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. Ben, I don’t know what you’ve been on about either; I’m lost in the colloquialisms, but your anger comes across. Jeez, man, we’re doing our best. It’s fucking serious; word is, Turkey is saying it’ll shoot down Russian air force.

    You pissed with me ‘cos I don’t think they thermited the Twin Towers? I just don’t. That particular rumour just happens to be wrong, I think. What difference does it make? The neocons don’t even bother to hide it. The (alleged) 9/11 hijackers are the same breed Turkey is infiltrating into Syria, the ones we bombed Gadaffis forces to “protect” in Benghazi, the ones Westminster wanted to bomb Assad’s government for fighting. It’s not even hidden, just plausibly deniable.

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/01/feminism-a-neo-con-tool/comment-page-24/#comment-575894

  2. Turkey will shoot down Russian air force planes. That’s what Squonk’s post at 01:17 is saying.

    Squonk, are you on the shortwave? How jittery is the US?

  3. Don’t you love former DCI General David Petraeus getting away with on punishment for helping Israel during Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

    Though he fell for Paul Broadwell’s ‘honey trap’, allowing her to go through all the secrets he brought home, and acting as his representative on occasion, he suffered no loss of rank or financial penalties.

    Great precedent for future top spies _ i. e., you will only have to quit if caught spying!

  4. Fuck it, as soon as I write anything, everyone goes away (except Trowbridge, whom I don’t seem able to communicate with on a personal level anyway).

    Guess I must be really scary. Or just hated for being shit or something.

  5. I’m not fickle, Clark. My words kindle some anger but it’s more like frustration with humans who don’t seem to gather that change, if it’s to be effective, must be transformative rather than incremental. IOW’s one must feel the need to change before that will occur, and that need normally must rise above lower altitudes where the air is plentiful and light is clear and bright. Such altitude is rarely reached for average persons. Physical evolution is slow and political evolution snail-paced. There should be some incentive visible for improving the phenotype but it must be recognized as such before any elevation can happen. If everyone made attempts to rise above the genetic tendencies evolution would proceed with some speed of note. Interestingly, human progress is very slow in this regard.

  6. Clark..

    Sorry to hear you have been unwell again…Same here bit of the Shivers.. Rest up and stay warm.

    Ben nice writing Echos of Transhumanist… 🙂

  7. Clark; Busy with other stuff and feel the urge to surf less often. Growing mother plants from seed. Black thumb is my talent. Only 2 seedlings under the light but they are quite vigorous and even I can’t stop them with all my growing ability.

  8. Ben, thanks for using plain English; I haven’t installed the US colloquialisms extension to my language pack. E-mail me. I’ve had nothing but spam from your accounts; don’t even remember which one to write to.

  9. Clark; Many folks would prefer I wrote in simple declarative sentences, but I can’t imagine greater boredom for both the writing and the reading.

    Brian; Cheers dood. It’s heartening when someone gets it. 🙂

  10. Look What i Found…

    A Goth wearing MY Boots… My Friends paid £50 per foot..Second hand On ebay…Playing Piano Like My Eternal Love Dressed in Black

    Anyhoo For Human Advancement And peace Warriros

    Bit better today Clark..I need to stop this Storm chsin Malarkey

    Ben hope you aint BEEN TOO busy to tend MY apples 🙂

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI0fyOaD94Y

  11. Of course, you are right Brian, but I need much less help than others, especially the developed countries and their inhabitants.

    I have lived the life I wanted, and was successful enough with its results, though I have spent too much time and effort being my own dentist, and doctor, largely because I have enough time to do it, and these professionals charge way too much for the skills.

    Have no worries about money, as my delayed trip, starting on Sunday, to Thailand and Cambodia indicates.

    Live by myself with my dog Domino, spending most of my time on the internet and helping others.

    Wish everyone else was so comfortable.

