Perhaps we are the most controlled, disabled, corrupted country on earth?

Surely that accolade is reserved for the United States of Advertising. But I’m disappointed that Channel 4 news didnt get back to you – I’ve emailed them to express this disappointment and to request an explanation. If none if forthcoming, I may have to use …. the phone!

Bit of course, the mainstream media in the UK is unlikely to jump to permit systemically criticism of the deep structures of power in the UK, particularly when the individual concerned – Craig Murray – hails originally from deep inside that structure and therefore discourses from a position of irrefutable knowledge.

I suspect the same would apply in any country with respect to its own structures of power. The foreign press is relatively less worried about criticising the structures and dynamics of power in the UK because they are not dependent on the patronage of those same structures. This is where the true limits of ‘free speech’ lie within the mainstream media.

Torture is what it means to be British.

The UK has always tortured and will always torture.

This might be relevant, from reddit/politics today:

Harvard Study: From 1930s-2004, NY Times called waterboarding torture in 81.5% of articles, LA Times in 96.3%. Yet from 2002-2008, NYT did so in only 1.4% and LA Times in 4.8%. The WSJ? 1.6% (1 of 63 articles) and USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/publications

/papers/torture_at_times_hks_students.pdf

doh! sorry :/

I don’t know, Craig, why do you think it is? Have they absorbed the notion (without needing to be explicitly told) that your information is taboo? Or have they been misled into believing you are a trouble-maker and therefore ‘unstable’? And that once they form this view it is very difficult to shake them from it. I get the impression that journalists are very fixed and rigid in their worldview, although, of course, they are convinced that the very opposite is the case.

What’s wrong with this country? Well, a great deal actually, but that’s another story.

One is either inside or outside. Within the circle of power, or not. Craig was once, before he went rogue and native, on the inside track. He had proved his potential to serve the establishment power structure, the deep state, the power that remains no matter how people vote; however, he failed at the vital, final hurdle; the ability to serve even though such service means the total destruction of everything one truly believes in… the willingness to sell out, and sell one’s soul.

Like Craig, I was once taken to the top of the mountain and offered everything I could see, but there was a price, my soul and everything I believed in, which wasn’t much, but it was all I had, and it was mine. I declined the offer and walked away.

It’s not about left or right, or these crooked political parties, and their obtuse ideologies. It’s about up and down and Power. Who has it, and who doesn’t.

Recommend http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/29/john_pilger_there_is_a_war

JOHN PILGER: Well, the war you don’t see is expressed eloquently by the New York Times, that range of extraordinary media apologists that we’ve just seen. The reason we don’t see the war on civilians, the war that has caused the most extraordinary devastation, human and cultural and structural devastation in both Iraq and Afghanistan, is because of what is almost laughingly called the mainstream media. The one apology, not these apologies that we’ve seen this morning from Fox to CBS, right across the spectrum, to the New York Times this morning, the real apology that counted was the New York Times when it apologized to its readers for not showing us the war in?”or the reasons that led up, rather, to the invasion of Iraq that produced this horrific war. I mean, these people now have become so embedded with the establishment, so embedded with authority, they’re what Brecht called the spokesmen of the spokesmen. They’re not journalists.

Brooks writes about a “culture of exposure.” Excuse me, isn’t that journalism? Are we so distant from what journalism ought to be, not simply an echo chamber for authority, that somebody in the New York Times can attack a journalist who’s done his job? Hastings did a wonderful job. He caught out McChrystal, as he should have done. That’s his job. In a country where the media is constitutionally freer, nominally, than any other country on earth, the disgrace of the recent carnage in the Middle East and in Afghanistan is largely down to the fact that the media didn’t alert us. It didn’t report it. It didn’t question. It simply amplified and echoed authority. Hastings has proved?”God bless him?”that journalists still exist.

/….Transcript and video

Writerman, do you mean you got the tap on the shoulder, a cup of lukewarm tea and the offer of a raincoat? Was it a Jon Snow moment? Tell us more!

People who know my perspective know that I am not easily given to conspiracy. But after attending Craig’s evidence session at Portcullis House last year, I genuinely thought the press would be interested, but hardly any publication was willing to pick it up. Here we have a fresh development, and there have been others involving Craig, post FCO, but the result is the same.

Could this be active interference from D-Notices? I thought they were reserved for items that were not already substantially in the public domain though. SIS knows that, even if something is discussed on the internet, it keeps it’s ‘rumour’ status, and it only becomes respectable discussion if the papers run with it.

To be fair to the Guardian they do have this report on seven different cases in which Iraqis died in the “custody” of British forces in which the MoD refuses to answer questions on how they died and why

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/01/iraq-deaths-custody-military-legal

I do agree with you that torture by British forces doesn’t get nearly the coverage it should get though – and that when it does the focus is often on hooding rather than all the working in shifts to beat and kick civilian prisoners into unconsciousness or death

Fascists running the system. No, not satire.

Good point. Could well be D-notices Jon.

Question to Craig: Have you posted the memo which you quoted in your 2009 article, How a Torture Protest Killed a Career, at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/102409b.html :

- snip -

We built up an overwhelming dossier of evidence, and I complained to London about the conduct of our ally in rather strong terms including the photos of the boy being boiled alive.

