The General Discussion Thread

[Publish Date updated to restore to front page]

Okay as an experiment here it is. Discuss your favourite generals here!

Well perhaps… Really this is simply the place to post news-items, fun-items or whatever takes your fancy. In short just post what you want here.

It’s just another wee experiment – comments welcome.

Squonk.

[Image: General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett (Stephen Fry)]

17,285 thoughts on “The General Discussion Thread

  1. I suppose it is hypocrisy, but people just don’t want to get nuked. It doesn’t really matter whether US/the West really have incited a coup or in Ukraine, “we” have done it so many times in so many other places that if there’s the slightest hint “we” did it this time, so close to Russia… we know we’re due our comeuppance…. I mean, will the Neocons ever decide they’ve gone far enough?

  2. I mean, will the Neocons ever decide they’ve gone far enough?

    Well said Clark….. it’s horrendous to watch…. i mean… at some risk in the Popularity stakes, i try to tell people…. Oh aye…thats the guy who’s been training up rebels in Syrial… What Protest at the Police station ? Rolls ones eyes….

  3. Wow Clark ! You do flatter me; all I initially did was to ask if it was right that I should receive a Ban warning because of such an innocuous first comment ! If this is the effect my calm reasoning can have on you & Jon (apparently), then perhaps I should indeed set up my own Site to take on the Neocon supporters ! 🙂 Alas I don’t even have enough time to make comments on other people’s blogs, which is why I’m typing this at this ungodly hour !

    I hesitate to point this out to you yet again, but your call for a private email debate is beyond rude to others, who being all Posters at Craig’s Blog, will probably find what will be discussed very relevant & interesting; you call for this to be done in secret is I’m sorry to say, another manifestation of your controlling authoritarian trait, wherever you realise it or not; so sorry, but no thanks.

  4. Mary, it’s no surprise the canning Craig is receiving over at MediaLens, matches the canning he is receiving on his own Blog; Yes we admire Craig for his courage & decency, but he’s a flawed human like all of us, and even the best heroes sometimes have feet of clay: his bizarre Post heaping praise on War Criminal Gorden Brown, plus his very off Post about the UK riots, were only two fairly recent examples of his worrying other sides, and as I’ve pointed out on his latest Post, his apparent antipathy to those of the Eastern Orthodox faith, is either a definite pattern, or a hat-trick of coincidences !

  5. Macky, 5:19 am

    it’s no surprise the canning Craig is receiving over at MediaLens, matches the canning he is receiving on his own Blog; Yes we admire Craig for his courage & decency, but he’s a flawed human like all of us

    Flawed, Macky? Even you? Odd, since I haven’t seen a trace of humility from you. Perhaps you should write to Craig and ask for control of his blog?

    Alas I don’t even have enough time to make comments on other people’s blogs

    What can you be doing that is so important?

    Macky, I’m calling you out. You’re a JTRIG disruption agent or equivalent, aren’t you? For evidence, I cite these facts:

    * you have, personally, psychologically and aggressively, repeatedly attempted to discredit and dispirit Craig and all people you know to have contributed to the running of his blog,
    * like other promoters of mass surveillance, you conflate privacy with secrecy,
    * you insist upon a public platform,
    * you deliberately attempt to escalate arguments and insult-trading in Craig’s comments section in order to degrade and obscure debate, and to justify the platform of your colleagues who merely pretend to hold political views different from your own.

  6. ()Squonk, is there another problem with squonk.tk’s DNS resolution? I had to add the appropriate entry to my hosts file to post that last comment.

  7. Clark,

    Yes there is a widespread problem with dot.tk domains – lots of complaints on twitter. Problem seems to have started about 5 or 6 hours ago. The last tweet from dottk support was just before the problem started and they haven’t yet said what the problem is. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

  8. Clark; You are a peacemaker, and your efforts to tamp down the acrimony are noble, but sometimes defending the middle ground is perilous. It’s obvious you are loyal to Craig; …also admirable. But please use the same temperance in your responses to criticisms of Craig. He is made of firm stuff, not mythology. And he does have faults, so it would help if you acknowledged that fact in your own critiques. Thanks for all your good work.

