language at school.
But synagogues and mosques (and churches) are places of worship, which you enter of your own free will (or are dragged there, like me, by your parents). There is no choice for the women chess players who go to Saudi Arabia. That said, you are spot on in that the chess authorities that agreed to the tournament being held in Saudi Arabia deserve nothing but contempt for their greed and stupidity.
Apart from the 8th Army Air Force, advanced parties of which arrived in Britain on 23 February 1942; the Joint Chiefs of staff's plan to invade France in early 1942 (sensibly vetoed by the British); Operation Torch (Nov. 1942) to clear the Germans from North Africa, etc., etc.
Trump has made his contempt for these leaders obvious on numerous occasions. He seems to get on well enough with Theresa May, but won't lift a finger to help the UK get out of the mess we're in over leaving the European Union. All the surface bonhomie of his visit to Emmanuel Macron couldn't persuade Trump to reverse his decision to leave the Paris climate agreement. He presented Chancellor Merkel with an "invoice" for Germany's supposed shortfall in financing NATO. He had a blazing row with the Australian prime minister within hours of becoming president.
Arpaio was invited over here to the UK some years ago to give us the benefit of his keen mind during one of our periodic flaps about law and order. It took about 30 seconds of listening to him on the radio to realise he was basically a sadist who'd landed his dream job, running a concentration camp.
I have long thought that Trump is a sadist. You don't need to be a trained psychologist or psychiatrist; you just need to look at what he does to people. He hurts them; he doesn't apologise for any hurt done; if anything, he doubles down. Take all the small contractors he's stiffed over the years - e.g. the caterer who is contracted to provide food at a Trump party. Flattered that such a mogul would choose her, and doubtless excited at the prospect of being able to put "catered for Donald Trump" on her CV, she does her darnedest to provide a spread fit for a king. And he doesn't pay her. Worse, if she complains, he says she did a lousy job and threatens to put his lawyers on the case. Pure sadism.
Alliance with the DUP is not a done deal yet. Many socially liberal Tories (especially their leader in Scotland, Ruth Davidson) are very unhappy with the prospect. Contrary to received wisdom, I don't think May is a methodical and careful politician; she actually seems to act on impulse without thinking things through - e.g. appointing Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, calling the wretched election, the notorious "dementia tax", and now allying with the political wing of the Ulster Loyalist terrorists.
I don't think Trump had a great effect on the election here. Two factors strike me, though: Theresa May was a hopeless campaigner, while Jeremy Corbyn was in his element out on the stump; the terror attacks in Manchester and London brought to the fore May's incompetence as a minister in charge of the police and security services. But, above all, people are sick of austerity imposed by a bunch of rich thickoes from posh schools and universities.
I liked this bit: 'By the time Trump reached the bit in which he threatened the bad guys – “if you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and your soul will be condemned” – he sounded like a speech-writer for Isis.'
I have long thought that Trump is a thoroughgoing sadist. Take, for instance, his notorious habit of not paying small businesses and little contractors who did work on his many projects - deliberately inflicting pain on helpless people over and over again.
De Gaulle was in a difficult position. France signed an armistice with Germany, which meant that it automatically became neutral. Other countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, the Netherlands, formed governments in exile, which enabled them to continue fighting, generally as part of Britain's armed forces. De Gaulle was - in the eyes of the French government - a rebel and a traitor, and consequently had enormous difficulties in raising his Free French forces until the tide of war began to turn in the Allies' favour.
For a good account of one of the least-known bits of World War II, there is Colin Smith's "England's Last War Against France" - an account of the extent of the fighting between Britain and Vichy France, largely played out in the Middle East.
The Vichy regime was a Fascist junta in all but name, and the British were worried - among other things - that the French fleet would fall into German hands, or even that France would re-enter the war on the side of the Germans.
The Murdoch family are trying to take over Sky TV here in the UK. Their last takeover attempt, in 2011, was scuppered when the phone-hacking scandal broke just hours before the deal was to be finalised. Welcome as it is, there is doubtless an ulterior motive behind their throwing Bill under the bus, as they are well aware that the regulatory bodies here are considering whether they are "fit and proper" persons to be given such power in broadcast media.
It was at Bari, on 2 December 1943, when a German air raid hit the Liberty ship John Harvey, which had a secret cargo of mustard gas. Details in Wikipedia entry on "Bari".
Well said, Prof. Cole. Just one small correction - I believe that 1700 is the total of all people killed in road traffic accidents, not just pedestrians.
I happened to be about half a mile from the attack scene on Wednesday, and I can confirm that London kept calm overall.
