I just can't believe that the "Ticking Bomb" scenario still gets wheeled out. Haven't we invented the polygraph? If we've really got a suspicion and a suspect, wire him up and drive him round the target area and watch the dials.

Exactly Craig.

This Bruce Anderson guy is one of the biggest twits writing in national daily. He's there for one purpose only, to rile people, to stir things up, and promote "controversy." It's pathetic really.

Why do we torture people? Seemingly, from an objective veiwpoint, it isn't to gain information that we do not know; rather it's a practice designed to gain "information" that underlines and supports what we "know" already to be "true", or what we "sincerely" believe to be true. Torture primarily provides us with infomation that supports our view of the world, what we already "know" to be true about it.

For example, we "know" that Evil exists, that Satan is real, that his minions are all around us, that witchcraft and witches walk among us; then it's a short step to finding real "evidence" that "proves" the existance of this invisible, parallel world. Torturing witches, gaining confessions, doesn't tell us things we don't "know" already, but it does show that what we "know" is true. Torture becomes a form of self-fulling prophecy or argument, that strengthens our false veiw of the world.

And this mindset is part of a bigger and more dangerous tendency; a move away from rationality and science, towards the re-birth of faith, superstition, religion, mythology...

I suppose one can argue that the "irrational" never really went away, what's different know is that ignorance and stupidity, and the belief in an invisible, supernatural world that's parallel to the real one, can be found in our political leaders, in Blair for example. Blair who wasn't subject to the laws of man, but, in the final analysis, only to his maker, who had the right to judge him and look into his soul.

Of course this is very convenient for the budding despot. One can convince oneself that ones statements and actions are justified and legitimate, and that ones "intentions" are all that matter, not the consequences of ones actions in the real world, because in this kind of tripe metaphysics, the real world doesn't matter that much, not compared to the invisible world, which whilst it isn't real, is more true.

Nice article, but not a flattering picture mate.

Much of Bruce Anderson's writing in The Independent is underpinned by thinly-veiled racism and bigotry; somewhat laughably (if it wasn't so serious), he seems to see himself as a sort of swaggering John Bull character. But for from being the Pearly King of the broadsheets, it's precisely his kind of writing that provides the numinous substrate through which both bourgeois racism/ bigotry and the Masters of War ply their trade.

Excellent article Craig,many thanks.

Bruce Anderson is just another bought and paid Useful Idiot for the bullshit artists who contrived the War On Terror,Inc.

He's also a despicable,vain,pompous,ignorant psychopath.

@ Tony op-moc

Tony...does your name refer to Operation Mockingbird?

If so,why?

Mind you..it would explain an awful lot of your often rather strange dissembling posts here...

@Jives - no, I think it has something to do with "Compo", the character from Last of the Summer Wine. Read it backwards :)

Tony came out with a couple of great posts recently, but I fear as the hour gets later, and as more is imbibed, the posts become a stream of consciousness that would be great elsewhere. I don't think the disruption is deliberate, but I do wonder whether Craig should appoint a moderator!

@Jon.
He does come up with some jems though.

@ Jon

Indeed i did previously consider the backwards spelling...but hmmm...

Dont get me wrong...his posts are often strangely funny-pithy even...but yes...the later it gets...

But who knows...this is,at times,a strange blog...who knows who the spooks trolls are eh?

Regards..

Craig,

See the link below for a rather brilliant and succinct explanation of Bruce Anderson's moral universe.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003212.html

Well, I'd be amazed if my post appears in the London Evening Standard, yet I was completely sober when I wrote it.

The only chance is if the moderator, comes back from his Lunch Time Session, and had a Cook-In-Pot and threw up when he read it and pressed the wrong button by mistake.

Apologies by the way.

Opmoc stands for compo which was my original internet handle 10 years ago until I kept being banned, and the actor compo who I had never head of dropped dead.

Tony

Thanks Craig. "Not everybody is convinced. Lord Goldsmith has called for a public inquiry, and so has the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights."

I think a public inquiry into this is long overdue.

a Public Enquiry eh?

There's a scene in The Thick Of It where an errant incompetent Minister is told by an aide there will be a Public Enquiry into his actions...

The Minister duly falls to the floor almost weeping with relief>

" A Public Enquiry?" Yes! Yes ! Oh thank you God! Thank you!"

Craig,
Agreed. Ticking time bomb is hollywood script material.

Looking forward to Radio 4 tomorrow.

Regards
-Control

Craig....hope you don't mind me asking..i'm curious though..

When you were given The Treatment by the powers that be,after you spoke out,did you ever feel that it was tantamount to a form of torture...psychological perhaps?...i don't mean of the horrific physical type you encountered in Uzbekistan..