  9. Ben March 3, 2014 at 2:14 pm
    “Craig has officially gone barmy.”

    I have to say I was surprised. My comment was a tiny bit ambiguous but he absolutely miscalled the deletion. And he assigned motivation to me thus being hypocritical under a post accusing others of hypocrisy. I suspect the strain of moderating is getting too much for him. I bet he now wishes he had given Jon more support when he was asking for it.

    I simply do not understand the disagreements dragging out over there. The situation seems pretty clear. NATO have been fanning flames. The Russians are sending in the troops under the lie of a fascist coup. And it is a popular uprising by ordinary Ukrainians. All of these things are true. So to bicker about wether the Russians are worse than NATO or vice versa seems a complete waste of energy. Madness.

    Clark, re: that video showing the release of a prisoner: I agree it does look staged and they do look too paramilitary for a spontaneous civilian uprising. I have asked my man in Kiev to respond to these observations.

    And I agree with Ben that you are on to a hiding for nothing when trying to be a peacemaker in a blood sports ring.

  10. “Macky, I’m calling you out. You’re a JTRIG disruption agent”

    Again I spat tea with laughter.

    Macky I sort of sympathise with your pov but dare I suggest you need to care less about internet comments. You are so inflamed you have managed to get Clark riled. Even my nonsense has never got close to that!

  11. Although in the face of murder Craig, remarkably, did the right thing he is still a man seeped in establishment thinking. After all he chose a career fighting for empire. Presumably he just didn’t understand what his role was.

  12. MJ, March 3, 3:32 pm; I took a look at cheniere.org. This is Tom Beardon, who used to have articles published in Nexus Magazine. For years, he’s been writing about ‘vacuum energy’ and ‘scalar weapons’. I’ve trawled through this stuff looking for some link-up with actual science, but never found any.

    A scalar is a type of mathematical quantity, to distinguish it from a vector. A vector has magnitude and direction, whereas a scalar has only magnitude. So velocity is a vector; to specify a velocity you need to specify the speed and the direction, like ’15 metres per second due north”, where as ’15 metres per second’ is all you need to describe speed, which is a scalar.

    So a scalar is an abstract concept, not anything physical. I think that a ‘scalar wave’ has to be a contradiction in terms. Also a bit odd that Russia hasn’t taken over the world seeing as they supposedly have these weapons and the US doesn’t.

    Always the same stuff – free energy, UFOs, nuclear stuff, mind control, cancer treatment, conspiracy and government cover-ups. Someone has always invented some machine that produces more energy than it consumes, but the Men In Black turn up, wreck the lab and steal all the notes, and the inventor walks around for years but no one will listen to him. The entire scientific community of physicists and their students and all the folk like myself are just so brainwashed or complacent that governments have managed to keep the secret hidden for years, despite the claims that you can build such a machine in your shed. Despite all previous inventors getting hostile visits from the Men In Black, each new inventor apparently makes the same mistake, and instead of contacting physics departments all over the world, they try to make money by just building one machine and keeping the principle secret. Then the lab-wreckers arrive and the idea is lost for another few years. Hmmm…

    Squonk, have you ever found anything worth following up in this sort of thing?

  13. There seems to be a lot of slow DNS resolution today. squonk.s3.amazonaws.com keeps taking ages to resolve. I’ve been getting long waits on ‘waiting for wherever.com’, too.

    Do you suppose someone’s trying to take over the Internet?

  14. Not seen any slow DNS resolution myself Clark with Virgin ISP

    Never before heard prefixes are being heard today on USAF hf. Thought to be new Emergency Action Message prefixes (or intended recipient code).

  15. Phil, 4:54pm:

    I have asked my man in Kiev to respond to these observations.

    Thanks. Regarding your comment being deleted by Craig – and Macky take note – in my experience moderating I found that the relationship between commenters and people who actually work a blog is highly asymmetric. There are loads of commenters, but only one or two people at a time operating the blog software. Most commenters behave like they’re the only one; they assume a symmetric relationship without thinking what it’s like at the other end. About half of the commenters are rather protective about their comments, but at the blog end comments are like prawns or cherries; you’ve got so many of them to handle that they become a bulk commodity.