Sebastian Gorka attended the posh Catholic school a couple of miles down the road from the slightly less posh one I went to. If he has doubts as to whether Islam is a religion, then I am very disappointed in him and/or the monks who taught him.
As someone born and brought up a Roman Catholic, I am intrigued by how many of the wingnuts in and around the Trump administration are not just political extremists, but also extremist Catholics (Pence, Gorsuch, Bannon, Yiannopoulos, Gorka).
If nothing else, the So-Called Ruler Of The United States (or SCROTUS) is teaching us that there are invariably very good reasons for doing things the boring old conventional way.
As a Brit, I'm wary of finding fault with the US Constitution (the backlash from offended Americans can be ferocious). But the sight of a US President, elected by an undemocratic holdover from the days of slavery, ruling by decree like some tinpot third-world dictator, indicates the need for some serious reform.
From Trump's interview with German newspaper Bild: “If you go down Fifth Avenue every one has a Mercedes Benz in front of his house, isn’t that the case?” he said. “The fact is that ... there is no reciprocity. How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Not very many, maybe none at all ... it’s a one-way street. It must work both ways.”
Chevrolet is part of General Motors, whose marque in Germany is Opel. Germany's deputy chancellor had a simple solution to the US's problem: "Build better cars."
My American friends tell me his knowledge of the geography of New York is a bit iffy, too.
The famous Iraq war dodgy dossier was not (as far as I know) an MI6 production. It was plagiarised by Tony Blair's eminence grise, Alistair Campbell, largely from an article by a graduate student, the contents of which happened to suit the conspirators' (for that is what they were) case.
Sadly similar here in the UK after Brexit. Racist attacks, though not on campuses as far as I know, and a major threat to our higher education system, both from European academics leaving and overseas students going elsewhere (though possibly not to the US now). As for that extra $30 billion - you won't get it; they'll just let the education sector shrink. If Trump had a favourite album, it would probably be "The Wall", with its hit song announcing, "We don't need no education ..."
And take a lesson from us here in the UK, after the ghastly referendum on leaving the European Union, manipulated by our virulently right-wing, and increasingly openly racist, national newspapers. The latest horror unleashed has been an attack on the judiciary as "enemies of the people" (yes, the Daily Mail actually used these words on its front page) simply for giving a judgment that ruled against against the goverment
From here in the UK, I feel your pain, Dan. We had two political charlatans every bit as bad as Trump in Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. I used to think that bad as the British press is, it's not in the Fox News league. Oh, yes it is. Take a warning from what's just happened here.
Islamophobia may have played a part, but probably not the most significant one. The right-wing press have been lying about the EU for years. One of the liars-in-chief is Boris Johnson, now a whisker away from being our Prime Minister, who was once a Brussels-based journalist notorious for making stuff up.
In the UK at least, returning "jihadists" do face jail. But this in turn causes its own problems. What if you're little more than a kid, go out there, find out how you've been tricked and are then desperate to come home? You also forget that they do not go to Syria directly - just book a holiday flight to Turkey and then get a bus to the Syrian border.
Also in the UK, Parliament took action quickly after our two worst mass shootings, with semi-automatic rifles being banned after the Hungerford shooting in 1987, and handguns after the Dunblane massacre of 1996. Guns are in such short supply for criminal gangs that they tend to be held by "quartermasters" and hired out.
If I remember rightly, there was a case a little time ago of some produce labelled "Palestine" but with the producer's details showing a Tel Aviv phone number.
This also says a lot about the weakness of democracy in Israel. It's hard to imagine the military of any west European democracy interfering so blatantly in party politics.
Not very different. If you could hear them, it meant their engine had not yet cut out, causing them to fall to earth and explode. The British used captured German agents to transmit false information back to Germany, giving the impression that these primitive cruise missiles were falling short of the target. The Germans duly increased the fuel load, with the result that the missiles landed well north of London.
Bombing generally is a much overrated tactic. Hugely inaccurate in WW2, it caused huge civilian casualties (and a horrendous casualty rate among the attacking aircrews) with very little to show for it - a marginal reduction in Germany's industrial capacity until the final few months of the war.
Current use of drones seems to be following that pattern. If the aim (no pun intended) is to "decapitate" guerrilla groups, then that is ineffective, both because of replacement leaders always being in waiting, and because of the near certainty of significant collateral damage. Add the factor Pres. Obama touched on in his speech - that intelligence is simply not good enough to ensure you aim at the right general area where the bad guys might be lurking, and you have a strategy that is simply not worth pursuing.
Top of the bestseller charts that week was "Netanyahu: The Man who Destroyed Israel" (by one of the good Professor's distinuguished students, of course).
