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. Macky

    You really sound as if you’ve gone overboard on the HRT.

    I sympathise, but a period of silence on your part would be most welcome to (I suspect) most readers.

  2. The Mirror joins in.

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/vladimir-putin-been-neutralised-security-5338390

    Has Vladimir Putin been ‘neutralised’ by security chiefs staging ‘secret coup’?

    Vladimir Putin is alive but has been ‘neutralised’ by shadowy security chiefs who have staged a stealthy coup, according to the head of a leading Russian Muslim group.

    Geydar Dzhemal, chairman of Russia’s Islamic Committee, claimed former security service chief Nikolai Patrushev was behind the plot.

    The Russian leader hasn’t been seen in public for the past 9 days.

    Dzhemal, who is seen as a Kremlin loyalist, said: “I think that Putin is neutralised at the moment, but of course, he is alive.

    “He is under the control of the power-wielding agencies, who have, in my opinion, organised a coup d’etat.”

  3. http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/.premium-1.647001

    Israel’s former ambassador to Russia: ‘There are signs of a coup’
    Zvi Magen believes army factions or wealthy businessmen could be behind President Vladimir Putin’s disappearance.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin was last seen in public on March 5, and in Russia there are increased fears he is the victim of an attempted coup by security organizations and the Russian army.

    Rest of article pay-walled unfortunately.

  4. Putin is on Russia 24 TV tonight in a programme called “Crimea – the road to a homeland” (in Russian) in which he explains why Russia took the action it did in Crimea, including pointing missiles at Kiev from Crimea, to protect the inhabitants who expressed a desire to be part of Russia (95%) rather than be governed by a coup government in Kiev. He also states that the CIA were planning to assassinate Yanukovich and that was why he was removed to Russia for his own safety. Apparently he wanted to stay. The action in Crimea, as he says, prevented its residents suffering the same fate as the people of Eastern Ukraine (6000 dead).

    http://www.msk-tv.com/page/russia24-tv-online.html

  5. Squonk, anything funny going on with this site? I just tried to return to an open tab:

    https://squonk.tk/blog/2015/03/15/the-general-discussion-thread/comment-page-39/

    I got a page with a big “3” on it, covering a single word of text, and a message something like “this is embarrassing, isn’t it?”. I tried editing the URL down:

    https://squonk.tk/blog/2015/03/15/the-general-discussion-thread/

    Same thing. I followed the “Squonk Blog” link and that worked, but with the General Discussion Thread at the top (I see you’ve moved it above more recent posts). I got to page 38 of comments but the URL stayed the same as above. It all seems to be working now, though. I’ve put some screenshots here:

    http://www.killick1.plus.com/temp/

  6. Word on the street is the SAS are expecting an invasion Thursday, they are making preparations.

  7. I’ve had trouble bringing up your blog tonight Squonk.

    But I’ve had more trouble trying to get the Crimea link above to work. Did anybody else try. I can get other channels. Can they block documentaries they don’t want you to see?

  8. John, I can reach the msk-tv page you linked to above. I can’t watch anything but that’s because I don’t have the confounded Adobe Flash Player installed.

    John, you and Macky have mistaken my position on this matter. I’m opposed to the NeoCon agenda. Macky says I hate Russia and Russians but that’s not so, but I don’t trust the Russian government as some great peacemaker. I expect it’s like other governments and makes peace when it finds it advantageous to do so.

    I’m frustrated by having only opposing propagandas available; there’s been no real clarity. If I could have calmed the argument down between you and RD I’d have asked you to join me in examining one incident at a time, looking for as many different news sources as possible, seeing if we could rank the news sources by accuracy.

    You and RD both know a bit of Russian but I know none. Without help I can’t make any progress. I feel that the pair of you have let Craig’s blog down by having a furious ideological row when you could have been helping everyone by working to clarify facts.

    John, I’m sorry I swore at you a couple of times but you really didn’t help. I’m not about to abandon my critical faculties just because you accuse me of “supporting fascists”. You were insisting I accept things when I could see for myself that they were untrue. I reacted badly to that and I probably always will – I’m of scientific bent and faking data is the cardinal sin; I value honesty and accuracy very highly. You and Macky will probably not believe me; all I can do is speak from my heart, but the pair of you basically drove me to the opposite side because RD, instead of trying to control me with slurs and insults, was linking to more convincing evidence.