‘Over-Focused on Human Rights’

I received a reply from the British Foreign Office. It said, this is a direct quote, “Dear Ambassador, we are concerned that you are perhaps over-focused on human rights to the detriment of commercial interests.”

- snip -

writerman

It’s not just ‘about up and down and Power. Who has it, and who doesn’t.’ It’s also about those subservient to this Power, those who in their normal course of duties will commit an isolated corrupt/immoral act such as a defence lawyer ‘who forgets to send off a letter’, a prison governor who at the behest of a state agency detains a prisoner after his release date to help hide state crime or an otherwise well respected judge who makes a perverse judgment again to conceal illegal state acts.

What’s wrong with this country?

http://euro-med.dk/?p=13656

Duncan McFarlane,

I read the Guardian article. I’d say that the difference is that the Guardian article focuses exclusively on the Ministry if Defence. It goes nowhere near any question of whether the MOD was following a government *policy* that approved torture.

This is where attention is not permitted to be focussed – who decided that torture was acceptable.

me in us

Hi – I’ve not posted that one. I am not sure if I have a copy, to tell the truth – might need a new FOI request.

You say that you got the brush off from the Guardian and Telegraph. Perhaps you could post their responses, as you have done the FCO documents? As for the BBC and Channel 4, I can think of two possibilities, not necessarily mutually exclusive:

(a) They feel they have already looked at the material in “Murder in Samarkand”, so that it is not fresh evidence.

(b) They have succumbed to pressure to ignore you, from powerful people who can influence their funding or careers.

Abe

Five of the seven documents are not in Murder in Samarkand because I didn’t have copies. I have only obtained them recently after FOI requests.

Most journalists I know would have no qualms about hacking up their sources for the sake of a good story but they instinctively stifle anything that makes their editors frown. I think the thumbs up or down is usually dictated by what will sell to the public rather than what might offend the powers that be. Papers love controversies and if the editors feel they can land a blow on the government they’ll generally jump at the chance. However, they’re terrified of embarrassment and demand a high level of trust in their sources, in proportion to the potential impact. Maybe it would help to get a press agent?

Won’t the establishment just haul out the usual suspects to deny the significance of this evidence? What’s Charles Crawford’s take on it? If you can force him to concede, then the end game is truly in sight.

@writerman: very well put. The King’s schilling is usually offered informally, over coffee, off premises. They want to test the water first to make sure you’ll accept. Later on, if they think you’re about to wander off message, you get offered extra perks to buy you off. If you refuse, then your fortunes suddenly go into steep decline. It takes a courageous individual to disregard the threat. Craig, you’re a shining example.

I do care about those tortured, 1st witness is one organisation to support.

But what I said two days ago stands. They called the bluff by saying that Cameron will initiate an inquiery.

Since then we had ferocious infighting, no dopubt the Americans are hell bent on influencing what we are exposing here, hence my call for more back up documents from over there, whatever these important documents point to.

The rejection of Craigs testimonies by the mainstream media is telling of their underlying agenda or of the level of infiltration by the MI’s.

So whence Cameron finally comes out with his ‘news’ of an inquiery, we have shot all our canons already.

Why can there be not an independent inquiery, were victims of the Uzbekistan regime are called, were we decide the open agenda and the remit, Holland, being played about by Goldsmith and Blair might just provide the vehicle for such an inquiery.

Why should the bastards investigate themselves, thats what Israel is doing!

Although their tete a tete with Turkey seem to have split the cabinet and led to power games between Bibi and that bouncer from Moldova, relations between the two are deteriorating.

Thanks also to writerman for being so honest here, it makes for better understanding.

Reply to Craig: Can you say what the date of that memo was? The emptywheel post that you linked to puts things together in time reference to each other:

- snip -

That is, [you, Craig, asked your questions of Michael Wood,] is it legal and is it the accepted practice of the government to accept information gathered using torture (ironically, at almost exactly the same moment Jane Harman, having been assured that torture was legal by CIA General Counsel Scott Muller, was asking him whether it was the formal Bush policy).

- snip -

and

- snip -

Also, it bears mentioning that these minutes [Duffield, 3/10/03] were written within a week of Dick Cheney’s last ditch attempt to claim Iraq had ties to al Qaeda in the lead-up to the Iraq war (the intelligence community managed to vet that specious claim) and about the time KSM’s 183 waterboardings started.

- snip -

Where were “commercial interests” in the timeline? Thanks, my deepest respects to you.

nextus, is the preferred beverage nowadays, coffee rather than tea? Do you speak from experience? Tell us more, please. Writerman, I’m sure many are eager to hear your account, now you’ve introduced the element of suspense… go on…

Ruth, that’s fascinating, so this is how it can happen without the normative diurnal of the system being interrupted or visibly corrupted. Quiet individual acts of betrayal of principle.

Thanks.

