The news thread

[scotlad]

4 hours ago, Caledonian Craig said:

No surprise there. It is just further evidence of the total union bias in the media.

It's not even subtle. I don't see anyone trying to turn this around on Labour - and why should they?

We're far too supine and easily led up here.

[Squirrelhumper]

[Squirrelhumper]

Hope @Malcolmhasnt sold his house and moved down south yet....

[thplinth]

Again always useful to read the other sides media...although it is merely reporting on a US interview. It is so obvious who is behind this and why. Even children could work it out.

Ex-Trump Pentagon Aide Names Likely Culprits Behind Nord Stream Sabotage

The massive pipelines, designed to deliver up to 110 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea every year were sabotaged on Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the “Anglo-Saxons” of targeting the Russian pipelines to deliberately destroy Europe’s energy infrastructure.

The United States and Britain are the primary suspects in the sabotage attacks against Nord Stream 1 and 2 based on a cost-benefit analysis, former Trump Pentagon advisor Douglas Macgregor believes.

“Let’s use the process of elimination. Would the Russians destroy their own pipeline? 40 percent of Russian gross national product or gross domestic product consists of foreign currency that comes into the country to purchase natural gas, oil, coal and so forth. So the Russians did not do this. The notion that they did I think is absurd,” Macgregor said, speaking to syndicated columnist Judge Napolitano on the Judging Freedom podcast.

Germany, the pipeline’s primary European beneficiary, is also “extremely unlikely” to have sabotaged the infrastructure, Macgregor said, pointing to Berlin’s economic interest in the pipelines, and dependence on Nord Stream for the country’s energy security.

“Who else might be involved? Well the Poles apparently seem to be very enthusiastic about it. As you know the [former] Polish foreign minister said ‘Thank You United States of America’ for doing this,” Macgregor added, referring to Radoslaw Sikorski’s now-deleted tweet about the incident.

EU parliamentarian Radek Sikorski deletes his tweet two days later attributing the bombing of Nord Stream to the U.S. His follow up tweets remain.

“Then you have to look at who are the state actors that have the capability to do this. And that means the Royal Navy, the United States Navy Special Operations. I think that’s pretty clear. We know that thousands of pounds of TNT were used because these pipelines are enormously robust. You have several inches of concrete around various metal alloys to move the natural gas. So it’s not something that you could simply drop a grenade down at the end of a fish line and disrupt. That means it takes a certain amount of sophistication,” the former official, who is also a retired US Army colonel, explained.

On Wednesday, sources told the Wall Street Journal that Danish officials at a NATO meeting had calculated that the force of more than 500 kg of TNT had been detected in each of the explosions disrupting the Nord Stream pipelines, which led to the release of massive methane bubbles on the surface of the Baltic Sea.

Macgregor suggested that the sabotage attack on the Russian gas pipelines may have ultimately been perpetrated after Berlin, the economic and military “gorilla in the room when it comes to the EU and NATO,” began “to give the impression that they were no longer going to go along with this proxy war in Ukraine.”

“I’m hesitant to say ‘we know it must have been Washington’. I can’t say that because we just don’t know. But it’s very clear that we have foreclosed Berlin’s options. Berlin was drifting away from this alliance. [Chancellor] Olaf Scholz said ‘I’m not sending any more equipment, I won’t send any tanks’. Now he’s in a bind because the United States has simply robbed him of the option of bailing out. Who’s going to supply him gas and oil and coal and everything else if he bails out? Where does he turn now? And remember, the Germans, who are facing terrible consequences at home refuse to restart nuclear power plants,” the former official said.

Macgregor believes that the German government may eventually collapse due to the energy crisis, and suggested that the Ukrainian security crisis has also placed NATO itself on a “slippery path” to potential disintegration in the long run.
'Unprecedented Act of State Terrorism'

The Kremlin characterized the sabotage of the Nord Stream network as an “unprecedented act of state terrorism.” In an address to the nation on Friday dedicated to the entry of four new regions into the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin accused the “Anglo-Saxons” of sabotaging the pipelines to destroy Europe’s energy infrastructure. “It is clear to everyone who stands to gain. Those who benefit are responsible, of course,” Putin said.

Also on Friday, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin told reporters that Moscow has materials that “point to the Western footprint in organizing and carrying out” the sabotage.

Officials in Denmark, Sweden and Germany have not ruled out deliberate disruption, and NATO has paid lip service to supporting investigations “underway to determine the origin of the damage.”

A Pentagon spokesman refused to answer a question by Sputnik about the suspected presence of US military helicopters in areas off Denmark’s Bornholm Island where the gas leaks occurred prior to the incidents.