    So say you’re making a cherry pie (running a blog), and some of the cherries (comments) are bruised. How long are you going to spend cutting bits out of cherries, and then sending explanatory notes to each supplier? More cherries keep arriving via the conveyor belt as you work. You make a cup of tea, and a whole bunch has built up by the time you get back.

    Then Mr Gumby turns up and starts chucking cherries at all and sundry. They start chucking their own cherries back, but just like a slapstick film some of them hit the wrong target, provoking further retaliation. Before long it’s utter chaos. You can kick Gumby out, but it only takes him five minutes to climb back in through a window (gets a new IP address), and it doesn’t stop the cherry fight anyway, which has developed a life of its own.

    Now Macky will say that you need to exercise zero-tolerance on Gumby, but it’s just not possible on a small-team blog. Oh, the BBC and the Grauniad can have full-time anonymous moderating teams, but even they close comments when there are no mods on duty, they only ever give stock explanations, and they never edit out insults etc. to preserve the political content. When you’re only a small team there will always be times with no moderator. By the time the moderator logs in again, oh look, another cherry-fight has been going for four hours and the place is a complete mess.

    So you start clearing up, which results in howls of “I didn’t start it, it was him!” and “What are you picking on me for?” Each commenter only really notices the deletions of their own comments; they get upset about that, fail to notice who else’s comments have been deleted, and start demanding deletions affecting the other “side” to make things “fair”. Meanwhile, you’ve got the damn “Freedom of Speech” crew, who never consider that a deleted comment can just be re-phrased a bit and re-posted. They go on at you like you’re censoring their political viewpoint (as if you could), but really they’re just suffering from a slightly bruised ego.

    But Macky’s never tried it and so has no idea of the compromises you constantly have to make, instead mouthing off with offensive cod-psychology.

    Gives you the pip.

  16. Clark March 4, 2014 at 7:29 pm
    “Always the same stuff …”

    Hilarious. I saw this exact scenario play out a couple of years ago. There was a young man enthusing about this cranky old crank Eric Dollard: Dollard is a genius, he has the secret to Tesla’s free energy, the CIA are after him. The young man raised a shed load of cash on one of the crowd funding sites to fund Dollard’s next lab. Not only would they all get rich they would also save the world! It was incredible how many people literally bought into this crap. He raised a small fortune. Which Dollard ran off with. Rumours are he drank it. Priceless.

    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVsBh9Exd-tQvsfofh3ubhGSgXmFHRvr

  17. Clark, re deleted comments: Yes I was disappointed with my reaction to being deleted. My ego was bruised and I had to have a pop back. Which I did and regretted it as soon as I pressed submit. The devil just grabbed me.

  18. I know nothing about the world of crank science scams except for Eric Dollard. Apparently he’s off the meths and again on the verge of revealing the secret of free energy. He accepts paypal and bitcoin. Does it get any better than this?

    http://ericpdollard.com/

  19. Phil, I think you just got unlucky. Craig’s been getting a lot of stick from some of the regular commenters, and he just happened to be there when your comment arrived and probably just zapped it on impulse, then immediately felt guilty about it and thus felt a need to explain. But you re-posted later so no harm done.

    Regarding US incitement in Ukraine, Craig’s never been very interested in undercover, cloak-and-dagger stuff; look at his 9/11 post. I think he regards that stuff as essentially marginal. And he’s basically right; if governments would stick to their declared policies and abide by international law, the conspiracies, false-flags, and covert-ops wouldn’t have much effect. They’re designed as provocations; you can have a false-flag attack on a ship or something, but you can’t have an entire false-flag war. Wars always proceed from the orders of governments, and governments are supposed to follow the will of their electorates but they don’t; fix that, and you’ve fixed the problem. False-flags etc. would die out because they’d be ineffective at provoking a reaction.

  20. X posted on CM (just in case you get busy)

    “Well I hadn’t planned on going to get some booze tonight. I think I will now just in case!”

    What are you drinking? I suggest your favorite single-malt with a quarter century waiting for your palate. No time for going cheap on yourself.