Dangerous game

Editor’s note: The campaign against Moazzam Beg and Amnesty International is led by the McCarthyite Harry’s Place, an Israel lobby operation that specializes in defaming critics of Israel and what it broadly labels as ‘Islamists’ (which according to its definition is any Muslim who is not Ayaan Hirsi Ali). It is also assisted by The Spittoon which is jointly run by members of the neoconservative Centre for Social Cohesion and the Quilliam Foundation. Like Harry’s Place, the Spittoon also uses the cover of anonymity to smear opponents. Both frequently crosspost each others material and coordinate their attacks.

by Victoria Brittain

Guantanamo jumpsuit detainees (photo)

Two weeks ago in Leeds, I gave a peace lecture honouring Olof Palme, which ranged over wars old and new, the bombing of Dresden, Daniel Ellsberg, Wikileaks, Bloody Sunday, and the Turkish flotilla to Gaza. Afterwards I was approached by two young Muslim women. They wanted to discuss the issues raised in the lecture, but also to talk about how isolated they felt and how hard it is for them these days to talk about politics without fearing hostility and feeling that they are being seen as “terrorists”.

http://pulsemedia.org/2010/07/01/dangerous-game/

The arrest of the alleged spies in the USA this week highlights a point which has come up here and elsewhere, that people working covertly for various states, including the host state, are embedded in all notable walks of life.

There is no reason to expect that the UK and US states do not have people embedded in professions and business in their own countries, undertaking covert – by which I mean working to an agenda co-terminous with that of the hard state, rather than solely those of overt mercantilism/ law/ whatever – domestic work on behalf of their own state.

It is interesting that this alleged spy – see link – worked for a while at Barclays in London. While one is not suggesting in way that this relatively brief period of her employment activity was in any way, shape or form instrumental or that the bank was in any way, form or shape involved in this specific case, banks, of course, being absolute paragons of morality, it is, I think, becoming common knowledge that banking institutions as a sector are likely to be replete with such dynamics and that in some cases, the relationships are indeed instrumental and systemic.

On rainy afternoons, as one counts one’s bronze, one takes to watching the raincoats stroll by…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/30/anna-chapman

“What is wrong with this country?”

We got rid of the farts; now we need to get rid of their smells.

Hello Craig

What you’re experiencing is a phenomenon by no means exclusive to the UK. One can observe similar nonsense in any country where a) there are few political parties capable of taking power, b) the parties are made up of people with little political courage or talent and c) there’s a dense concentration of media ownership. A gradual reduction in the depth of education only helps. With this sort of setup it is far too easy for the press and the politicians to control the agenda for the country. Your documents are nothing short of political wet dynamite ?” little wonder the domestic MSM is reluctant.

This sort of sweetheart deal is marginally harder to arrange in the US, where the predominant culture is one of suspicion of government and power. But no doubt, work is in progress. In Germany, memories of what happens when the press and the public take their eyes off a government are still far too fresh.

From Medialens message board

Eviction at Parliament Square today…

Posted by Alan Haynes on July 2, 2010, 8:17 am

Hi All,

According to the radio this morning on the orders of a High Court Judge, all of the anti-war protesters camped on Parliament Square since 2001 are to be evicted today ?” so presumably this means Brian Haw as well.

Meanwhile 3 soldiers are to be awarded the Military Cross at Buckingham Palace today for ‘gallantry against an enemy on land’.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the cars taking these 3 ‘heroes’ to Buck House happened to drive past Parliament Square at the same time the riot squad were wading in, batons at the ready. Somehow a real statement about the times we live in, where people genuinely craving for peace and justice are given a good kicking, whilst those responsible for killing in the name of a perverted, corrupt establishment are given rewards.

aa

Hear,hear, Alan Haynes

Eric Hoffer nailed this syndrome long ago:

“To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats ?” we know it not”.

“It is not the job of serious journalism to fall at the feet of power, but British and American journalists habitually do just that.”

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php

First of all can I just say I am as convinced as anyone here that the war criminals we’ve just voted out are complicit in torture.

Secondly I’m perhaps a bit more hopeful than some here that the Lib Dems in government can genuinely be a force for good to counter this evil.

I’ve offered this line before and Craig’s jumped all over me but, the trouble with Craig’s heavily redacted documents from the previous post is that there is no smoking gun. They discuss in principle whether it is an offence to possess torture derived intelligence and that there is a risk this offence might be occurring, it does not explicitly show that it did happen.

It just seems to me that an incriminating paragraph would consist of two sentences.

1. We, HMG, are knowingly and currently making use of information gathered using torture.

2. We do not think there is a legal problem with the possession of torture derived information.

We have sentence number 2, but not sentence number 1. We all know it happened, but sentence number 1 is still behind the black marker pen.

The practice of ethics in this country/world is approaching the non-existent.

You’ve been told what’s wrong with this country numerous times, but didn’t do anything about it, which is also something that’s wrong with the country. Disconnect from the puppet politics. Ignore them and dont’ pay tax.

I’d say that no-one is going near the subject of torture, becasue any digging around the subject of UK knowledge of torture would axpose the case of Salahuddin Amin – associated with the Operation Crevice case. The Crevice case (which is intertwined with the 7/7 case more than they’d want us to know) hinged on the confessions extracted from Salahuddin Amin by the Pakistan ISI (under knowledge of the UK authorities), and on the testimony of overworked Al Queda supergrass Mohammed Jaunid Babar – see details here:

http://tinyurl.com/2yuwht .

