Neo-Liberal paranoia is extreme, and it is everywhere
by Kit
I consider Nick Cohen an unpleasant man. His columns are smug, rude, ill-informed, intellectually dishonest, hypocritical and self-righteous. A perfect example of the modern journalist, in his natural habitat. However, before today, I never considered him to be truly, literally insane.
Russian Treachery is extreme and it is everywhere!
This startlingly subtle sentiment is the headline to Cohen’s latest…offering. I haven’t changed it or exaggerated it, with the exception of adding an exclamation point that is, in the original, only heavily implied.
In the past I have written detailed, point by point refutations of pieces from the Guardian – similarly bizarre ramblings from Cohen and Natalie Nougayrede – but when the message is so rampantly hysterical…what is there to say? There’s nothing to refute here but the loud and incoherent repetitions of made up facts and establishment lies, already disproven a million different times by a thousand dedicated and honest alt-news sites. The work has been done. The truth is out there. To not see it, at this point, is an act of willful blindness.
There’s no evidence any of the European “far right” are funded by the Russian government, there’s no evidence the FSB (or whoever) hacked the US presidential election, there’s no evidence the Syrian or Russian military deliberately targeted hospitals. Corbynistas aren’t anti-semites. Brexiters aren’t neo-Nazis. Hashtag fakenews.
A year of Brexit and Corbyn and Syria and Trump seems to have pushed the whole world of establishment journalism right up to the ragged edge, and recent frothing op-eds from the WaPo to the NYT to the Guardian suggest they are due a big fall and a hard landing.
This isn’t journalism, true mainstream journalism died generations ago…if it ever truly existed. This isn’t even propaganda, the coherent and dishonest distortion of reality to suit an agenda. This is rudderless, leaderless, meaningless. It is the dying breath of a flabby king. The wild-eyed, claw-handed, scrabbling desperation of brittle delusions impacting a hard truth.
It’s a drunk muttering threats in a doorway, an old man shaking his fist at the sky. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. It’s almost sad.
Almost.
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AMAZING COMIC!
Nick Cohen’s latest offering in the Guardian attempts to portray Nigel Farage and Julian Assange as representatives of a modern-day totalitarian Hitler-Stalin Pact, based purely on the grounds that Nigel Farage recently paid a social visit to Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy. He also refers to Assange as an alleged rapist.
But Ukip has always been opposed the issue of a European arrest warrant against Assange, whereas people on the Left (including many Greens and some Women’s groups) have opposed his enforced incarceration on the grounds that he has already been interviewed (twice) by Swedish prosecutors, the evidence against him looks concocted and he has not actually been charged with anything.
Currently, the evidence against Assange seems to consist of one split condom with no human dna on it, and the statement provided by a woman who was not supposed to have been staying in the flat with him, continued to boast about partying with him long after the alleged assault had taken place and was allegedly thrown out of Cuba for spying for the CIA. Meanwhile, Plaintiff 2 does not even appear to have signed her police statement. Not exactly a copper-bottomed case on which to pin an accusation of rape, but it does not seem to stop Nick Cohen…
I’ve read this article a few times – I followed a link a facebook friend posted on their feed – and I can’t find a single fact here. Sure, there’s a lot of sneering at Nick Cohen for being a liberal, and denying anything he’s said is true, but you don’t back it up with anything; no links to reputable news sites or academic studies, nothing.
I was willing to take a look at what I assumed was a fact-check blog for The Guardian (after all, liberals don’t have the monopoly on facts) but this is just another right-wing blogger saying “That guy who I don’t agree with? He’s CRAZY!” and going “Nuh-UH!” for a couple of paragraphs. I’m disappointed, but by no means shocked.
I think the point here, Richard S! Preston (what does the S! stand for?), is to just let Cohen’s writing speak for itself. Substitute every instance of Russian with communist, every instance of Putin for Lenin and see how the piece reads then, and who Cohen is taking his lines from.
Also, since when did criticizing jingoism become “right wing?” This is how warped the political sphere has become. It is very possible to criticize the Guardian from the left, in fact leftists have far more reason to oppose its transformation into a voice of third way-ism than anyone on the right.
Most criticism I’ve seen of jingoism lately has been dismissed as “unpatriotic” and “talking the country down”. As for Cohen’s article, at least he linked to other sources to back up his claims. Kit’s response does nothing of the sort. There was a chance for Kit to do a decent fisking (like Adam Worth’s superb piece on the absurdly naive pro-Brexit article Andrew Marr wrote for The New Statesman) but instead it was just childish sneering.
Oh, and the “S” stands for Simon. It’s my father’s name.
Richard – The above article is an opinion piece aimed at an informed audience. I understood its point and it was made well. Sometimes there is a lot of sense to the adage “never wrestle with a chimney sweep”. Arguing fact for fact only works when both sides act with integrity, otherwise you’re wasting your time and obfuscating your point.
Cohen acts with no integrity. Cohen does not link to sources to back up his claims. He links to a series of facts to do with Russia – some well-known facts, some disputed and a lot of hearsay and all of which are entirely unconnected accept by his own paranoia and circular reasoning. He interprets these in the form of a flimsy, inflated and hysterical opinion in order to, I guess, sell copies of the Guardian by tapping into public fear.
He leaps to opinions like “[Trump] sees Russia as the west’s partner against radical Islam just as it was its partner against Hitler” with no logical progression and no external link to justify this bizarre statement. He has clearly reasoned backwards from a pre-selected conclusion. This is not respectable journalism – it is ill-informed and sensationalist garbage.
Most informed people can see this clearly. You, however, do not. But this is not the fault of this article by Kit. It is beyond the scope of the article above, itself an opinion piece, to debate fact for fact Cohen’s article as – and this is the premise of the above article – it does not deserve this amount of respect, it is clearly intellectually corrupt.
You also seem to think a journalist at Cohen’s level deserves points for effort. He does not. If you glance back on this website you will find articles dealing in detail with all the misinformation peddled in Cohen’s piece. There’s some good reading there.
All the best,
Sooo… asking somebody to provide facts is wrong, but Cohen is definitely wrong because reasons.
That’s nice
What claims do you consider require sourcing?
The claim that Nick Cohen’s headline is what Kit says it is? – Well, that’s sourced.
The claim this is a crazy opinion to hold? Can’t really be sourced can it? It’s a subjective opinion.
The claim Kit has written many point by point refutations of other Guardian writers in the past? That is easy to establish by looking in the sidebar of this article
The claim there’s no evidence for Russia funding the far right etc etc? How do you propose sourcing to an absence of evidence? The point has been covered many time here by other writers. If you think there is such evidence, produce it.
The claim not all Brexiters are Nazis? You think that needs proving?
If it’s so easy to provide a factual refutation of Cohen’s articles, why doesn’t THIS post do it? Why bother denying the presence of Russia funding the far right, when there IS evidence, you lot just keep pretending there isn’t? You want proof, here you go!
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=russia+funding+far+right
Also, a bit disingenuous to pretend that every neo-Nazi group in the world isn’t anti-EU/pro-Brexit, but I guess that’s what I should expect from this place.
Read Nick Cohen’s work and see for yourself.
I did – Cohen at least linked to other sources, because that’s what journalism is about: showing your work, explaining how you came to your conclusion. Kit’s response is, as I said, merely a childish “Nuh-UH!”, when Kit could’ve just PROVEN why Cohen was wrong, instead of merely asserting it without a shred of evidence.
And I’m sure this and my other posts will be downvoted, because that’s what happens to anyone who dares to ask if something can be proven these days…
So does Cohen ‘prove’ his depositions with proven substantiation or confirmation bias? Your logic gets voted down because you disappear up your own eductions. Yours is fake real news…and theirs is real fake news.
Better than no proof whatsoever. I stand by my criticism of this post, and of this blog.
Cohen is no neo-liberal. He is an arch-zionist, plain and simple. He is all talk and no evidence.
He is using the typical hasbara approach, i.e. diverting peoples’ attentions away from the barbarism of the zionist state towards other matters that bear no relevance to the vicious vile zionist regime.
He has sucked you in, well and truly!
I didn’t see much mention of Israel in the original article, but okay.
Well spotted John….anybody seen binra?
Cohen linked to other sources for what?
Having a group of people in the media propagating bullshit by cross linking to each other with unsubstantiated guff is not journalism. Anyone can do that.
Cohen is an unrepentant Iraq war supporter. Even after all the chaos and death he continues to. The man is a sick sociopathic arsehole. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself.
Not content with the lies he printed over Iraq and Libya he then continues with Syria:
‘blockquote’ ‘To grasp the scale of the barbarism, listen to Hamza Fakher, a pro-democracy activist, who is one of the most reliable sources on the crimes the regime’s news blackout hides. “The repression is so severe that detainees are stacked alive and kicking in shipping containers and disposed off in the middle of the sea,” he told me.’
Cohen is an arch-zionist who supports the Yinon Plan.
What other kind of rubbish could he possibly write?
No. You don’t get to act high and mighty because Cohen at least tried to back up what he was saying, when this blog was nothing but as a 15 year old meme and flat denials
Act high and mighty? You need to stop projecting.
So in your world if Journo A makes unsubstantiated claims and then Journo B links to Journo A as evidence -that amounts to journalism to you?
The point here is that there is no evidence. Exactly what should have been linked to, to back this up – a blank page?
Once more from the top… if the evidence is faulty, then PROVE it’s faulty. Don’t just say it is and declare yourself the winner!
This is bad logic used to defend bad writing, and I’m done banging my head against the brick wall that is this comment section
Are you really banging your head against a brick wall.? A real headbanger would at least provide some dull thuds for provenance.
The problem with your logic and argument in favour of cohen and against Kit is that just about everything cohen says can be proven. It’s very much a case of “where does one start”?
I meant to say “dis” proven – apologies
At least he’s TRYING to prove his statements. Kit just says Cohen’s wrong and demands a pat on the back for it
“Cohen at least linked to other sources, because that’s what journalism is about” What!! Since when has British journalism (I struggle with that term as I think ‘lobbyism’ works much better) been about sources. Most ‘lobbyism’ in this country is about hiding or even making up sources. ‘One politician said’, ‘one insider explained’ etc Of course I would like it to be different. I think the writer is also making the point that in other articles he has contradicted cohen’s position with evidence and argument but in this case, it is so outlandish that he can’t. it is just such drivel.
Okay, once more for the children round here… Burden of proof rests with the ACCUSER. Cohen gave links to back up his claims, and this pathetic excuse of a blog just went “Nick’s wrong because I say so!” and you all clapped like the braindead seals you are.
I have asked for you all to provide proof, and the best you can do is go “Well, it’s so OBVIOUS!”, and “Well, read the other articles on the blog!”. If it’s so obvious, then PROVE it. If the other blog posts about Cohen prove he’s wrong, why doesn’t THIS blog post prove it? If Cohen is making up source, PROVE they are made up – just saying “they’re made up because they are” just exposes you lot as idiots who can’t back up anything you say.
I wouldn’t have come back to this circlejerk of a blog if you hadn’t thrown you hissy fit six months after everyone else here had proven they were impervious to logic.
That’s just silly. I don’t hold any particular affection for Assange, but a split condom with no human dna supplied by 2 women who went to ground shortly after their allegations surfaced does not impress me either.
Assange has been interviewed twice by Swedish prosecutors and they’ve come up with nothing as far as I can see (and I want you to underline this in your school notebook). No actual evidence. Full stop. And he name-calling merely serves to highlight the fact that you’ve already lost the argument. 🙂
Could you please tell me where you heard this, or would providing evidence be neo-liberal lobbying?
Also, you’re once again running to the “You’re wrong because we say so!” well again, as well as projecting your own childishness. Given how infantile you’ve all been when I ask for the slightest shred of evidence, I think I’m justified in being a little frustrated.
We have a stinker like Cohen in Oz…. Joe Hildebrand be his name. Ex and current Murdoch minion and now facetious funny man on a daytime tv show with a bunch of condescending, so-called celebrity women who rabbit on inanely, 5 days a week, sucking the last remnants of intelligence from its female audience. Hildebrand, I can only imagine being cast there by the machinations of the producers to show the female audience that although the female cast are taking them for a ride..its acceptable because Joe plays the role of a bigger arsehole than the women (sic).
What strikes me most about this article is that there are entire paragraphs that sound like sarcasm if read outside the context of the entire piece. Take for instance:
“Nationalism always breaks its promises because nationalists hate enemies in their countries more than they hate the enemies of their countries. Millions of American conservatives proved it when they voted for Donald Trump, even though he was an open admirer of a hostile foreign power.”