    I was also completely disgusted with smears against Uzbek in the UK, Evgueni and Phil’s reports from his friends in Kiev. They have all been at Craig’s for years. How can we throw away reports from actual people just because they don’t fit a chosen ideology? That’s crazy, giving up all the Internet stands for and abandoning our humanity to some “authority” of another country’s mass media. If that’s the way to go we may as well give up the blog and just watch (Russian) news on the telly.

  9. I updated the publish date on the general thread to bring it back to to front page and that changed the URLs. Hit a minor snag and had to toggle a wordpress URL format setting back and forward to fix it. If you tried to access the site around that time you would have seen inconsistencies . Sorry about that.

  10. The complex on fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novodevichy_Convent

    Novodevichy Convent, also known as Bogoroditse-Smolensky Monastery (Russian: Новоде́вичий монасты́рь, Богоро́дице-Смоле́нский монасты́рь), is probably the best-known cloister of Moscow. Its name, sometimes translated as the New Maidens’ Monastery, was devised to differ from an ancient maidens’ convent within the Moscow Kremlin. Unlike other Moscow cloisters, it has remained virtually intact since the 17th century. In 2004, it was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

    March 15, 2015, a fire destroyed part of the convent.

    It is often mistaken for the Kremlin on a Moscow webcam and initial tweets mistakenly said The Kremin itself was on fire.

  11. When I followed Squonk’s link to the RT video about Putin’s absence, the following interview with Ray McGovern was listed in the YouTube side-bar:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56zN7K9qI6I

    I found McGovern’s distinction about the NeoCon’s very interesting. He goes into the sarin gas incident in Syria in some detail. He identifies Kerry as the NeoCon agent involved, and contrasts him with Martin Dempsey.

    Just blaming the US or NATO or in RD’s case the Russian government seems too simplistic; none of them are monolithic. Goodness knows what’s going on in Russia now, or what sort of power structure will be presented after whatever is happening there.

  12. Squonk, 8:27 pm, no apology necessary. In tense time I report any anomaly with Internet functionality.

    You get those horror stories where various people have each individually seen something anomalous but no one tells anyone else for fear of looking daft, and they all end up getting eaten or whatever.

  13. I missed the live fire event and I can’t say I’m disappointed.

    Recently, I think it was Fred or Phil, gave a link to who shot down MH17 which basically had an eye-witness and somebody formerly from the separatist army claiming it was shot down by BUK missile which they saw fired from the separatists. I recalled earlier there had been eye-witness reports at the time, reported by a BBC correspondent in Moscow, saying they had seen a fighter jet after the plane exploded. I never commented on that report because I remembered that the CIA bribed Tony Gauci with $2 million to testify against al Megrahi in the Lockerbie trial, which got an innocent man convicted.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Gauci

    However this more recent article, though briefly mentioning the eye-witness reports from both sides is asking more pertinently why has the United States not provided its satellite evidence and not changed its stance from a few days after MH17 was downed, especially since its initial evidence comes from internet sites: a very revealing article.

    https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/14/us-intel-stands-pat-on-mh-17-shoot-down/

  14. Squonk, Clark, Fred and other stargazers would you say that the meteorite had burnt out before landing? I don’t know anything about the bigger ones. I saw one once driving down a motorway but not as big as that just posted by Squonk.

  15. John, I don’t know much about large meteors except that it’s comparatively rare for any meteors to reach the ground. The first video has two distinct flare-ups and the object is still going after the second flare. Possibly the flares are when most of it burnt away because I’d have expected another flare if a large chunk had hit the ground. If the second video is of the same event, the object presumably passed beyond the horizon before the flares because we don’t see them.

  16. Thanks for the Fireball Sqounk.. Magico

    John teeny bits ( two percent ) of the over all mass will land… And possibly worth a few Bob Lol

  17. The Parry articles are informative and convincing, and Parry’s journalistic career calls for them to be taken seriously.

    Macky and John, you’ve really been needlessly discrediting yourselves with me. These few hours calm have done far more to convince me than all the, as I see it, insult and bullying over the last few weeks.

    John, the stuff like the sott.net article really wrecked your credibility. When I could plainly see that a report was just totally wrong, and multiple commenters claimed that I was “calling for war” or a NeoCon troll because I pointed that out, I felt I was being pushed so I reacted against it. If a group are all pushing me to accept, or at least say, that something is true when I can see for myself that it’s false, I naturally assume that someone has an agenda to push and so my suspicion level goes sky high.

