Two sided stories blog

spot on Tanya.
Now it just needs a leader writer to connect this story with the extradition of Roman Polanski for an incomparably much lesser offence and we have a proper piece of newspaper work.

Its a crime...

The tone of recent (linked) newspaper reports about the disgraceful situation regarding the number of soldiers who end up in the criminal justice system after serving in a conflict zone needs some examination.

I can agree that IF we insist that we need to send troops over to foreign lands then we should look after them, there, and when they return.

but...IF we have volunteer armed services we should be forewarning them of the dangers of combat - the fact that they are likely to end up being dehumanised criminal types, beating up their wives and girlfriends and assaulting strangers due to post traumatic stress disorder.
This means recruitment should be a little like the scenario when people apply to convert to Judaism - the Rabbi must try their hardest, 3 times, to dissuade the applicant. We do not do this. Instead we at best turn a blind eye to any violent rationale motivating a candidate to join, at worst we positively encourage it within the army culture.

I get the feeling that, to some people, the way the army (particularly the army with its hand to hand combat element)
a) attracts people who are already likely to be brutish and attracted to violence, and
b) makes damn sure that they are violent, traumatised and generally useless for a normal life after serving,
is a mystery they would rather not see...

The stories of soldiers who can't wait to get involved in real conflict - engaging the enemy - killing people... are legion. Is it really such a surprise that ex soldiers make up a large number of the violent and traumatised people in our society? I know that long before the most recent engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cry of those who noticed was that ex soldiers ended up homeless and jobless on the streets.
The institutionalisation of even peacetime army life has a counter productive effect on people's ability to survive and prosper in city life.

Army life is not a life for a decent human being - and the only way to cope with people who have been further dehumanised by actually going to war is to offer a long term rehumanising therapy process. Something that will never be part of any culture of blind belief within the armed forces, so the way to go, is towards something best supplied by civilian specialists working with enlightened ex soldiers who can turn the trauma around.

The figures show that without any army we would have an 8% cut in the prison population - as well as all the other benefits.
peace and love Y'all.

The sentence handed down to Rekha Kumari-Baker for murdering her two teenage daughters in cold blood may seem harsh to some, those who believed her defence of unbalanced mind for example.

The numbers of incidents where ex husbands kill their children in "revenge" on the mother is of course much higher than this "unnatural" way round. The judge's comments revealed the established stereotype of the woman as the one that the children should be able to trust - there is an implication that men cannot be trusted, that, in nature, the male often does kill the young so perhaps it is almost felt to be a credible crime.

This woman may be mentally unsound but the jury clearly didn't think so. Whereas the man who jumped from a balcony pushing his two young sons with him but survived is now free because a Greek court decided that he was momentarily insane.

I don't want to push the particular case of unfairness that the above statements appear to be suggesting (It does seem that it in this latest case there was premeditation whereas there was not in the Greek balcony scene). I am more interested in the hidden crime of spiteful parenting that never reaches the attention of the courts or press.

This woman stated she always loved her husband and couldn't stand to see her children hurt like she was (by his leaving). The twisted logic of hurting them to death due to her own blind selfishishness and dumb outlook does not constitute mental illness - it is based on a motivation that is all too common in the twisted anger of a divorced parent. The underlying psychology of the situation would appear to include a good deal of lack of insight into oneself and often a huge amount of self-loathing.

Locally, I know a woman who was deserted for another, and whose reaction over many years after the divorce has been to poison her son and daughter against their father at every opportunity... No regard for what might be in the best interests of the children, just selfish, twisted, openly revenge motivated selfishness. She got the house, the children and an income towards their upbringing, and no beastly behaviour from him, just desires and attempts to see his children, constantly denied or sabotaged by her.

She is not alone.
There are undoubtedly many men out there who never properly cared for their children and may, due to their own behaviour, have declined or forfeited any right for random access and help with spending time with their own offspring.
There are also a surprisingly large number of otherwise intelligent women who, once they are divorced - even when at their instigation and for relatively minor reasons - forget any principles of equal rights they once spouted. They go on to bring shame upon their gender through using children to get back at their ex... but that twisted behaviour, which ends up making them more unhappy than they could have imagined, is not just their loss.
What of the children?

From when women pull every trick in the book to poison children against THEIR own father, right through to just failing to facilitate good access, it makes me angry. I am lucky enough to have a good enough life not to let such anger get even close to eating me up, but for those men who can only feel that pain with no gain, it is not so surprising that they lose it, temporarily, terrifyingly or permanently. Fathers for Justice may include some idiots but a huge number are making a very good point, divorce justice has missed the target for far too long.