Huh? Is the latest conclusion pulled out of the collective rear end of the liberal media that Donald Trump is a nationalist? I would like to know what that makes Barack Obama, who people seem to have forgotten so easily rode a similar populist wave to office in 2008 and used “make America great again” style rhetoric in his speeches too. Nationalism is expansionist – Obama checks off that box and then some. But it doesn’t really matter because it’s a meaningless assertion to begin with. Then:
“If that is not enough for you, consider that the CIA once inspired fear around the world. Now it is so feeble it cannot stop a Russian plot in plain sight to manipulate a US election.”
Uh…? Even the widest-eyed of gullible political observers couldn’t be so naive and stupid as to believe the CIA can’t stop an alleged phishing attack if it wants to, right? These and other assertions are so ridiculous I think he can’t possible be in earnest, but the entire piece makes it clear that, in fact, he is. Ignoring evidence and taking everything on faith used to be the hallmark of the right, now liberals are taking up the same banner.
Anyway…have they worked out who is going to get Japan post election?
You know things have gone awry when the Graun is touting Boris Johnson as the face of democracy and light in the face of “Russian dirty tricks”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/10/putin-moscow-boris-johnson-hacking-democratic-national-committee-russia
The MSM will question Boris over the smallest little thing and yet they don’t ask him about his total change in view on Syria after his cabinet post.
The real skinny on the DNC hacks (for all of you Neil Breen fans out there — I’m his biggest fan):
WOW!…. Neil Breen has hacked into the matrix and discovered there is no Santa Clause..WOW!! Oh revelation! Oh joy! How could we be so blind?
P.S. and yuz reknn I can take the piss.
Post war Italy circa the late 40’s and 50’s. My grandparents going to church on Sunday and hearing the priest state that Stalins Russia/communist’s eat their babies. NuFin changed since then the lies r just the same the people are similar the hate is palpable the ignorance is abundant. It is so sad that here in the west when so many people r supposedly educated. More access to knowledge . More post secondary educated humans than ever. No sense of history . We here in the west r dying. Morally and intellectually bankrupt in journalism in philosophy in economics. TIME FOR A PARADIGM SHIFT B4 IT IS 2 LATE
Pope Pius the 12th, was known as “Hitler’s Pope” after a deal they did allowing Hitler(a Catholic) to do what he did without interference from the Pope………..
If/whenever you hear things like “Communists(or anyone else at all) eat their babies”, you’ve just GOT to know that it is propaganda and complete Bullsh!t………
Yes. That’s the infamous Concordat.
There’s a few of us who never shifted over to ‘riches for the strongest’. The golden rule (of care about others the way you would have them care about you) was just fine. A few individuals here and there may have a change of heart. But it won’t happen on any grand scale, which is why the angel told John ‘Let he who is doing unrighteousness do it’. You can try to encourage – only ‘encourage’ – people to care, but that’s all. It is a matter of choice. Then comes judgment.
Give only as you would (in truth) receive. I added ‘in truth’ because in self rejecting judgement we attract and receive punishment -or interpret our experience through the lens of denial to feel denied and deprived. Guilt inherently attracts or expects punishment – even if then redefined as ‘healthy, normal or ‘someone else’s fault’ and therefore worthy of giving pain to…
Once a false currency propagates and is accepted true – blame and hate become pervasive guilt and fear that drives a false economy and a false sense of social cohesion. False foundations operate as foundations just as an inverted map can give ‘directions’. But conflict with our true being.
True choice is proportionate to true worth. If we neither accept ourselves or each other worthy – we will not see choice in terms of creative freedom of being – and so don’t really ‘see’ at all, but are triggered to conditioned reaction of roles and strategies of survival set in our past – that re-enact such separation trauma over the present into the future – with no real presence of shared appreciation.
The corruption of the rule operates ‘give only to get rid of, so as to get from or at expense of’. But at the level of creative mind, giving is the way to KEEP. The worth I extend – I get to meet and live in. I can reach to your creative freedom – but I cant make you drink thereof – nor would I.
A bankrupt world has forgotten true choice with is inherent responsibility to thought and feeling – in exchange for a managed sleepwalking existence in miser-y. Perhaps because the ‘mortal mind’ simply cannot cope with what living calls for. That’s not it’s function or capacity.
Well, if the Syrian/Russian coalition didn’t intentionally target hospitals then they have t=some of the worst front line spotters or GPS/mapping technology because by the end all of Eastern Aleppo’s hospitals were destroyed.
Is that so?….The question is “By Whom”?
Can you supply us with some empirical evidence for your assertions please, Steven?
Look! the hospitals were destroyed by the Communo/ Ishmaeli coalition set down in the verbal of genesis 16;12…and ratified by Jane Standley of the BBC,,a good twenty minutes before you asked the question. So If that’s not proof then I’ll quit the bar.
Hospitals wouldn’t have been destroyed had they been identified as such, rather than hidden away. In any case, how many hospitals were really destroyed, and how many were propaganda “destructions” for the western media remains highly in doubt. What is not in doubt is the rebel deliberate bombardment of the large publicly identified hospital complex in west Aleppo (of which I forget the name), because they videoed it themselves.
The reason hospitals may have been destroyed is because the ISIS terrorists who took them over refused to provide GPS co-ordinates for them and – in fact – used them to house their personnel and weapons in their basements.
They used their so-called and self-styled “white helmets” to publicise attacks on their bogus hospitals.
We – and you – are all living in a different era, where terrorists use any ploy, regardless of the sufferings of innocent people – to achieve their goals and aims.
Look at what they did to the poor Yazidis.
However, they picked the wrong guy to mess with when they tried to take on Assad.
You may have been taken in by terrorist propaganda but he certainly was not.
Nothing like linking us to the EVIDENCE supporting you mouth, is there Steven.
LOOK!… Does it really matter who destroyed the hospitals?… I mean, the Israeli medical facilities in the Golan Heights can still patch up the Jihadis and send them back into the fray in Syria. So then Rupert Murdoch and Baron Rothschild can go on drilling for gas and oil there. Oh!..and also have Haaretz boast about all that and rub it in your face.
Oh dear.
I suggest you search out Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett’s reporting from Syria and Aleppo. Reverend Andrew Ashdown as well.
“Hi, I’m Steven. John Smith’s brother. Tom Johnson’s brother-in-law. I’m American. We are exceptional. We disdain facts because we can. We create our own reality, because Karl Rove says we do, and Karl Rove is another American, like me, but a lot more exceptional than me in that he was educated, but not too smart by even American standards, otherwise he would have been a Democrat, not a Republican, on his own admission. Now to quote one of Rove’s created realities, so that ya’ll get with the program, “[w]e face a brutal enemy who will kill the innocent for one purpose and that is to gain control of the Middle East and to use the leverage of oil to bring down the West, and to attack us again.” So ya see, we gotta turn reality on its head, otherwise it will look like we are the ones guilty of what we are accusing others.” — Steven Smith.
Good one Norman, Steven, Tom or Smith & Jones. Nearly fell off the sofa, laughing so hard. Even my dog decided to join me on the floor to better see what I was reading.
Keep up the good work.
But not by Russians or the Syrian Army.
Yes Steven and all those moderate rebels great humanitarians. The west and their oligarchs along with their representative members of various pairliament and governments r knee deep in crimes against humanity. If their is justice. Oba,ma and all his western rackateers will be tried at the Haig for crimes of aggression and crimes against humanity. Mr Steven Smith I suggeest u ask the residence of the newly liberated east Aleppo what their thoughts r on those TAKFIRI wahabbist fascist (moderate rebels). Imperical evidence ,facts and truth plus logic might lead u to some discerning insight when it comes to things of the ME.
P>S I suggest maybe u change ur sources of information
Cohen gave the game away at the outset. The Euston Manifesto was an obvious spook front to make islamophobia (and the resource wars in the ME) acceptable to otherwise leftist leaners.
Cohen thought he could gain the fame and fortune of that more eloquent paid windbag Christopher Hitchens.
COhen also writes for The Spectator, the little weekly sister in the Telegraph group stable. The readership there makes Berlusconi seem like a communist, so ascribing socialist views to Cohen is a bit laughable.
Cohen peddles his words for a fee wherever he can find punters (using terms associated with prostitutes is entirely apposite).
The only thing to say about him is that he knows nothing about consequences, living in a London bubble far away from the deadly effects of bombs.
I find it amusing females are planning a protest march on Washington Jan 21. Are they protesting a crackdown on free sex from Muslim rapists?
Is your comment relevant to anything?
Melanie – you really need to get a grip – of something, anything. What on earth is your comment doing on a site dedicated to meaningful discussion of relevant events and journalism?
Maybe Melanie is multitasking, browsing multiple pages at once, and meant to comment elsewhere, got distracted, and commented here instead.
It’s hard to tell, too, whether her comment isn’t a tad wistful — at first blush, of course.
Oh Norman, that is the kindest “interpretation” this creature is likely to receive.
Oh, my! I just re-read your first comment.
O_O ;D :’‑)
Their true colors are showing, and it’s, red red and red.
The commies have left Russian and gone home, it seems.
Right back where they started from – NYC..
Your comment is obscurantist trash (right-wing detritus).
I wasn’t sure how to read his comic. I decided it was irony. But it does cut both ways. Or does it?
After the McCarthyite insanity, you still think there are reds under the bed?
Wow, they must have a big set since it has taken 40 years for centrist socialism to poke it’s head above the parapets in the guise of Democrat Bernie Sanders and he sold out in deference to Clinton or was pushed out with rigged elections/threats against his life and loved ones.
What a strange post and what an even wilder claim to make.
It is fascinating that official American announcements that they are taking steps towards the political assassination of the leader of North Korea hasn’t garnered a single qualm from the beer-fuelled berk, Cohen.
Not to mention the actual political assassination of Gadhafi, and Saddam Hussein. Cohen is only fit to be a ‘real’ Journalist’s garbage can….
If their “success” against Fidel Castro is anything to go by, the leader of North Korea has little to fear.
They couldn’t “get”(topple) Sadam Hussein either, so they just bombed the s**t out of Baghdad and the rest of the country.
Reblogged this on idontbelieveitagain and commented:
Poor Old Cohen, it had to happen sometime.
Cohen’s an awful writer, and his thinking isn’t too great. How can editors let so much rubbish pass like this? I dunno, perhaps I expect too much, like minimal standards of competence? Anyway, how can the Russians be guilty of ‘treachery’? The word and concept of ‘treachery’ has a meaning, yes, I know this is a quaint idea these days, that words have meaining, instead of being twisted and turned like elastic bands to mean almost anything. Cohen seems to use it, and, Christ, this guy is paid to use language… well, as if it just means ‘super-most-bad-in-the-whole-universe.’ There’s something juvenile about his scary cartoon world. But, I agree, it’s a sign of singular desparation that he’s taken to ranting like this. For the first time in decades a political leader, and not just any one, but the coming president of the United States, is openly questioning the neo-con agenda which leads towards Moscow and war with Russia, if we don’t pull back and put a brake on the war-juggernaut that’s rolling in that direction and gathering momentum. Trump, love him or loathe him, is, at present, the best chance of slowing the juggernaut down, giving us a breathing space and time to think and act, beofre it’s too late.
What’s sad is how few people, liberals, lefties and conservatives, understand this, letting their visceral hatred of Trump blind them to this harsh reality. In this context the use of the Rolling Stones by Trump is interesting. ‘You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.’
“How can editors let so much rubbish pass like this? I dunno”
Because they get paid by the owners of the Guardian(in this case) and they know that(as Rupert Murdoch famously said years ago, “My editors know exactly what I want them to say”) The Piper calls the tune.
@Brian ,Australia. They allow debate and conversation . The rubbish will always sink and relevant discussion will always garner weight on this website. Thats why it’s called ”OFF THE GUARDIAN”
Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
UK mainstream media is just as much a splurge of garbage as in the US. Russian haters rule the MSM and keep up the pretense of so-called Russian Aggression totally skirting round the giant elephant in the room to the extent that they may as well be babbling on trying to convince people black is white. It has left the Guardian looking like a shabby has been – which it is, but worse, the wheels have come off including the steering wheel. Once upon a time, the Guardians readership thought it was a sad joke, now they just consider it a joke, as with so many other MSM toilet rags and still they ponder why there has been such a massive drop off in their ratings.
Cohen is, really, a piece of work. Assange isn’t ‘cowering’ in the embassy, he’s been granted political asylum by Ecuador. Cohen states that Assange is facing ‘charges of rape’ in Sweden. This is completely untrue and is probably a libel. Assange hasn’t been charged with anything, let alone rape. There are accusations and rumours, but not charges. It’s odd that Sweden hasn’t actually charged Assange with something, after so many years, which, surely, has to tell one something about the strength of the case against Assange. Why let him leave Sweden in the first place if the authorities believed he’d raped two women?
