Editorial: Thatcher's death has unleashed an almost medieval public mood




If Baroness Thatcher was divisive in life, she is proving no less so in death. Indeed, the proverbial Martian might conclude from the extremes of approbation and acrimony that have consumed Britain since the former prime minister’s fatal stroke on Monday that, in fact, two different people had died.

One was the country’s saviour, a straight-talking political titan who restored an ailing Britain to health and hastened the end of the Cold War. The other sacrificed the post-war consensus to the idol of the free market, destroyed lives and livelihoods across swathes of the North, and fostered a culture of greed and selfishness, the deleterious effects of which we still suffer from.

To their credit, most politicians have maintained a sense of perspective. Formal tributes were delivered to a hastily recalled Parliament yesterday with due decorum, and Ed Miliband, in particular, deserves credit for his carefully calibrated tone. But such restraint has by no means predominated. Rather, Baroness Thatcher’s death has unleashed an almost medieval public mood, with pro- and anti-Maggie factions – many of whose members have no memory of her time in power – battling as ferociously over her death as her life.

Amid so much froth and hyperbole, neither side can be taken seriously. It may be ludicrous for Mrs Thatcher’s supporters to detect a left-leaning bias in BBC news presenters not wearing black ties; to demand a state funeral, even though the honours planned are such in all but name; and to call for a statue in Trafalgar Square and a minute’s silence at this weekend’s football games. Yet it is hardly more sensible for her detractors to routinely claim that she railroaded a reluctant populace – overlooking the three election victories – and to baulk at the taxpayer funding her obsequies.

What is striking, though, is the depth of feeling. This is no measured debate about the past; this is red raw and right now. With the traditional reticence of the British so wholly overturned by the public outpourings over Princess Diana, perhaps the floral tributes left at Baroness Thatcher’s Belgravia home are not as remarkable as they would once have been. But the same cannot be said of the celebratory street parties, the jubilant graffiti and the gleeful vitriol that followed the news of her death.

There is much to be lamented, here. Yet there is also cause for comfort in the cacophony. Is it in bad taste to rejoice at the demise of a frail, old woman? It certainly is. Does much of the venom go too far? Undoubtedly it does. Such excesses could hardly be further from the gun-to-the-head communal mourning that accompanies the demise of the world’s less democratic leaders, however. For all that we might decry the inappropriate revelries, then; and for all that we might consider George Galloway’s “May she burn in the hellfires” tweet to be unpalatable; such outbursts can nonetheless be celebrated as the marks of true political freedom.

There are other positives, too. At a time of increasing electoral disinterest, it is no bad thing for a politician (even one who is dead) to provoke such elemental passions. Equally, at a time when the political class is so often dismissed with the weary observation that “they’re all the same”, it is no bad thing to be reminded so forcefully that this is not always the case. Some of Westminster’s current crop might even grasp the notion – from so arresting an example – that leading public opinion, rather than slavishly following what focus groups suggest it to be, might be a decent aspiration to have.

One of Baroness Thatcher’s friends said this week that the former prime minister would have been proud to have caused such a stir. In death, as in life, she did not need to be liked. And in that, at least, she is a lesson for all.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/editorial-thatchers-death-has-unleashed-an-almost-medieval-public-mood-8567297.html

Your comments are rather comical for such a serious topic.

Your fantasy conversation does not match well against this logic

n order to understand the improbability of the government’s explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy.

You only have to know two things.

One is that according to the official story, a handful of Arabs, mainly Saudi Arabians, operating independently of any government and competent intelligence service, men without James Bond and V for Vendetta capabilities, outwitted not only the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, but all 16 US intelligence agencies, along with all security agencies of America’s NATO allies and Israel’s Mossad. Not only did the entire intelligence forces of the Western world fail, but on the morning of the attack the entire apparatus of the National Security State simultaneously failed. Airport security failed four times in one hour. NORAD failed. Air Traffic Control failed. The US Air Force failed. The National Security Council failed. Dick Cheney failed. Absolutely nothing worked. The world’s only superpower was helpless at the humiliating mercy of a few undistinguished Arabs.

