It has long been the plan to dismantle the NHS and sell great swathes of it into private hands. The profits that can be made from healthcare are staggering – just ask the Americans. So have British politicians, lobbyists, and corporate interests used the pandemic to speed up the steady creep toward a US-style pay-to-play healthcare system that puts profits above patient interests? Ross Ashcroft is joined by Dr. Bob Gill to discuss the future of the NHS.
How disgusting. To top off the Orwellian nightmare of 6 years of false allegations of antisemitism being made by racists, Sturmer is now doing an Oswald Mosley impersonation. Don't take my word. Here's @davidjrosenberg https://t.co/e9EtDKaOBr. Mosley was a knight too by the way. pic.twitter.com/cRntQjYDmF
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) January 4, 2022
From the 'Rebel Notes' blog:
Could I just flag up…? No, not really
“Think of all that the British have to be proud of. The rule of law. Her Majesty the Queen…”
“I believe that the best still lies ahead for this country. But only if we have the courage to create a new Britain.”
“We stand for the future of British purpose”
“This is a remarkable nation with an extraordinary cultural heritage. British music, British fashion, British advertising, British acting.”
“We stand for the new England”
“I don’t think you cease to be a patriot because you notice your country has flaws. On the contrary, the reason we in this party want to correct those flaws is precisely because we are patriotic.”
“The Labour party is a deeply patriotic party.”
[...]
If you have any doubt about which two quotes were said by Mosley rather than Starmer, ask yourself why you have those doubts. And, if you are on the left and you voted for Starmer, you may have another question to ask yourself.
Have you ever come across a a more mendacious, more conniving Secretary of State than Antony Blinken Blinky?
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has denounced remarks by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Moscow's involvement in Kazakhstan, telling Washington it would know better about arriving somewhere uninvited and overstaying its welcome.
Asked about ongoing protests and rioting across Kazakhstan during a Friday press briefing, Blinken argued the situation there is distinct from brewing tensions over another Russian neighbor, Ukraine, but claimed that Moscow might have ulterior motives in spearheading a joint security response to quell the violence.
“I think one lesson in recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave,” he said at the tail-end of the press conference, offering no elaboration.
The comment prompted a sharp response from Russia’s Foreign Ministry, which blasted Blinken for making light of “tragic events” unfolding in the ex-Soviet state, where initially peaceful demonstrations over a hike in fuel prices quickly escalated into deadly clashes with security forces, as well as arson, vandalism and looting.
“Today US Secretary of State Antony Blinken joked about the tragic events in Kazakhstan in his typical boorish manner,” the ministry said, dismissing the statement as a “snide remark” while arguing that its peacekeeping effort under the regional Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is “absolutely legitimate.”
Moscow ramped up the criticism further, also going on to cite a number of Washington’s invasions, interventions and military occupations over the decades, suggesting Blinken might learn a “history lesson” of his own.
In recent years, governments have created armies of online warriors designed to fact-check alleged Russian ‘disinformation.’ Worryingly, these guardians of the truth are often more dangerous than the threat they claim to combat.
By Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is author of the Irrussianality blog. He tweets at @Irrussianality.
Most analysts grounded in reality accept that Russia is not about to invade Ukraine. Still, the breathless speculation to the contrary in much of the Western media this month has had the virtue of concentrating a few minds. Suddenly alert to the seriousness of the situation, a few of the more sensible commentators have come to the conclusion that the West ought perhaps to reconsider its policy towards Ukraine. The result has been an outpouring of bile that brings to light the difficulty of having an intelligent conversation on anything involving Russia.
A case in point is the reaction to an article last week by the RAND Corporation’s Samuel Charap. Writing for Politico, Charap suggested that the United States should help end the war in eastern Ukraine by using its leverage to persuade the Ukrainian government to fulfil its obligations under the 2015 Minsk II agreement, according to which Ukraine is meant to grant “special status” – i.e. political autonomy – to the rebel region of Donbass.
This is hardly a novel proposal. Others have been saying the same thing for several years. But the RAND Corporation, for which Charap works, has long been considered the intellectual heart of the American military industrial complex. This gave his article a certain oomph, being seen in some circles as a betrayal of Ukraine from within the core of the American system.