The Anderson incident was startling. I don't think a piece like that would have been published by Völkischer Beobachter. Seriously.

Intelligence from torture? Writerman nails it terribly well.

"MI6's health and safety people considered the country too dangerous (sorry, James Bond fans)".

Is that a prolonged and desperate drumming of the heels that I hear, from the long-dead Ian Fleming?

You really, really, really could not make this stuff up. What kind of imbeciles are running the UK these days - and why?

Jives,

It was a dreadful persecution but I wouldn't call it torture, not knowing victims of real torture.

Express comments board not going in your favour,Craig.Mind you that's probably a compliment.

On the general point of disbelief about our practice of torture-the moronization of the British public seems to have proceeded apace for decades now.How else can we account for their failure to believe that their government could be complicit in torture?

After several books,a mountain of research,even mainstream coverage confirming that torture was standard practice in Northern Ireland right from the earliest days of the conflict-the British public must be plain stupid to have taken so long to have worked it out.

The same goes for the Americans.One would have to be woefully ignorant of the US proclivity for torturing its perceived enemies in every war in which they have ever been engaged from the Spanish war in 1898,the ensuing carnage used to suppress civilian uprisings in the Philippines-to Korea and Vietnam you'd have to have lived on Mars all this time to claim you knew nothing about it.

Wars of aggression and conquest march with the torturers in their ranks.The conquered population has to be subdued by the terror which the conquering nation can demonstrate it has at its disposal.

I remember hearing a Radio 4 broadcast in which Craig described what he had seen in Uzbekistan,what the UK government knew was going on,and how that government-with the pricipal involvement of Jack Straw-set about relieving Craig of his duties with any manner of black propaganda re-his insanity and procurement of travel documents for local Uzbeks deemed worthy of such favourable treatment.

Sadly all of this is the tip of a very high and nasty shipping hazard.

Yes,we do torture.Yes,we had an empire once and other like-minded states have coveted our expertise in this area ever since.

We've been doing torture for as long as we've been in denial of the fact.

These facts would not even be deemed newsworthy were it not for that well recognised trait which all other states deem defining in our case-RANK BRITISH HYPOCRISY to wit!

Freeborn,

Even 10 years ago, whilst I realised I was a bit mad at times, I had absolutely no idea about British Government complicity in Torture.

Sure I knew about the IRA painting shit all over their cell walls, but I also knew nothing about the real history of Ireland.

I had had my education, and my brothers joined the TA, and they said to them if a bloke comes up to you with an Irish accent - and says - can you give me your gun mate, then don't give it to him cos he might be a Terrorist.

But most of my life, I was as completely naive as the great mass of the great unwashed and even the washed who went to Eton.

Then, I started to read books.

Of course I had read books before - but they were nearly always Technical Books, just so that I could remain employed and learn and earn sufficient money to bring up my kids.

I had no time to find out about the world as it really is.

I had no idea that such evil exists in the highest places of Government.

I was outraged when our Government was bombing Yugoslavia to shit 10 years ago, but I still didn't understand and believed the official story, that bombing them to shit was good for them.

Sure I went to see plays like Animal Farm done brilliantly live on stage, but I thought it was about another society in another age.

I saw the film 1984 last night for the first time.

The torture scenes were very hard to take.

Tony

Thanks Craig, you write:

"The key point — and one I cannot stress too much — is that the vast majority of this material was absolute rubbish"

There remains the question of whether you would support torture in the case where it produces not rubbish but something more reliable. Would you? And if not, why not?

When you present the case as you have, that is, in what I would call a prudential argument, concluding that it does not serve any interest of our own to torture, you seem to shy away from an argument from a perspective of a fundamental principle of human rights.

It may be that the prudential is the stronger case. But wouldn't it be better to offer both?

I'm sure you don't support torture in either case, but what would be your basic reason for opposing it if, let's say, it produced truth, even in one of these ridiculous ticking bomb scenarios.

Come to think of it, consistent would be a position which supports Anderson's conclusions in his hypothetical case but rejects torture in practice because such a case never holds. But I digress.

I will offer a possible answer to my own question. It may be that the arguments of principle and those of practice, once suitably refined as to address all available objections, actually collapse into one another. For example, there can be no reason in principle to torture if we know in practice that the probability that the information obtained is reliable, combined with its usefulness if it is, does not outweigh the probability that an innocent person may be tortured combined with the great damaged caused both to the tortured individual and to the common good of all to be free from these very terrors which the state, in this case, would visit upon us. Sorry for such a ridiculously long sentence. Probably best to ignore it. Sorry.