Also, unprecedented measures were required in UK courts (see http://tinyurl.com/33pkavg ), all in the name of ‘National Security’ of course.

A full investigation of UK involvement with torture would/should expose these nefarious connections.

I guess that is why there is no pick up by the compliant media.

Shameful

Nevermind Bert, we’ll just vote in some politicians that will uncover and cure everything. Whoops!

‘no response from sending the documents to Channel 4 and the BBC’

Anyone taking up the offer at ‘Channel 4 and the BBC’ would be out of a job, within seconds.

What we need is a peoples tv station, hmmm, it would never be allowed an operating licence.

Look on the bright side, we live in a free and democratic democracy, we are told that by successive governments and the media, so it must be true.

^

Big Whoops indeed.

No that won’t happen & never will, but it doesn’t stop me highlighting /exposing this info.

Heard in the corridors of MI5 – thanx R

Seems like Joe needs reminding again of ‘the threat’ talk to ‘N’

Bert I wasn’t being personal. Your comment was dead on.

I’m just saying, we are forced to live with a shit government which is forcing a shit system upon us with increasing levels of shittyness every month and we keep voting for that shit again and again even though we know it’s shit. WE are responsible for its perpetuation. The shits are us I’m afraid.

“I’m just saying, we are forced to live with a shit government which is forcing a shit system upon us with increasing levels of shittyness every month and we keep voting for that shit again and again even though we know it’s shit. WE are responsible for its perpetuation. The shits are us I’m afraid.”

Cheer up!

Thanks for those links bert and thanks for all that shit at July, so nice to wallow in its perpetuation innit?

As experienced at every election, one can believe that this self perpetuation has something to do with a defect in the national psyche, a political apathy gene that periodically comes to the fore and induces a national feeling for more of the same, not unlike masochists screaming for more and more…….shit.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this country that isn’t wrong with every other one, and to about the same degree. Nor do I think that this is a new situation – it has always been this way, and the difference betwen a dictatorship and a democracy is merely one of method. Democracy is the most readily sustainable form of dictatorship, requiring only a modest internal security service and a captive press.

What might be new is the widening understanding of the problem, thanks to the internet. The government’s position seems to be that it doesn’t matter if a few vocal people know what’s happening – they can simply be ignored. There is of course precedent for this hope – every government crime in history was understood as such by at least some of the population. In this context, the regular appearance on these threads of trolls seems to suggest an elevated level of establishment concern. It’s sad to note that there seem to be very few blogs worthy of their attention.

Political apathy is cultivated. Yes, there’s a lot of shitty shit; is it any surprise that the majority don’t want to put their hands into it?

“What is wrong with this country?”

Not enough?!

When things are basically OK for people, they have no incentive to become activists. People can eat, they have homes, healthcare, some luxuries.

“Torture is something foreign governments do to foreign people. I don’t have time for all that, I have a mortgage to pay, and mouths to feed. I vote for X to keep Y out of power. I get my news from a reputable paper / TV station, you can’t believe all this minority stuff on the Internet, which I don’t have time to research. And what could I do about it anyway?”

Craig, I think I can answer your question. It’s not so much what is wrong with the country as what is wrong with its press and human rights agencies. How can one expect the government or parliament (or people) to risk dealing with real human rights issues if the press and human rights industry are scared to back them up?? Yes, it’s true that we are lions dealing with Pinochet types thousands of miles away where neither our establishment, or MI5 / MI6 are involved. But involve either MI5/MI6 or the establishment and OMERTA becomes the order of the day.

As an example, take the Lahane case I recently referred to on this blog. As the review of the book “UNPERSON A Life Destroyed” stated he ?” “refused to work undercover for the CIA and MI5″; they then in revenge “spread rumors that he was insane, an alcoholic and a serial rapist” . What is appalling to me about this case is that it seems that the press lacked the courage even to defend one of its own from abuses by MI5 ?” so how can one expect cases such as mine or these central Asian ones to be dealt with honestly.

The publisher of Mr. Lahane’s story subsequently commented in Media Lens about our press, saying this ?” “We used to have a press that was noted for its investigative tradition. Now, seemingly, it has become too scared to tackle a subject where human liberty is sacrificed to condone those elements in government willing to abuse the power they hold from an invisible position in an unaccountable cause.”

Take my own case and my experience with the Guardian and Amnesty International that is well documented in my WIKI (click on my signature to see). At the time I thought the behavior of these two organizations was shocking; now I just think it is rather pathetic. A good analogy I would suggest for the double standard and craven attitude of our Press and Human Rights Industry on issues that involve our establishment or MI5 / MI6 is this: They are a little like a Gelding in the presence of a Mare: they like to whiney a lot about other human rights issues elsewhere, but they haven’t got the balls to deal with human rights issues in front of them that involve MI6 or the establishment.

Roderick,

What we need to do is set up our own human rights organisation which deals exclusively with people who have been abused by UK state agencies. I think significant underlying patterns will emerge. Isolated we can’t be as efffective as we would be together.

Yes, the Lahane story is a case-in-point. A journalist who was targeted, his life destroyed, simply because he refused to spy for the hard state. He hadn’t done anything wrong, he was no threat – in fact, he hadn’t done anything at all. It seems to have been done simply in order to teach him, and others, a lesson, to deliver a message widely. A message of threat.