While some people welcomed Charap’s piece, others were furious. Comparisons with Hitler were soon spreading over the internet. Stephen Blank of the Center for European Policy Analysis – a think tank funded by the likes of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and the US Department of Defense – penned an article in which he claimed that “Appeasement of Russia would deliver exactly the same outcome as the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich – dishonor and disaster.” “The consequences of following Charap’s advice,” says Blank, would be no less than “the dismantling of the post-Cold War settlement. … The international rules-based order would end.”
Others were not content with mere hyperbole, and sought instead to name and shame the appeasers who had had the temerity to promote Charap’s article. An example was the Ukrainian information warfare outfit Stop Fake which produced a hit piece entitled ‘Are we ready to die for Kyiv? How Twitter is helping to push the West towards surrendering Ukraine.’ In this, Stop Fake denounced journalists who had tweeted links to Charap’s essay, saying that “Kremlin-friendly actors turned it into a mainstream theme.”
Among the “Kremlin-friendly actors,” Stop Fake singled out RT’s Bryan MacDonald, The Independent’s Mary Dejevsky, Meduza’s Kevin Rothrock, Latvian-based Russian journalist Leonid Ragozin, bne Intellinews’s Ben Aris, and the Atlantic Council’s Emma Ashford. One can see why Ukrainian info-warriors might have a beef with someone from RT, and it’s probably fair to say that Dejevsky is relatively fair to Russia as British journalists go. But Stop Fake’s attempts to portray its targets as propagators of “Kremlin metanarratives” is absurd.
Rothrock’s Meduza, for instance, is decidedly hostile to the Russian government. So too is Ragozin, who has often used Twitter to boost the cause of imprisoned activist Alexey Navalny. This, however, didn’t prevent Stop Fake from denouncing him as “just another Kremlin mouthpiece.” And as far as NATO lobby group the Atlantic Council is concerned, to call it “Kremlin-friendly” is like praising cats as “mouse-friendly.” Ridiculous doesn’t begin to describe Stop Fake’s position.
Unfortunately, though, it’s pretty much par for the course for the organization, as for so many others who make up what one might call the “disinformation industry” – that is to say the large and well-funded network of institutions that has sprung up in the past five or six years to supposedly protect democratic societies from the insidious danger of foreign “influence operations.”
Although these institutions purport to be doing valuable work exposing “fake news,” analysis of their output reveals that much of what they produced is decidedly biased. Their own opinions are taken for absolute truth, and anything that disagrees with their interpretation of reality is denounced as “disinformation.” In the process, these organizations spread disinformation of their own.
A report by British academics, for instance, determined that, “The EU’s main task force for fighting Russian disinformation is in danger of becoming a source for disinformation itself, and so of skewing policy decisions in the EU and the UK, as well as distorting public discourse throughout Europe.” The EU’s disinformation outfit, EUvsDisinfo, was guilty of “blatant distortion,” said the report, adding that “the EU is not alone” in this regard.
Indeed, one can find many examples beyond Stop Fake and EUvsDisinfo. The problem is that the disinformation industry does not for the most part consist of independent researchers objectively determining the accuracy of what appears in the media and on the internet. Rather, many of its members are political activists pursuing an extreme agenda and using their power and influence to attempt to silence those who do not agree one hundred percent with them. In this sense, the disinformation industry is quite dangerous. By supporting it, states are elevating entirely unsuitable persons to the position of semi-official guardians of the truth, in the process severely constraining the parameters of public debate.
Take, for instance, the issue of Russia and Ukraine. As the reaction to Charap’s article shows, even people who are far from being “Kremlin-friendly” find themselves being denounced as such if they deviate even slightly from the preferred narrative. This serves to silence voices urging restraint and to block any proposals which offer a peaceful solution to the war in Donbass, on the dubious grounds that any move towards peace is a dissemination of “Kremlin metanarratives.”
Since Donald Trump’s election as US president in 2016, much of the Western world has been in the grip of exaggerated fear of foreign “influence” and “disinformation.” To combat this, governments have empowered zealots who do their utmost to maintain a constant state of international tension. Sadly, as the Ukrainian example shows, the cure is proving to be even worse than the disease.