Cohen mentions, in passing, Assange’s lack of honour for not coming out to face the ‘charges’, suppsedly this is what real men, like Cohen, men, like Cohen who apparently have honour to burn, would do. The grotesque irony here is hard to overlook, or forgive. I dunno about the rest of you, but the thought of men like Cohen occupying positions of influence in UK public life fills me with disgust.
charges cannot be levelled under swedish law until the suspect has been interviewed
He was interviewed several years ago, and was allowed to leave Sweden with no charges laid…..The women themselves have apparently said they weren’t raped.
The definition of rape in Sweden is much broader and includes things that would be considered sexual assault in other countries..
A full catalogue of accusations against Assange can be found here..
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden
Please read to the end as this describes some flaws with the accusations.
If Assange had broken Swedish rape laws, he would have been charge by the Swedish police, when he was interviewed by them all those years ago. But, they didn’t lay charges, and Assange was released and allowed to leave Sweden, by the Swedish Legal System.
The “Allegations” of Assange’s guilt are Politically motivated, probably by the USA, bullying the Swedes.
But, the European countries won’t ‘stand up’ against the USA, who seem to Bully any country that ‘disobeys’ them.
And yet, the USA cannot run their own country in any sort of reasonable way themselves.
The two women went to the Swedish police to ask if Assange’s actions constituted rape – a classic way of avoiding being charged with making false accusations. The act is even more blatant given that the older of the two women was a hardcore Swedish feminist and was fully aware of Swden’s rape laws. The younger women eventually said she wanted nothing to do with the persecution of Assange and disappeared without a trace.
“The younger women eventually said she wanted nothing to do with the persecution of Assange and disappeared without a trace”
Are you serious? “dissapeared without a trace”?
In this day and age, the only people who “dissapear without a trace”, are those being ‘Liberated’ by the Military Industrial Complex……….
Sweden doesn’t need any bullying from the US & is happy to bash Russia, Putin and Assange if it will serves against Russia. One of the biggest anti Putin US NGO funded organisations in Russia is Sweden based. The woman running the campaign is an avid detractor of Putin’s and a right wing Russian elitist. Victoria Nuland paid her a visit to congratulate her on her sterling work of stirring up opposition to Putin.
Information from the Swedish Govt. is not very forthcoming precisely because they do not have a case against Assange and most of it’s ministers who oppose Russia would rather not admit it.
”The definition of rape in Sweden is much broader and includes things that would be considered sexual assault in other countries.”
Yes, you might be absolutely correct, but of course this is irrelevant since Assange hasn’t been CHARGED with anything. Moreover, the fact that Cohen asserts that Assange is facing ‘rape charges’ if he returns to Sweden, which he isn’t, is a prima facie case of outright slander. The fact that the Guaran’s editors let this pass speaks volumes about their respect for the rule of law.
I thought they had interviewed him – at the embassy, or didn’t that go ahead in the end?
It was delayed but I am pretty sure the interview went ahead in the end. Haven’t time to trawl the WikiLeaks twitter time line tonight and all has been quiet on the subject since as far as I’m aware.
From Craig Murray. A reminder Assange was interviewed by Swedish prosecutors last November over several days apparently.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/01/julian-assange-not-charged-anything/
Actually, that’s not correct. It’s perfectly possible to charge someone under Swedish law with an offence without having to interveiw them first. This happens routinely in Sweden. Anyway, Assange has been interviewed in relation to the allegations by the chief prosecutor in Stockholm who decided there was no case to answer. That was her legal opinion that surely has to carry some weight? The first person to raise the question of ‘rape’, which has a broader definition than it does under UK or US law, wasn’t one of the women involved, but was uttered by a policewoman, who, incedentally, knew one of the women socially. So one could see this as a personal and emotional response by the policewoman to the situation and not a calm and precise judicial judgement in relation to the actual facts. The policewoman is entitled to her opinon, but that doesn’t make it correct in law.
What I find strange and I’ve had difficulty finding out if this is normal practice in Sweden, which kind of indicates that it isn’t, is that after the chief prosecutor in Stockholm looked at the case and read the transcripts, she concluded that no crime had been committed, and probably thought about how hard it would be to prove any of it in court, and decided there was no point or reasons for going forward with charginng or arresting Assange and he was free to leave Sweden.
Then, somehow, the whole thing was released to the Swedish media and suddenly the case in all over the front pages and Assange is being called a double rapist and a monster. Within hours an ex politician from the Social Democrats becomes involved, because he too knows one of the women involved. He then decides to find another prosecutor and get them involved. Obviously he doesn’t look in Stockholm because the prosecutor in Stockholm has looked at the facts and dropped it. So the lawyer goes right the way to the other side of Sweden to Gothenburg, where he finds a prosecutor he knows ‘specialises’ in these kind of ‘sexcrime’ cases and as both of them have a common agenda, she agrees to look at the case again.
As far as I can assertain, this ‘fishing for a willing prosecutor’ is extremely unusua, if not acutally unique,l in Sweden, under Swedish law. The alleged offences, after all, happened in Stockholm not Gothenburg and the relevant authorities looked at the evidence and transcripts and droppe it, yet, suddenly a prosecutor in Gothenburg gets involved and questions the competence and credibility of the Stockholm prosecutor. This is very, very, unusual indeed, or unique, it’s hard to tell which. One would imagine that the new prosecutor in Gothenburg must have seen something incredibly important in the evidence or transcipts of the interviews, that the proescutor had overlooked to justify her becoming involved, no? What could that be? Yet, still she doesn’t order charges or the arrest of Assange and still allows him to leaved the country, when she has weeks to make up her mind. Then suddenly, once Assange leaves Sweden, she issues an International Arrest Warrant for him, still without charging him with a specific offense!
It’s all very odd. They believe they have a strong enough case that warrants issuing the arrest order , but not enough evidence to stop him leaving the country and not enough to charge him with something. They want another interview, yet as Assange has denied the allegations already during the previous interview, what do they expect him to say the next time that’ll change things? It’s all very odd. No wonder people think it’s all a frame-up.
Bigger Question!..Why, if he is such a threat to the establishment…is he alive and breathing? The bronze statue isn’t talking.
In my view he and others are on the payroll of M15/M16.
I like your work but I have to sit on the fence on that one. I can easily see Greenwald in that scenario though.
Since I so dislike Nick Cohen, it really is nice to see him in such pain. As ‘Dieter’ (Mike Myers) used to say during the old ‘Sprockets’ skit on Saturday Night Live: “His agony is gorgeous!”
Continuing my earlier train of thought, Cohen’s misery is also good news because it constitutes yet more proof that we have now seen peak New World Order. In retrospect, I think most of us will agree that 2016 was definitely a historical turning point: Brexit, Trump, Syrian victory in Aleppo, China becoming the world’s largest economy. All of this is why liberals are in a state of complete and total panic. They are starting to realize that there is nothing at all inevitable about their little ‘end of history’. They are starting to realize that, as Bush once said: “This sucker could go down.”
. @ Seamus Padrig. Liberals died with the colonisation of Palestine in 48. Last I heard the King of liberals in now in a Nursing home PHILL DONAGHUE. I my self think that identity politics has numbed the brain with terms of left right ,liberal conservative. Obama was not a liberal. He was well right of centre. Bernie Sanders was not a democratic socialist but a large L liberal. Hillary and Bubba Clinton were progressive conservatives. Jimmy Carter was small l liberal.
What does Nikki have to say about Israel operatives deliberately trying to take out Brit politicians?
The zionists in the US have cultivated a nest of traitors around the centres of power, who I label as neo-traitors, in that they place their loyalty to zionist Israel before their own country.
It seems the UK has now imported a similar nest of neo-traitors into the heart of UK Government.
When will people in the UK, US and elsewhere finally wake up and realise that zionism is one of the most vile ideologies on Earth and that the racist supremacist zionists will do anything to get their way, even if that entails destroying their hosts? Such people and regimes can literally be described as parasites.
It is high time that everyone on Earth realised that individuals like Netanyahu, Bennett, Regev and their insidious hangers-on are utter scum. They should all be permanently ostracised.
So I don’t know either you, nor Mr. Cohen, from Adam – but your article came up in my Google feed. Although I am an American liberal (not progressive damnit, I take the full mantle of liberal – go ahead an google my name – you’ll find my writings), I find you column to be nonsense. Mr. Cohen’s piece IS NOT filled with unrefutable facts, other for the fact they are true. Let’s just look at a few:
“Even connoisseurs of the grotesque have had to take a deep breath and count to 10 after watching the Republican president-elect of the United States preferring the word of Julian Assange to the word of his own intelligence agencies.”
It is a fact that Mr. Trump has sided with Mr. Assange over the intelligence agencies – just review the tweet.
“That Assange is cowering from rape charges in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy …” – this is also true, with the exception that we don’t know if he is “cowering” but he certainly is hiding out from the law.
“The FBI once harassed real and imagined communists it claimed were in the pocket of the Kremlin. In 2016, its director intervened on behalf of the Kremlin’s chosen candidate in the US presidential election. Russian enmity is hardly a secret.” True, true and true.
Now let’s look at your writing. “there’s no evidence the FSB (or whoever) hacked the US presidential election,” Well, apparently you haven’t read the report, but the evidence released seems compelling and apparently from our Senators, there’s much more from where that comes from which they cannot release.
“there’s no evidence the Syrian or Russian military deliberately targeted hospitals” – You can only believe this if you discount the BBC, CNN and the Economist. No offense, but they have better track records than you have shown so far.
Your article supposedly quotes Mr. Cohen’s statement about Europe’s “far right” (your quotes, not mine). However, the article you reference does not speak about Europe’s far right at all, not one mention. Ditto for Mr. Cohen mentioning “Corby” or “Nazi” – not there.
Half of your article, namely paragraphs 1, 6 and 7, are simple ad hominem rantings without any reference to a possibly verifiable fact.
Simply put, Mr. “Kit”, whomever you may be hiding behind your moniker, you are embarrassment to liberal thought, because apparently you have no ability to actually think. Your emotional brayings do not count as intellectual thought. The way to counter the right is to simply show that they lie with irrefutable reference to demonstrable facts. What you have done is a sad folly, designed only to increase the volume in your echo chamber.
there is an entire brit run wesite dedicated to bias at the bbc, the record of the bbc is far from reliable or impartiality.
I take it you didn’t notice or understand the title of this site and the section headings. Looking again might give you some evidence to juxtapose with your comment and see things a little differently.
Apologies I misread the first word in your comment. I misread ‘there’ as ‘this’.
Have you a link?
Go ahead and google your name? Your name is Tom Johnson FFS!
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the Russian government hacked anything. The evidence is quite compelling? What evidence?! And there’s more from ‘your’ Senators, which they cannot release? You have got to be fucking kidding me.
He’s a liberal and proud of it. What more needs to be said?
PHil Ochs: Love Me I’m a lIberal – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLqKXrlD1TU
All the lies have been dealt with seriatim on OffGuardian and on hundreds of other non-CIA-controlled websites elsewhere. Kit explicitly said that she would not bother dealing with each of them separately on this occasion, because Cohen’s article was just a compendium of every discredited smear that he could think of. Jumping in and pointing out that she hasn’t done what she said she wasn’t going to do doesn’t make you look very bright.
Tom Johnson? Really
May I google John Doe instead? It seems the same.
M0r0n…
I can find some writing by Tom Johnson but he doesn’t look like you. Your link is to a facebook account last updated in 2009 and without any content.
Anyhow….let’s talk about the points. If you don’t know Nick Cohen from Adam, maybe you should check out his other work before you defend him.
As for BBC, CNN having a better track record – you’ve read one article here and from that you figured this out? What have those media outlets done instead of reporting from ‘activists’ who are paid members of the opposition. What evidence have they even provided? US State Dept can’t even back it up when questioned. You believe this nonsense? They have a great track record alright – on total bullshit for regime change. One only has to look back at recent events in Libya and Iraq to see it.
Assange hasn’t been charged with rape. The Swedish prosecution service is investigating allegations of rape, very tardily and the arrest warrant is based on ‘suspicions of rape’.
Since the assassinations of left of centre policians Palme and Lindh, Sweden has gone full on US vassal to the point of politicians there desperately seeking an excuse to join NATO despite popular opposition to this amongst the general public. CIA renditions have been done from Sweden and Assange is absolutely justified in his fears that were he to go to Sweden, he would be swiftly extradited to the US and never seen again.
The allegations of rape are, in actual fact, extremely flimsy, and more on the line of whether or not he used a condom. The entire process is political and should now be thrown out due to the ridiculous length of time the Swedish prosecutor has dawdled over this case.