  21. “and governments are supposed to follow the will of their electorates but they don’t”

    They never have. But still people just keep asking for more government. As if the next will be different to every one that has ever existed.

    Having no governments is our future. Why people don’t see that and step onto the long road there is totally beyond me.

    Radical decentralisation now!

  22. Ben, I have become partial to a single malt this past year myself. With one cube of ice and a half of real ale in the other hand.

    What are we celebrating?

  23. Myself:

    you’ve got the damn “Freedom of Speech” crew, who never consider that a deleted comment can just be re-phrased a bit and re-posted.

    …which leads me to another thought; “freedom of speech” is a misnomer, and when people complain that deleted comments constitute censorship, they’re really asking for the protection of their words.

    It’s freedom of ideas and the expression thereof that really matter, not a few specific words. If the same idea gets removed every time it’s expressed, that’s censorship; Craig censors holocaust denial on his blog. If a comment gets deleted for being offensive or off-topic, it’s not a campaign to suppress a specific idea or a political standpoint, so it isn’t censorship.

  24. That’s what they call a ‘boilermaker’, Phil. That’s some serious consumption. 🙂

    AA has been under the Scottish grey skies and his ‘lightbox’ doesn’t help. Adding to it is the nuke-rattling, rattling all our nerves.

  25. We’re raising a glass to the end of the world?

    I was at a meeting earlier discussing WW1. How none of the parties really wanted it but it happened anyway. It was pointed out that the last five centuries have all started with huge wars.

  26. “We’re raising a glass to the end of the world”

    I just want to get laid just before the end. 🙂 I can’t think of a better way to go.

  27. We’re ‘celebrating’ heightened international tension, teetering on the brink of all-out superpower confrontation.

    Phil – “They never have…”

    Well it’s a matter of degree, isn’t it? Some governments are much better than others at doing their people’s will. But the governments that do the worst things to their own people are always the least responsive; the dictatorships and the absolute monarchies. When democracies do evil deeds they do it to other countries.

    Anarchy is great at a personal level, so long as you’re reasonably intelligent and you’ve got decent morals or you practice “enlightened self-interest”. But I can think of plenty of people who wouldn’t do very well without a structure to fit into, and I can think of lots who basically need to be constrained to stop them doing bad things. It isn’t just certain politicians who are evil.

    Decent governments do all sorts of good things. I’m very glad of my state education and the health care I’ve had. I’m glad there’s half-decent infrastructure and a legal system; even though these things are flawed I think they’re much better than nothing. And government is needed to protect people from powerful structures that always spontaneously arise, such as corporations.

  28. But yes, “radical decentralisation now!” I agree…

    “Hierarchy” is a much maligned word. People usually think of a power hierarchy, but hierarchy is really a system of nested classification, like the folders within folders on your computer system, or this sort of thing (for domestic dogs):

    Kingdom: Animalia
    Phylum: Chordata
    Class: Mammalia
    Order: Carnivora
    Family: Canidae
    Genus: Canis
    Species: C. lupus
    Subspecies: C. l. familiaris

    Now I had to go through that, because I’m in favour of increasing the degree of hierarchy, and people don’t like the sound of that. But the more subdivisions a hierarchy has the less members in each subdivision, so that’s decentralisation; locating the power closer to the people or group or grouped groups affected by it.

  29. It’s been Decades since i thought the end of the world was Nigh… and we in these parts…. were actually able to gaze upon our doom… just across the clyde….

    And a pleasant lunch on Friday with a visiting friend Whilst watching a Nuke sub going round in circles… out on the river…wee Fkers…. we just had to pick a table by the Large windows….

    Here’s to the end…and peace to all here at Squonk…

    P.S…Check oot this foto of a whisky filled Stag…i took the pic in Oban a couple of weeks ago…a snip at £250….ooooch.

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/115454618@N06/12938358354/

  30. Clark, I have tried my best not to get into a fight with you & I refuse your attempts to draw me into one; surely we should treat each others as adults, which means to be able to discuss matters of concern in a respectful & rational way, without all the unnecessary hysterics. If you disagree with any view I put forward, why not actually engage with it, instead of simply hurling wild accusations ? It’s easy for me to go into & take apart all these accusations, but it’s a distraction from the real points of issue, and will be frankly, very boring for others, including myself.