And what are the "gains" of such relationship-denying actions for these women in the long term?
Sure, in the short term it gives a sense of control and power, using the children's dependency or naivety to prevent them from shouting out about the unfairness or imbalance, protecting themselves from having to confront the reality of the parent they have excommunicated.
Even if the children are in their teenage years and can perhaps see a hint of what is going on, the pressure of the resident parent is all powerful. In the longer term these children will grow up and slowly discover what really went down. The long term relationships children have with themselves and any sibling, never mind with BOTH parents, will be seriously twisted and damaged, long into adulthood, by these types of behaviours.

So... instead of having twisted parental relationships to muddle through and recover from, these two young Kamari-Baker girls have no lives at all to sort out... and that was the choice of this particular mother.

Before any semi-feminists start to shout about the greater frequency of "Dad rage" leading to similar tragedies, I would want them to take a huge long look at the way resident parents behave, male or female. It isn't always a gender thing, and in this instance it appears to be just an extreme example of twisted, selfish, anti-child, revenge that is much more common in otherwise educated women than analysts tend to think.

another in the occasional series, this time prompted by two beloved luvvies dying virtually simultaneously...
Ladies who write
...It's not supposed to be serious, OK?

among many other American people judging by the rubbish they publish...
and do those many, like him, believe the decision to end the Star Wars fantasy "may undermine American leadership in Eastern Europe"?
Oh dear...

I have news for those who think like McCain (and presumably those who voted for him are still around): Your type of leadership is not wanted.
Not in eastern, western, southern, or northern Europe - nor anywhere else in the world. The only leadership we could possibly accept from America from here on in would be in co-facilitating financial and world trade fairness - not an area where the record looks good.

America - World Police has had its day.
Iran and Pakistan will always have their nutjobs, but yours shine out as bigger and more dangerous. (just ask the hundreds of thousands of civilian ghosts wandering those foreign fields searching for the body parts of their children).

The sort of leadership that sane people want does not feature the paranoid scapegoating of enemies in far away (to you) countries. Obama is the first president in many years who actually seems to understand this - and now most of his enemies are within his own country - the irony, to the rest of the world watching is extreme.

There is a massive quantity of on line, on air and in the media propaganda out there now, mostly focusing on how much Obama is going to ruin the USA... and the world...and all based on snatches of information filtered and twisted to ensure that truth and progress are the ultimate victims.

the agenda of the film linked in the title seems to be one I have seen often before - editing popular ideas to defend the notion that evil people are conspiring to take over the world at the expense of the libertine (not liberal, heaven forbid!) American dream.

Its funny how people who shout about liberty in this individualistic and capitalist manner nearly always mean liberty for themselves, right now, to include all the benefits and rights gained by painful societal reforms to create a more equal society, but none of the responsibilities. I welcomed Obama's election, not because he was going to save the world, not because he was going to bring the American power elite crashing down and install a healthier equality minded new world order - these dreams were the most extreme form of surreal optimism.
I just welcomed him as an intelligent social reformer and welcome change from the devils we saw in action previously.

I have no doubt he will disappoint me - he is a leader - its in their nature. We always want our leaders to achieve in action the ideas they championed when we voted/supported them. They get faced with the real world, we foolishly believe that they will tear off their Clark Kent gear and mash up the bad guys.

What saddens me is seeing the level of ignorance about the core aspects of socialism, capitalism, freedom and responsibility that get quoted and misquoted by selfish and myopic ranters who fill the media airwaves. The idea of a health care reform meaning that the majority of working Americans will lose their ability to choose a doctor and get the best healthcare is based on just such an enormous pile of bullshit that 2,000,000 democrats cannot shovel it away fast enough.

What is it that the Americans who hate Obama and satirise him as Stalin with black skin really feel?
Are they racist as Jimmy Carter has claimed?
Are they just Republicans who don't care what low level of underhand tactics they go to, as long as they can move the country nearer to the right wing state they imagine as ideal?
Are they genuinely fearful of this thing called socialism? (and accept the notion that Obama is in some way socialist?)
Do they think that there is a world wide conspiracy that has Obama installed as just another pawn, like the failed Bush model?

Out there on the net, in papers and other media, the sheer quantity of un-sourced, twisted, or abused statistics, fake research, invented expertise flows so fast that any repudiation is lost among the torrent of fresh bullshit served up daily for the hungry public to consume.
But why do so many consume it without appearing to question its validity?