It is hard to image a more far-fetched story–except for the second thing you need to know: The humiliating failure of US National Security did not result in immediate demands from the President of the United States, from Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the media for an investigation of how such improbable total failure could have occurred. No one was held accountable for the greatest failure of national security in world history. Instead, the White House dragged its feet for a year resisting any investigation until the persistent demands from 9/11 families for accountability forced President George W. Bush to appoint a political commission, devoid of any experts, to hold a pretend investigation.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary-911-paul-craig-roberts/

Please stay on topic Mr Conrad.

n order to understand the improbability of the government’s explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy.

You only have to know two things.

One is that according to the official story, a handful of Arabs, mainly Saudi Arabians, operating independently of any government and competent intelligence service, men without James Bond and V for Vendetta capabilities, outwitted not only the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, but all 16 US intelligence agencies, along with all security agencies of America’s NATO allies and Israel’s Mossad. Not only did the entire intelligence forces of the Western world fail, but on the morning of the attack the entire apparatus of the National Security State simultaneously failed. Airport security failed four times in one hour. NORAD failed. Air Traffic Control failed. The US Air Force failed. The National Security Council failed. Dick Cheney failed. Absolutely nothing worked. The world’s only superpower was helpless at the humiliating mercy of a few undistinguished Arabs.

It is hard to image a more far-fetched story–except for the second thing you need to know: The humiliating failure of US National Security did not result in immediate demands from the President of the United States, from Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the media for an investigation of how such improbable total failure could have occurred. No one was held accountable for the greatest failure of national security in world history. Instead, the White House dragged its feet for a year resisting any investigation until the persistent demands from 9/11 families for accountability forced President George W. Bush to appoint a political commission, devoid of any experts, to hold a pretend investigation.
Read the rest at http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary-911-paul-craig-roberts/

If you claim it to be true it must be so.
I do not think you noticed that quote was taken from the website I provided a link to and a reminder this thread is pretty much about why people are dancing in the street in the UK. Its not about what any of us have or haven't achieved personally, pleas stay on topic.

I am thinking both parties are two heads of the same snake.

Hundreds attend Thatcher street party in Windrush Square, Brixton – big photo report.

Follow the link see the photos and read the comments of those in attendance for a better picture of what is going on.

http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2013/04/hundreds-attend-thatcher-street-party-in-windrush-square-brixton-big-photo-report/

The best comment I saw.

omg Nigel how dare you !! I lived through the thatcher years!! I had 5 kids and a husband my husband was self employed and worked 6 days a week 12 hours everyday..I to fit in with my kids had 3 part time jobs so as I could take them and collect them from school, where my mum looked after them until my husband came home from work..I worked from 9.30 on a morning til 12 midnight 6 days a week and Sunday afternoons, I never saw my kids and me and my husband passed on the landing in the mornings saying hello through the sleepy haze!!! I missed my kids growing up for the best part of their lives and we still nearly lost our house because of her cuts and the rising inflation, we couldn,t physically have worked any more hours a week between us so don,t you dare insinuate that folks who are glad she has passed were misinformed, workshy, lazy people.

Really? was it not the Bush junta that created the Orwellian state with the Patriot act? implemented a short time after 911?

I am reminded of the great Gonzo, Dr Hunter S Thompson on Nixon's death.



He was a crook

Jun 16, 1994

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK

DATE: MAY 1, 1994

FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON:

NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER... HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA... BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is becoming the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of
every unclean and hateful bird."--REVELATION 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing--a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said. "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive--and he was, all the way to the end--we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style--and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

Nixon was a navy man, and he should have been buried at sea. Many of his friends were seagoing people: Bebe Rebozo, Robert Vesco, William F. Buckley Jr., and some of them wanted a full naval burial.

These come in at least two styles, however, and Nixon's immediate family strongly opposed both of them. In the traditionalist style, the dead president's body would be wrapped and sewn loosely in canvas sailcloth and dumped off the stern of a frigate at least 100 miles off the coast and at least 1,000 miles south of San Diego, so the corpse could never wash up on American soil in any recognizable form.