    So let’s try again, yes moderating is a very demanding & thankless task, etc, etc, & all that stuff in that long Post of yours, but nowhere did you touch upon the problem of the impossible not to notice very bad or very bias moderating; should Posters say nothing and act as if they don’t care, and perhaps just watch as other Posters leave in disgust, or should they raise their concern that there is a problem, and that the Blog is being damaged, and/or that some people are being treated unfairly? Or it is in your view, that the Moderator is always right, like it or leave ?

  31. Clark you are completely confused about what anarchy is. It is not an unrestrained free for all with no rules. It does suppose that everyone is a moral angel. In fact it is the only system of social organisation I know of that actually offers a real opportunity to limit the damage done by those that would hurt others.

    http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html

  32. “It does suppose that everyone is a moral angel.”

    Ahh. I meant:

    “It does NOT suppose that everyone is a moral angel.”

  33. Seriously Clark. You are repeating ignorant tosh about anarchism worthy of comrade pr super of the yard.

    Do you think an honourable political tradition embraced by many great minds throughout the past few centuries is a friggin riot where crazy bastards get to do what they want?

  34. Wow Ben…Very elegant Packaging there… Effin $100 a Shot ….That is Shotting…. Hic, i mean Shocking…..

    Now… that the drams and cognac are taking effect… shall we dare dream of peace….. in Fugazi World.

    The Great Lao-Tseu said –

    It is only when you see a mosquito landing on your testicles that you realize that there is always a way to solve problems without using violence

  35. Phil, I didn’t actually write much about anarchism; I was just listing some of the things I think are good about government. Personally, I regard myself as having no leader, or, if I submit to leadership it is because I choose to do so. I know that the word ‘anarchy’ is grossly misused; people seem to think of it as crowds of people running around trying to mug each other. That’s their problem, not mine. I used to go to the Stonehenge Free Festival, and that was pretty much anarchy; no police, no leaders, spontaneous organisation. I loved it. Maggie smashed it. But we were a self-selected group at Stonehenge; we went for the freedom of the free festival. The sort of people who need to be told how to enjoy themselves didn’t go in the first place.

  36. AA.. Can you please delete my last post… i can re post art from elsewhere…cheers

    {Done]

  37. Macky, how’s your JTRIG training going? Are you on Barefaced Lying or Inciting Resentment?

    So, where to start? “…fight… like adults… hysterics…” This is how not to start a fight, is it? Or was that earlier, “controlling authoritarian… embarrassing outbursts… rude…”.

    Then there are your self-compliments, “…innocuous …my calm reasoning”. I can’t be bothered to check the other pages for more of the same; you’ve been at it for weeks. People reading our conversation have e-mailed me messages of support! No, honestly. It seems that everyone can see it except you – surely your arrogance and self-importance can’t be obscuring your self-awareness. No, surely not.

    You’re either conscious of what you’re doing, or you aren’t. If the former, you’re a deliberate wind-up merchant and therefore probably JTRIG or the like. If the latter, you lack self-awareness. Go figure.

  38. Phil, I started on the Anarchy FAQ you linked to, and ran straight into a problem:

    “Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society,

    Yep, I sort of agree with that*, but:

    and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organisation.”

    But hierarchy is essential for organisation! Abandoning hierarchy would mean keeping all your files, videos, photo’s, music and system files all in the same folder; finding anything would be an absolute nightmare! ‘Hierarchy’ doesn’t necessarily imply ‘hierarchy of power’.

    * The problem of most power hierarchies is that the power structure is unidirectional; power is exerted from the ‘one above’ to the ‘many below’. This is what human dominance, animal dominance, naturally and unconsciously attempts to enforce upon other individuals. Ironically, the place we commonly find the opposite is in democratic systems, where the ‘many’ exert power on the ‘one’ by voting. But it’s still a hierarchy.

    I’ll read some more tomorrow.

  39. Clark,

    If you keep suggesting people are JTRIG, others might think you are JTRIG/SIS/KGB/MOSSAD/NUTS/ETC. or something. 🙂

    That’s the way it works.