Vronsky

I think your point is spot on. There is nothing new here – we were, by all accounts, torturing a-plenty during the Mau Mau uprising. The difference, as you say, is the internet and the access it grants us to the information. That’s the good news. The bad news, of course, is the elites know this too. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they attempt to control the net. I’m not sure if they will succeed, but I am sure they will try.

Has anyone else noticed, that any organisation that comes into being that will have any detrimental effect on the status quo is taken over/infiltrated or just destroyed. The Labour party, TUC, BBC, Media, are examples. How many ex-trade union leaders are now in the house of Lords, or have been elevated to the house of Lords in the past?, a lot. There are a lot of very intelligent people out there that have just given up the fight, they think that what they are up against cannot be beaten.

Of course, anonymous poster, the structure will either co-opt, marginalise or destroy. Nonetheless, they don’t get everyone. No, no. Resistance is NOT futile!

I count it a victory each time somebody becomes more knowledgeable about the true state of affairs in the UK.

Although I do not post here any more, I do occasionally mention Craig Murray elsewhere. Good to see that some real progress is apparently being made.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cameron-to-launch-inquiry-into-mi5-torture-allegations-2014031.html#comment-59969822

tony_opmoc [Moderator] 2 days ago

This is highly encouraging. However there is evidence, that some members of the UK Government itself were made fully aware, that torture was taking place, and that they did nothing to stop it. In fact there are serious allegations, that some individuals in Government not only did nothing to stop it, but went to great lengths to cover it up. This in fact was the subject of the UN Convention Against Torture Joint Committee on Human Rights attended by Craig Murray – Former Ambassador to Uzbekistan. There has been very little publicity about this, and it appears that the media has been complicit in its suppression, even though the inquiry took place in open session in the UK Parliament. I am not a journalist. Why was this not broadcast by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 or SKY – or at least some news reference to it? Less than 5,000 people have watched this in over a year. What exactly are journalists for? What purpose do they serve? Shouldn’t they be finding out the truth and publicising it. How can anyone accept Torture as being acceptable under any circumstances?

youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI

Tony

Thanks, Tony. Absolutely agree. Good to hear from you.

Employers have an unwritten rule that you must not damage the interests of the company/institution/state. I often heard “off the record” stories about failed whistleblowing attempts when I related my own gripes. Nonetheless, the advice was usually to toe the line for the sake of self-protection. Sad, but all too common. And yes, having fought the system, I have to say you have be genuinely prepared to lose everything.

Lots of mainstrean organisations are staffed by former activists who had once been very passionate about principles (to the point of being arrested on demonstrations) but gave up fighting because they realised they couldn’t beat the system. A pal had a good word for them: she called them “de-activists”

Unless people who are in a position to do so, have a little courage to stand up against “authority”, initially to point out in the strongest terms that something is very wrong, sometimes completely by-passing the chain of command, then it is not just the individual who will lose “everything”, which in most cases merely means getting fired – but we all lose everything.

Our humanity is destroyed. Our planet is destroyed.

I can point out numerous examples – for example BP and The Gulf of Mexico.

I think “Western” Democracy over the past 15 years have totally and completely Lost The Plot.

We deserve everything we get, because we have lost our courage and we have lost our morality.

We have become Pathetic.

Tony

Hi Tony,

Hope you’re well and the guitar playing till gives pleasure. In case you missed, it check this out:

http://euro-med.dk/?p=13656

Suhayl Saadi

Why is it that I keep thinking that the recent expenses scandal was set up to get rid of some from the commons?. To get new and more right wing MPs in?. A new intake of MPs that would be more supportive for extreme measures should things get out of hand. I just find it strange that it all happened at the time it did and the way it did.

Scouse Billy,

I have played my guitar every single day since it arrived about 3 months ago, when I was last up in Lancashire. I am back up in Scouse land now, and have just picked up my Father-in-Law from a Scouse hospital. He’s just had a scouse ticker fitted. Hopefuly it will give him a new lease in life such that he will make 100. He ain’t that far off.

I brought my guitar with me – my old one actually. I wouldn’t trust my new one with all these thieving scousers everywhere.

Tony

Lol. you can’t be too careful

“the Guardian and Telegraph, no response from sending the documents to Channel 4 and the BBC, in fact precisely zilch from the UK media. What is wrong with this country?”

the gaurdian is much more right wing paper than any I find in india-that is what is wrong with the country called uk/.

look how much iraq war and afgansitan war was pimped up by the guardian-inf act after the war it kept mum about totrue saying ” we have to stabklise and maniatn hold there” the guardian and bbc were dreaming of another empire of thousand years! so hitleresque ,no?

itis only becaus eof eforts and sacrifice of iraqi and afgani freedom fighters how foiled thes british desire tos tart empire again that the british media start tchanging tune and is now osing as somewhat abivalent and ,letting usa take all blame.!

we must celebrate the c=achivement of iraqis and afgans who stopped the angloamerican in its march to the empire and lootin g of the world.

your comment-”Harvard Study: From 1930s-2004, NY Times called waterboarding torture in 81.5% of articles, LA Times in 96.3%. Yet from 2002-2008, NYT did so in only 1.4% and LA Times in 4.8%. The WSJ? 1.6% (1 of 63 articles) and USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/publications

/papers/torture_at_times_hks_students.pdf”

shopudl we not have the world jury judge and put to torture the biggest terrorist of world tony blair bastard and his monkey7 freind subhuman bush?