I can only speak of the UK situation. First, it was good to see that interviewer Jon Snow wasn't having any of Farage's illogical nonsense. (I'm sure many readers of Informed Comment will be familiar with Snow's legendary takedowns of Israeli government front man, Marc Regev.)
Farage is adept at "dog whistle" appeals to racists here, but UKIP's main appeal is to people who think Britain would be better if it left the European Union. Farage is dangerous, though. Under our first-past-the-post election system, UKIP is unlikely to gain many seats in next May's general election, but they could gain just enough to form a very right-wing coalition with the Conservatives. However, my money's on them splitting the Conservative vote just enough to allow Labour to form a government, either on their own, or with the support of smaller parties such as the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists and the Greens.
I have been puzzling for some time now - and this article, while informative, still doesn't tell me - why, when Israel was recognized as a state, was Palestine (or what was left of it) not similarly recognized?
Quite shocking - the whole attitude and the unmistakable tones of Bob Danvers-Walker doing the voiceover (he was the voice on much British newsreel footage in WW2). At least, over here in the UK, clips like these are now likely to be used as educational case studies on colonialism.
But, but, but... Marc Regev kept saying in that interview with Jon Snow, that thousands of rockets were raining down on Israeli cities. And yet the good folks in Sderot could put some bleachers out in the sun and watch the fun in Gaza. And the Israeli transport ministry either knows the rockets aren't much of a threat, or else doesn't seem to value the lives and safety of airline passengers very highly.
I listened appalled this morning to UK PM David Cameron telling Parliament that Hamas was firing rockets into Israel "unprovoked". At least one Labour MP (David Winnick) spoke up: "If shelling a hospital isn't a war crime, then I don't know what is." Imbalance was soon restored, with a short, unmediated, soundbite of Netanyahu lying his head off.
Their intelligence is poor in both senses of the word. Shelling a beach overlooked by a hotel full of western journalists was not smart. The Guardian's reporter helped bandage one boy's wounds and his report is the front-page lead today. There's also a blistering attack on Israel from Guardian columnist Seumas Milne. It was quoted with evident approval on BBC Radio's review of today's papers (the BBC has been getting a lot of stick for its feeble reporting from Israel/Gaza lately). http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/16/gaza-shameful-injustice-israel-attacks-occupied-people
If this is true (and it almost certainly is), then Netanyahu set up that #bringourboyshome campaign and paraded the distraught parents at the UN in full knowledge that it was all a political ploy of breathtaking cynicism.
When I was at school, we were visited by a Catholic priest who had just returned from the "Holy" Land. He described witnessing Israeli soldiers at the Allenby Bridge beating up a Palestinian man - "and when soldiers beat you up, you stay beaten up." That was in 1969.
We British of Irish parentage (you didn't look closely at my handle, did you?) tend to know both histories quite well. And please don't refer to us as "limeys" and "micks". It's not polite.
We've had the same nonsense over here in the UK. What if the Irish fired rockets at us? To which the answer is simple. They did, but we didn't invade Donegal or bomb Dublin.
Re the airstrikes - If it was the recently delivered Su25s, then highly likely flown by the Russians who delivered them, as Iraqi pilots would still be in training.
This is not going to end well, especially in light of the numbers – an almost 1:1 ratio between the colonist and indigenous populations. Where the settlers vastly outnumbered the indigenes (e.g. USA and Australia) the settler society has succeeded. Where the settlers were outnumbered they have returned where they came from (French in Algeria; British in Kenya) or surrendered power to the majority (South Africa). But a 1:1 ratio seems to me to betoken only violent confrontation for years to come.
The whole thing is a shambles (and Blatter has admitted as much). There is one huge problem - it's impossible to play soccer at 50 degrees Celsius and high humidity. If games are moved to mornings and evenings, global live TV coverage is a problem. There has been talk of moving the tournament to a winter month, but this would ruin the domestic schedules of many of the countries competing.
No.4 illustrates well the hole Israel is digging for itself. The more settlers set up home in the West Bank, the more stretched the IDF becomes, trying to shield them. That results in poorer military performance, both in the form of brutality on the streets and ineptitude in larger-scale operations (such as the tactics of Israeli armour in Lebanon in 2006). Ever more money will be required to subsidise the growth and manufacture of products that are increasingly becoming impossible to export.
I'm sure it's familiar to you and your readers, but it's worth quoting again, his five questions: " If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system."
It's been obvious from the first of Edward Snowden's revelations, that "finding a needle in a haystack" is the big problem with the NSA/GCHQ method of countering terrorism. Logically, you would want to make the haystack as small as possible, to make it easier to find that goshdarned needle. Instead, they make the haystack so big that it contains a million needles. Now which of those needles should I be interested in?