The rape allegations have been withdrawn…..the CIA has been lying to Presidents…..the report about the so-called FSB hack has been totally trashed precisely because there is no evidence…..the evidence of Syria deliberately targeting hospitals has now been proven with real and not fake evidence as a load of propagandist bilge(Brits view the BBC as a corporate owned propagandist platform)……the big “Europe” with a few exceptions is corporate owned far right…..
the people who will not see the elephant in the room are either vague in their understanding of the real world around them or are unwilling to view that world as it really is, usually because it does not serve their own interests or bigoted stance.
Assange has not been charged with anything. He has been willing to meet with prosecutors. There are no individuals who claim to be victim of his alleged crime. The UN say he is being arbitrarily detained and should be released and compensated. It is a witch-hunt. npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/05/465681231/julian-assange-is-being-arbitrarily-held-un-group-says
The official report into Russian hacking contains no evidence does not question the truth of any of the leaks. Whether it was the FSB or a 14 yr old kid does not change the fact that the DNC and the Clintons were revealed to be a disgrace to democracy.
I too consider myself a liberal, and I agree with Kits general take, that too many of us have lost the plot over this. Truth, balance and justice must precede taking political sides in this regrettably acrimonious debate.
‘“That Assange is cowering from rape charges in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy …” – this is also true, with the exception that we don’t know if he is “cowering” but he certainly is hiding out from the law.’
This statement is pretty much completely false. Assange has offered repeatedly to meet with Swedish authorities, even in Sweden, if he can get assurances from the Swedish government that he will not be extradited to the US [and get the Chelsea Manning treatment]. The Swedish government has refused to give him any such assurances. The Swedish authorities have also refused until very recently to come to Assange in Britain to question him. He is not hiding from the law. He is hiding from American vengeance, and wisely so.
So, in fact, Assange is hiding out from well funded kidnappers with a long record of illegal renditions, followed by torture and detention without trial.
Suggesting that he act ‘honourably’ by allowing the CIA and its allies to spirit him away from the protection of the law is an indication of how little Cohen knows about honour.
When you put it like that “bevin” it does sort of put the whole matter into real perspective. Would I allow myself to be handed over to CIA/US authourities no matter what evidence I could give in my defence? Answer: Only if hell freezes over.
Well said my good man.
If you use the BBC and CNN as “evidence” then I’m afraid you just lost all credibility. The media are simply a conduit. These are the same people who reported Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction as a statement of fact. Did you believe that too?
I assume that since you seem to believe BBC, CNN and Economist, you thought there were WMD in Iraq in 2002 also. Better track record, my a*se. What did George W Bush try to say? “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”
The report of 3 of the 17 US Intelligence Agencies seems to spend most of its time complaining about RT. In what sense is that hacking? The Russian news agency has a right to have opinion pieces on the US just as NYT has a right to have opinion pieces on Russia. Incidentally didn’t the then head of CIA call the Iraqi WMD case a “slam dunk” and I guess you believed him? Some track record!
You seem to be doing your best to make “liberal” a dirty word!
I realized after I had posted, that at the time of the Iraqi WMD affair, the BBC had tried to chart a course slightly independent of the Blair government and was castrated for it. It will not make the same mistake again.
When even seasoned anti-Putin writers like Kevin Rothrock and The Guardian’s own Shaun (of the Dead) Walker have rubbished the US government’s report on supposed Russian hacking of the DNC emails, your belief that the evidence seems “compelling” might be a little misplaced.
https://sputniknews.com/world/201701081049367385-journalists-report-russia-hacking/
Saying that there is much more from the source whence the report originates which apparently can’t be released is just another way of saying you have nothing left to offer that is not fluff.
BTW I do agree that the BBC, CNN and The Economist have better track records than Off-Guardian.org does in following lousy pro-jihadi sources via conduits like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which is based in Coventry, in the UK.
I have a feeling “Tom Johnson” might be a source close to Mr Cohen 🙂
Hi, Tom,
Now let’s look at your writing:
<
blockquote>“Mr. Cohen’s piece IS NOT filled with unrefutable facts, other for the fact they are true.”
Still kinda scratching my head over that one, Tom.
Are you trying to say that Mr. Cohen’s piece is somewhat “fact-free” or completely “fact-free?”
But I wholeheartedly agree: Cohen’s piece is not filled with unrefutable facts – that’s for sure. In fact, it’s pretty much bereft of any. True, true and true — all the way through.
And again you are indisputably correct, Tom: if there is an unrefutable fact in Cohen’s piece, then of course it would have to be true. For after all, it would be a fact, and by definition, a fact tends to be true. Always. As well as unrefutably irrefutable, generally speaking and on the whole.
And then there is this niggling little other bit that you write:
I don’t know about you Tom, but have the “right” ever really managed to master the seeming paradox of “lying with irrefutable reference to demonstrable facts?” I’m not claiming it can’t be done. But to “simply show” that they do that? Are you sure?
Then you write:
How did you know Mr. “Kit” was a American liberal? Really? Honestly, I never would’ve guessed. All of Mr. Kit’s wrongheaded thinking had me altogether fooled. He must be working undercover, then. But you nailed that, too, didn’t you, Tom, when you realized that “Kit” wasn’t his/her real name, and you straight up called him/her out in that very sentence on whomever he/she might be, hiding behind his/her moniker. That fuck*ng coward — eh, Tom Johnson.
Oh, and I almost forgot: thank you for setting us straight on all of the facts with this factually fact-free gem, which seems to be as close as you yourself come to the glaringly obvious fact of matter:
<
blockquote>. . .the evidence released seems compelling and apparently from our Senators, there’s much more from where that comes from which they cannot release.
And to think that on this issue, I was almost flirting with doubt. Thank you, Tom. Tom Johnson. Google-able, quotable Tom Johnson. Whose writings are apparently on the internet. For the whole world to see. And very proudly so! Because yeah! You are an American! A liberal! (And damnit, not a progressive, eh! Lest we should presume you to be a knucklehead.)
Thank you for playing with us,
John Norman Smith-Pilon
Glad you piled in JNS-P, as always, nail the &*$%@r to the wall.
You need to know that NC is a longterm supporter of the Iraq war. NC is someone who broke with 99.99% of his socialist, left and liberal comrades over the Iraq war. He has been moving to the right ever since. His position of crypto Zionist anti Zionist and Socialist has become NeoLiberal and Euro-Anglo-Zionist NeoCon, leaving Guardian readers puzzled, sad, or in a rage. Nowadays Guardian readers comments for his articles are limited, moderated heavily or turned off because every time he writes something he gets roundly contradicted by what is left of the readership. That said the state of USA journalism now is so bad that The Guardian still seems to be a progressive journal to most US liberals, whereas most leftwing and liberal Brits think it sold out to NeoLiberalism years ago. They even call it the NeoGuardian.
NC is an inheritor of the bizarre cult of British Israelism, which goes back to the 19th century and earlier. There was a strong connection between the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, and the Manchester Guardian’s famous editor CP Scott which helped bring about about the Balfour Declaration and the paper’s unequivocal support for the establishment of Israel in 1948. The Manchester Guardian (founded in 1821) became The Guardian only in 1959 when it moved its main office from Manchester to London.
To know more, look up the Euston Manifesto (which he and various other water heads (about 3000 of them) signed, signaling their resignation from the actual progressive international left and their full reorientation to the WOT and Euro-Anglo-American-Zionist imperialism).
http://eustonmanifesto.org/the-euston-manifesto/
Many thanks for this info. I was not aware of it and is explanation of a great deal and so much makes sense now, that didn’t before.
You’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere and arrived outside the bubble, my friend. For your comfort, return to the bubble asap.
Quite a few years back I frequented a forum, think it was about audio/video stuff. On most forums they always have a ‘General Chat’ section. Someone posted a question one day ‘Why don’t people get out of my way?’. They went on to detail when they’re walking down the street, some people coming the other way refused to move aside.
Now I don’t know if this was a wind up or some kind of social experiment but they sounded pretty serious. Now every time I hear anything about Nick Cohen I always connect it back to that post. Maybe it was Nick posting it.
Beneath Cohen’s article was originally printed a line to the effect that “Comments will open later”. But now (13:57 CET), that statement has been removed. They must have had a pretty good idea what was coming . . .
Cohen knows he’s perceived as a nasty and dishonest piece of work, which makes him even nastier and more dishonest. He’s got himself into a positive feedback loop and can’t seem to extricate himself 🙂
I had my comment ready for when it opened:
<
blockquote>From 9/11, western politicians from George W Bush and Tony Blair onwards bent over backwards to say that the west is not in a war against Islam.
<
blockquote>
Uh huh, that’s news to me. So how come they are still gleefully bombing the shit out of Muslims wherever they can find them? Is this cognitive dissonance?
Genesis 16:12 is why Ross Hendry ….. a verbal from the mob that invented god. Where Isaacs gets the real estate and Ishmael gets inscribed as perpetual terrorist: Exposing the devil is proscribed…and anti-semetic.
Thanks Kit for exposing yourself to the Cohen merde so that the rest of us don’t have to.
It sounds like he hasn’t improved since I stopped reading him – which was long before I stopped reading the Guardian. (It was too time-consuming having to go and wash after each article.)
Insanity is an apt term for dissociated identity or indeed a false identity conflict. To knowingly work destruction and denial of the true – (on which all depends, including any capacity of false witness) – is to determine NOT to know oneself or one’s own act truly.
Those who know not what they do, BELIEVE in – or indeed love – something other than truth (of themselves included), that they place HIGHER than truth. But they are WRONG about themselves – and as a result – about EVERYTHING.
Beware of identifying AGAINST the insane – or becoming the ‘the very thing that you hate’ as if to seem relatively SANE by contrast. True sanity is not lost to a struggle of self-validation over and against scapegoated evils – real or imagined.
The lie and the father of the lie is a self reinforcing wish to be who you are NOT. For the moment you allow the lie to tell you who you are, is your capture to its ‘protection’.
The belief that deceit confers power is the wish to give worthship to that which subjects you to slavery – and the willingness to lose or abandon the capacity to know the difference.
Self-specialness is THAT destructive a belief.
Binra. Any chance you can dumb down your posts for the likes of my poorly educated brain. I never really got on with Neutsche, probably because I found Einstein easier to follow and I don’t really do Confuscia. Just asking.
People may use the term insanity pejoratively (as name calling). I am using it literally for a state of fragmented dissociation. The identity running as ‘normal’ is UN-natural and Un-sane. Hence the screwed up world.
A ‘disconnected’ sense of mind operates on entirely different premises. In a lie of a world the only ‘honesty’ is power and lies are simply weapons serving the ‘true god’ (sic),
Unconscious fear drives extreme self-assertiveness – where the presentation operates an extreme denial (of refusal to own) one’s actual experience.
I don’t dumb down – but I do tune it to an honest request to see if what seems obscure can become clear.
The surface mentality – called our conscious waking life (sic) is the tip of an iceberg with most of our experience being discarded, airbrushed or rendered into terms that support our ‘habit’.
Disconnected people have to be addicted to ‘getting’ it from outside – because if they Felt Connected – they would extend worth rather than try to put others down so as to seem more powerful.
One of the reasons I witness as I do into the ‘world-insanity’ is because I SEE ‘consciousness’ as the cause – and in particular the disconnect or insanely fragmented consciousness that is ‘lived’ and ‘adapted to’ as normal. But see how EXTREME are the costs in pain and loss of such a conformity.
The self-specialness hidden within my/our own split-consciousness is exemplified by those who have chosen to play it out for us all to notice. What is insanity but loss of truth to self-delusion? But the paradox is that the recognition of one’s OWN insanity is the re-wakening OF Sanity. Those who believe their thinking ‘see’ OTHERS as invalid, insane and do not recognize themselves at all in the assignment of guilt or worthlessness. But a simple truism runs, “it takes one to know one”.
If you believed your very survival depended on asserting a lie – would you hold to it as for dear life?
If that belief was ‘covered’ in layers of ‘justification’ would you then have any conscious sense of lying – or more likely an honest righteous assertion of survival in a den of vipers – for how can a liar NOT ‘see’ anyone and everyone else but in the same light?
How can you expect anyone else NOT to attack you when your very identity is founded in attack as the best form of defence?
But in any relationship of some willingness and honesty – the revealing or unmasking of ourself is met with recognition, understanding and love. I suggest we have forgotten Who we are as a result of masking our true state and asserting the mask at expense of our true need.
Who is Neutsche? Just aksing (sic). 😉
Meant to spell Neitsche (German Philosopher) could just as well used Freud(Austrian psychopathologist/analyst) but found Einstein easier!