The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all, the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable--some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.

It would also play into the hands of those millions of self-stigmatized patriots like me who believe these things already.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern--but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man--evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him--except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it ****s up my children's sense of values."

Many were incensed about the howitzers--but they knew there was nothing they could do about it--not with the current president sitting about 50 yards away and laughing at the roar of the cannons. It was Nixon's last war, and he won.

The funeral was a dreary affair, finely staged for TV and shrewdly dominated by ambitious politicians and revisionist historians. The Rev. Billy Graham, still agile and eloquent at the age of 136, was billed as the main speaker, but he was quickly upstaged by two 1996 GOP presidential candidates: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California, who formally hosted the event and saw his poll numbers crippled when he got blown off the stage by Dole, who somehow seized the No. 3 slot on the roster and uttered such a shameless, self-serving eulogy that even he burst into tears at the end of it.

Dole's stock went up like a rocket and cast him as the early GOP front-runner for '96. Wilson, speaking next, sounded like an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator and probably won't even be re-elected as governor of California in November.

The historians were strongly represented by the No. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with many axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments--most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H.P. Lovecraft and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism--which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along 10 years earlier. He got away with his sleazy "my dog Checkers" speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in 14 years that Nixon lost an election.

When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of 40, he was a smart young man on the rise--a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream with a heart full of hate and an overweening lust to be President. He had won every office he'd run for and stomped like a Nazi on all of his enemies and even some of his friends.

Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him.) It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.

Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.

For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director--who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.

That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says--and he is, after all, the President of the United States.

Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."

****. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. he was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.

Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.

Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Richard Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his Presidency.

It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that--but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure, Nixon was one of these, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.

Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.

Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives--whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also **** in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

KICKING NIXON WHILE HE WAS UP

It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string warts, on nights when the moon comes too close....

At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps 50 feet down to the lawn ... pauses briefly to strangle the chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness...toward the Watergate, snarling with lust, loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue and trying desperately to remember which one of those 400 iron balconies is the one outside Martha Mitchell's apartment.

Ah...nightmares, nightmares. But I was only kidding. The President of the United States would never act that weird. At least not during football season. But how would the voters react if they knew the President of the United States was, according to a New York Times editorial on Oct. 12, presiding over "a complex, far-reaching and sinister operation on the part of White House aides and the Nixon campaign organization ... involving sabotage, forgery, theft of confidential files, surveillance of Democratic candidates and their families and persistent efforts to lay the basis for possible blackmail and intimidation?"

- Hunter S. Thompson
http://www.peeniewallie.com/2005/06/hunter_s_thomps.html

And the working people in the UK are dancing in the streets?

Why Would Anyone Celebrate the Death of Margaret Thatcher? Ask a Chilean
by Dave Zirin

Never have I witnessed a gap between the mainstream media and the public, quite like the last 24 hours since the death of Margaret Thatcher. While both the press and President Obama were uttering tearful remembrances, thousands took to the streets of the UK and beyond to celebrate. Immediately this drew strong condemnation of what were called "death parties", described as “tasteless”, “horrible”, and “beneath all human decency.” Yet if the same media praising Thatcher and appalled by the popular response would bother to ask one of the people celebrating, they might get a story that doesn't fit into their narrative, which is probably why they aren't asking at all.

Thousands have taken to the streets to celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher.I received a note this morning from the friend of a friend. She lives in the UK, although her family didn't arrive there by choice. They had to flee Chile, like thousands of others, when it was under the thumb of General Augusto Pinochet. If you don't know the details about Pinochet's blood-soaked two-decade reign, you should read about them but take care not to eat beforehand. He was a merciless overseer of torture, rapes, and thousands of political executions. He had the hands and wrists of the country's greatest folk singer Victor Jara broken in front of a crowd of prisoners before killing him. He had democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende shot dead at his desk. His specialty was torturing people in front of their families.