Is this real, or something out of "The Onion"? Not that we Brits have anything to feel superior about. A few days ago BBC Radio's flagship news and current affairs show had a climate change "debate" involving a leading scientist vs - wait for it - Lord Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer (= Finance Secretary) who, besides having no scientific qualifications, is these days little more than a paid mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry.
The BDS movement is still pretty small but it is really terrifying the ultra-nationalists who run Israel these days - they know very well how much it did to bring down apartheid in South Africa. And the Scarlett Johansson debacle has given it the kind of publicity money just can't buy.
Oh, dear. They have a long way to go to catch up with the teacher at my Catholic boys' school fifty years ago, who told us: "If you want to marry a non-Catholic girl, you'll have to convince your parish priest that it's for a really serious reason - like you're madly in love with each other."
Some white guys have ended up in the Hague, notably people like Ratko Mladic and others after the wars in the former Yugoslavia. What the people who do end up there have in common is that they were on the losing side.
The sporting boycotts had considerable clout, and of course raised the profile of the anti-apartheid movement in Britain too - after all it was our players who were refusing to tour in South Africa. Economic sanctions were effective, to the point where SA's neighbours had superior military equipment, as SA's became obsolete.
I suspect the fierceness with which Israel tries to fight off increasing sanctions and boycotts is because they know how effective they are.
Reading these last few days about the roles of Cuba and South Africa in Angola's civil war, and in particular the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, I discovered an aspect of the effectiveness of sanctions against rogue regimes that I was not previously aware of. Because of sanctions, the South African military's aircraft were outdated and inferior to those ranged against them. The realisation that SA was increasingly vulnerable to potentially hostile neighbours, and could do nothing about it, must have concentrated minds on the lack of a future for apartheid.
I don't think academics here in the UK face half the problems you do in trying to get the message out re the Middle East. So, as the ever-popular wartime slogan put it: "Keep calm and carry on!"
Thanks you for this neat summary. The British newspapers are already reporting the usual suspects in Israel as screaming blue murder. Someone really needs to tell Bibi, Avigdor and Naftali to shut up, put up and, above all, to grow up.
The attack on Libya was in 1986; the Lockerbie bombing, 1988.
Cambridge Analytica's pawprints were all over the campaign to take the UK out of the European Union - another political catastrophe
The Economist Intelligence Unit rates the US as a flawed democracy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
What a shame it was Piers Morgan. Better British journalists, like Mishal Hussein or Eddie Mair, would have made mincemeat of him. But then that's Trump: the Art of the Mulligan, for you.
You're right. It was by no means the only factor, and the chief responsibility lies with Cameron, a weak and ineffective leader. But the atmosphere in the run-up to the referendum was poisonous, with the gutter press printing lurid stories about migrants on their front pages almost every day. They haven't stopped since, calling anyone who opposes Brexit, or who even tries to make the government obey the law of the land, enemies of the people, traitors and saboteurs.
There is a similar problem here in the UK, but with our newspapers dominated by the right (indeed, the extreme right) wing. Our TV and radio news outlets are still governed by a doctrine of fairness (of the sort Reagan did away with in the US). That is why there has been such fierce opposition to Rupert Murdoch's attempts to buy the 61% of Sky TV that he does not yet own. Even our right-wing government has baulked at this and ordered an inquiry into it. The right-wing press here has already done huge damage to the nation by promoting the insane campaign to leave the European Union; damage that may never be undone.
Why would Trump care about Hawaii? It's you-know-who's home state.
I was on a guided tour of Thomas Mann's home town of Lubeck a few years ago. Our German guide told us that, much as he admired Mann's work, his German was so dense and complex that he preferred to read the novels in English translation. But, to your main point, I learned Spanish reasonably well when I lived there in my 20s, but would have learned much better had I studied the language at school.
But synagogues and mosques (and churches) are places of worship, which you enter of your own free will (or are dragged there, like me, by your parents). There is no choice for the women chess players who go to Saudi Arabia. That said, you are spot on in that the chess authorities that agreed to the tournament being held in Saudi Arabia deserve nothing but contempt for their greed and stupidity.
here in the UK, Haley's threat to take down names reminded us of this classic moment of TV comedy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhY-Y0I8DkY
Apart from the 8th Army Air Force, advanced parties of which arrived in Britain on 23 February 1942; the Joint Chiefs of staff's plan to invade France in early 1942 (sensibly vetoed by the British); Operation Torch (Nov. 1942) to clear the Germans from North Africa, etc., etc.
Trump will do anything to ensure he's not invited to that wedding.