And I can spell Freud
In the context of the conversation in which you spelled it the way you did, it came off to me as hilariously funny, regardless of whether it was intentional or not. You mentioned something about uncontrollable laughter above somewhere above (I think) . . . Well, I read your comment and the way you had spelled Neitsche, together with the way that Binra carries on, and in this instance in a way that shows him to be a tad defensive in reading that comment by Disraeli, as though it could have been meant for him — well, I laughed until I cried and laughed and cried again . . .
I really enjoy reading other people’s comments. It really does brighten my day.
Well I’m so glad I was able to entertain you. Good job for you I have a wacky sense of humour (or puerile depending on your own bint) and don’t take myself too seriously – you do realize I’ll have to trawl through all those comments to see what kind of mess my dyslexic fingers have made.
goodnight Gordon, no Steven, sorry Peter? Simon? what the devil is this chap’s name? Oh, now I remember -Norman. Until the next time( and there will be – I swear by all that’s holy I’ll find you).
I found this OffG forum quite informative and entertaining thanks to clowns like you(and me).
Perhaps you don’t regard ad hominem as such when your investment in righteous judgement brings you your quota of entertainment?
I found it interesting that the Disraeli quote shared similarity with N Cohen’s tactics – and how easily it passed by me as if fact until I paused to look more closely.
Ad hominem is hate. Once identified as such what defence is needed?
Well at least you were able to make the connection necessary to distinguish,analyze and compare in order to be able to judge. I don’t have your analytical mind – wish I did, but all well considered responses have their worth whether it’s from intellectuals like yourself or “clowns” like me. It is said envy is a sin, I disagree, I envy those with a superior mind, good analytical skills and the ability to put across their views without looking like my rambling attempts and since I bear you no ill will, how can it be sinful? I also envy Sibelius and Viktoria Mullova for their musical talent and various other artists, so you are in good company, not only can I not write an opus or play the violin, I can barely read music. Now you know what you are up against trying to explain your thinking to someone like me – but don’t stop doing what you are good at simply because some of us seem to be poking fun. I cannot speak for Norman but I wasn’t in fact drawing any comparison to Gladstone and Disreali’s back and forth with your comments. I didn’t like what I read of either of those politicians policies as they both seemed to be orating to a select audience rather than commoners like me, but it has been forty plus years since I did history and Lord knows who wrote the books I was wading through or what their own agenda was in their representations of said characters. I think you already mentioned something along those lines in some of your comments?
No hard feelings I hope.
Not at all mohandeer. I followed my own joys throughout.
I appreciated the ‘diversion’ to reading some of Gladstone’s speeches and getting a feel for his contribution and his times. I read that commoners turned out in droves of their own free will to see him because he passed laws that actually recognized their needs. Within today’s world we may invalidate him on various charges – but he lived his times not ours.
My appreciation of qualities I see in others is a part of growing the same in myself. It takes one to know one. I don’t wish I could be someone else – but is I recognize something that resonates true and worthy in me – I acknowledge it and am glad of them. So I associate envy with self hate – that would – if it could – steal or pass off as another as if to become ‘someone’ worthy of what in fact they are not willing to accept and grow in themselves. So there is a difference in emulating or following an example adapted to one’s own character and desire, and presenting a mask that then MUST hate the real thing.
I don’t regard myself as intellectual – so much as an intuitive – but such as I grew the intellect in the futility of trying to understand life and metaphorically flew too close to the Sun – burned up in recognition that not knowing is the condition in which understanding rises anew and freely given perspective – that is preverbal.
The vocabulary of some intellectual ability is yet available to me as a channel of translation or expression. But it wasn’t generated by analysis so much as by curiosity and desire.
If I abide in arenas that are outside my current inner modelling – then I do so without trying to force meanings out of – as if I should or have to understand it in terms of what I already model. To be as a baby in a new world and grow a feeling of the relationships of that field from within it.
Coercion backed learning is very different from joy based learning. Where a sense of should or ought to – is NOT given power – something else rises as a movement of native desire.
Coming back to the overall subject – the idea that we should NOT be hateful and should be loving or kind is used as a coercive usurping of freedom to uncover and live the true of our being. I strongly recommend NOT letting hate feelings act out through you – but to pause and open a space in which a greater perspective gives a capacity of true response rather than lashing out at what always has past conditioning in it. We lash out at our past – imposed upon a present we are not able to see while replaying such a past.
Whatever you accept true of yourself is a launching place – not a conclusion. But where coercive will runs out of energy amidst reaction and depletion, your joy moves freely to alight where it will and it may be that areas that do not yield to force give themselves freely to a true receptivity. It’s different and perhaps a new trick too late in life for those who believe it is too late in life to change.
Hard feelings are those denied acceptance – that struggle to come up for acceptance while meeting denial – and so take on a sense of the power to deny us. How do we move through fear that we are not allowed to express or bring to awareness without meeting rejection and denial? Answer – any way you can find that works for you but in a sense – some way of being with that doesn’t either shut down or be taken over by.
Amidst all the stuff of our times that may be talked and debated here – is that we are living this day – and our time – and that is itself a journey of perspective. The capacity to stay open with the difficult is the depth we can open in joy – and be undone of rigid and unyielding dissonance of self. A lot of ‘control’ is really the damping down of consciousness so as not to really feel. Joy can be more threat than pain – because pain is the devil you know but joy awakens the unwillingness to live inside the cage of pain. But I take no joy in seeing others in pain and would rather have people to play with than compare myself to as if to ‘become more ‘better! (deliberate grammatical choice there).
I have printed off your reply so as to remind myself of the comments you made. Unfortunately, so much of what made me angry in the past(the Biafran suffering is just one example)has ingrained in me a sense of futility. Then came alternate news sites. Now I am what many would call a keyboard warrior, constantly trying to get news out that is based in fact and truths in the hope that those who read it will know there is a different interpretation of events. I still let the anger best me, but hopefully the years of feeling futile in the face of so much ignorance and cognitive dissonance can temper ire and substitute it for constructive(hopefully)dialogue. I can and have changed over the years and accept that all I can do is give it my best shot. I “hate” the ceaseless, mindlessness of bigotry and though you may disagree, I do not intend to let it go. It fuels me to react, which of course is the exact opposite of what you would advise, but if it galvanises me into making a contribution to inform where there is utter ignorance, I see it as a positive thing. As for envy. I still wish I could play a violin like Viktoria and still love to listen to Sibelius and wish I had their talent for creativity and accomplishment, even though it makes me feel inferior with respect to their accomplishments, but I doubt very much they have the same passion or caring I possess in trying to right abject wrongs with my fellow human beings. In that respect, many people, far more gifted in other things, are not elevated in my mind. There is no point in my trying to emulate others who impress me since I can only ever be me, the sum of my life, experiences and knowledge are who I am.
I may not be Einstein, but hay, do I really need to understand the science of why I don’t float off the planet(except in my dreams)and the answer is no. If I don’t stay true to myself, that part of me of which I can feel good about, is betrayed, the trick is to know that part of me which is not all I would wish it to be and try, pretty much on a daily basis, to strive for mastering those failures.
To you it might sound like an oversimplification of understanding and enlightenment, but I just don’t have the smarts to delve deeper than that.
Thanks for the time you gave me in your response and I will study it from time to time as a reminder, the printed copy can go in a spare photo frame easily accessed.
When you listen to music that truly moves you – you are co-creational to its being. Music is not manifest unless it lives in you. As a musician I testify that making music is alchemical in its power to transform sickness in the the Soul to a truly felt Soul connection – because such sickness is the block to true presence. I also testify that creativity does not occur in a vacuum but to a receptive or magnetic power that is as simple as listening and being moved. This synchronicity transcends time.
My response to your association of anger and hate with power is similar to that regarding envy.
The experience of anger is a force that is usually squelched and bottled up or projected away – out at whatever is associated with its cause. But opening the anger to feeling operates a purge within me that I often use Jesus and the moneylenders to illustrate – only I update it to clearing out the moneylenders in the Template. The Template level of our beliefs and definitions is what we operate from – and it is also where the ‘middleman’ interjects scarcity and control. In his day the Temple was where culturally mandated rituals required items or animals that the temple merchants had a monopoly on providing at extortionate price. This cartel of private interest operating in the place held for devotion, teaching and healing is not just a political thing but a pattern within consciousness itself. I hold that Jesus was demonstrating dramatically that what has NO belonging in you is to be swept out or shaken off. The sickness that is felt in meeting the evils of humanity upon its own is inherently working to undermine your integrity of being unless you actively dissociate from it – and the force that can drive us insane becomes a purge to a deeper honesty of being than we would or could otherwise access.
I feel that a large part of discernment is simply the result of refusing a hate-founded or fear-defined self – such as to feel it rather than act to shut it off or project it away. It is maddening and yet these conditions are the conditions in which a deep honesty is absolutely needed – and all the crap is an indulgence that cannot be afforded. And core honesty is not sick – but clean. Once this sickness isn’t part of your acceptance you feel it in whatever shape or form it presents and choose not to partake in the collusion to squelch it or scapegoat it – and so there is an energetic communication that opens which otherwise is lost to the dynamic of conflict or conflict suppression.
Compassion is a spaciousness of being that embraces the unthinkable, the unforgivable and the damning. If you have ever been undone (of hurt and rage) from within you know the miracle of this. So I don’t seek to invalidate or deny that we feel what we feel – and yet such feelings arise from core life issues that go back to separation trauma and imprinted beliefs and strategies. Terror operates a fragmenting dissociation as a defended amnesia. Rage can drive a lifetime’s ambition to overcome all obstacles to getting what it demands. In other words we carry such a past presently in various interlocking patterns of reinforcement and it is easily triggered and manipulated as a way to influence behaviours and outcomes. Just below the surface perceptions.
I don’t feel it my place to judge others for their choices and when I do – I notice I am the one who suffers the result. I feel for bringing more awareness or spaciousness of being so that we make choices that are truly informed rather than falsely framed substitution for choice. Fake news is also a fake self-narrative. Can we deal with the outer while persisting the same inner? Do we want to ‘succeed’ in banishing symptoms that alarm us to “out-of-true”, so as to become so identified in self-illusion as to become unreachable? But – CAN we succeed in denying the gift of life so as not to hold consciousness of what we are created to be? In time and for a time yes – but where the denial is – is pain. Hate is pain of treachery and betrayal… of love – is it not?
But I hold there is always a greater perspective available to the desire and willingness to receive it. Grievance locks the mind in the past and never lets go, making a religion of suffering and death. How many do not hush in reverence to this ‘god’? Yet whatever sacrifice we make, it will never embrace or recognize us – being only the idea of gaining power from pain and death and calling that life. Extreme? Look directly at what humanity sacrifices to protect and maintain. It takes many forms but they all lie. So rather than feed hate to hate I feel to open my mind to truth that recognizes, embraces and extends a sense of connected worth. I’m using words here but intimacy of being is wordless.
But when I choose to express in words I feel for the green light of a lack of dissonance so as to be clear of the dark arts of faking and manipulating communication. Even if my offerings are long and dense – they are not promoting division and conflict – even in willingness to interpret these as symptoms of a deeper malaise.
Need a “z” there, NP! And the vowel that you sound, in German, usually comes second: “Nietzsche”.
Oh great, not only did I have Norman laughing his socks off at my dyslexic fingers,well the “u” is right next to the “i” on the qwerty key board(Norman and I rarely disagree on any of the subjects we post on, so I have a lot of time for him – he’s quite informative) I also managed to miss out the “z”. I feel so much better now. I just found Wiki and looked up Niet(z)sche and you are of course correct but in fact I didn’t use the “z” and it still took me to the right page. I guess that means that an awful lot of us don’t know the German spelling for a famous chap. Does this mean I can pull Norman’s leg? Thanks for the input.
A little leg-pulling, now and then, keeps us all on our toes, M!
Oh, my! How I hate it when that happens. But in my defense, I was well-nigh hysterical with laughter even as I was trying to type my comment . . . and then there is that chronic “keyboard dyslexia” that I suffer from and for which there appears to be no cure . . .
. . . and anyway, the misnaming of Nietzsche as “Neutsche” in the context of the exchange with Binra still strikes me as funny after all these many weeks . . .
Regards,
–N
The “S” on my keyboard is wonky and when it misfires, and what should be the plural goes singular, I often end up looking like an illiterate twat trying to get away with typing above his pay grade. Oh well!
Good ‘un. That got me laughing, I’ve been typing well above my pay grade for a long time, hasn’t stopped me though. Nice one.
