Barney Ronay's article in the Guardian today on the World Club Championship is both insightful and provocative. Whatever you think of Fifa and the game we all care about. Whatever your political leanings, the shadows cast be this competion need to be understood.
Was listening to the VergeCast today on this very subject. They are completely anti Trump, but suggest it is slightly different than the quotes above. For a start, they cannot find any clone that it has been made from looking from the images, but they too have doubts that it will be US made…only by a technicality maybe. They think it will be finally assembled in the US (Which isn’t the same as US Made). The other interesting thing is that there is no FCC ID for it and they should have one if it is being launched in September, but this is Trump after all so maybe they won’t bother with it. Is the FCC going to sue Trump? The other alternative is that it is an existing phone and has FCC approval/ID. Either way it will be interesting to see how they make out it is a US phone. Unless the flag on it makes it US.
No comment on this thread following the proscription of Palestine Action this afternoon. There is an interesting article on the Tribune website about this and the ramifications of showing support for a protest group who have achieved their objectives through direct action. It is quite interesting if you are uninformed like me. I have never heard of this group before and not aware of their actions until the Brise Norton incident this week. Quite interesting to follow the debate online in relation to the broader discussion in freedom of speech. I think the wider issue is the goverment using the law to suppress freedom of speech where direct action has been shown to be effective. Not sure quite what the ramifications might be. I can see many people being disgusted by the damage of the warplanes and totally understand that point of view especially in these febrile times. On the other hand , most people in this country will be upset if the UK goverment is aiding the Israeli government having never voted for suppory or meddling in the Middle East. An israeli oened defence company has already picked up sticks and left the Uk. If the government is shutting down those protestors who feel they need to resort to direct action , can we at least have a debate in parliament to discuss uk support for Israel and whether this should cease ? Palestine Action may have overstepped the mark but i feel there is sufficient support amongst the people in this country for support for censure of Israel to be debated in parliament. If parliament was doing its job, PA would not exist. There are plenty of MPs like Corbyn , protestors on the streets each weekend and oetitions in Change to demonstrate that government policy on Israel is wrong. I do not feel that the majority view is being properly considered. The matter should be debated in parliament to see if there is a democratic consensus for or against Israel. I do not feel i am being contentious.
Why the hell has the BBC got an in depth deep dive article on Zia Yusuf, when have they ever focused this hard on any party chairman before? When do you see this level of coverage afforded to Ellie Reeves, Nigel Huddleston, Dominic Johnson, Mark Pack, Jon Nott. Could most people even tell me if they know which party those names belong to. Yet Zia Yusuf has been headline news for the BBC twice in the past month, even leading the news with him in one instance, now there is a ****ing life profile on him on the BBC website. I used to think that by and large they did maintain a relative level of balance, but in the face of this utter nonsense it is becoming very hard to argue they are not entirely sacrificing their integrity for clicks. This is not what the public pay them for, if they want to get into a broadcast tabloid battle with Sky News and GB News then they should do it without public funding.
My main concern about this particular incident , is not what the protestors did to the planes , it’s HOW ON EARTH were they able to get to the planes , that’s a real concern IMHO .
Ultimately the Government is never going to accept the sabotage of military equipment, I don't think it is suppressing free speech for them to react severely against this, they need to send a message that if you mess with UK defence capability in any way then you are going to be severely dealt with, they would be irresponsible not to. That said it is an extreme embarrassment for our armed forces that this could occur, it might be better long term that they have exposed this weakness as there will be a beefing up of security going forward, better they exposed it than some Russian agent.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ckg3rzj8emjt US President Donald Trump says American warplanes have bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, marking a significant escalation in the ongoing war between Iran and Israel. One of the targets was Fordo - a uranium enrichment plant hidden in a remote mountainside that is vital to Iran's nuclear ambitions Two other key nuclear sites - Natanz and Isfahan - were also hit Israeli officials say they were in "full co-ordination" with the US in planning these strikes The US contacted Iran through diplomatic channels on Saturday to say the air strikes were all it intended to do and that "regime change efforts" were "not planned", according to US officials speaking to the BBC's US partner, CBS News We do not yet know the full scale of the damage at the facilities - but the UN nuclear watchdog says there has been "no increase" in off-site radiation levels reported
That's made the world a more dangerous place, his campaign promises of bringing peace to the middle east and Ukraine worthless as is much of his juvenile rhetoric. Trump's assertion that the operation had been a "spectacular success" can be taken with a massive pinch of the proverbial.
I am hoping that the Uk played no part in the operations against Iran. Trump got elected on the basis of nin intervention and i feel that yesterday's actions may be something he will ultimately not be able to spin to satisfy his core support. There is no Anerican foriegn policy...it is just shooting from the hip. The uk needs to disassociate from the US.
If the EDL/BNP any other far right group felt the "need to resort to direct action" would you and others on the left be OK with it? Would it be freedom of speech? What if they really really thought it was necessary because they weren't listened to when they protested on the streets? Happy for them to spray paint a mosque because they feel they're not being listened to? Bricking the windows of an asylum processing centre? Of course not. It's criminal damage no matter how morally superior these cos-playing middle class twats feel. It's also massively damaging to our countries security. They've been emboldened by being given full permission to damage whatever they like for years, is anyone really surprised.
Fair comment. I hate all of them, far left and far right. At least with the far right you can see the majority of them are just quite thick. The ****ing smugness of the hard left is really something else though.
The far left in this country currently consists of about half a dozen unemployed former academics selling, or rather failing to sell, copies of the Socialist Worker. The far right, on the other hand, have the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Express, and GB News. There is no equivalence.
This kinda shows the problem. Anyone perceived as any grade of right = far right........so probably half the country. Anything perceived as left = good guys, nothing to see here.