  40. JTRIG?

    So much activity in the last week or so I’ve been away, it’s remarkable. Reminds me:

    E: “So there I was, with my Cambridge tie…”

    WG: “_You_ – you were at Cambridge??”

    E: “Oh, ya… ya, yes I was.”

    WG: “What were you doing in Cambridge?”

    E: “Buying a tie.”

  41. Clark: ““If the latter, you lack self-awareness”

    I leave that hanging in the air.

    Try re-reading our exchanges, see if you can determine who has tried to get a issued debated, and who has avoided addressing a single point of issue, and instead issued a series of bizarre smokescreening accucations. Yet I can be quite honestly blunt, but you have to imagine that even so, I have actually suger-coated many of my remarks, yet still the truth as I see it, still hurts enough for you not to address it, but to actually cause you hysterics.

    So I was wrong to criticize Jon, for allowing the Habby Troll to victimize Mary month after abusive month, wrong to criticize the leeway he was given to totally disrupt & make meaningful debate on the Blog impossible, I was wrong to criticise Jon for causing people to leave because of ridiculous accusations of anti-Semitism, whilst at the same time allowing blatant Islamophobia to stand, I was wrong to say that Jon should not take side in disputes, especially when he has nothing to add to the point of issue except “ leave X alone, X is a good egg”, etc, etc ??

    As to these others that you say have emailed support for you, if they are not honest enough to address me & the issues that I have raised, then their support really means nothing in all senses of the word.

  42. Clark: thanks for taking the trouble to read that article. I had not heard of Tom Beardon until very recently and this is the only thing of his that I’ve read.

    To be fair to him it doesn’t discuss many of the things that you mention, which must crop up in his other stuff. It’s probably best read as science fiction but is nevertheless not without value in my opinion.The fact that the Woodpecker ceased after Chenobyl for instance suggests that the system of which it was a part required a vast amount of power – perhaps a whole nuclear reactor’s worth – and the article at least provides some explanation for that. Also, his aside about the Challenger disaster in 1986 got me thinking because the official explanation for it always struck me as being not wholly satisfactory.

  43. Macky, does it not occur to you that in my position, there are things I cannot say at all, and more things that I cannot say in public? That I may want to say those things, that keeping them to myself is a burden to me, and yet I must remain silent? That, for instance, as a former moderator and someone who publishes his e-mail address, I have private information that I must permit to go no further, out of respect for other individuals involved? Indeed, there are things I know about you that I have not mentioned here.

    You have used words as weapons, Macky. In your single-minded pursuit of justice as you see it from your more limited perspective, you have psychologically attacked everyone you know to have been involved with the running of a blog which you claim to support, including Craig himself.

    Honestly, Macky; a bit more self-reflection is called for on your part.

    Now, if you want a debate about moderation, you’ll need to bear in mind that I cannot discuss as freely as yourself, simply because you have not been exposed to as much information as I have. You hold an inherent advantage over me, in that you don’t need to reflect and consider where the boundaries are, simply because you are completely outside those boundaries yourself. Put simply, you can say anything you like in a comment, whereas I cannot; I have to be careful about which directions I permit such conversation to progress towards.

    I do not trust you, Macky. I do not think that you have evil motivation; I expect (but cannot prove) that you’re acting with good intentions. But you have let the end justify your means, and that demonstrates lack of judgement. I feel that if you detect a hint of a boundary in our conversation, you’ll use every psychological weapon in your armoury to breach that boundary. Blinded by the searing brilliance of your own quest for “the truth”, you’ll emotionally attack and injure the people that comprise the structure you think you’re serving.

    My judgement of you probably seems harsh, and I am sorry for it, but it is based upon your own behaviour to date.

    Or I could be wrong, and my joke about you being a JTRIG-type agent could even be true; I don’t think it likely. I put that question to you, very gently, ages ago, but you ignored it, and instead attempted to control the direction of conversation yourself. It would serve as a good opening for debate, if not quite the debate you’d rather have. It’s the sort of question moderators have to consider. So I’ll ask you again…

    How am I to tell that you, Macky, aren’t a JTRIG or equivalent agent?

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