  12. Trowbridge, thanks; it’s really good to read something about you. I love dogs. I had a super golden mongrel called Shiboo. Kids would call “mummy, look at the doggy!” and one day a little’n in a push-chair cried “Look! There’s an orange dog”! If someone asked me what breed he was I’d tell them he was a special circus dog; his favourite thing seemed to be making people laugh.

    Hey, say hello to Domino for me. Is he (she?) black with white spots? What about when you go traveling? I used to take Shiboo everywhere, so I didn’t leave the UK. He loved the Intercity 125 trains; he could just get his face out of the window and point his nose into the oncoming rush of air. When he came back in his eyes would be streaming and he’d have such a grin on his face.

  13. Trow

    To Echo Clark Thanks for the wee insight…good that you don;t harbor a bunch of regrets… Its more the wee yin’s I worry about…When one pays some attention to what the Elites are up to.

    Safe travels to ye come Sunday..keep us posted… its such wonderful world oot there ..Places and Creatures –

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsgP8LkEopM

  14. Thanks for sweet responses, guys.

    Domino is a Tibetan terrier, about equally black and with with ears like spaniels. An outstanding looking and acting creature.

    He is smart as a whip, and a lot of fun. Taking care of him has improved my health a bit, as he is always pulling me somewhere.

    Picked him up in September 2013 at an animal rescue place. Seems his owners just walked off and left him. Seems completely uncalled for as I am sure he could have gotten a wad of money.

    He has no trouble with my going away, as he just loves the couple who takes care of him. They have a dog, and a big yard, so he really savors it. Pay top dollar for it, though I don’t complain as I want him to be quite happy while I’m gone. Suspect that I miss him rather more than the reverse.

    I ‘ll drop a line on occasion, especially if a get some word from the Thais about what really happened to MH370. Then there is always the chance of another coup in Bangkok.

    Take care of yourselves,
    Trow

  15. Trowbridge, have a great time.

    I have a joke I like to drop into conversation sometime, if the subject touches prehistory or dogs I’ll ask “it’s around, what, a hundred thousand years or so since dogs domesticated humans?” Some people don’t notice, and just carry on as if I’d said that humans domesticated dogs. But really, who are us human to assume that it was our choice rather than dogs’? We just assume human superiority; we talk of “the ascent of Man” and we draw the evolutionary tree with single-celled life at the bottom and humans at the top with everything else branching off to the sides. It’s the same assumption as in Genesis, that humankind is the crowning achievement, either of God or evolution; that everything else came before as mere stepping-stones or infrastructure to make humankind possible.

    We shouldn’t assume so. Humans are dependent upon nature, not vice-versa.

    Dogs are so brilliant because their sense of community is so strong. People call this loyalty or faithfulness; there’s that assumption again, that the dog is faithful to “its master”. But I suspect that dogs are faithful to something higher, to a shared bond, and the “assumption” they’re working to is one of assumed generosity, a gift of the self to the group.

    You take care too, Trowbridge. I’ll be checking this place for your messages.

    C.

  16. http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/05/investing/oilmageddon-recession-oil-citi/index.html

    Financial markets are trapped in a “death spiral,” according to analysts at Citigroup.
    The bank’s research team described a “negative feedback loop” in the global economy and across financial markets. It is fueled by strong dollar, lower commodity prices, weak trade and declining growth in emerging markets.
    The four forces are interconnected and present central banks with the difficult task of fighting deflation and staving off another global downturn, the bank said in a report, released Friday.
    If the loop continues, Citi warns, the world could slip into “significant and synchronized” global recession.
    The bank even invented a new term for its doomsday scenario: “oilmageddon.”

  17. Craig’s seems to be down. Plusnet still seem to give me a dynamic IP address. I’ve tried cycling the power on my router. I’ve been using https://www.grc.com/shieldsup to get my IP address; it gives me a “machine name” and the address. So I’ve tried from two IP addresses, and Craig’s is down from both. DNS lookup seems to complete. Ping seems to work:

    clark@tris:~$ ping craigmurray.org.uk
    PING craigmurray.org.uk (107.150.10.16) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from craigmurray.org.uk (107.150.10.16): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=150 ms
    Oh, I can connect now.