…Alphabet Ubermensch…
The quicksand effect, of alphabet soup
if coursed last will astound and then drown you
That analogue broth brews there in the trough
for the terms of interminable sentence.
Albeit shemitic, if a.e.i.o.u. is phonetic,
then gods’ name is mighty,
unpronounceable.
If you wish,play this shtick this, interlocutory quiz
and curious sink where the silence is coming..
…which will make you a very bad listener:
liminal limericks from the limbic limn limbo
Just received a comment from StAug on the spelling of Neutsche – not only did I press the wrong key and put u instead of i Neitsch, but I missed out the z and according to Wiki, which I just accessed, the i should come before the e. All in all it’s a wonder anybody had a clue who I was referring to. Correct spelling: NIETZSCHE. StAug had the right of it, now I am the one who is laughing to the point of tears at myself. (I dare say St.Aug is as well – probably thinks I’m an idiot) I’m not, just can’t spell for toffee and my hand to eye coordination isn’t that brilliant, but the rest of my brain is just this side of senile!!!
In any other context, Neutsche would just have been the result of a series of unfortunate keystrokes and wouldn’t even have registered for me. But against the backdrop of Binra’s style of expression and as a plea in behalf of the “poorly educated,” it was for me a stroke of comedic genius. I was just trying to give credit where it was due, and still it is getting a chuckle out of me . . .
Aye!
Nah, M, we all make mistakes or misfire at the bridges of our various comment-Starships… ’tis only human. I only laugh at cat gifs anyway.
Btw, M, perhaps you or Norm can clear this up for me: what IS the difference between a “like” and a “thumbs-up”…? Or is this just another example of Existence becoming ever more unnecessarily complicated by barely-detectable increments…?
The only difference I can tell is that if you hover over the “Like” you get the name of who actually liked your comment, other than that, haven’t cot a glue.
Ah, so you can “like” anonymously if you… like. Thanks, M!
its azamnig waht yuo cna raed adn slitl fllwoo teh gsit fo.
Spelling is working magic – but the resonance of the communication channel is a field of a like vibrational atunement.
Or put the other way around – if not on the same wavelength – communication is distorted, filtered or denied.
I didn’t feel to read much of Nietzsche – for all his insight into the mask of piety and its weapon of guilt – alloyed with a sense of true nature forcefully overcoming the fakery – which is not what I hold true. I sense that fighting evils of his day set him in the road to madness. But I relate to a story about him – where upon meeting someone whipping a horse, broke into tears and ran to embrace the horse. Balancing an open feeling being in a world that is predicated on denial of true feeling is the art of integrative being. I don’t close the book on him so much as follow or alight in what resonates for me now.
Perhaps defensiveness was correct – but any attack on the form that ignores the content rings dissonant to me regardless ‘who’ it might be about. I found a glad tone in what the thread brought me – and that seems so for others in whatever form the outcome took for them.
” I sense that fighting evils of his day set him in the road to madness.”
I think the culprit was Syphilis, actually. Meanwhile, here’s a pic of Freddy N. you may not have seen yet…
https://tinyurl.com/hcoj8cr
(though I have to say, that looks more like Addy than Freddy and Paul Rhee doesn’t look himself at all… the Interwebs may be hoaxing again)
You are referring to organised religion – right?
That is one subset taking particular forms. I am talking about human beings – though the being aspect is what I am saying we are significantly and destructively dissociated from.
The core patterns of organized religion operate no less in ideological identities and institutions and power structures rising from them.
The deceit is better hidden from the mind that believes itself free – and exults itself in contrast to those it deems backward, ignorant and insane.
There is a core symptom of a sick mind – that MUST hate its projected guilt in the Other – where that Other can be anything or anyone on whom the charge can be laid and validated by social reinforcement.
A sane mind repents or releases guilt to a restored presence in which to recognize Others or its world FREE from the lens of hatred and rejection. IF you recognized that you hurt yourself by judging others – you would reconsider… unless of course you felt yourself worthy of pain. But then again – if you ascribe the pain to the fault of Others – your pain becomes your justification to break off communication, withhold your blessing and give out the measure you have ascribed them the power to do unto you.
Religion can be made of guilt, fear, hate and death – and it is. It can also be made to seem ‘above’ all such and from an ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ position – define all else to be mechanism or resource to exploit AND BELIEVE it!
Intellectomania is an affliction…snap out of it binra….. you come across as a borgeoise freak.
If intellect is used in my postings then I am glad it serves my purpose and my joy.
If snarky put-downs of self-superior smear tactics – of no substance are your comfort zone – who am I to disagree?
Why the attack? What’s the grievance? What’s your desire?
Do you get paid to comment?
Yeah. It wasn’t an attack. Mania I think was the operative word. Not sure what my desire is. What is yours? No I do not get paid to comment. And if you only ask questions to receive the awed reverence and confirmation of silence…them don’t ask them.
Well you may think your posting was NOT as I describe – or that what I describe is NOT attack, but I feel you somewhat open to communicate here – that is – you accord me some degree of worthiness of communicating with – and I feel that isn’t a denial or a rejection but a point of contact.
I’m not aware of any grievance with you – but only of yours with me for whatever reasons known to you. The questions I posited to you in my last response can be used for your own reflection. Grievance can and does distort desire. Emotional reaction can easily override a considered response for a temporary private gratification. Curiosity as to what motivates and shapes our thoughts and actions is not blame for those actions. But blame disrupts the possibility of such communications, within ourselves as between us.
Given you connection with Pavlov’s cat as opposed to his dog – is that not a desire to be awake to – and free of programmed conditioning?
That question is – I feel – extremely relevant to a world that is becoming ever more reactively polarized – and degraded as a result. If ‘THEY’ are manipulating us then THEY are aware of our fears and hopes and mine information that to use to hack us – rather than free themselves and therefore others.
I feel they offer an education service, to illuminate ‘back doors’ and weaknesses – that I can then address. But while triggered to react – they frame the focus of our attention – and no one wants to know about irrelevant things like ‘consciousness’ and identity because they’ve been tricked out of recognizing its primary contextual power to engage in polarized reaction. In fact we use the same ‘dark arts’ as part of our own masking and manipulation. That’s why I felt to learn to come from a different place.
Read and reread your comment in response to John’s enquiry here until I finally understood what you were saying. Now I can “like” it because it identifies so much that is wrong with our perceptions, unfortunately that doesn’t mean I’m cured of my misconceptions or my understanding of my own reactions. I do try to be fair but sometimes(a lot) I fall short – keep reprimanding me when I do, preferably in a way I can grasp. You never know, it might develop that skill of dumbing down for the likes of me which you state you don’t do, you might surprise yourself!
I hold that you are cured of your misperceptions but not of your belief that you must go through a process to heal them. When a habit is seen – it is no longer a habit but a choice. If you persist in making choices out of alignment with what you know yourself to be – then they are serving you in some way that is not obvious to you – and so you can be curious as to what that is. Otherwise you are in the position of demonstrating you are healed by living the choice that is truly aligned with who you know yourself to be. You recognize when you have truly changed when the conditions that used to trigger reaction no longer do – and the response that does arise is the witness to your acceptance of yourself – regardless of any outer change.
When we are not demanding that others change to meet our needs or make us feel better – they are more free to change – as we are more free to accept them where they are rather than need them to conform to some fantasized reality that never really existed anywhere but my own wishful imagining.
Summary, the mind can be used to play tricks by which to limit and delay ourselves in ways that perhaps served us in the past but do not serve us now. Believing is seeing. But trying to believe is trying something on – which is quite different.
Paranoia is extreme and it is everywhere!
Do we not have a deep undercurrent preverbal belief that something “Out There” is out to get us?
Isn’t this the nature of a mind in denial that then fears and expects to be itself denied?
Belief that one is attacked, reacts as if true – and the reaction is what gives meaning or reinforcement to the ‘experience’.
Think I might be getting the hang of this. Hope I have not shown too much hate in my comments in reply to others and wasn’t aware that I was being paranoid, but you may be right. The brain is a powerful tool, not least our subconscious, precisely because we cannot access it easily – or refuse to acknowledge what it betrays about us- either way I will take your words to heart and try and confront any demons lurking there in my grey matter. I’m probably not a good person, but I know that I am not a bad person either, like so many others, I’m just trying to get by and live an age old saying “do unto others as you would have done unto you” something Cannon Stallard explained to me when I was seven years old. Never forgot what he taught me that day, but may well have fallen short since then, but that’s never stopped me from asking questions, of others and myself and adjusting my thinking accordingly.
Many thanks, Binra. Admin will be interjecting very soon, although they cannot complain of you since you have dealt directly with the perceived subject matter(not sure what they will make of my comments though).
Till the next time!
No one is so hard on us as ourselves. If you notice you forgot – then that is the point of remembering. Unless used to trigger the blame game. I found that mistakes I am conscious of and uncomfortable with – become part of a greater willingness going forward to stay present with whatever – so as to find ways NOT to be triggered into what turns out to be blind reaction. Pausing for inner connection prevents auto-retalliation of no relational consciousness. I don’t try to be good – or I would be preoccupied with the bad 😉
A true self acceptance isn’t so much a judgment imposed as a recognition uncovered. The gift to your 7 year old self was a true foundation that resonated and stays with you. It may be covered over – but you know it’s there to be uncovered by living it.
Thanks Binra. BTW, that seven year old self has always been with me as was the lesson of the temple, (the old woman)and the sweeping away of adopted disrespects, but the very fact that Jesus lost his cool means he also understood where things were going wrong, two thousand years ago if we are to believe what the bible tells us. But that’s a whole different chapter.
I don’t know that he did lose his cool – as I say I read it as a dramatic teaching device to illuminate inner responsibility and not a political activism at all. Address the conflicting purpose in the Template – using the energy of the recognition of discord.
But then we read Everything through the lens of our current definitions or through a lens darkly.
He lost his balance in the garden when his disciples failed to keep watch – but even this offers a teaching for the willingness to go within and undo the mind of judgement. He did not take that mind to the crucifixion. His whole life was about putting it aside or behind so as to align with the true will of the situation.
So he could read the hurt beneath the hate and respond to the nature of the innocence beneath the hurt. If you SEE another as in need – do you lose your cool with them? No we get cross when we feel crossed or betrayed or let down by what we see as the failure of others to meet our conditions. Our ‘love’ is usually contingent on meeting conditions – and turns to hate in an instant when those conditions aren’t met. Therefore it isn’t love – but a way of hiding or masking from hate – in mutual transaction.
This chimes somewhat with the “liberal” paranoia – because the conditions that support a fake reality are gone or threatened – such as to re-open old stuff that they perhaps don’t want to own. Part of which is honest recognition OF hate feelings. Which is the precondition for healing. If symptoms are always denied like whack-a-mole – then the nature of the dis ease cannot be uncovered – and so the outsourcing of inner conflict onto external displacements claims the power position and defend it against change.
One fear I see in the ‘liberals’ is that rage and hate is coming up raw and as the forces that threaten all they hold dear. Whack the devil down! But fears run as if truths in contagion – fanned and fed by a devil in disguise they take to be news.
A fear of loss of control to the rising of intense emotional pressure that will not be denied – at least not in its initial expression. A lot of stuff coming out in the open that triggers a lot of stuff in others and inflames and suppresses the natural being – unless natural being is vigilant for its integrity and doesn’t take the bait.
Jesus was mightily miffed according to Matthew(I think) because he turned over all the tables of the money changers, let rip at the pigeon keepers and said something along the lines that the scriptures say the temple will be a place of prayer and you make of it a place of thieves, or thereabouts. I think he was definitely looking through the glass darkly at what he saw and knew to be going on there. If Jesus could get angered by wrong doing it seems to me that those who followed after him would be entitled to do the same. Granted I don’t go round chucking money all over the show or tipping peoples chairs up but I live in different times and I’m not Jesus, so I let rip with my wrath when I see wrongs via a keyboard. I’m never going to be like you but I can live with my failings and forgive some of them just as I try to do the same with people I am at odds with. I’m not perfect, no-one is, not even Jesus apparently, but I never aspired to be and I wouldn’t want perfection. I can judge right from wrong in imperfection, and I wouldn’t mind if we could all agree to strive in that general direction – never gonna happen of course, because that is human nature, but it’s all about the journey.
If you were to look upon the defilements to your own altar – instead of looking for a worldly kingdom, (trying to put new wine into old paradigm) you might read ‘Jesus’ as an inner way shower rather than as a personality. I can tell you this is a sickening or putrid exposure – that most do their utmost never to experience directly. Much easier to hate evil without and fight the good fight than look upon and past what fear was made to hide.
Now I am not saying I need to believe he didn’t vent anger – but I already attempted to communicate about that.