Guess who was really upset by the prospect of wind turbines off the coast near a certain Aberdeenshire golf course?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/22/trump-resumes-fight-against-windfarm-near-his-golf-course
Thank you, GWC. We are so busy these days trying to psychoanalyse Trump, that we forget how insightful older ways of seeing can be.
Time for puppet-master Putin to have a word in Trump's ear.
Trump has made his contempt for these leaders obvious on numerous occasions. He seems to get on well enough with Theresa May, but won't lift a finger to help the UK get out of the mess we're in over leaving the European Union. All the surface bonhomie of his visit to Emmanuel Macron couldn't persuade Trump to reverse his decision to leave the Paris climate agreement. He presented Chancellor Merkel with an "invoice" for Germany's supposed shortfall in financing NATO. He had a blazing row with the Australian prime minister within hours of becoming president.
Arpaio was invited over here to the UK some years ago to give us the benefit of his keen mind during one of our periodic flaps about law and order. It took about 30 seconds of listening to him on the radio to realise he was basically a sadist who'd landed his dream job, running a concentration camp.
OMG, he's been reading Mein Kampf again!
I have long thought that Trump is a sadist. You don't need to be a trained psychologist or psychiatrist; you just need to look at what he does to people. He hurts them; he doesn't apologise for any hurt done; if anything, he doubles down. Take all the small contractors he's stiffed over the years - e.g. the caterer who is contracted to provide food at a Trump party. Flattered that such a mogul would choose her, and doubtless excited at the prospect of being able to put "catered for Donald Trump" on her CV, she does her darnedest to provide a spread fit for a king. And he doesn't pay her. Worse, if she complains, he says she did a lousy job and threatens to put his lawyers on the case. Pure sadism.
Alliance with the DUP is not a done deal yet. Many socially liberal Tories (especially their leader in Scotland, Ruth Davidson) are very unhappy with the prospect. Contrary to received wisdom, I don't think May is a methodical and careful politician; she actually seems to act on impulse without thinking things through - e.g. appointing Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, calling the wretched election, the notorious "dementia tax", and now allying with the political wing of the Ulster Loyalist terrorists.
I don't think Trump had a great effect on the election here. Two factors strike me, though: Theresa May was a hopeless campaigner, while Jeremy Corbyn was in his element out on the stump; the terror attacks in Manchester and London brought to the fore May's incompetence as a minister in charge of the police and security services. But, above all, people are sick of austerity imposed by a bunch of rich thickoes from posh schools and universities.
Dear God! The Riddle of the Sphinx is easier to fathom than Trump's incomprehensible gun debate tweet.
Good for Brownback. Let's hope he's not into wind power because he thinks "The Wizard of Oz" was a documentary film.
No doubt, when Mar-a-Lago lies full fathom five beneath the Atlantic, he'll blame the Gulf of Mexicans.
Thank you for this shrewd assessment of Trump's braindump. Veteran Middle East reporter Robert Fisk has a fairly similar reading today: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-saudi-arabia-muslim-speech-a7747856.html
I liked this bit: 'By the time Trump reached the bit in which he threatened the bad guys – “if you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and your soul will be condemned” – he sounded like a speech-writer for Isis.'
I have long thought that Trump is a thoroughgoing sadist. Take, for instance, his notorious habit of not paying small businesses and little contractors who did work on his many projects - deliberately inflicting pain on helpless people over and over again.
De Gaulle was in a difficult position. France signed an armistice with Germany, which meant that it automatically became neutral. Other countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, the Netherlands, formed governments in exile, which enabled them to continue fighting, generally as part of Britain's armed forces. De Gaulle was - in the eyes of the French government - a rebel and a traitor, and consequently had enormous difficulties in raising his Free French forces until the tide of war began to turn in the Allies' favour.
For a good account of one of the least-known bits of World War II, there is Colin Smith's "England's Last War Against France" - an account of the extent of the fighting between Britain and Vichy France, largely played out in the Middle East.
The Vichy regime was a Fascist junta in all but name, and the British were worried - among other things - that the French fleet would fall into German hands, or even that France would re-enter the war on the side of the Germans.
The Murdoch family are trying to take over Sky TV here in the UK. Their last takeover attempt, in 2011, was scuppered when the phone-hacking scandal broke just hours before the deal was to be finalised. Welcome as it is, there is doubtless an ulterior motive behind their throwing Bill under the bus, as they are well aware that the regulatory bodies here are considering whether they are "fit and proper" persons to be given such power in broadcast media.
It was at Bari, on 2 December 1943, when a German air raid hit the Liberty ship John Harvey, which had a secret cargo of mustard gas. Details in Wikipedia entry on "Bari".