Welcome back Tony, great to hear you have you guitar close to your heart and your music even closer.

may your dad get back to his former self, as fast as Scousers talk.

I very much agree with Clarks punching resumee and Vronsky’s assemssment.

The future will be controlled and we better get sussed.

I will tear myself away from beautifull Norfolk at the end of the month and go up north to help on Jamies Doune castle fair.

I’m sure that there will be enough space to meet and talk, without mobiles, internet,etc. face to face talk.

There are people like us all over the world and we will find ways to organise, Ruth is right, we should be instigating our own human rights torture inquiery of sorts, Holland is nearby and hopefully helpfull, regardless what the status quo is forcing the media to accept here.

We should be approaching Dutch MP’s/Government ( know anyone?) and play on their liberal history, the disgusting way they were treated by Blair and his Goldie locks, regardless who chews the katt here to bamboozle the general public’s media consumption.

I have no more time for any of the three leading parties, their agenda has melted into one Dogam and we cannot expect sense and certainty for our children from them, they have been to the cross road.

What is now being presented to us is worth than George Orwell, not because its a copy of his predictions, but because the masses, the plastic consuming masses, accept it as gospel.

lets speak to the young generation, lets take them into our fold and inform them as to what matters, i.e. help yourself to help others, communities are not dead, regardless of the multiple indoctrination that we are subjected to, a new dawn of politi.

We are not programmed to perform the liars dance and we should teach our children to be aware of simple messages.

So who’s coming for wee dram in the rabbit hole?. PS Suhayl, they will need a medical professional to sit by, health and safety and all that shit, you could be it and its only a spit away from you. For me, its more like a journey to the worlds end(a brilliant session pub in Watton, Norfolk), on foot.

please if there is somebody going up there from further south, lets meet up somewhere like Peterborough and share the costs.

Organising here, in full view of the MI clones is not condusive to the future of our kids.

what do you say? Do we have a date in sunny Scotland? or are we going to carry on in this anonymous fashion?

Tony, lets not quit earth whilst we are still cognitive and able to raise hell on wheels.

If we do not like what pushes us into oblivion, then we have to shut out the diverted and abused normalcy that is presented to us, create our own norms.

what have we got to loose? Money? a date? a piss up in the pub?

Just to cheer you all up, this is the sort of stuff I have been partying to in my hay days, eat your heart out Macy Gray (she swallowed betty Davis hook line and sinker, good on her). ENJOY.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTt1biOZX4

Scouse Billy,

Well You Scousers did an absolutely FANTASTIC job of keeping My Mum Alive.

You rebuilt her hip and you rebuilt her heart.

She was born in London, and came back to her home to gracefully die.

She didn’t quite make 100 – but you Scousers did a fantastic job.

I am seriously considering moving back up North.

My Son born in London has got nearly all his business in Manchester

Lancashire People are Completely Out Of This World In Their Genuine Friendship and Warmth and I Can’t Get a Pint of Pendle Witch Down South

And The Hospitals and The Doctors and Nurses Here Are All About Keeping People Alive.

And They Speak LANCASHIRE

Tony

Tony_opmoc,

good to hear from you again.

Ingo,

yes, a fine suggestion. I shall try to attend.

All techies,

it seems inevitable that the Internet will become a target for censorship. We need a contingency plan. I see the Internet as the physical substrate of an emerging global consciousness, it is too valuable to be permitted to slip away. I have an idea or two, there must be many more ideas floating around out there.

Tony_opmoc,

I lived in York for a few years, and spent quite some time in Leeds, Bradford and there abouts. I used to visit Essex to see my parents; there seemed to be more humanity and common sense Up North, so I’ve often wondered why you’ve been hanging on in London. I’ve been in Essex for years now, and I’m pretty pissed off with it.

ingo,

I am a man of limited resources. Whilst I brought up to Lancashire My Guitar, I didn’t bring my amp. I am just trying to learn ho to play it…

But I did bring my Zen and quite a lot of cables..

I am just trying to work out if I can find a way to play your link at 110 decibels.

It is just completely Fucking Fantastic

And so are we…

There are so few of us around it is scary

You are an ANGEL

BETTY DAVIS -”They Say I’m Different” (1974)

Tony

Very pleased to hear that, Tony.