“Who is without sin – let them cast the first stone”. Well the wish to SEE your sins on the OTHER and ‘stone’ them so as to eradicate your sin on the scapegoat is why those who shout first and loudest are those who fear exposure within and need to direct it away.
So we can all define forms of classification and make some forms ‘evil’ and others socially acceptable. But the issue beneath them all is the abuse of Life – be that others, our self our world – to feed private fantasy gratification and act it out upon them. We covet this as like unto our ‘self’ because we MADE it. But it embodies itself in such a world as war, sickness and deceit to which the living are fed. People seem to hate truth being withheld or denied them by others without a moment’s pause to recognize the same in themselves. Or only to see their own secret mind and project it onto a ‘not knowing’ and react as if true. Perhaps because an under world also operates the belief – ‘everyone does it’ but don’t get caught – for when someone is caught (or delivered up as a patsy) the mob hate enacts the magic ritual of transferring guilt onto that one and killing it – or invalidating and excluding them – so they become ‘sin-eaters’ by proxy – or legitimate targets of hate and ridicule.
Jesus didn’t seek to attack symptoms – nor judge or drive demons out of those who were sick or in need and asked for help. (Though that was the primary paradigm of the times). He brings it into the light of a wholly present and embracing awareness. That which grows in the dark cannot exist in the light – and in the modern day the unaccountability of the ‘deep state’ or various rogue agencies or corporate lies and regulatory protection rackets all manifest the personal agenda of private gratifications upon the abuse and destruction of the living – including themselves. The lie and the father of the lie are one – but addressing the lies without understanding their root – is to grow seven heads for every one cut down.
So do we get mad with rage because we don’t get what we want? Or because we get what we do NOT want?
The investment in self, identity and world is our personality structure. Some here laugh at others having to adjust to a reality shift as if they are NOT themselves built on shaky foundations. As if rage or hate is a reliable power and aligning in it one’s true protection – indeed it can be an addiction to some sense of being alive – within a heavily shielded and defended fear of life.
Trying NOT to be hateful gives power to hate by taking definition from it. Likewise living so as not to allow the fearful to happen. “Resist ye not evil” means don’t feed the troll. Whatever we focus upon, we feed. If we look at the darks arts of deceit – let it be to recognize who we are NOT – and release that from our currency of thought and meaning. Just hating and fight evils becomes the thing we hate. Look at anti-whatever’s! But true witness of an integrity of being is from a different foundation than a vendetta and brings different fruit. Disintegrity is the condition in which contagion spreads inflammation and dysfunction – but periodic inflammations are part of maintaining a strong life. Private destructive agenda cant usurp and control a strong life – hence the free sweets, false freedoms, self-inflations and ‘gifts’ with strings attached. regardless one’s political inclinations, we need to attend our foundation – because that’s where the attack is leveraged – not in the show.
Agreed with much of what you said, still find some of your tenets a bit untenable, but on the whole you probably nailed it. BTW you ARE getting much better at dumbing down for people like me. Like it or not, I’m having a positive impact on you(my interpretation)you are writing your understandings down in a way that I can follow. (That isn’t of course, proof positive, but surely indicative?)
I see this as the aligning power of a relational field. I tune in to what I feel of you in ways that bring what I write into specific focus – and correct me if I’m wrong – but when a degree of trust or relationship opens up there is less ‘armouring’ and its easier to engage. We don’t realize the defences that were running until they fall away. But then we enjoy ourselves and aren’t focusing in what isn’t there any more and have more free attention for what is here to appreciate. You know I don’t write to be right – but to open perspectives that may be helpful.
Right again. You are patient, tolerant, thoughtful, perceptive, astute, good natured and generous with your time and effort. You are NOT vengeful, spiteful, cruel, arrogant, sneering or superior. In short you neither sugar coat nor obfuscate, you simply tell it as you see it, that’s a big thumbs up!
But why would that not be the normal culture of communication?
Because we identify in story in ways that distort, filter and limit our perspective?
Polarised in reaction to what we identify against?
Trying to impact, influence or change others?
Once that kind of currency establishes itself as the norm, willingness seems naive .
Honesty is the condition in which the true isn’t hidden. And so truths are ‘sanctified’ to adulterate and usurp the currency – by appearing to stand for the good and against the evil. And if you are not with us – you are one of them! You know how it works. Everyone can see through the ploys of others – but only in those ploys they are aware of in themselves – and yet don’t notice that they do.
You gotta wonder who invented the slogan “You’re either with us or against us”. Amazing thing to say, discourse not allowed, no grey only black or white, no alternative thinking, no opportunity to rethink, just a complete shut down of any communication. Just incredible totalitarianism. Don’t know if you are aware but Pavlovscat7 seems to think we should “rent a room”. I’m curious why he/she should feel that way since the strange poems take up so much space on the site. I have concluded that he/she needs no enlightenment because he/she is far superior to meself. Anyway, I get bored with reductive argument so I will just delete his/her quaint posts, can’t think why he/she is unable to do the same, can you?
The shutting down of open communication under the ruse of pain or terror is nothing new – its a kind of emotional blackmail – but it puts those who receive it on the spot as to whether they have their voice taken away or stand in whatever comes from staying in communication – both internally and in society.
After 9/11 I saw almost NO questioning or challenging voice anywhere.
That which you cant open dialogue about is cloaked in fear and guarded by fear.
In some instances we become aware consciously of fences we may otherwise not have really noticed – because we imbibe the taboo inductively. But once we walk out the boundary of that identity – we are outside the unspoken ‘law’ of the group identity – and awaken the need to align and follow an inner directive.
With regard the subject of this article, your last statement is pretty much bang on as to how the liberal paranoia gained such traction. Imagine if we had done as you suggested and questioned, even demanded that dialogue should be encouraged rather than shut down, despite what Pavlov’s latest claim suggests, much of the cognitive dissonance that has enabled the false narratives and hidden agendas might have been exposed and seven countries bombed by Obama might never have happened. The more people who are alerted to the specious tactics of the lying rhetoric of the perps at the top with their voices unchallenged, the more likely our voices are heard and feared for what we might expose as the true nature of those engineered and manipulating propagandist claims. Whinging after the event without changing the foundations underpinning that which has taken place does nothing to deter or prevent the protagonists continuance with their mendacious claims but empowers them to repeat what worked in the past. I’m up for taking them on, I don’t have your wordcraft, but I can take a stand against that which I believe to be faulty in it’s premise and the more of us who can recognise the secrets untold and the spoon fed double speak deceptions, the better to remove each brick in the wall until the light dawns.
True dialogue is never two sides. It is always transformational to a step taken in common. But willingness to dialogue is the willingness to at least pause our own story and open to hear another perspective. This is very emotionally demanding and very rare.
Binra. The last question was rhetorical, I already know the answer, I may be dim witted, but I’m not entirely stupid and I’m sure you already know the answer.
Yes but the belief we know is the way to neglect to grow 😉
…….DEM VEHMGERICHT VOLK……..
When ihsous just was christmas name,
No wijsseggers then riding came…
Marie Claire, said father Joe, this little chippie I did not know, one day become, next day bego,
the shinning star of theists’ show:
DEM MAGI late inscribed das script,
that allegoric crock of IHS…
His will be gone, our kingdoms come,
we all in vain just made it fit:
sheeezh! mohandeer and binra…get a room.
Thumb your nose all you like or write weird shit, it reflects as much on you as it does on Binra and I, so who are you to point the finger?
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone
The lament it begins and on it drones
But with malice of wit your true skill you hone.
And how yourself and binra use strawman verbals and ignoratio elenchi as refutation reflects on you and binra as you ascribe that false witness on me…SEE!, I can do it to? This world is ruled by jungle law, made art form..mate! While you and binra hold hands in your little, mutual admiration, self-depreciating, love in…the predators and their agencies are doing what they always have done and their concern for the body count is in inverse proportion to the potency of your so-called, investigations and revelations of your own and of human emotions, positive or negative, as you apportion it to yourselves and others. When the forces of dominion come at you and yours (absit omen) are you going to protect yourself and disarm them with a dissertation on the pernicious nature of hate? And while you two clap hands and play “Down Down Baby” in the corner..the people and the agencies who microwaved those seven buildings in Manhattan are looking to their job sheets to see which country is going to rise or fall this season for the maintenance of dominion. Are you fools?.. or is it your MISSION, to deliberately give people the idea that peace, love and understanding is the cure for the forces in their faces that don’t care how many of them live or die? Missives like yours are the very things, to the very purposes, of the Chomskeys of this world. I live in hope that you are as silly and fragile as you sound and are not on the Chomsky Job. ..Either way, I’ve got some reloading to do:…Tell me I’m a naughty boy.
No!
Again I wonder why, if you really dislike the raport that Binra and I have going, you would still choose to respond in defence of your remark? Why would you want to get involved in our little “rent a room” scenario? Why not just disengage and delete, or should I book a room for three?
Pavlovscat7: For crying out loud! Do you really view the exchange of understanding as a competition? How do you think the neo liberal seduction achieved it’s intended goals? Answer: Because people did not question, did not wonder at the language used to gull them, did not have discussion as to the guile that was used to entrap them. You don’t fight their kind of manipulation without discourse and the exchange of perception. Contribute something to help understand how to fight the enemies of truth or just bitch and moan at those who want to arm themselves against it. Why are you so resistant to the exploration of fundamental issues regarding the success of the neo liberal gloop?
….Le ssons de ge’e’z…
Something spitted out the sun
The sun there spits out all her sons
All that rain, a great big flood
all our vain for just IHS blood:
The nailed son there pondered some..
..the links!, those finks!..this stinks he thinks
all their pain to rule this mud:
He knew then what spitted out the sun
you anthropomorphic sons of the gun
the sum is one..pons asinorum:
I have considered Cohen to be a totally dyed-in-the-wool zionist for some years now.
Invariably, anything he writes turns towards promoting zionism and israel.
He has become a bore.
It was said of Disraeli “He has become inebriated by his own verbosity”.
These days, the same can be said of hasbara lackeys like Cohen too.
There is a solution: don’t buy or read The Guardian.
Sorted!
I think the time has come for boycott of Guardian and other corporate media including BBC. No clicks = zero revenue. I broke my personal Guardian total boycott of three weeks yesterday but have just reinstated it seeing that headline.
I decided to boycott the Guardian shortly after the new editor Jonathan Freedland took over. While it was by no means perfect before he arrived, it went rapidly downhill. If I want to read fantasy, I will buy a novel.
Wot, you didn’t get the begging letter from Sarah Vine and throw money at her pro Israeli, pro Zionist cause?
How remiss of you. Presumably you didn’t take the opportunity to write a scathing response to her request for funding either. Our lives are full of missed opportunities. Fortunately for me(but unfortunate for Vine) I was still on their mailing list even though I only ever read articles by Chackrabotti and Seamus Milne. Such fun I had.
‘The honourable gentleman has become inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity.’
That one flew straight over my head, care to expand to a dimwit like myself, it might have been a good one, if only I had caught on.
It is a reference to a comment made by Disraeli after one of Gladstone’s interminable speeches in the Commons.
The full quotation is ‘A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.’
In other words, the person talks too much – and gets carried away in the process.
Excellent – thanks for enlightening me. Boy did Disraeli have a way with the English Language.
I googled up an archive of Gladstone’s speeches and found indeed very long and detailed speeches – but I did not find justification for Disraeli’s ad hominem – which here passes off as fact. Just as media headlines tend to do today.
Perhaps as Chancellor his speeches on matters of the Economy were different to others I have not scanned – but what I didn’t find was what Disraeli succinctly exemplified.
Over detailed yes – sophistric egotism no.
From what I gathered – Gladstone received the kind of reception that pop stars and celebrities garner in our day – which is a curious observation for a Chancellor of the Exchequer! So it may be that the attention Gladstone was largely given, encouraged him – but perhaps irked Disraeli.
I don’t pretend a quick scan of a few speeches to substitute for genuine study – but I found enough to leave a more open verdict upon Gladstone – and a keener sense of Disraeli’s tactic.
Take an accepted truth and use it to weave into it your own message.
Public perception was influenced by Gladstone’s 18 April 1853 budget speech, which lasted nearly 5 hours.
Disraeli no doubt played on this perception.
Queen Victoria once said of Gladstone “He always addresses me as if I were a public meeting.”
Disraeli made sure he was always on the better side of The Queen.
The speech made by Disraeli about Gladstone’s verbosity was delivered to an audience outside the House.
This meant Gladstone was unable to respond immediately to the speech.