Well said, Prof. Cole. Just one small correction - I believe that 1700 is the total of all people killed in road traffic accidents, not just pedestrians.
I happened to be about half a mile from the attack scene on Wednesday, and I can confirm that London kept calm overall.
FBI chief Comey has challenged Trump over his allegations. Buyer's remorse?
Sebastian Gorka attended the posh Catholic school a couple of miles down the road from the slightly less posh one I went to. If he has doubts as to whether Islam is a religion, then I am very disappointed in him and/or the monks who taught him.
As someone born and brought up a Roman Catholic, I am intrigued by how many of the wingnuts in and around the Trump administration are not just political extremists, but also extremist Catholics (Pence, Gorsuch, Bannon, Yiannopoulos, Gorka).
feel free. I stole it too.
Not mine, just going around on social media.
If nothing else, the So-Called Ruler Of The United States (or SCROTUS) is teaching us that there are invariably very good reasons for doing things the boring old conventional way.
As a Brit, I'm wary of finding fault with the US Constitution (the backlash from offended Americans can be ferocious). But the sight of a US President, elected by an undemocratic holdover from the days of slavery, ruling by decree like some tinpot third-world dictator, indicates the need for some serious reform.
From Trump's interview with German newspaper Bild: “If you go down Fifth Avenue every one has a Mercedes Benz in front of his house, isn’t that the case?” he said. “The fact is that ... there is no reciprocity. How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Not very many, maybe none at all ... it’s a one-way street. It must work both ways.”
Chevrolet is part of General Motors, whose marque in Germany is Opel. Germany's deputy chancellor had a simple solution to the US's problem: "Build better cars."
My American friends tell me his knowledge of the geography of New York is a bit iffy, too.
The famous Iraq war dodgy dossier was not (as far as I know) an MI6 production. It was plagiarised by Tony Blair's eminence grise, Alistair Campbell, largely from an article by a graduate student, the contents of which happened to suit the conspirators' (for that is what they were) case.
"(urolagnia is a fetish for sexual satisfaction, not an instrument of revenge on a political opponent)."
I wouldn't have though the two were mutually exclusive, especially in the PEEOTUS's [sic] case.
Sadly similar here in the UK after Brexit. Racist attacks, though not on campuses as far as I know, and a major threat to our higher education system, both from European academics leaving and overseas students going elsewhere (though possibly not to the US now). As for that extra $30 billion - you won't get it; they'll just let the education sector shrink. If Trump had a favourite album, it would probably be "The Wall", with its hit song announcing, "We don't need no education ..."
What's with the "at least four grandparents". How many more can a person from planet earth possibly have?
And take a lesson from us here in the UK, after the ghastly referendum on leaving the European Union, manipulated by our virulently right-wing, and increasingly openly racist, national newspapers. The latest horror unleashed has been an attack on the judiciary as "enemies of the people" (yes, the Daily Mail actually used these words on its front page) simply for giving a judgment that ruled against against the goverment
From here in the UK, I feel your pain, Dan. We had two political charlatans every bit as bad as Trump in Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. I used to think that bad as the British press is, it's not in the Fox News league. Oh, yes it is. Take a warning from what's just happened here.
Islamophobia may have played a part, but probably not the most significant one. The right-wing press have been lying about the EU for years. One of the liars-in-chief is Boris Johnson, now a whisker away from being our Prime Minister, who was once a Brussels-based journalist notorious for making stuff up.
In the UK at least, returning "jihadists" do face jail. But this in turn causes its own problems. What if you're little more than a kid, go out there, find out how you've been tricked and are then desperate to come home? You also forget that they do not go to Syria directly - just book a holiday flight to Turkey and then get a bus to the Syrian border.
There is just such a petition. Alas it hasn't got nearly so many signatures yet.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/108495
Oh, look on the bright side - no more alliance with Saudi Arabia.
Also in the UK, Parliament took action quickly after our two worst mass shootings, with semi-automatic rifles being banned after the Hungerford shooting in 1987, and handguns after the Dunblane massacre of 1996. Guns are in such short supply for criminal gangs that they tend to be held by "quartermasters" and hired out.
If I remember rightly, there was a case a little time ago of some produce labelled "Palestine" but with the producer's details showing a Tel Aviv phone number.
Ruling has been duly issued:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/11/eu-sets-guidelines-on-labelling-products-from-israeli-settlements
This also says a lot about the weakness of democracy in Israel. It's hard to imagine the military of any west European democracy interfering so blatantly in party politics.
Not very different. If you could hear them, it meant their engine had not yet cut out, causing them to fall to earth and explode. The British used captured German agents to transmit false information back to Germany, giving the impression that these primitive cruise missiles were falling short of the target. The Germans duly increased the fuel load, with the result that the missiles landed well north of London.