As Naomi Klein has written so expertly, he then used this period of shock and slaughter to install a nationwide laboratory for neoliberal economics. If Pinochet's friend Milton Friedman had a theory about cutting food subsidies, privatizing social security, slashing wages, or outlawing unions, Pinochet would apply it. The results of these experiments became political ammunition for neoliberal economists throughout the world. Seeing Chile-applied economic theory in textbooks always boggles my mind. It would be like if the American Medical Association published a textbook on the results of Dr. Josef Mengele's work in the concentration camps, without any moral judgment about how he accrued his patients.

Pinochet was the General in charge of this human rights catastrophe. He also was someone who Margaret Thatcher called a friend. She stood by the General even when he was exile, attempting to escape justice for his crimes. As she said to Pinochet, "[Thank you] for bringing democracy to Chile."

Therefore, if I want to know why someone would celebrate the death of Baroness Thatcher, I think asking a Chilean in exile would be a great place to start. My friend of a friend took to the streets of the UK when she heard that the Iron Lady had left her mortal coil. Here is why:

"I'm telling [my daughter] all about the Thatcher legacy through her mother's experience, not the media's; especially how the Thatcher government directly supported Pinochet's murderous regime, financially, via military support, even military training (which we know now, took place in Dundee University). Thousands of my people (and members of my family) were tortured and murdered under Pinochet's regime- the fascist beast who was one of Thatcher's closest allies and friend. So all you apologists/those offended [by my celebration] -you can take your moral high ground & shove it. YOU are the ones who don't understand. Those of us celebrating are the ones who suffered deeply under her dictatorship and WE are the ones who cared. We are the ones who protested. We are the humanitarians who bothered to lift a finger to help all those who suffered under her regime. I am lifting a glass of champagne to mourn, to remember and to honour all the victims of her brutal regime, here AND abroad. And to all those heroes who gave a **** enough to try to do something about it."

I should add here that I lived in Chile in 1995, when Pinochet had been deposed but was still in charge of the armed forces. I became friends with those who were tortured or had their families disappeared so Thatcher's connection to Chile strikes a personal note with me. I also understand however, that similar explanations for "why people are celebrating" could be made by those with connections to Argentina, apartheid South Africa, Indonesia, Belfast, Gaza, or Baghdad. The case could also be made by those in the UK affected by Thatcher's Pinochet-tested economic dictates who choose not to mourn.

It also matters because the 48 hours after a powerful public figure dies is when the halo becomes permanently affixed to their head. When Ronald Reagan passed away, a massive right wing machine went into motion aimed at removing him from all criticism. The Democrats certainly didn't challenge this interpretation of history and now according to polls, people under 25 would elect Reagan over President Obama, even though Reagan's ideas remain deeply unpopular. To put it crudely, the political battle over someone's memory is a political battle over policy. In Thatcher's case, if we gloss over her history of supporting tyrants, we are doomed to repeat them.

As Glenn Greenwald wrote so expertly in the Guardian, "There is absolutely nothing wrong with loathing Margaret Thatcher or any other person with political influence and power based upon perceived bad acts, and that doesn't change simply because they die. If anything, it becomes more compelling to commemorate those bad acts upon death as the only antidote against a society erecting a false and jingoistically self-serving history."

Or to put it even more simply, in the words, of David Wearing, "People praising Thatcher's legacy should show some respect for her victims." That would be nice, wouldn't it? Let's please show some respect for Margaret Thatcher's victims. Let's respect those who mourn everyday because of her policies, but choose this one day to wipe away the tears.Then let's organize to make sure that the history she authored does not repeat.
© 2013 The Nation
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/09-7

I believe what I see not what I am told to see. DUH

This Lib would be happy if the Catholik church was held accountable for its pedophiles.

Granted no plane hit it but the flawed 911 report cites the fires for the cause of the collapse. Lets see this fire looks to be at least ten times worse.

Any minute now it should be turning to dust and collapsing at free fall speed.........

YUP

The real issue is will americans allow our government to slash social programs and continue aiding other countries? It is true americans are
some of the most intellectually unsophisticated people on the planet earth.

Please provide me a figure as to the amount of aid we give our "Muslim brothers"

As a result of sequestration budget cuts in America, many important programmes, especially for the poor, will be unfunded.