  18. Updating my Grow Diary;

    Obtained seeds-only three have sprouted. The Bull Ryder is the most stout plant I’ve ever seen. huge hashplant fan leaves and after three weeks following germination, under a 400w HPS has a quarter inch thick stem and I’ve already taken two very healthy clones that didn’t droop as usual after cutting. If that’s all I get from the seed purchase it will have been worth it I think.

  19. Ben, only three seeds out of how many?

    Meta: is it a relief to be able to openly discuss growing after a lifetime of prohibition? I loathe concealment. It requires a partitioning of the mind, and constant checking of what can be said where and to whom. To make analogy with computing, it increases demand upon resources, both memory and processing power.

  20. Clark; Yes, the drama over pot has decreased in LE so talking about growing with local businessmen is much more relaxed. Our small town has three hydroponic stores and they provide a lot of input. Stealth is still necessary though because they like to wait until harvest then raid your garden….the thieves I mean.

    I had about 8 seeds and the lack of success on germination was largely my fault. I let the seed bed dry out for about an hour one day and the tender shoots dried up. One thing the seedbank screwed up was sending me two Acapulco Gold seeds which I need for breeding and only one popped. Unfortunately it’s not a sativa so I don’t know what they sent. It’s gonna be a surprise I guess.

  21. Ben: Well three out of eight isn’t so bad in that case then.

    How about a “bird waterer” or capillary action arrangement for germination beds?

    The bird waterer is like a jar full of water stood upside-down with the open end of the jar stood on a saucer, maybe with a matchstick or something between the jar and the saucer to maintain a small gap. When the water level in the saucer gets low enough it permits a little air to bubble into the jar, displacing just enough water into the saucer to reseal the jar against air.

    The capillary action arrangement is just a jar of water with towel rag or whatever acting as a wick from the water to the germination bed. The relative height of the jar versus the bed regulates the dampness of the bed.

  22. Thanks Clark; Too much water damps the seeds off and leads to oxygen deprivation.

    It’s like a hospital nursery. You have to check on them several times a day and keep the bed damp but not wet. I let it go a little too long. I’ve made all the classic mistakes. The trick is to avoid repeating them. I didn’t mention that with my purchased seeds I got two free Ruderalis which have not popped after a week. That is also disappointing.

    The seed banks only want to know you received the seeds. They won’t talk to me about how non-viable seeds will not germinate. They operate as genetic researchers and can’t get into growing because they are legally proscribed.

    One of the reasons I got into growing was having more control over the outcome. That’s why I want to breed my own seeds. I know what they are and how well they’ve been stored to maintain viability.

  23. BTW; One of my dogs tore up her knee ligaments chasing the sheep. Vet gives her cold laser treatments to ease the injury. tramadol at night so she can sleep. Gave her a half cap of non-psycoactive CBD powder in her food instead last night in case she gets resistance to tramadol.

    She feels great this morning… 🙂

  24. Ben, when Shiboo got old, well,I don’t know how I’d have got through it without the occasional bit of weed. He had a long, slow decline. I was sleeping downstairs so I could carry him out to relieve himself in the night. I should probably have had him finished off sooner, but there was no catastrophe, no clear event, he never gave up and told me that he wanted to go.

    I don’t know why, but all the tips of my joints increasingly felt like fire or electrocution – the tips of my elbows, shoulders, hips knees and ankles. The weed took all that away.

    When me and Ann finally filled in the earth over him, Sirius had risen, brightest star in the sky.

  25. @JSD, With due respect, you are also repeatedly missing the main point; her posts were being moderator/deleted because her postings of Jewish Zionists connections & support for the Israeli State, which do have an undeniable influence on practically every subject discussed here, were being deemed as off topic by the Moderation, a policy caused by the constant pressure/complaints from the Pro-Israeli Apologists.