Bombing generally is a much overrated tactic. Hugely inaccurate in WW2, it caused huge civilian casualties (and a horrendous casualty rate among the attacking aircrews) with very little to show for it - a marginal reduction in Germany's industrial capacity until the final few months of the war.
Current use of drones seems to be following that pattern. If the aim (no pun intended) is to "decapitate" guerrilla groups, then that is ineffective, both because of replacement leaders always being in waiting, and because of the near certainty of significant collateral damage. Add the factor Pres. Obama touched on in his speech - that intelligence is simply not good enough to ensure you aim at the right general area where the bad guys might be lurking, and you have a strategy that is simply not worth pursuing.
Top of the bestseller charts that week was "Netanyahu: The Man who Destroyed Israel" (by one of the good Professor's distinuguished students, of course).
And Birmingham has one very distinguished Muslim citizen - Malala Yousafzai, winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.
I can only speak of the UK situation. First, it was good to see that interviewer Jon Snow wasn't having any of Farage's illogical nonsense. (I'm sure many readers of Informed Comment will be familiar with Snow's legendary takedowns of Israeli government front man, Marc Regev.)
Farage is adept at "dog whistle" appeals to racists here, but UKIP's main appeal is to people who think Britain would be better if it left the European Union. Farage is dangerous, though. Under our first-past-the-post election system, UKIP is unlikely to gain many seats in next May's general election, but they could gain just enough to form a very right-wing coalition with the Conservatives. However, my money's on them splitting the Conservative vote just enough to allow Labour to form a government, either on their own, or with the support of smaller parties such as the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists and the Greens.
Re no. 1 - as the popular joke has it, there are more pandas than Tory MPs in Scotland.
I have been puzzling for some time now - and this article, while informative, still doesn't tell me - why, when Israel was recognized as a state, was Palestine (or what was left of it) not similarly recognized?
They morphed into "The boot's on the other foot."
Quite shocking - the whole attitude and the unmistakable tones of Bob Danvers-Walker doing the voiceover (he was the voice on much British newsreel footage in WW2). At least, over here in the UK, clips like these are now likely to be used as educational case studies on colonialism.
But, but, but... Marc Regev kept saying in that interview with Jon Snow, that thousands of rockets were raining down on Israeli cities. And yet the good folks in Sderot could put some bleachers out in the sun and watch the fun in Gaza. And the Israeli transport ministry either knows the rockets aren't much of a threat, or else doesn't seem to value the lives and safety of airline passengers very highly.
I listened appalled this morning to UK PM David Cameron telling Parliament that Hamas was firing rockets into Israel "unprovoked". At least one Labour MP (David Winnick) spoke up: "If shelling a hospital isn't a war crime, then I don't know what is." Imbalance was soon restored, with a short, unmediated, soundbite of Netanyahu lying his head off.
You never can tell if these things are for real or from The Onion, but HUffington Post is reporting this ludicrous tweet from the IDF: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/21/gaza-idf-tweets-westminster_n_5605104.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
Worth watching Britain's Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow confronting Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev. Regev must really hate appearing on Channel 4 - Snow always wipes the floor with him:
http://www.channel4.com/news/the-israeli-military-does-not-target-civilians-video
Their intelligence is poor in both senses of the word. Shelling a beach overlooked by a hotel full of western journalists was not smart. The Guardian's reporter helped bandage one boy's wounds and his report is the front-page lead today. There's also a blistering attack on Israel from Guardian columnist Seumas Milne. It was quoted with evident approval on BBC Radio's review of today's papers (the BBC has been getting a lot of stick for its feeble reporting from Israel/Gaza lately). http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/16/gaza-shameful-injustice-israel-attacks-occupied-people
If this is true (and it almost certainly is), then Netanyahu set up that #bringourboyshome campaign and paraded the distraught parents at the UN in full knowledge that it was all a political ploy of breathtaking cynicism.
When I was at school, we were visited by a Catholic priest who had just returned from the "Holy" Land. He described witnessing Israeli soldiers at the Allenby Bridge beating up a Palestinian man - "and when soldiers beat you up, you stay beaten up." That was in 1969.
We British of Irish parentage (you didn't look closely at my handle, did you?) tend to know both histories quite well. And please don't refer to us as "limeys" and "micks". It's not polite.
We've had the same nonsense over here in the UK. What if the Irish fired rockets at us? To which the answer is simple. They did, but we didn't invade Donegal or bomb Dublin.
Re the airstrikes - If it was the recently delivered Su25s, then highly likely flown by the Russians who delivered them, as Iraqi pilots would still be in training.