Fear is the easiest thing to create in any society, and unfortunately it is inherently a better tool with which to whip up stern right wing, strong strict father type politics, than it is to create a calm and intelligent debate about a fair society.

My message to those whose fear keeps them posting such utter drivel about world conspiracies (cock-up theory beats conspiracy theory every time) and the need to get rid of Obama, is simple - the intelligent world is not laughing at you any more, we are all just worried that the rational intelligent voice (and the USA has some of the best) will get buried under your dumb but loud fearfulness... and the burn the planet brigade will ruin the world for the rest of us.

Too old - that was the main criterion cited as why people said that Sir Elton John should not be allowed to adopt an orphan from the Ukraine...
Madonna and Angelina Jolie are the other two famous adopters of foreign "orphans" that hit the news and people's imaginations...

So was it age? and was, is, it right?
Elton John has a huge public persona - and thanks to the documentary "tantrums and tiaras" many know of his somewhat paranoid raging ego freak tendency...but that shouldn't disqualify him.
I know plenty of other parent wannabes adopt from abroad, we don't get to hear about their suitability, maybe they are wonderful parents, but maybe money is more of the issue considered.
It seems some countries are only too happy to offload their unwanted children to foreigners who can promise a better life.

A better life though, for whom?
yes, the infant would almost certainly never achieve the level of wealth, the level of family security, the quantity of demonstrable "love" that they do with their new adoptive parents...but is this a trade to be encouraged? or is it a new form of slave trading?
When is the will of the child taken into account? if it was a child over twelve there would be a lot more serious questions raised I feel.

Historically, adults and their children were stolen from Central Africa, first by wealth seeking tribes nearby and then on to the slave traders who took them away to death or foreign fields where they were abused to the greatest possible degree. It was good for the owners...

Despite the notion that any wealthy wannabe parent must always be better than an indigenous orphanage, the way that a route through to a normal life within their own family's culture is cut off by this event is extremely worrying. Notwithstanding Elton John's dubious temperament and age suitability to take on the raising of a baby, this potential possession would be stolen away from its homeland with no say-so other than dubious interpretations of its smile.

I'm against it as a trade, never mind the individual circumstances - this trade in babies is not something we should be encouraging as if wealth were the only criteria that mattered in a parent. I have seen drug addicts have their children taken away from them, only to reform their ways and fight for years to get them back, often unsuccessfully. Once adopted, a child has its roots cut away with no understanding of why. Not just Elton, Madge and Brangelina, but all those non celebrities who adopt from abroad due to their desperate "need" to have a child - need to instead find a new vocation of preventing the children in poor countries becoming orphans in the first place...
it is, ultimately, a little too like the slave trade.

Planes caused devastation in a democratic country on 11 September...
1973.
The planes in this case were military jets firing rockets and dropping bombs, all part of the USA backed coup against the democratically elected socialist regime of Salvador Allende. This tragic event led to the illegal torture and murder of 10,000 innocent civilians as well as the president himself. After 36 years, Chile may have finally come to terms with the disaster of Pinochet's Milton Friedman monetarist promotion coup, but as far as I know, they haven't launched any war on the terrorists who started this, who recruited for this murderous regime...probably wise not to - seeing as this sort of reprisal only ever leads to more senseless violence, terrorism and war.

So on this fateful day let us not just remember the 3,000 who died as a result of a small terrorist group's attack on the Twin Towers, let us also remember the three times more massive loss of life and much greater long term loss of democracy and liberty that was heralded by a small power crazed, militarily connected capitalist elite of the USA sponsoring an assault on the democratic state of Chile.

Liberty does not mean the freedom to buy an expensive doctor whilst running your Hummer over a queue of starving children...

So now we know...
that as well as the wonderful grocery and household items that Labour MPs bought with (our) expenses money, and all the toffee nosed children's student costs and moat clearing bought by the Tory lot, they were also enjoying, on a daily basis, the most extensively subsidised canteen and bar in the world...

Thanks David - for reminding us, along with Alan Duncan's pathetic and unfunny contribution about living on rations, just how little the MPs have learned from the expenses debacle.

These Cameron savings of £120 million can apparently be made by reducing the salaries of those on over £100K by a small percentage, cutting the number of MPs by 13% and ceasing to subsidise their restaurant.

Whereas our local authority is faced with a similar number of job losses and rationing services to the needy in order to find £60 million over 3 years...

of course we could cut the salaries of those on more than 20,000 a year and stop paying travelling expenses at that amazingly generous HALF of the MPs rate - but I doubt that would save £60 million...we have to lose more staff and they can't fall back on a career in the city as a part time advisor...