Meanwhile, Western officials and media have claimed that Russia sabotaged its own pipelines. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed speculation to that effect last week, saying the West's claims were "quite predictable," and that it was "predictably stupid and absurd to express such hypotheses."

https://sputniknews.com/20221002/ex-trump-pentagon-aide-names-likely-culprits-behind-nord-stream-sabotage-1101436595.html

 

Whether you agree with bombing this pipeline or not it is completely risible to suggest the Russians did this. Anyone doing so is clearly a bare faced liar peddling propaganda IMHO and they just expect you to believe any old shit that comes out their mouth at this point no matter how absurd.

Edited October 3, 2022 by thplinth

[exile]

1 hour ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Hope @Malcolmhasnt sold his house and moved down south yet....

😅 Poor old Roddy Dunlop doing a handbrake turn at Berwick?

One more the Scots Tories have been left humiliated as their London masters U-turn on the big policy they urged on the Scottish Government.

[exile]

Seems that whatever happens. Middle England gets what it wants.

[Malcolm]

2 hours ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Hope @Malcolmhasnt sold his house and moved down south yet....

😂 thankfully I’m still here!

[Orraloon]

4 hours ago, Squirrelhumper said:

We are going to see a lot of half built ferries on Reporting Scotland tonight.

[Caledonian Craig]

17 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

We are going to see a lot of half built ferries on Reporting Scotland tonight.

And everything else being worse now than in living memory (in reality that is worst since last unionist party was in power in Scotland).

[scotlad]

No mention from the Scottish Tories about this - you know, the same people who normally lose their shit over Yes stickers being stuck on constituency offices and the like.

I know they've other fish to fry at the moment but I thought it might have mertited a mention but no, not a peep. 🤔

Then again, it's possible those YCL dopes got the wrong address! 😂

 

[exile]

The FT not holding back

(pre U-turn - but applies to the personalities and overall 'growth plan')

[phart]

5 minutes ago, exile said:

The FT not holding back

(pre U-turn - but applies to the personalities and overall 'growth plan')

Do you read Sam Freedman?

[slasher]

I stopped watching the news and have tuned out of my other main source Twitter for about 10 days now. I’d highly recommend it!

[Ally Bongo]

PM's Office of Japan

 

@JPN_PMO

 

Japan government organization

 

[Emergency alert] A projectile that appears to be a North Korean ballistic missile has likely flown over Japan.

Edited October 3, 2022 by Ally Bongo

[thplinth]

I have only read snippets so far so can't judge how fair this is but here is what seems a reasonable summary of Putin's latest speech. Read it. We are in a very heavy and perilous situation here folks... 

 

[exile]

On 10/3/2022 at 8:03 PM, phart said:

Do you read Sam Freedman?

I don't think so. Should I?

[phart]

1 hour ago, exile said:

I don't think so. Should I?

He's alright just made almost the exact same point as you 24 hrs before except instead of FT he had the name of the author , so I thought maybe you had seen his piece on it. Although i guess the FT article got a lot of interaction.

[King Of Paisley]

Is there not a more disgusting, reprehensible creature in this country than Suella Braverman? Go and read her speech to the faithful. Her views wouldn't be out of place within the BNP.

And I thought Norman Tebbit was bonkers

[scotlad]

 

 

 

[vanderark14]

7 hours ago, King Of Paisley said:

Is there not a more disgusting, reprehensible creature in this country than Suella Braverman? Go and read her speech to the faithful. Her views wouldn't be out of place within the BNP.

And I thought Norman Tebbit was bonkers

My particular favourite quote from that lunatic was seen she said she was proud of the British empire. 

I genuinely thought bojo and his band of cunts were the worst but fuckin hell they've gotten worse with truss and Co.

[King Of Paisley]

36 minutes ago, vanderark14 said:

My particular favourite quote from that lunatic was seen she said she was proud of the British empire. 

I genuinely thought bojo and his band of cunts were the worst but fuckin hell they've gotten worse with truss and Co.

They have definitely morphed in to a UKIP/BNP hybrid.

How anyone in their right mind can vote for this shower of swivel eyed cunts is beyond me

[thplinth]

Watched Putin's speech. Very interesting. If you want to understand the Russian position just watch it. Especially when he  talks about the West.

It was a small trivial part of it but he revealed that 'the whole world knows that the US bugs the leaders of Germany, Japan and South Korea... including at their private residences!' They are essentially occupied countries and to call them allies is a (sick) joke.