The budget speech (delivered on 18 April), at nearly five hours length, raised Gladstone “at once to the front rank of financiers as of orators”.[33] H. C. G. Matthew has written that Gladstone “made finance and figures exciting, and succeeded in constructing budget speeches epic in form and performance, often with lyrical interludes to vary the tension in the Commons as the careful exposition of figures and argument was brought to a climax”.[34] The contemporary diarist Charles Greville wrote of Gladstone’s speech:
(From Wikipedia – not a reliable source for anything of a current controversy)
Thanks to JOHN I now know that your comment was indeed a good reference.
On this matter we come to opposite conclusions!
Here are other views relating to the man Disraeli’s quote would smear:
Taken from
https://ia601406.us.archive.org/26/items/gladstonesspeech00gladuoft/gladstonesspeech00gladuoft.pdf
“…it was only in watching him as he spoke that one received a due impression of the easy power he showed in dealing with any interruption that came from the audience, or in following up on the spur of the moment some line or argument suggested by expressions of assent or dissent. His readiness was amazing. Those of us who listened to him in Parliament used to think that the short speeches he made on the spur of the moment when some question arose suddenly in debate, revealed the swiftness of his mind and the combative force of his whole nature better than did the more elaborate discourses on which he had reflected beforehand. There was a fire, a passion, a concentrated energy of diction, in these extempore outbursts which roused his followers and cowed his opponents as the set speeches hardly could. No one had less need for preparation”.
“…whatever length they might run, they do show forth three of the rare and admirable qualities which placed upon him the stamp of true greatness. They are marked by a singular absence of bitterness. Indignation there often is, burning indignation at injustice, falsehood or cruelty but no personal acrimony, no note of malignity or vindictiveness. No man ever inflicted fewer wounds in controversy”.
Sounds like a smiling, smooth talking car salesman.
There’s YOUR reality then!
It might have been satire, but if it was then it was too obscure!
Guilty as charged.
I have described Cameron and Blair the same way.
So you love a good actor? There’s YOUR reality then!
Reading through the Saturday Guardian (delivered by mistake) ì was struck by how every other article seemed to be propaganda. Michelle Obama is nice, Russia is bad, Oliver Stones JFK film is “hogwash” (!!) etc etc. Refreshing then to be sent a link to Kit’so piece. Thx
Yes, I noticed a huge stepping up of ‘fake news’, nonsense and glaring omission from online headlines three or so weeks ago. Couldn’t face opening even one article.
it’s stupefying. i click on an article about a shakespeare scholar and there is an obligatory dig at trump in the first couple of sentences. i read articles on climate change and come across references to russian hacking (btw, i’m not a trump supporter, i did think he was less terrifying than clinton because he doesn’t seem to want to provoke a confrontation with russia). the guardian puts up new articles daily on the terrible danger posed by russia hacking the us election, and rarely opens comments on them so people won’t link to articles showing the dearth of evidence. the guardian has become fox news.
It’s worse.
After a lifetime of laughing at Fox News viewers and Daily Mail readers, I now am embarrassed to have to admit that each of those outlets is actually the best of a bad lot in their respective markets. Each allows some significant truth through the MSM filters from time to time.[
Really? I must have missed that article. There is a reason it’s called the Daily Fail you know. On a more serious note, if you have a link to an article where a glimmer of truth has been allowed to peek through I’d like to see it or perhaps it is one particular journo op.ed.
I’m quite serious, because if just one Editorial will allow a truthful analysis gain print then I will use the share buttons to put it out there.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/ includes links to mainstream articles that evidence release of actual information – albeit limited, buried or out of true context.
Went to Want To Know site, signed up for subscription, shared and re-blogged the site info. Many thanks for this very good link to what is an impressive site.
At this moment, you are my best friend, I only wish others on the OffG site were aware of the link you posted me.
Many thanks.
It is part of my conditioned mind to want to ‘tell’ others of things that to me seem important and yet – as I feel we all know from experience – communication doesn’t happen like that – (but through a resonant synchronicity of purpose), and any attempt to increase the ‘effect or impact’ actually adulterates the message or even negates it.
Communication is lost to the attempt to leverage attention or validate, justify or reinforce an assertion – which must be weak or it would not need validating by force and guile.
Once one invests in an idea or assertion as true – all else is ignored, attacked or defended against. As if truth is determined by contest or indeed struggle.
My sense of signal and noise closely correlates with honesty and deceit. We are accustomed to judging the person of others rather than addressing their behaviours and the issues, but all that does is ensure the issues are never addressed – and perhaps that is inherent to the personality level – because it operates a masking by which to assign or project blame – and then kill or invalidate the messenger.
I feel for a different way. I feel it honest to acknowledge we experience hate or anger feelings, but less so when these are in effect dumped on the messengers or situations that trigger them. So I feel to monitor my communications to see that they are free of hate – because as I experience Life – what goes around, comes around. There has to be a better way – and there is a better quality of living in the willingness of it.
I notice you have sought to alert some others here to blanket judgements that are unfounded. It is too easy to become polarised in reaction – but we learn through the living – and not from some edict that requires ‘perfection’.
Truly wanting to know has to be truly willing to not know – so as to receive, (of a wholeness directly rather than through a lens darkly). It seems simple to say “listen in the heart” but the mind of ‘justified hate’ not only forbids this – it invalidates the idea and substitutes some form of victimhood or self-specialness.
“Once one invests in an idea or assertion as true – all else is ignored, attacked or defended against. As if truth is determined by contest or indeed struggle.”
In other words, I have decided on a course of thinking that I deem as truth and I cannot be persuaded otherwise. I can’t agree with that , because it is in itself an assertion assigned by you to me without knowledge of my beliefs or thinking. I tend to defend that which I believe is true, as I have done on this site, but that does not mean I am in competition with those who have a varied approach to my thinking. In fairness, though, people I perceive as lame trolls do get the sharp edge of whatever small wit I possess and yes, I do attack the bigots and the mindless.
“I notice you have sought to alert some others here to blanket judgements that are unfounded. It is too easy to become polarised in reaction – but we learn through the living – and not from some edict that requires ‘perfection’.”
Please elaborate on which posts you refer to with regard my polarised reaction and in what way I have alerted others to blanket(not that I understand what application of the word blanket, you mean) judgements that are unfounded.
Blanket: cover? stifle?
If you refer to trolls, then yes, guilty as charged, since most of the people commenting are contributing something to the debate. Trolls do not. They have a very specific agenda which does not include debate.
What I am pointing to is closer than any ‘course of thinking’ – it is the presumptions of reality you react from – totally believing in that moment that it is as you believe, perceive and think it to be.
The reason manipulators seek to control the narrative is because running people’s minds is much easier than conquest by force – AND operates under the masking idea of freedom or protection.
N Cohen doesn’t need to make rational sense to maintain the narrative conditioning triggers of an ongoing ‘mind-control’ psyop. The ‘post-truth’ is really a switch from rationally supported narrative identity to a pre-rational and preverbal conditioning. You may recognize where you have identified by your sense of being attacked and your need to defend. There are some who use a sense of being victimised as a weapon by which to guilt others – and indeed the signs of this influence are embodied in the neo liberal correctness culture – in which hurt feelings – of selected and cultivated minority group identities – constitute the basis for criminal offence. Hate is legally empowering personal retaliation in the name of stamping out ‘hate crime’.
Otherwise…
I was complimenting on your bringing to attention to others of THEIR unfounded blanket judgements. I haven’t condemned you for anything at all.
Well, I never go to the Mail as a matter of routine. (Though I have a friend who does, and he’s even more ALT than me.) I just follow links there from ALT sites, and save them if the article is interesting. Here are a few I’ve got lying around:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker-arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes-escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4041318/Sole-Republican-elector-plans-vote-against-Trump-9-11-faker-claim-responder-Pentagon-FALSE.html#ixzz4T9CetHHq
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3697770/US-backed-Nour-al-Din-al-Zenki-behead-boy-accused-al-Quds-spy-Assad.html
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/09/clinton-aides-attack-threaten-reporter-saying-hillary-looked-low-energy-friday-press-conference/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3753013/Missing-FBI-files-linking-Hillary-Clinton-suicide-White-House-counsel-Vince-Foster-vanished-National-Archives.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3729466/Child-rape-victim-comes-forward-time-40-years-call-Hillary-Clinton-liar-defended-rapist-smearing-blocking-evidence-callously-laughing-knew-guilty.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3632119/Why-today-s-young-women-just-FEEBLE-t-cope-ideas-challenge-right-view-world-says-academic.html are a few I’ve got hanging around?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2799924/mystery-american-journalist-killed-car-crash-turkey-just-days-claimed-intelligence-services-threatened-coverage-siege-kobane.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3315347/Watch-heart-pounding-moment-Israeli-commandos-save-Islamic-militants-Syrian-warzone-risking-lives-sworn-enemies.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvited-guest-Chinese-sub-pops-middle-U-S-Navy-exercise-leaving-military-chiefs-red-faced.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3084535/UK-Government-quietly-rewrites-law-GCHQ-British-spy-agencies-avoid-prosecution-hacking-computers.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2862334/MH17-shot-botched-bid-assassinate-PUTIN-Pro-Kremlin-media-names-Ukrainian-air-force-pilot-allege-downed-craft.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2098946/US-Marines-sniper-squad-seen-Afghanistan-posing-Nazi-SS-flag.html
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/02/a-not-so-brief-history-of-crimea.html
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/02/putins-bite-is-worse-than-his-bark-should-we-have-been-surprised.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2904460/First-pictures-emerge-Ukrainian-pilot-pro-Russian-rebels-believe-downed-MH17-killing-298-victims-board.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2882208/PETER-HITCHENS-Forget-evil-Putin-bloodthirsty-warmongers.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2887081/North-Korea-NOT-Sony-hack-according-multiple-security-experts-discredit-FBI-findings-reveal-insider-named-Lena-responsible.html
The article’s spin might sometimes not be my ideal, but many of these articles would not appear at all in most legacy media outlets, or the “unapproved” point of view would be tendentiously summarised for purposes of ridicule. My similar collections for other outlets are much, much smaller.
I notice this also.
http://wanttoknow.info/
collects links to leaks in the mainstream – as I mentioned elsewhere on this page.
I call them leaks not because they are deliberately leaked – though they may be – or hidden in plain sight where none of the ‘intelligentsia’ look. Or got away with because they are mixed in with such banality as is apparent to anyone visiting the site.
The term ‘mindfuck’ seems appropriate – whether it is a psyop to undermine consciousness or a fragmenting identity running out of control (as direct result of the attempt to control).
As you indicate one doesn’t have to get to information via the front door of a site. If an aggregation service or shared link leads to information – then that information can be discerned in context – and here’s the part of the conscious participant – because if you haven’t an active purpose as your context – you will be fitted or framed in the purposes of others.
Fragmentation of consciousness is evident to me in my fellow humanity regardless what motives and agendas are associated – such as divide and rule, or opportunism rising from destructive acts and events.
Humpty Dumpty personifies both the belief in fragmentation and the attempts of the ‘King’ to ‘restore order’. And thus of any game of thrones by which to determine primacy – which lay all to waste by wars and deceit.
Identity politics is the name of the game – although the version using that name is a specialisation of all investment in identity as a weapon, a shield or mask. Fear derived identity is a mask and a mind that runs the matrix of the mask.
Guilt or blame are used to manipulate – such as “YOU don’t read the Daily Mail do you!!!’, or You don’t associate with RACISTS – DO you??? – with the insinuation that if you don’t in some sense retract and reframe yourself – you INVALIDATE yourself.
I witness to that the free and true witness of who I currently feel and know and notice myself to be – is first and foremost a self-honesty in which the mind of guilting manipulation and masked hate is recognized invalid – and also to be deeply pervasive as the current identity in operation.
The powers that be – were traditionally associated in part with guiding and holding the balance points for their peoples or societies. This is still the case but true power is not in coercion but through communication – which a war-mind subverts to manipulative propaganda and narrative control. Just as they subvert a system of energy value and worth exchange into a pyramid scam.
Finding balance within a bubble reality – may afford an emotional experience with which to grow – but is not the basis of sanity or wholeness of being – so while everything is coming up because private realities are popping – we each are obliged to find our balance point within all that is current – or persist in trying to put Humpty together again…
For once, I think I have largely understood – and found myself in agreement with – what you have written.
I find myself asking “Why is there so much emphasis on identity these days?”
Put another way, “Why are so many people seemingly terribly fragile in terms of their “identity” security?”
This explains – perhaps – why there has been such an upsurge in domestic and religious terrorism?
What kind of “identity” is it that thinks it is a good thing to blow one’s self – and others – to smithereens?
This whole “identity” business is making for a truly weird world in which we – all of us – end up living.