I'd still like to know your answer though.

Best Wishes,
Stephen

Before I had even seen Craig's article today I wrote the following on Alternet this morning. Its an American website that gets over 50,000 visitors a day.

I guess I am trying to apologise to Larry for writing a complete load of uninhibited bollocks (nearly all of which is true by the way) on Wednesday night. And a Policeman did turn up at our door on Thursday Morning. No - I don't think any of our neighbours reported a lunatic dancing in the garden at 3:30am on Thursday Morning. They Know I am mad - and the Burglars Fuck Off Elsewhere. The Policeman was our local copper and just checking that everything was OK

So this is what I wrote on Alternet - I wrote more later after I had read Craig's article.

Sorry, I just don't understand why more people aren't as totally outraged as I am.

"For a good representation of where Cheney has taken America to check out the film 1984. I watched it last night. It was made in 1984. George Orwell wrote it about 40 years before. He got it right, just his timing was a bit out.

It shows a graphic representation of Torture and the Oppression of a Totally Fascist State.

In the UK, virtually everyone, even the politicians complicit in torture, are totally opposed to it. The politicians lie and hold their heads in shame as they await the inevitable prosecutions that are getting much closer.

In the US, the last opinion poll I saw, showed that 52% of Americans were in Favour of Torture.

That’s all you need to know to demonstrate how Brainwashed Americans are.

You are living in 1984. It maybe 2010, and you haven’t realised it yet.

The majority of you are back in the dark ages.

Yours, Disgusted,

Tony

Report This Comment
tony_opmoc
2010-02-19 05:17:40"

I share Stephen's unease - would we condone torture if we found it to be effective? Having looked at the comments against the original Independent article, I think the practical morality of the situation was best captured by the poster who said that a society that is willing to defend itself by such means is not worth defending. Let the bomb tick, let it explode.

I'll never forget walking through the Tuol Sleng school in Phnom Penh where the Khmer Rouge tortured their prisoners to death. There was the photo of an Australian backpacker on the wall among all the Asiatic faces, along with his 'confession' in which he owned up to being a member of the CIA, MI6, KGB and goodness knows what else beside. Poor bastard.

Vronsky,

Whilst I didn't use the powerful version on Wednesday Night

I have got an incredible laser machine

I have not yet had much success with the smoke machine, and got rather annoyed when my wife started feeding her plants with the contents of a large flagon of fluid specifically designed for the smoke machine, which could have had a bigger label.

Whilst the plants in her window box are dead, most of the fluid is still in my shed.

You see, I am trying to tame things down

We used to do this stuff with rather powerful explosives (commonly called fireworks) Yes we have had our local Conservative Councillor Knocking on Our Door at 1:00 am on New Years Day Saying You Can't Do That

So, we thought we would do it a different way.

Its all completely legal and much quieter

But the idea is to

PAINT THE SKY

Tony

Bruce Anderson (whose articles I never read) is getting slammed in the letters page of The Independent. It doesn't appear that Independent readers care much for this sort of apologia for torture, neither is it in line with the general political stance of the paper itself, so it's quite amazing to see articles like this printed. The Indy has some odd writers - the Blair apologist Rentoul, the "you're-all-antisemites" correspondent Jacobson, and now this half-wit Anderson dragging the paper down.

While on the continent a month or so back, a British guy was holding forth on the xmas day Undies-bomber, telling his sceptical listeners (all continentals) that he should be brutally tortured without delay. I couldn't let the impression that all Brits were pro-torture go down, and so challenged him on it. The Stasi gave up torture because they knew it produced rubbish. We got far more out of Nazi war criminals with chess and ping-pong than "harsh interrogation methods". It's illegal under International Law. People will say anything to make it stop, that the FBI got Al-qaeda suspects talking with intelligent questioning and considerate behaviour, but the suspect clammed up again when the CIA thugs started their torture tactics. Naturally, it was a waste of time. The half-witted Brit suddenly found himself interested in the football instead, and waved away my statements rather than counter them.

There's no convincing pro-torture types who think they're being tough n' hard. Not facts, not evidence, not reference to what's actually worked, not the law, nor an appeal to any form of basic decency. I think it's a blood-lust, a cruel streak and maybe a desire for revenge - or to terrorise those who might dare oppose us (the West).

A liking for torture, and enjoying witnessing it, is nothing new. Crowds used to gather to watch scenes of utter barbarity carried out by the Church or the law throughout the middle ages. Nothing could be better than watching a person being broken on the wheel, and if it was a woman being tortured, all the better. And if it was two or three women, all the better still.