Clark,

When Margaret Thatcher closed down The North Of England – and us blokes from Oldham were being made redundant from the Highest Fucking Tech Company In The Entire World – We were 10 Years ahead of The Americans

My mate said he would never work in London

But he was better looking than me – and much more extrovert – he even got himself a job flogging cars whilst I was on the dole learning how to program Computer Games on a Commodore VIC 20 with 1K expansion cartridge

And I was about to form my own company – doing computer games – and if I had I might have made loads of money from computer games

But he got a job in Waterlooville – near Havant in Porstmouth probably working for the Competetion

I Have Never Worked For an American Company

I am English

And We were the Fucking Best Then

And We are The Fucking Best Now

Sure I have worked with loads of Americans -who were Brilliant – But I have Never Given Away any Technical Secrets About How Manchester Is The Most Innovative Place In The World As Far as Computing Is Concerned which is Why My Son has Moved Almost All His Business There

And I do Not Live in London

Sure I have worked in London -but under my own terms

Most of the time I was working in London I was working From Home

I live in One of The Most Beautiful Villages In The World and Have Loads of Friends

I travel into London occasionaly

What pisses me Off is that I came down south before I had seen the Happy Mondays Live in Liverpool

But I saw them last year

And I met Lemmy in Soho

You see I am stretched between The North and the South

I have spent half my life Up North and Half Down South

The Weather Tends To Be aLot Better Down South

Like I was swimming naked in a mates swimming pool a couple of months ago when it was hot in May and he said come round for a BBQ

They didn’t mind

because Both My Wife and I Still Speak Broad Oldham and Wigan and She is a Heart of Gold – And Are Really Open – We Pull Loads of Friends because We Cut Through All The Bullshit – and then they try and Compete With Us – Because They Realise We are Completely Harmless

Tony

What’s wrong with this country?

As someone alluded to earlier, what’s wrong with the world?

An amusing Andrew Jennings talk prior to the Winter Games in Vancouver – 2012 here we come…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0YBUgtSytg&feature=related

For the last 3 years or so since the websites in England were infiltrated by foreign agents who trashed nearly all discussion about contentious issues with complete and utter rubbish, I moved my virtual world and my virtual discussions to America…

The Standard was Just So Much Higher.

It was like posting on a UK website in 1997.

People used their own real names and said exactly what they thought and recommended some completely amazing books..

So for over a year I didn’t dare post a word.

I was completely ignorant.

Sure I had loads of time on my hands after retiring but I never had had the time to learn anything that was not connected to me earning a living to support my family.

Now I had a pension – and time to Learn

So I guess I fell in Love with America

A place I have never been to

The thing is I could play my word guitar – and they hardly ever deleted anything

And sometimes I was not very nice

But they always seemed to forgive me

Whilst I realised I was occupying far too much of Craig Murray’s time deleting all my drunken rants such that he wasnt even reading them much before he deleted them.

So I banned myself – because Craig is so much better – than having to spend his time deleting my drunken rants.

I Love Him To Bits Though

A Man of Rare Courage

Can I have a walk On Part In Your New Film?

I am the Bloke Who Looks Like The New Bloke in The Prisoner

He comes from Lancashire Too

Tony

Tony

Scouse Billy,

I personally did not do it, though I do ride my bike a lot with my wife…

No its not a Tandem – but an old couple did ride a tandem from our home at about 4:00am in the morning.

They drunk two bottles of wine between them…

But they are both musicians (from South Africa )

So I thought Fuck It

There is No Point in Going To Bed

My wife said she wanted to see it – but I knew she wouldn’t get up so early..

I did warn her and I had two cups of coffee to try and sober up

I was by my local train station at around 5:50 am

And I had my pole

My monopod

And I had my high definition camera – and I had my external microphone

The thing is our Village Just Looks So Completely Fucking Beautiful

And on The recording in Clear Sound One Of Them Said

Where Are We?

They Were In The Most Beautiful Village on The London To Brighton Bike Run

I Can’t Post The Video Because I am Going To Bed and I haven’t edited it yet

Tony

Welcome back Tony,

Do your guitar solo’s meander as much as some of your posts ?

I prefer the three minute heros who are direct and catchy, but each to their own.

There is much beauty in some of your postings. Keep on rockin.

Shouldn’t Tony Opmoc have his own blog? It got to the stage before where you had to scroll through yards of his mainly self indulgent stuff to get to comments on Craig’s posts. Nothing personal btw.

Anonymous poster at 1050pm: It’s an interesting hypothesis. I guess one would have to go through each of the new MP’s ‘portfolios’ and links and those of the ex-MPs, in order to assess whether, overall, there was any substantive difference with respect to to their relationship with the hard state. I mean, people like Norman Baker and Clare Short held fast, whereas some pro-war, etc. ones got the boot. Having said that, yes, I do think that the intelligence agencies continually leverage for more and more money and influence and getting ‘their’ people (eg. allegedly, Pauline Neville-Jones) into critical positions in the legislature which facilitates the economic war-machine is one of those tactics.

My take – having not undertaken the above research in a systematic manner – is that the scandal may have had something to do with the City of London protecting itself from what it would consider to be inordinate regulation. Of course, the hard state and the world of finance are intimately, indeed systemically, intertwined – as I recently suggested on a previous post on one of these threads – and so whatever the underlying dynamics, one might view the whole as a tussle within the ruling elite.

The hard state won.

I think that even though the forthcoming Inquiry may well be – to a greater or lesser extent – a whitewash, as with the Bloody Sunday Inquiry we are likely to see dirty tricks being put into action against those MPs and others who might possibly pose a threat. In the end, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry absolved the state, and the highest levels of command, from systemic mass murder that day and also from engaging in a campaign of disinformation – obstruction of justice – for years afterwards. David Cameron’s apology was possible because of this.