No cuts for Israel?

Among other things, 600,000 low-income women and children could be thrown off the Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.

The USDA will treat 200,000 fewer acres for hazardous fuel contamination, leading to an increased risk of wildfires.

Around 70,000 children will lose access to Head Start preschool services, with layoffs of 14,000 people nationwide.

There will be reduced funding for the health and well being of more than 373,000 seriously mentally ill adults and children, which could result in increased hospitalizations and homelessness.

About 125,000 individuals and families have been put at risk of becoming homeless, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimated.

An additional 100,000 formerly homeless people might be removed from emergency shelters or other housing arrangements because of the cuts, according to HUD.

These represent only a few of many programmes to suffer from funding cuts. No cuts for Israel?

Let’s look at the figures for some of the losers:

A total of $86 million has been slashed from key women’s health programs that primarily serve lower-income women.

$8 million from the Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program,

$24 million from the Title X family planning and reproductive services;

$50 million from the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant.

$20 million from the recently reinstated Violence Against Women Act

$9 million from the Family Violence Prevention Act

$424 million from Head Start and Early Head Start programs, which provide health and education services to low-income families.

$600 million is set to be cut from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program For Women, Infants and Children.

A total of 1 billion, 221 million for these programs alone.

But wait! AIPAC’s campaign in Congress calls for:

Efforts to provide Israel with its full $3.1 billion in military aid for 2013 and 2014, as well as $211m in additional funding for the Iron Dome missile-defence system.

The Washington Post acknowledges that there may be consequences within the American public “that attempts to exempt Israel from painful budget cuts while the rest of the U.S. was forced to absorb them would cause a political backlash.”

Concurrent with the AIPAC meeting in Washington D.C., Congress is proposing a resolution which states “If Israel were compelled to take military action in self defence, the U.S. government should stand with Israel and supply military and diplomatic support.” This would create additional costs.

The Jewish Week calls AIPAC’s gambit to exempt these cuts a “very risky strategy at a time when millions of Americans will be feeling the bite of the sequestration debacle, which “could easily backfire and damage Israel far more than any cuts in its very generous grant aid program.”

James M Wall asks, “Is the U.S. Congress so beholden to AIPAC and so insensitive to the impact on programs like Head Start for children, that it will give Israel’s self-designated “defensive needs” priority over US domestic needs?”

If the U.S. congress yields to the wishes of AIPAC to exempt Israel from budget cuts at the expense of needy Americans, those in Congress should not be proud to be Americans.
http://theinternetpost.net/2013/03/26/the-social-cost-of-israeli-aid/

The ignorance is astounding.

Climatologists predicted the warming gulf stream would be shifted away from England causing that country to have colder winters. Hate to break the news fellows but the global average temp is rising despite a few cold

I offer this up from our friends at the Christian science monitor

Over the past century, global average temperatures appear to have risen faster than at any time since the end of the last ice age 11,300 years ago, and perhaps longer. Meanwhile, the magnitude of the increase has been unmatched in at least the past 4,000 years.
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Researchers say those are the implications of a new study that uses natural stand-ins for thermometers to trace temperature trends back to the beginning of the current warm, interglacial period. Significantly, the study’s findings suggest the current warming trend cannot be explained by some forms of naturally occurring temperature variability, a lingering issue in the debate over the impact of human activity on global warming. [Editor's note: The reference to temperature variability has been revised.]

The main trigger for the current warming trend, especially since the middle of the last century, has been rising emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide as people burn fossil fuels and change land-use patterns, researchers say.

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Although other so-called paleoclimate records reach farther back into geological time, the team focused on the Holocene epoch, in which human civilizations emerged and evolved.

"To our knowledge, based on this reconstruction, the rate of change today is unprecedented" in the Holocene, says Shaun Marcott, an atmospheric scientist at Oregon State University who led a team formally reporting the results in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Indeed, it may be unprecedented in the past 22,000 years, he adds, when previous paleoclimate research he and his colleagues have conducted is taken into account.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0307/Global-temperature-rise-is-fastest-in-at-least-11-000-years-study-says