The torture advocates and their torture apologists are throwbacks, they would be watching with awe and rapt attention just like their dark-age counterparts, delighted at the spectacle themselves, if they had the chance.

"PAINT THE SKY"

Go for it, Tony. What colour are we getting? I'm up in Scotland, and we'd be ever so grateful if you plumped for something unusual like - uh - blue.

Ted Hughes wrote a poem once about a debate in the House of Commons in the 19th century in which it was proposed to outlaw the cat-of-nine-tails in the Royal Navy. The various Bruce Andersons of the day were outraged, claiming it would be tantamount to handing out brandy and cigars to the sailors. Then a real 'cat', stained with flakes of blood, was brought in and passed round the chamber. After which they all meekly voted it through without a word. Says it all.

glenn, next time maybe point and scream "aargh! psycho!".

thanks for the lovely image of getting "far more out of Nazi war criminals with chess and ping-pong".

and thanks Tony, interesting couple of posts - the first reminded me of a German film called 'The Nasty Girl'; about a school girl who finds out what her leafy, happy German town did during the Third Reich.

Incidentally, since you raised it again a while back, I was in the NWFP and Afghanistan with an NGO, so I had some protection.

Five people were arrested this week for organising an Anti-Muslim march on Facebook in Treherbert, a small village in the Rhondda, where I frequently stay when I go to see my children in Wales. There are only three Muslim families in the village, but they are hoping to link up with an Afghan village soon and hold a similar anti-Welsh event.

I've got an idea, next time M16 decides to gang rape a 5 year old to make her father talk, they should do the same thing to Bruce Anderson to see if he still thinks torture is useful?

Shouldn't that be an anti-Christian rally, rather than an anti-Welsh rally? Wouldn't mind joining an all-encompassing 'anti-religion' rally myself!

Treherbert eh - a hotbed of fanatical Muslim sleeper-cells if ever I heard of one. Sheesh.

I think there are three Muslims in treherbert if you count the cat of the couple who run the corner shop where these idiots buy their pints of milk.

Whilst we have seen him loads of times before, I am extremely vulnerable when presented with new information on a Friday evening by my wife as I was a few weeks ago

So I paid significantly more than twice the face value of the tickets

Knowing that sometimes these things are sold out in minutes

And the tickets have been delivered, and I feel embarrassed about having paid so much

And so today whilst doing our weekly shop in the supermarket - we looked at the CD - Top 50

And it was there at about Number 31

And so we bought it £9.99

We haven't heard it yet

Peter Gabriel

Tony

The Tickets Are Not For Sale

We have been to The Millennium Dome Before

But We Have Never Seen This

Tony

She said Stop Crying. I said I Can't It's Completely Brilliant.

She said - Well You Are Not Playing It Tomorrow Night. No One Will Understand.

I Said I Won't Unless Van der Graaf Generator and Peter's Mates Turn Up

Tony

September 1, 1939
by W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Craig - A powerful piece in 'this is London' and very brave - excellent and inspiring.

Dear Craig: Yes, I am sorry for the complete off topic (I blame Tony x); am very glad you wrote this.

I would be interested to hear Bruce Anderson's response to the majority of comments on his article. I wonder if we will, or if he is up to it. I remember an odd interview with him on Radio 4 back in 2001, where he said, with some conviction, that people in the City (bankers etc) were afraid of New Labour; not the other way round. Always wanted to ask him to expand on that.

Like Baroness Warnock, he's responsible for doing what the German equivalent of 'She' magazine did in the Nazi era - bringing the hideous and brutal into the public domain, and treating it as though it was rational. Warnock attracted relatively little condemnation, I think, perhaps because people were so stunned at the idea that at some point we will merrily start killing off our parents (or encouraging them to kill themselves).

I wonder if he realises that?

PS Could you try and interview him? Perhaps not after calling him a 'saloon bar bigot'. But no, I'm sure you could swing it. It would make a great piece.

I never look back, well hardly ever,but this is the last thing I posted in my manic state on Thursday Morning

And yes I know all about Aspartame and Exceedigly Strong Mint Flavoured Chewing Gum

I say to her can you please not do that, you are chewing Rat Poison and I do not Approve of The SMELL

But I know he is sponsored by an American Chewing Gum Company

But whatever

This is Completely Fucking Brilliant

You Have Got To See The Video

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/

Tony

anyone who doesn't want to end up living in a fascist state may want to sign this petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/stiat000/petition.html

We already live in a facist state.
The question is where are we going to move to to excape this facism.

"torture of innocent women and children is patriotic" - Yes it is, because that's the path trodden by the ruling elite.