  26. well it looks like a whole tranche of comments about moderation has been deleted at Craig’s, from various commenters including myself, presumably for being off-topic – which I feel is fair enough.

  27. Oh what fun on the “Free Speech Blog” ! 😀

    More censored Posts;

    Clark; “I repeat, the comments Mary thought were deleted were not. I already investigated this on Jan 31; my summary including links to the comments in question is here:

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-22/#comment-576051

    Macky; “@Clark, And so confirming that some of Mary’s Posts went straight into per-moderation, which was indeed the final straw for her. It’s no accident that all this occurred whilst the bizarre policy of per-moderatating all instances of the “J” word was in operation.”

  28. Another one deleted from the “Free Speech Blog”;

    Macky; “@Clark, missing the point again, why were the traffic lights turned red ? Imagine if the word “Islam” and/or “Muslim” became trigger words, how many Islamphobes we would lose ! :D”

  29. Macky, that thread is still mainly on-topic. I was feeling quite embarrassed commenting about moderation issues and in a way I was glad our comments were deleted; after all, our personal grievances aren’t a fraction as important as wholesale distortion in the corporate media with its much wider reach. On the other hand, JSD is right that inaccuracy should not become part of the “blog mythology”.

    I agree that queuing comments containing words like ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’ is a silly idea. Certainly if it was me at the mod interface I’d only put words like that in a block list if I was sat there watching the comment stream ready to approve queued comments; I wouldn’t leave the queue unattended for hours.

    But that’s because they’re common words, not because I think the effect would be biased. Both sides of a row get caught equally by keywords, because replies have to answer assertions and thus contain the same words. Also, Habbabkuk, Anon1 etc. often criticise a commenter who has used “Israelis” or “Zionists” by saying “oh that’s just a sneaky way of criticising Jews”, and that gets caught by such keywords. Keywords always cut both ways, but they usually cut much too often unless they’re really specific.

  30. Clark; “I agree that queuing comments containing words like ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’ is a silly idea.”

    Careful, that could be miscontrued as criticising the sacred Moderation ! 😀

    Still haven’t addressed as why on Earth this this moronic decision was made.

  31. Macky, I was going to write “your guess is as good as mine” but it probably isn’t 🙂 Well, Craig’s Moderation Rules include:

    “The biggest problem we face is anti-Jewish comment, which I will not tolerate. We are not in the business of stigmatising anti-Zionism as anti-Jewish, but there are quite frequently distinctly anti-Jewish comments

    […]It is surprising how often people attempt to insinuate holocaust denial. “

    so it could have been an attempt to catch those sort of comments, or comments like my example above. Or you could go back to earlier in the thread where it first started and look for comments that contain a keyword and break the moderation rules, which might give you an idea of the target.

    I saw the islamophobic comments from Anon1 that John Goss complained about and were not deleted, I commented at that time myself. I think it was right to leave them on the thread because Anon1 is a regular and the comment helps show his attitudes and values. It’s good that people challenge it; it exposes that there really are common islamophobic attitudes. Tony_0pmoc posts vile anti-US comments; I know he acts the fool so no one takes him seriously, but in a way that makes it worse; more insidious and avoids challenge.

    The funny thing is that I can’t remember any of the type you mention; Russiophobia (is that how you write it?). I’ve seen of plenty of criticism of Kremlin policy and specific criticism of individual Russians, but no racist comments, for instance stereotyping of Russians as a whole or using a person’s Russian origin as a criticism in itself, or jeering or sneering or belittling about being Russian. I suppose I might have missed some. If anyone, probably Anon1.

    The only criticism of a class of Russians I can think of is “Russian oligarchs”. They come in for stick from all sides; no one cares and no one should, should they? Oh, there’s Resident Dissident with “Putin and his cronies” etc, but that’s not racist, it’s disrespect for government which Craig’s blog should never be short of until peace and justice prevail, which will be before the first winter that Hell freezes over, not Moscow or Washington.