Thanks again you guys.

There are people presenting long standing claims for compensation for Libyan funding of the IRA - via supplies of Semtex.
No one is presenting much in the way of argument against this idea - the actions of the IRA were illegal, many would say immoral, and whilst the same people are now legitimately in political power in Northern Ireland, the memory of wrong done runs deep.

But what about all those other victims of horrific crimes against humanity perpetrated by regimes against innocent people that were undertaken with the use of exported arms and explosives? - items such as cluster bombs and anti-personnel mines - manufactured and supplied by British arms manufacturers... with the blessing of our governments over the years?

Could not the families of victims of corrupt and illegal regimes (East Timor springs to mind) sue the British government for as much compensation as Libya pays each IRA bomb victim?

I know that Libya can afford to buy its way, with oil money, into world trade, and it may decide, as with the Lockerbie bomb, that taking a hit for a crime it didn't actually commit is just a worthwhile business exercise. I just wonder if the UK and other arms exporting governments have realised the corner they may be painting themselves into if Libya decides to support any claims by countries who have lost ten times, nay 1000 times, the number of lives to victims of our arms trading over the last fifty years.

Our legal position may be winnable, our moral position as an arms trader in the know, is way lower than that of the IRA freedom fighters, and, if it happens, the Libyan compensators.

This man would no doubt applaud the speech made by the Murdoch progeny at the Edinburgh television festival...this man is a Nobel winning economist.

Never mind "Nobel prize winning economist" sounding a little like the famous oxymoron, "Military intelligence", the connections between Milton Friedman's ideas and Rupert Murdoch's claims of unfair competition deserve public debate.

Why would I want to link the rather loathsome Murdoch's attack on the BBC with an award winning economist? I hear you ask...

Simple really:
Friedman was a champion of free markets, making wonderful statements about how free markets work, that government intervention in economics is always disastrously negative, and that the market is the all powerful self- correcting tool that should be allowed to rule worldwide.

This is a position that is much more commonly attacked since the recent free market created crash and burn. Everybody now realises that TOTALLY free markets actually kill the economy...don't they?
I ask because this lesson was not learned previously when the same thing happened - so many times.

Murdoch and Friedman have a common enemy - government organised or tax funded ventures in their ideal free market world. The BBC collects a licence fee and provides an all conquering universal service that is subject to no pressures to advertise - very bad they say, bad for competition and competitors (like poor little struggling Fox/Sky/Times world-domination media inc.)

Friedman's Nobel prize presentation ceremony was interrupted by a heckler - a heckler who was ejected to the joking of the speech giving president, "It could have been worse".

Damn right! it could have been worse.
it could have been a USA sponsored assassination plot to get rid of an enemy of democracy...except of course Friedman only secretly supported the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile, he only helped educate those free market thugs into a military coup, mass starvation of the masses and hyper inflation, then he only carried on believing that the massive arrest, imprisonment and murder of the poor is worth it to support a free market system to keep the rich richer...

Chile was an anti-democratic disaster - even in his own pathetically proscribed economic terms - but he went on to do it again in Argentina and then on to get a Nobel prize for his Latin America despoiling economic dogma.

No wonder he was heckled, the Swedes are a democracy and have that right enshrined in law... shame his government couldn't stick to democratic heckling instead of subversive invasion, promoting civil war and assassination of democratically elected foreign leaders...

So Mr James Murdoch...
is repeating his father's, and Milton Friedman's, calls for a freer market - and an end to the socialist tendency that is the heart of the BBC, one might guess that he probably believes the NHS is a disaster compared to the American system too, and that democracy didn't get despoiled in Latin America - it was protected from those ghastly socialists that the people wanted to rule their country...they can have democracy but not if they vote against free market economics.

The free market capitalist system does not work.
How many times do masses of people have to suffer and die, proving this via practice?
I am not saying, let's try communism (again) - that system does not appeal either - both these dogmas allow depraved and corrupt power brokers to hold massive sway over our lives in an anti-democratic and wealth stealing manner.

I am just a little fed up with "greed is good dickheads" ignoring the sins and proven failures of their ways, and preaching against one popular state funded project or another, because the majority of a 60 million population, (who support state intervention to keep the BBC as it is), should give more money to them, the richest 2%.

the broken thing that states keep having to fix is free market capitalism,
and free marketeers have the nerve to keep on saying that its the state that is broken!
unbelievable.