Fed a diet of quazi-Imperialism and irrational fear(s) (to name just two from many) this fascism - which I sometimes hope will end in tears - has come about due to the silence (deliberate/apathetic/pressurised) of
i) herr mudjesty
ii) the oppositon
iii) the courts
iv) the media
v) the church
vi) the (so called) intellectuals and academics
vii) the people
viii) the military

That's the problem with democracy. If a "democracy" decides to go for fascism, then all you who support democracy have no choice but to accept it.

And as most people lack sturdy morals and spine, if it is ever fought, that fight will never take place outside the boundaries that fascistic democracy allows.

The situation is terminal. Don't say you weren't warned.

Contributors to Medialens are running a campaign to contact all the advertisers in the Independent on these lines -

I write to draw your attention to a deeply disturbing article carried by a newspaper in which your [company/business/organisation] advertises.

The article in question is by Bruce Anderson, in the Independent, and is apparently endorsed by the editor, Roger Alton.

In this article, Anderson unequivocally asserts the necessity in some circumstances to torture not only people who are merely suspected of grave crimes, but also wholly innocent members of their family INCLUDING CHILDREN.

I append a link to this article so that you can see for yourself that this is no exaggeration.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-we-not-only-have-a-right-to-use-torture-we-have-a-duty-1899555.html

I'd like to ask whether you think that your [company/business/organisation] should really be sustaining with your advertising revenue a newspaper which endorses such shocking, and deeply-depraved ideas?

May I ask further whether you consider that it will benefit your [company/business/organisation] to be seen to be associating with and supporting such a newspaper?

With all due respect, may I suggest that it might be a good idea to withdraw your advertising from the Independent, or at least to contact them and make your disquiet known.

I hope you'll be good enough to drop me a brief line in answer to this query, and thanks most sincerely for your time and attention in this matter.

Aspects of the media provide publicity for many bad things - like encouraging the "shock and awe" invasion of a country which is certain to involve considerable loss of young life.

In that case, the newspaper is question was one of the few siren media voices against it.

Not that I don't agree with you... Let's just be thankful, Mary, for people like Craig Murray, flawed as he is... like the rest of us.

Bruce Andersen may not be a fool, but his job at the Independent is to write like a fool and a bigot, and this is what's troubling. Why does the Independent employ him? After his latest vile outburst advocating the use of torture against the innocent, surely no respectable newspaper would employ such a man, with such despecable views, if he really means what he says?

medialens is a gatekeeper outfit that pretends it's on a crusade to cut out the cancer of "corrupt journalism" etc.

Sorry they're aiders and abettors.

All they're good for is the email addresses for the target journalists they provide.Usually you are reminded by medialens to addresss your complaint respectfully.

I vented my spleen to Nick Cohen and the equally appalling Bronwen Maddox and felt better for that.

If I were to write to a man like Anderson whose articles I would not read if I saw his name above them- because I know what an awful vainglorious overfed gobshite he is from his t.v. appearances-my words would be simply unprintable.

Anderson,Maddox,and Cohen are despicable Rothschild pens who will propagandize for war-the War on Terror, the one in Aghanuistan,Iraq or on the moon they're not that bothered where.But if there's a war going on they'll support it.That's what they're paid to do.

medialens is just a gatekeeper for such people.If you don't like horseshite don't go into the stable.

In other words only people daft enough to read The Indie in the first place could think that medialens is there to cut out "the cancer of bent journalism".

They're about as serious re-such reporting as the crook who uttered the words in the first place.

Venerable ex-con,reformed Profumo-type character to whom we should all now pay our respects cos "he does a lot for charity" Jonathan Aitken.Well known former friend to the House of Saud for whom he provided vital services.

email Jonathan here:

saudimasseuses.com

Once opon a time... I think there used to be something called liberal opinion in the UK. It was flawed, confused, and naive; but had qualities none-the-less.

The Observer used to be a great newspaper, now look at it. The Sunday Times had quality writing, now look at it. The Guardian had standards, now look at it.

I wonder, whatever happend to liberal Britain? I suppose Thatcher and the last decade of New Larbour, killed it off, like they killed off the working class?

I think these constant wars have eaten away of the soul of Britain, with terrible results to follow. First we had the dirty war in Northern Ireland, then that sordid bloodbath about sheep in the Falklands, then the attack on Serbia, then Iraq, Afghanistan, and just around the corner the coming conflict with Iran. All these wars make Britain a less liberal country, and pervert our culture, making us more nationalistic, brutish, and square.

And I almost forgot this ghastly war on terror, which undermines what's left of our old, hard-won, liberties.