After Mordor's foul accusations of Russian interference ('Russiagate') in Mordor's 'free' [cough!] elections kind of fell flat, Mordor's Mini Me (aka Albion) seems now set to embark on a malicious campaign of 'influencing' Russia... Mordor and its Mini Me have been jostling for the coveted title of 'Worst Country in the World' for some years now and this move will of course score them some points.
Gert.
RT.com reports:
Moscow responds to revelations of British political interference in Russia
Foreign Ministry reacts to leak of documents on London's spending on pushing its agenda in country
Britain has created a network of affiliates in Russia to influence civil society through a system of grants worth millions of dollars annually, Moscow claimed on Sunday.
The sums London spends on “influencing civil society organizations … and steering Russia’s [political] course in a direction favorable for the UK … boggles belief,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova insisted, citing a freshly leaked trove of documents shedding light on the activities of British diplomats in Russia.
UK officials have been spending money on attempts to destabilize the political situation in Russia by “sponsoring” increased protest activity, Zakharova outlined as she accused London of focusing its attention on “increasing social tensions and polarization” within the country.
She also called on the British Foreign Office to come forward and openly admit its activities, adding, however, that she didn't expect it to happen. The reaction from Moscow was sparked by a recent series of leaks published by the investigative group Underside.
The British Foreign Office is scheduled to spend 1.3 billion rubles ($17 million) between 2020 and 2023 in an attempt to influence public life in Russia in line with London’s interests, the group said, citing a trove of documents obtained by the investigative team.
The papers supposedly leaked from the British embassy in Moscow paint a picture of a vast network of NGOs that have received grants or funding from the British authorities for dozens of projects. London also spends lavishly on its state broadcaster BBC's activities in the Russian-speaking world.
A significant focus is the promotion of the LGBTQ+ culture and pushing for its acceptance in Russia, which the documents describe as a "homophobic” nation "unfriendly" to the community.
Certain projects were also designed to train Russia’s hoped for future civil society leaders directly in the UK, as well as creating a ‘pro-British’ group among the Russian elites. Some of the partners the UK Foreign Office has been working with have since been labeled as ‘foreign agents’ under Russian law – a designation that marks an NGO or a media outlet that has received foreign funding and engages in political activities in Russia.
One such partner is the Memorial NGO, which was recently accused of violating the ‘foreign agent’ law. Once a prominent civil society organization dedicated to “perpetuating historical memory,” Memorial was accused of breaking away from its roots and shifting to “distorting” history.
The NGO was closed down, last month, by a Russian court over ‘foreign agent’ law breaches in a move that immediately prompted an angry reaction from Strasbourg. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) called on Russia to suspend its court decision and keep the organization intact.
The documents released by Underside indicate that UK officials viewed such designations as well as the Russian ‘foreign agents’ law as a “risk” for their programs. Some of the documents openly state that the legislation could hinder the projects by discouraging Russian specialists from participating in them.
One such document hints at the possible dissolution of Memorial and outlines potential ways of accessing its documents if the NGO was closed.
So far, London has not commented on the issue.
You can find Part I of this essay, here.
A typical takeaway food dish, aluminium body with cardboard lid and filled with about 300 g of water was used as a simulacrum of a TV dinner:
The oven was set to 200 C.
The oven temperature ('Toven') and food temperature ('Tfood,cold' and 'Tfood,cold') were then measured at 10 minute intervals. The results are represented below, graphically:
Slightly surprisingly, there apears to be very little difference in temperature evolution between the use of a preheated oven ('Tfood,hot') and a non-preheated oven ('Tfood,cold') This may in part be explained by:
1. the food tray is aluminium, an excellent heat conductor,
2. the content is a pure liquid, which tends to heat faster than a pure solid,
3. 300 g is less than the more typical 500 - 800 g for a TV dinner,
4. the required heating time seems significantly lower than the one generally recommended by various outlets ('20 to 30 minutes') This may be due to said outlets 'playing it safe'.
It appears thus that it's worth for individual consumers to experiment a little with heating times of various foods, because substantial savings in heating times and thus £££ may be made.
Read all about it and sign the Change.org petition here.
... Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the oldest and most senior British Order of Chivalry???
...Most Noble... Order of Chilvalry... Just let that sink in for a nanosecond.