Corrected text -
This is not going to end well, especially in light of the numbers – an almost 1:1 ratio between the colonist and indigenous populations. Where the settlers vastly outnumbered the indigenes (e.g. USA and Australia) the settler society has succeeded. Where the settlers were outnumbered they have returned where they came from (French in Algeria; British in Kenya) or surrendered power to the majority (South Africa). But a 1:1 ratio seems to me to betoken only violent confrontation for years to come.
Oh, great. Now they're imitating Northern Ireland.
The whole thing is a shambles (and Blatter has admitted as much). There is one huge problem - it's impossible to play soccer at 50 degrees Celsius and high humidity. If games are moved to mornings and evenings, global live TV coverage is a problem. There has been talk of moving the tournament to a winter month, but this would ruin the domestic schedules of many of the countries competing.
Very trenchant article. Sadly, when I looked at the comments on the Times of Trenton site, they were all virulently hostile (only 5 comments so far).
I can't resist appropriating a comment I saw on another website - as a painter, he's no Adolf Hitler.
Quite. Never mind where is the Palestinian Mandela. More importantly, where is the Israeli de Klerk?
No.4 illustrates well the hole Israel is digging for itself. The more settlers set up home in the West Bank, the more stretched the IDF becomes, trying to shield them. That results in poorer military performance, both in the form of brutality on the streets and ineptitude in larger-scale operations (such as the tactics of Israeli armour in Lebanon in 2006). Ever more money will be required to subsidise the growth and manufacture of products that are increasingly becoming impossible to export.
I'm sure it's familiar to you and your readers, but it's worth quoting again, his five questions: " If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system."
It's been obvious from the first of Edward Snowden's revelations, that "finding a needle in a haystack" is the big problem with the NSA/GCHQ method of countering terrorism. Logically, you would want to make the haystack as small as possible, to make it easier to find that goshdarned needle. Instead, they make the haystack so big that it contains a million needles. Now which of those needles should I be interested in?
Indeed. It wasn't the EU that did for Greece. It was joining the Euro common currency, when the Greek economy was not robust enough to do so.
Is this real, or something out of "The Onion"? Not that we Brits have anything to feel superior about. A few days ago BBC Radio's flagship news and current affairs show had a climate change "debate" involving a leading scientist vs - wait for it - Lord Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer (= Finance Secretary) who, besides having no scientific qualifications, is these days little more than a paid mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry.
The BDS movement is still pretty small but it is really terrifying the ultra-nationalists who run Israel these days - they know very well how much it did to bring down apartheid in South Africa. And the Scarlett Johansson debacle has given it the kind of publicity money just can't buy.
Oh, dear. They have a long way to go to catch up with the teacher at my Catholic boys' school fifty years ago, who told us: "If you want to marry a non-Catholic girl, you'll have to convince your parish priest that it's for a really serious reason - like you're madly in love with each other."
Some white guys have ended up in the Hague, notably people like Ratko Mladic and others after the wars in the former Yugoslavia. What the people who do end up there have in common is that they were on the losing side.
Thanks, Juan. As a Brit, I had little idea things had got this bad in the States.
The sporting boycotts had considerable clout, and of course raised the profile of the anti-apartheid movement in Britain too - after all it was our players who were refusing to tour in South Africa. Economic sanctions were effective, to the point where SA's neighbours had superior military equipment, as SA's became obsolete.
I suspect the fierceness with which Israel tries to fight off increasing sanctions and boycotts is because they know how effective they are.
There always were destitute whites - the resemblance of apartheid to the US Deep South is frighteningly clear.
Reading these last few days about the roles of Cuba and South Africa in Angola's civil war, and in particular the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, I discovered an aspect of the effectiveness of sanctions against rogue regimes that I was not previously aware of. Because of sanctions, the South African military's aircraft were outdated and inferior to those ranged against them. The realisation that SA was increasingly vulnerable to potentially hostile neighbours, and could do nothing about it, must have concentrated minds on the lack of a future for apartheid.
As the great South African satirist, Pieter-Dirk Uys, once put it: "Hypocrisy is the Vaseline of political intercourse".
Jesse Jackson is in London right now, and was interviewed by BBC radio on their flagship early morning news programme.
Mine too!
I don't think academics here in the UK face half the problems you do in trying to get the message out re the Middle East. So, as the ever-popular wartime slogan put it: "Keep calm and carry on!"
Thanks you for this neat summary. The British newspapers are already reporting the usual suspects in Israel as screaming blue murder. Someone really needs to tell Bibi, Avigdor and Naftali to shut up, put up and, above all, to grow up.