Then there is our virtual unconditional support for whatever madness the extremists in the right-wing government of Israel decide opon. They are preparing even more wars, as we speak.
Where will all this madness and bloodshed stop?

Unfortunately... it won't. It's going to get worse, because it's what we're good at. Imperialism is in our political DNA, except for a brief gap in the 1960's when the ruling class were to broke and discredited to join any substantial wars under the imperialist banner. But that's over. We're now firmly on the imperialist trajectory, scrabbling over what's left of the earth's bountry, like vultures over a rotting carcass.

Is there hope? Only if somehow people revolt and clear out the old order, which should have happened decades ago, after the debacle of the two world wars, that bankrupted the country and turned it into a vassal state, an appendage to the American Empire. Irony here, the country we created, turns the UK into a colony!

What's irritating is that people are too peaceful, too reasonable, too democratic, and wait too long before they finally can't take it anymore and rise up. By that time the ruling oligarchy can have caused so much damage to society that re-building becomes a massive task taking decades, if the decline can be reversed.

One of the irritating things about modern society is the dogmatic belief that we cannot suffer the same fate as ancient Rome; that somehow our civilization is different, that time cannot move backwards, but only forward.

Agree with Frazer - you sent them the wrong picture! But good article. Only a few comments, one from a "disgusted from Tunbridge Wells type" but otherwise supportive.

Couldn't comment though, the CAPTCHA image widget keeps coming back, even though I get it right every time. I'll try again in the week!

@Apostate, I agree with you about the Indie - and wonder if peacewisher's "siren media voices" is perhaps a touch too generous.

But Medialens a "(left) gatekeeper" - rubbish. They're not funded by anything other than donations, as far as I know, and the only reason why they implore people to be nice to journos is that they know it is counterproductive to be written off as loony. Maddox and Cohen are indeed defenders of the Establishment, but if their respective bosses see an abusive rant from a reader, they will throw it in the bin immediately. Worse, it convinces these types to "stay the course", so your missives may actually have been counterproductive!

@Jon

I agree that the Indy has frequently disappointed - but not as much as the Guardian... remember the days of David Aaronovich?

I was very surprised - indeed, amazed - to find that the only british newspaper that would touch "sensitive" stories - was The Mail (especially on Saturday). There must be a reason for this.

Spinwatch is a good site, it's run by Professor David Miller from Strathclyde University. Also, Corporatewatch seems very on-the-ball, a good resource as well as a news-point. Lobster magazine, now online, is gold-dust.

I agree with writerman about the MSM.

What a lot of liberal left mush re-medialens and spinwatch.

No wonder elite domination is as far advanced as it is.

Look,media gatekeepers are there to do a job.That job is to provide fake opposition to the elite agenda.Medialens and spinwatch are extensions of the corporate media that are there to convince you that there are just a few nasty journalists about who can be dealt with by decent,polite complaints from readers.

Spinwatch is like the university-sponsored arm of medialens with the same people involved.The research is not independent.It is channeled in particular directions by elite Foundation sponsorship.That sponsorship manufactures a patently phoney left-right paradigm that obscures the extent even the existence of elite domination.

The journalists the gatekeepers pretend to critique are bought and sold Rothschild hacks who brief for the intelligence services and those that abet them have bought into a now absurdly anachronistic manufactured left-right paradigm.

Have you still not worked out that the political system the corporate media pretend to critique is and has been puppeteered by elite interests over centuries? Their instruments in the press a.k.a.Cohen,Anderson,Maddox,
Aaronavitch,Charles Moore are endemic in the media system.

The reason that disinformation comes to dominate the media system is because left-gatekeepers like medialens and spinwatch are so constricted in their perspective by the elite-sponsored codes that determine what is reported and how-that real critical thinking is filtered out of their journalistic or research practice.

Where corporate hacks are condoning torture or, like Cohen when I wrote to him, attacking the brave and principled anti-war stand taken by Commons-vigil protester,Brian Haw,we should get angry and demand medialens and spinwatch expose them and the system in which they operate.

Check out Bob Feldman's left-gatekeeper research:

http://questionsquestions.net/topic/left_gatekeepers.html

Fat,overfed elite-sposored dissidents forward left establishment ideological warfare against conspiracy researchers who are far more vigilant re-civil liberties and the need for independent critical thinking than themselves.Gatekeepers have an internalized impulse that waters down analysis.Because they signally fail to inspect and properly scrutinize the inner power structures and elite forward planning systems involved their critique amounts to a destinationless circular series of overlapping arguments that entirely miss the point.

The elites that sponsor such media practice are left entirely unscathed and so to dictate and manage the course of history.