One for Scotty, he actually says that the west is pursing 'anti-religion i.e. Satanism 'and this was in relation to all the gender identity shite being rammed down our throats in the West. Strange it features so prominently in his speech when no-one here is supposed to care... The very strange thing for me is that I came to that same conclusion myself in recent years so to hear the President of Russia say it out loud is very surreal for me. This actually exists! 

Be interested to hear the board's indyref2 YES supporters on the various referenda to rejoin Russia and if they recognize their legitimacy. I expect some will end up tying themselves in knots if they do which is probably why they will just be ignored.

I think at one point he discusses the various prominent European leaders and says it is one thing to be a complete lapdog to the US but they have now moved far beyond that into being traitors to their own citizens... hard to disagree on that one.

Russia has also partially mobilized. This is the road to full on proper war here. Most folk seem totally oblivious to it. It is a real eye opener. The power of the press is undeniable, you control that and you can shape public opinion to just about anything you want. 

[thplinth]

Truss' confidence will be shattered already. Rabbit frozen in the headlights from here on in (at best).

I was exposed to quite a bit of the mainstream uk media when they all really went after Johnson. Seems like the desired outcome was to decapitate any real political leadership in the UK. What a state the UK is in right now and the BBC played the leading role in it.

This is an interesting op-ed piece on the whole Truss unfolding fiasco... and she cant be challenged for at least a year.

https://www.rt.com/news/563968-liz-truss-crises-uk/

Truss exposes the current instability of Western democracies

The turmoil in British politics can lead to disastrous consequences. It also mirrors the current state of the wider West
Graham Hryce is an Australian journalist and former media lawyer, whose work has been published in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Sunday Mail, the Spectator and Quadrant.

Even fervent believers in the stability of Western democracies must surely have had their faith shaken last week by the extraordinary economic and political crises created by the newly-minted UK prime minister, Liz Truss.

In the week after the prime minister’s hand-picked chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, handed down a ‘mini-budget’ on September 23, the English pound crashed; the government bond market took a dive; interest and mortgage rates rose; some mortgage markets shut down; the Bank of England staged a highly unusual fiscal intervention to prevent the collapse of major pension funds; and the IMF criticized Truss in a manner usually reserved for the leaders of debt-ridden banana republics.

The global importance of these events and the ongoing economic and political disruption that they will inevitably cause should not be underestimated. Political commentator Alastair Campbell, formerly Tony Blair’s chief of staff, accurately described last week as “the week that everything changed.”

What led to the UK economic crisis?

Quite simply, the fact that the Truss mini-budget provided for billions of pounds worth of unfunded and uncosted tax cuts – including, most provocatively, a cut in the 45% top level income tax rate – caused the financial markets to register a serious vote of no confidence in the Truss government, with all the attendant consequences that followed.

Incidentally, the events of last week show where real power ultimately lies in the West – and it is definitely not with politicians.  

Truss’s mini-budget is, of course, a product of the crude neo-liberal economic ideology that she so fanatically believes in, and which proved decisive in attracting the 80,000 or so Thatcher-worshipping members of the Tory party that anointed Truss prime minister only a few weeks ago. 

Faced with an economic disaster entirely of her own making – one of her first acts as prime minister was to sack the head of the Treasury – Truss simply doubled down, and retreated petulantly to her Downing Street bunker. 

She did emerge briefly late last week to do a round of disastrous radio interviews with regional BBC stations – in which Truss continued to robotically tout the benefits of ‘trickle-down economics’, and (unsuccessfully) tried to blame the economic crisis entirely on Russian President Vladimir Putin and the conflict in Ukraine.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of commentators in the UK – irrespective of their political affiliations – have been strongly critical of the Truss mini-budget and the prime minister herself. Even Daily Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard accused Truss of having “embarked on a course of sheer madness.” 

Truss’ intransigence, however, means that the current economic crisis can only intensify – with predictions of a housing market crash as the next most likely catastrophe to engulf the UK.  

The ongoing UK rail strike ramped up last week, and further economic convulsions will no doubt occur in late November when Truss and Kwarteng have condescended to outline the vast array of spending cuts that will fund the mini-budget tax cuts. 

Truss’ attempt to remedy the deep-seated problems that bedevil the UK economy (including decades of wage stagnation, ongoing working class and middle-class impoverishment, the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, dramatically rising energy and food prices, and the crisis in housing affordability) by applying neo-liberal economic policies has failed spectacularly. 