    Likewise all the denial of Moscow’s wrongs such as the murders of journalists and the historical turning off of Ukraine’s gas. It’s no good with someone like me to try to portray villains as angels. When Nemtsov got shot it did no good insisting that I was bloodlusting for war and hating Russians just because I suspected the Kremlin. It’s a reasonable suspicion given the history of the treatment of the Russian opposition; I wasn’t insisting that it was the only explanation. The, and I don’t often use words like this, the hysterical response I got convinced me I was being opposed by Kremlin propagandists.

    Likewise, I should be able to point out blatant misrepresentation of news reports, like the Australian claiming the Belgian police were “idiots” firing blanks, without being called a condescending arse.

    Actually, you two couldn’t have done a better job if you were pro-Neocon psy-ops. Your treatment of me has caused me to react in the opposite direction than you wanted.

    And Macky’s psychological insults have caused me real distress. I have mentioned before that I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get actual psychotherapy. No ethical therapist would ever speak to a client the way Macky has been speaking to me. I’m actually quite suggestible which goes with being compassionate and empathic. I’m the sort of person who can’t stand to watch much screen violence. Some things make me cry.

    It’s not just been you two. I’ve had Habbabkuk tell me I’m a “real nutter”, RobG saying I’m a shill for the nuclear industry and a Neocon for linking to Wikipedia, TonyM accusing me of gloating over the ashes of the whole planet extinguished of life, Winkletoe and Tony Opmoc both slagging me off and Phil in real life talking over me to insist I’m a racist, though he made that right with me later,. But grief, it all takes its toll on my confidence. Is it really any wonder that I started to find more common ground with Resident Dissident, who actually spoke politely back and forth with me as if I were a real person?

    I want peace, and as I’ve said before, if we can’t achieve any peace on the blog, what are we contributing to the real world? There are no exceptions. You can’t pick someone out as a “troll” and decided it’s OK to be hurtful to them, because everyone’s idea of who is a troll is different. The only point in the cycle where aggression can be arrested is as it passes through ones self. I’m sorry for the times I have failed.

  18. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31897304

    Speculation rife as world waits for Putin to reappear

    Can there ever have been such importance attached to a planned meeting between the Russian and Kyrgyz presidents, in which they will discuss trade, investment, cultural and humanitarian co-operation?

    Such is the strange atmosphere in Moscow nowadays that Monday’s meeting in St Petersburg – assuming it takes place – will be scrutinised like no other.

    And all this because there’s been no verifiable sighting of the omnipotent and normally omnipresent Vladimir Putin since 5 March.

  19. Anyhoo

    They arhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D50AVVpiAIge all Black Belts….

  20. Brian, yes you’re real too. Sorry I left you off my list. And Suhayl and Arbed. And I haven’t got round to meeting Mary and Mark Golding, but I’ve spoken to them by ‘phone. And Arbed said I only just missed meeting John Goss at one of the demo’s outside the Ecuadorian embassy.

  21. “John teeny bits ( two percent ) of the over all mass will land… And possibly worth a few Bob Lol”

    OK. We’ll start a search party. Perhaps they ought to make meteorites the new reserve currency. Everybody’s got gold.

    As to the karate Brian. The Japanese masters were masterful, their timing and balance superb. Don’t know about the Italians as it never showed their act.

  22. Clark, I’m sorry to learn about your continued health problems. I hope things get better for you. I know you are sensitive, and sensitive people are vulnerable. I remember, it must be a three or four years ago, when we were discussing alternative currencies and gaining credits for ‘Hearts’ in what Ralph McTell called “a world that doesn’t care”.

    I don’t want to go back over old ground regarding Ukraine since it is still an open and tender wound for most of us who took flak in that conflagration and re-opening it is only going to cause pain. Hopefully the ceasefire will hold for all parties involved. Our wounds will heal. Theirs too in time. The dead none of us can do anything about.

  23. John, I refuse to classify loneliness and misery as health problems.

    Psychotherapy helped me before, but this was because my therapist maintained certain standards of behaviour. Basically he listened to me, reminded me of things I’d previously said, and didn’t try to dominate me or exploit me. After a while of this I developed trust. I could speak freely and the spiritual loneliness of life was no longer absolute.

    Human don’t treat each other right. It’s all very well to look at the grossest abuses such as war and torture, and there is some good we can do by exposing these and influencing the authorities to improve governmental structures. But the root causes of the problems are in each and every person’s emotional being.