The day when we stop getting angry about torture,war,and kicking a man when he's down and rely on medialens and spinwatch to do that for us will be the day we surrender to the elites that sponsor all these endemic evils.

Unless this hack is involved in some sort of double-deception we've got at least one corporate journalist who is at least willing to point out the provenance of attacks on judges who condemn torture.

Timothy Garton Ash fingers the MI6-embedded hacks and politicians here:

http//www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/17/torture-spies-judges-secret-services

Right on,Apostate.

I too detest the Foundation-funded leftgatekeeper "alternative media" crew.Most of these outfits have spent decades bolstering the status quo by failing to challenge official narratives re-911,Rwanda,Yugoslavia,7/7.

Real alternative opinion and investigative journalism is increasingly hard to find in the corporate media.For the time being at least there is no shortage on the internet.

Steer clear of medialens,alternet,Dissident Voice,The Progressive,Counterpunch,The Fanonite,The Nation-all peddle antiquated establishment left narratives that are actually impediments to the creation of a meaningful resistance network.

Go there and you'll read a lot about the colour revolutions in the former Soviet Union.They've probably already got a colour ready for the revolution the opposition movement in Iran is trying to bring about.

After all these are the same people who told us that Khomeini's Islamist take-over in 1979 was an exercise in national self-determination.To suggest otherwise was to deny the Iranian people's capacity for "agency".

The American journalist,Robert Dreyfuss,described in Hostage to Khomeini how the Islamist take-over was in fact engineered with the complicity of Western intelligence with the BBC in the vanguard.

Dreyfuss now works for The Nation and has had to distance himself considerably from his former position.He might stand as an example of a reporter willing to compromise his original vocation as an investigative reporter to regain admission to the more lucrative establishment left media.

Real investigative journalism and research is often undertaken by truthseekers who pay a heavy price.Check out what happened to Gary Webb who wrote re-CIA drug-running via the Contras in Central America:

http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/episode117_gary_webb.mp3

Bush research is especially dangerous to your health and wellbeing and those who go there have been known to pay the ultimate price.James Hatfield,who wrote the book re-Dubya,Fortunate Son,was one of several who have been "suicided".

http://www.globalcomplexity.org/Death%20by%20Association.htm

Before people get all pious re-medialens and their voluntary research on our behalf they need to ask themselves whether anyone on that team has been put out of a research library,or their job,or even "suicided" yet.How many whistleblowers have been interviewed by such sources?

It ain't gonna happen any time soon.Keep asking the wrong questions about the wrong players and you'll be all right.The gatekeeper media will employ you tomorrow.

I don't disagree, actually. Nothing substitutes for a genuine revolutionary movement and its sustained critique of th structures of power. Otherwise, we have only hot-air bourgeois sources, as you suggest.

However, while recognising this - that significant revolutionary change will not occur in the absence of a united political movement, so long as we do not confuse bourgeois media organs with revolutionary ones, there is no requirement/ it would be unwise for us to ignore them; there is much to be learned from them, even if, as you suggest, it is merely their limitations.

Having said all that, most/ all of the prominent whistleblowers - Katharine Gunn et al - have been extensively interviewed on a number of the media organs mentioned in the above posts. The Gary Webb story was reported extensively and in great detail on Counterpunch, for example, and in Lobster magazine.

Lila Rajiva's pioneering book on CIA black sites which was boycotted by all MSM outlets in the USA/ UK, was sold on the Counterpunch website, which also regularly features writers critical of the likes of gatekeeper Noam Chomsky and also of the 'accepted' Yugoslavia narrative.

David Miller, together with Greg Philo of the Glasgow Media Group, brought out an excellent critique, in book form of the biased manner in which the Palestine-Israel issue is reported in the UK media; I forget the title right now.

I agree though that some of the organs to which people have alluded frame the discourse in order to limit it. There is nothing new there, if you study the manner in the Left was 'modulated' during the Cold War.

The answer, in the limited world of information, i.e. outsdoie of revolution, is to read intelligently and skeptically, which I'm sure all the contributors to this site already do.

If you're using terms like "bourgeois" pejoratively you have been duped into the left-right paradigm I mentioned previously.

It's probably high time you did some research on the elite provenance of Marx's economic thought.Ask yourself why in the first instance the middle class are targetted for dispossession in the revolution envisaged by Marx.

Likewise Fabianism was another "left" political project sponsored by elites whose real agenda was not so much the vaunted dictatorship of the proletariat as one of "scientific dictatorship".H.G.Wells wrote extensively on this agenda in The Open Conspiracy.