  32. Hi guys.

    Made it to Sweden, and it is a pleasant change from the States, with its calm, pretty girls, and good bread. And its banks pay interest on investment.

    See that NATO, especially UK, is building up to meet alleged Russian aggression.

    Hope it doesn’t result in another Anchor Express Exercise where NATO planned to take out the USSR at Palme’s expence which only avanlaches in Norway prevented from becoming armaggedon, and we don’t have George Younger at the MoD to blow the whistle when danger strikes.

    Really shaping up for WWIII.

    Bye for now.

  33. @Clark, I was already aware of that extract that you quoted from Craig’s Moderation Rules, which is why I’m able to state that his Blog’s moderating policy appears to be cowed by fear of the Zionists Lobby/Supporters. Why is Craig so concerned exclusively about just anti-Jewish comments ? Surveys show that anti-Semitism is on a definite general decline, despite the best attempts of the Israeli State to inflame anti-Jewish sentiment, whereas Islamophobia & attacks on Muslims are on record highs & are constantly rising.

    I don’t have to point out that the very rare anti-Semitic posts that have been posted at CM’s, have been by “English Knight” & his obvious incarnations, are just likely to be one person, and in my opinion is most likely a false-flag Hasbara ploy, as we know that this is a favourite tactic of theirs. Another known favourite tactic is to accuse every critic of Israel as being motivated by hatred of Jews, ie of being an Anti-Semite, and this is even used against fellow Jews ! So it’s no surprise that we see this tactic constantly employed at CM’s, but instead of at least being impartial about it, the Moderating indulges in it more than the Pro Israel Apologists, by a host of absurd measures, including this notorious banning of the words “Jews” & “Jewish” !!

    Anyhow to sum-up as I’m pressed for time this morning, this is a continuation of a conversation started when JSD objected to my statement that the Moderation at CM’s had finally done the dirty work for the Posters who wanted rid of a certain Poster, and that the final straw for her was being put on pre-Moderation for using the “J” words; JSD was of the opinion that a very long standing Poster was suddenly be so miffed about having off-topic comments deleted that they would simply leave, whereas I’m of the opinion that the said Poster knew exactly why the Moderating was acting the way it was, that it had been cowed beyond belief by the Zionist Trolls, effectively acting as their play-tool, and so left in disgust.

    (I hope to address your other comments when I have more time)

  34. Macky, oh, I just read your comment 12:22 am again. Please don’t call it “moronic”. There is a real live volunteer who made those decisions, which then had effects and now can’t be recalled. You’ve no idea of their own opinion of the outcome; they could be pleased with it, disappointed, or even acutely embarrassed. Moderating, though anonymous, is a very public task; thousands may see the effects. Harsh words may lower moderators’ self-confidence , and I think that’s likely to make matters worse.

  35. In your 9:48 am comment, you’re entitled to your opinion, but please do not misrepresent facts.

    1) You wrote “…the final straw for her was being put on pre-Moderation for using the “J” words” – both of the assertions here seem to be false. So far as I know, Mary was not “put on pre-mod”; some of her comments went into the moderation queue because they contained keywords, NOT because they were posted by Mary. And according to Mary’s own final comments, this was not the reason she stopped posting at Craig’s. I think it would be helpful if you would correct these assertions.

    2) JSD was correctly referring to Mary’s own statements. Please do not impute motive to Mary; respect what she herself wrote. But these comments were not deleted at all, they are still on the threads as the links I posted show.

  36. Mary, if you’re reading (I hope you still do), sorry to be discussing you in your absence. I believe that we share the principle of Truth, Justice, Peace; each is a prerequisite for the next, so if Macky misrepresents, someone needs to defend the truth.

    I hope you’re doing OK.

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