    Humans seem to have two characteristics that lead to major problems. Firstly, nearly everyone wants to manipulate, dominate and control everyone else, and the main tool they use for this is communication. The second is that no one can see the entirety of their own motivations, and our need to compete, to win, to dominate is probably the motivation which is most well-hidden from ourselves.

    Consider propaganda. The primary mechanism of propaganda is self-censorship. The “Western” media simply doesn’t mention the Kiev fascists and the atrocities they commit, and likewise, the Russian media simply doesn’t mention the extremists among the east Ukraine separatists.

    But isn’t this how we all behave in everyday life? We have some row with someone, but when we describe the incident to a third party we leave out some of the bits that show our own fault in the matter. We do the same on behalf of our family and friends. How could any non-propagandistic mass-media be built from such biased components*?

    It’s not that I’m “ill” John; it’s not that there’s something “abnormal about my brain”. It’s that I’ve seen the big picture and I’m short on hope. I’ve seen that both peace and true friendship are highly unlikely, each for the same set of reasons.

    – – – – – – –

    * But there is hope, but it comes from a seemingly unrelated direction…

    We’re surrounded by electronic devices that work very reliably, and they’re all built out of variations of devices called transistors. But transistors are inherently imperfect. Their output is far from being a faithful reproduction of their input. They each introduce gross distortion, and that distortion is unpredictable. No two transistors distort in an identical fashion nor even in a consistent fashion over time, so it is impossible to compensate for the inaccuracies.

    Yet we produce audio and visual and other systems that reproduce their input with a very high degree of accuracy. Two techniques achieve this seemingly impossible magic of producing silk purses from pigs’ ears; negative feedback and digitisation. They work in essentially opposite manners.

    Negative feedback uses the output of a transistor as part of its input, but inverted with respect to the original signal.

    Digitisation works by using positive feedback to force the output to one extreme or the other; the whole middle ground is eliminated, but the output becomes predictably related to the input by being either full-on (“1”) or full-off (“0”).

    But most people don’t understand the mathematical underpinnings of these techniques, so discussing their use within social communicational contexts is very difficult.

  24. Fair enough Squonk. I apologise for my part in the recent rows and will try to calm my contributions.

  25. @Squonk, no problem with the deletions, but on a general moderating point, for a fair right to reply basis, deletions should ensure that rebuttals to personal comments should be deleted only together with the offending original personal comments also.

    This is a major problem with the loaded moderating at CM’s.

  26. Macky,

    Moderators are humans too. I certainly don’t believe they are working from malicious intent no matter what you think. However if you do disagree with a mod then hurling abuse at them is not likely to win them round.

    According to Craig’s Blog when Craig next posts (hopefully today) there will be no pre-mod restrictions in place. It would be nice if everyone could use the opportunity to drop the moderating (errm…) “debate” and see how things go from there. If Craig is sufficiently advanced in his book work to keep up with regular posting again then we’ll all have some new subjects to talk about. The longer between posts from Craig, the less the quality of the comments. Eventually it ends up with about half a dozen posters all bitching at each other 24 by 7 with the odd informative comment sandwiched in between.

    I’m thinking of pitching a blog-based sitcom to the BBC 🙂

  27. They’ll be interviewed at the Callanish Standing Stones on the Isle of Lewis Friday morning.

  28. Great idea for sit-com. We should crowd-source story ideas and script on your blog, then work out the royalty percentages. 🙂

    We have plenty of character actors to draw from. Hab could resurrect Ted Baxter.

  29. @Squonk, those who are deaf can’t hear the music, and those that are not being unfairly moderated against, can’t feel the bias; I have not been “hurling abuse” at them, although I have made critical comments here, so are you saying that you moderate at CM’s ?

  30. Macky, moderation at Craig’s is anonymous, just as it is at all major news sites. If you start trying to breach that anonymity, you are making an attack upon the site. Is that what you wish to do? I do notice that you were highly critical of Jon. Surely you wouldn’t wish to make moderation so uncomfortable that no one would do the job, would you?

  31. Macky, you noted earlier how Habbabkuk’s behaviour has improved. Do you think that moderation policy may have had something to do with this?

  32. Macky,

    As I’ve said before I help out technically with. Craig’s blog and I know It could actually do with more volunteer moderators to reduce the workload. As for me, I am not particularly good with this time of year – I don’t do winters well and, to be honest, I haven’t even read most of the comments there recently.

    If I rephrase what I said as “being perceived by moderators as hurling abuse at them…” does that sound better to you?

    Anyway wait for a new post is my advice.

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