If having researched the provenance of Marxism and Fabianism you still see some utility in the anachronistic left-right paradigm it's time to find out who bank-rolled Bolshevism and Nazism.

On this there is research by Anthony Sutton et al that demonstrates that both social systems are conducive to top-down elite management.

The sources you extol and piously advise us to read "intelligently and sceptically" are both examples of tired left "alternative media" all too willing to give credibility to establishment cover-ups like 911 and the "War on Terror".

We need not dwell on Alexander Cockburn at Foundation-funded Counterpunch but Robin Ramsay at Lobster is an interesting case-study.His "parapolitical" vocation to uncover the "deep politics" behind elite state management with particular focus on assassinations and warfare comes from Professor Peter Dale Scott.

Scott is a conspiracy theorist of some longevity whose work as a diplomat in the Canadian embassy persuaded him of US culpability in undermining the Geneva Accords making another war in SE Asia inevitable.Scott's work noted the importance in CIA machinations of the Golden Triangle narcotics trade.

Little wonder then that Gary Webb whose research led him in exactly the same direction features prominently in the pages of Lobster.

Sadly Ramsay got tired and wound up Lobster magazine.In its last hard copy Ramsay wrote of the masses' disinclination to want to read radical magazines even if it they were given them free of charge!

"Most people simply don't like politics and aren't interested in politics.Politics means conflict;and conflict means stress;and most people automatically avoid stress if they can.....If this depression we are entering turns out to be severe as some are predicting,and millions are thrown into poverty,maybe a general taste for politics will be overcome.

"But I kind of doubt it."

By contrast well into his eighties interest in Scott's work increased after 911 which he famously compares to the JFK assassination.

Moral of the story seems to be that Foundations will fund leftgate-keepers like The Nation and Counterpunch because they absorb lots of dissenting energy that will be swallowed up in endless debates,tertiary issues and disinformation.

Where smaller media operations like Lobster fail to sustain their parapolitical critique of elite power or take it to its logical conclusion they too can become an ennervating drag on the development of a wider critical consciousness.

In the final analysis the closer the researcher gets to uncovering elite corruption the closer s/he is to danger.

leftgatekeeper.com is in no danger whatever.

independent research into precisely how elites operate and sustain themselves is now a matter of far more public concern than left establishment gatekeeper media are ready to acknowledge.

Actually, FYI, apostate, Lobster remains in existence, twice a year, but now on the web. It's free on the web.

As I said, I do agree with your basic premise, contained essentially in your last paragraph.

I consistently have urged for such research to be conducted into the publishing industry (not just the non-fiction aspects) but my urgings have fallen on deaf ears (surprise, surprise). I guess I used the term, 'bourgeois' as a catch-all for 'elites', which was lazy and clumsy of me.

Thank you for your engagement and astute analysis. Much appreciated (by me, anyway!).

Bruce Anderson is a pompous Thatcherite windbag who used to write columns in The Glasgow Herald explaining that the Highland Clearances and the destruction of the steel and mining industries were all very positive and great for everyone.

Advocating torturing women and children with no involvement in terrorism is a new low even for him though. If his brother was a terrorist would he think it was justified to torture his wife and kids on the basis of a made up scenario from the TV programme '24' that never takes place in reality?

Yes, it's all very suspicious and seesm highyl likely to have been to do with the state and the arms industry.

On Cockburn specifically we might wonder at the man's willingness to rubbish the claims of the families whose children complained of suffering satanic abuse in the McMartin case.

Check out nobody's coverage of the pedophocracy by reading this piece and following the links to Dave McGowan's book where Cockburn's outrageous smear piece is mentioned in Chapter 4.

The Cockburn self-designated progressive,alternative media have long established links to the elite.

Claud Cockburn,said Cockburn's pater,was noticeably reticent in its coverage of the imminent royal marriage story in 1936.Seems Cockburn colluded with Mountbatten just like his son now colludes with spurious CIA fronts for the pedophocracy like the False Memory Foundation.

Are you sure about your so-called progressive liberal sources,Suhayl?

htttp://churchofnobody.blogspot.com/

Michael Barker! That was it. Here you go. I think it's the same guy:

http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/

I see he's also written for some of the outlets you critique, though. But then, I've also written reviews for the MSM. Perhaps we cannot avoid co-option on some level. '1984', by other means? But Orwell was reporting to MI5 or 6 on communists in the UK!

http://www.sangambayard-c-m.com

You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your opinion.

ed hardy clothing

Well said,I saw on the news that the money they dumped at Shire was fake, to represent the money he had raised. It wasn't the actual money.or the future will be more rampant.

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Excellent read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on that. And he actually bought me lunch because I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!

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