This is an ominous sign for Western democracies generally, because significant segments of the global elites that rule them remain firm adherents of the greed-based, crude neo-liberal economic theories that Truss and Kwarteng so rigidly embrace. These elites do not believe in noblesse oblige and are committed to overturning the social democratic consensus that prevailed in the UK from Atlee until the election of Thatcher.

Irrespective of that, what should be of most concern to intelligent observers is the demonstrable fragility of an economic system that descends into severe crisis within a few days of a mini-budget – no matter how misguided and foolish – being handed down. 

Unfortunately, the political crisis created by Truss is perhaps even more serious than the economic crisis that she has unthinkingly engendered.

The immediate political dilemma is the one now confronting the Tory party.

Such has been the intensity of the adverse reaction to the events of the past week that it is already clear that the Conservatives cannot possibly win the next election, and that Truss cannot realistically remain prime minister for long.

A poll taken at the end of last week shows that the Labour Party now leads the Tories by an astounding 33 percentage points – up from 17 points just prior to the handing down of the mini-budget. 

In one week, Truss has done what no Labour leader has been able to do in decades – namely, give Labour a seemingly unassailable lead in the polls. Truss also appears to have brought about a significant rapprochement between Keir Starmer and the trade union leadership, and invigorated the party generally. 

As for Truss herself, as Alastair Campbell said last week “She’s dead… she’s toast.”

Under existing Tory party rules, however, Truss cannot be challenged for 12 months – and, even if she could be, a new leader would have to be elected by the same lengthy and deeply flawed process that so recently threw up Truss as party leader.

The only way out of this dire situation would be for Truss to resign, and be replaced without the need for a leadership contest. But Truss shows absolutely no signs of relinquishing her position, and even if she did, the ensuing divisions within the Tory party would surely make a leadership contest inevitable.

Of course, yet another change of Tory leader would render the party even more unelectable than it is now.

Under the circumstances, there is, I think, a very real possibility that the Tory party will split, with the Truss neo-liberal wing hiving off, leaving a Cameronesque rump behind. A new right-wing populist party may emerge from such a split. If so, this would mirror what has occurred within conservative parties in some other Western democracies in recent years.

But whatever happens, there can be no doubt that the hapless Truss will have the privilege of having presided over the demise, in whatever precise form that it takes, of the contemporary Tory party.       

The Tory party conference that began in Birmingham on Sunday – it has understandably been boycotted by a large number of angry and disgruntled backbenchers – promises to be a very interesting event indeed. It started off badly for Truss with prominent Tory MP Michael Gove condemning her mini-budget as being “not Conservative” and hinting that he and other Tory MPs might vote against the Truss tax cuts in Parliament. This caused Truss to panic and reverse the upper income tax rate cut, which only further damaged her credibility.

The political crisis that is currently intensifying in the UK has highlighted a number of inherent defects within the political system that currently operates in most Western democracies. They include the following: 

First, it is clear that any political system that allows a genuine prime minister like Boris Johnson to be deposed for a few minor misdemeanors, and replaced by someone as demonstrably incompetent as Liz Truss, is irretrievably broken.

Second, any political system that encourages and permits a rapid and regular turnover of leaders – sadly a defining characteristic of politics in the West these days – can only perpetuate ongoing general political instability.

Third, party leaders should be elected by members of Parliament, not the party membership. Election by members debases the quality of candidates and policies alike, and leads to ongoing instability and destabilization in circumstances, as is often the case, where the elected leader does not command the support of a majority of parliamentarians. This was the case under Jeremy Corbyn’s recent leadership of the Labour Party, and it is now certainly the case with Truss.

Fourth, politics needs to attract a far better quality of politician than it currently does.

Fifth, if the Conservative Party does split, this may lead to a particularly dangerous consequence, namely the formation of a new right-wing populist party of the kind that has recently emerged in Germany, Sweden, Italy, and elsewhere in the West. Such a development can only destabilize politics further, as it has done in each of those countries. 

Whether it is possible to achieve any of the abovementioned reforms or prevent the emergence of a populist party in the UK are, I think, very much open questions.

It has always been obvious that Truss is a fourth-rate politician. She is completely lacking in real intelligence, empathy with voters, and political judgment. But Truss is no worse than the average politician who these days regularly attains high office in Western democracies. 

I doubt that Truss will survive as prime minister for much longer, and she would seem to have no future beyond that in politics. 

Perhaps her most significant political achievement is to have dramatically highlighted, in the short space of a week, the inherent and fundamental instability that underpins the economic and political systems that currently hold sway in the West.

[Ally Bongo]

Her tits are getting bigger

[TDYER63]

55 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

Her tits are getting bigger

Cabinet reshuffle already?