I expect a similar denouement with the ‘Torture Inquiry’. We may have our own ‘Lynndie Rana England’, our own ‘dog-handling trailer girl’ cinematic distraction. But the highest levels, and the structures and dynamics which they innervate, will remain untouched, fully-operative and indeed, possibly even enhanced.

Sorry, Clare Short stood down from the Commons, I forgot.

My feeling was that the expenses scandal was a distraction from the “bailout” of the banks. It didn’t really matter which MPs were affected or which escaped. What was important was that MPs be robbed of any moral authority with which to criticise the banks, question the bailout, or call for more governmental control of finance.

@Clark

Unless the bank bailout was predicted several years ago then the expenses scandal cannot be a media distraction.

Heather Brooke had been fighting for the expenses details since 2004 (she almost lost everything she owned in doing so)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Brooke

Suhayl Saadi

Thanks.

Chris Dooley,

well, quite a few people saw the financial collapse coming, if not the bailout. But didn’t the expenses scandal start with certain revelations to The Telegraph (sorry, I’ve forgotten the details)? Maybe the timing of that was chosen.

Clark,

You may have a point with the way that the information was leaked to the Telegraph and then drip fed into the rest of the media for several weeks.

The date set for the public access to the reacted information that Heather Brookes FOI requests forced, also predated the bailout by a few years.

As a distraction tactic it does not seemed to have worked though, 4.5 Billion people have noticed the banksters antics. We still await their punishment for their failings though.

Chris, the bankers have been rewarded. It’s the ordinary bank tellers – and a whole load of middle and working-class public and private sector workers – who have lost, or will lose, their jobs. The only situation in which the big boys – who are enmeshed with, and indeed defined by, the economy of perpetual war – will get their just desserts is not printable here, because it’s no longer conceivable.

Chris Dooley,

thanks for the Heather Brooke link. Yes, I see that the MPs expenses information was released at around the time that the courts ordered it. Respect to Heather Brooke. The link doesn’t say how the information ended up at The Daily Telegraph a month or two before the Commons said it would be published.

the bankers have been rewarded

And still are being rewarded

http://www.youtube.com/user/golefttv#p/u/2/Ne4cD9UYoo4

Suhayl Saadi

There is another dimension to this. The three Labour MPs and one Tory peer charged, may act as a deterrent to many other MPs/Lords who might get out of line. To my mind there should have been many others charged who were not, not to say they may still be charged in the future?. Goes to show others who have something to hide that they will be exposed, the government have files on them all.

Good point, anonymous poster at 1:45pm.

Yes, I expect it is all about the establishment and their intelligence services keeping the MP’s in line by pointing out just what could happen to them. After all MI5/MI6 must know all the MP’s secrets, and nobody is perfect. A little touch of light blackmail perhaps?

I read a novel about Tony Blair visiting the U.S.A. – and staying there because it was a ‘Safe Haven’ against prosecution for War Crimes. Not that it was under his name, of course. That was Entertainment.

And that’s what it will remain.

I have never understood how a grown man who has worked in the belly of the beast could fail to see ‘The Way Things Are’. Nor is that a matter of change from the past or what happens elsewhere.

Extraordinary Rendition is an Oxymoron which was announced by the Yanks that the British would be subject to themselves right in the Commons. But it’s been a delightful thread nonetheless.

I thought the ’911′ crew too radical in their coverage for people to be capable of taking them seriously. Note that does not mean that I don’t think ‘Poisoning the Well’ Argumentation has not effectively turned people from actually looking at what might be possible in a world where Media Monopoly is enforced by secret Talking Points laying out what is Acceptable Reporting. Not that anyone outside Editorial Concerns is troubled with such. In the days when the trouble of individual opinions were distributed by Pamphleteers ways were found to discourage distribution of information troublesome to the power structure.

Note that reporting such immediately consigns one to the epithet/pejorative labeling of Conspiracy Theorist.

Myself, I have a problem accepting the spew of known paid corporate promotion and advertising staff as more credible than unpaid critics.

So if you see me citing people you think ‘Over the Top’ do not be surprised.

Under the category of ‘Law’ I think ‘Bilateral Immunity Agreements’ might be of interest. They represent international agreements to frustrate prosecution of War Crimes.

Rick B. at Tenpercent put me on to stories about Belgium backing off from guaranteeing the protection of the International Court of Justice at the Hague. That would be prudent because of U.S. declaration that it would raid it to secure possession of any U.S. citizen covered under the 2002 American Serviceman Protection Act.

Spain’s abortive efforts at prosecution likely fell afoul of the same pressures.

I do not ‘rant’ at length about what is going on in the world. What I have done is collect articles about the ways our worldview is perverted. The posts on foreign policy and Perception Alteration are merely selected from things I have noted from comments and articles as I peruse punditry and politics. So today has been an interesting thread.

So that you can actually find what I am talking about I have posted a page called Topical Index at opitslinkfest.blogspot.com

I note it sometimes doesn’t Search properly and recommend going to that location rather than trying to go direct : but it’s your nickel.

This information was first collected at my.opera.com/oldephartte/links where I proposed to list tips and tricks for finding information from years of surfing. Since it’s a personal list I know I’ve missed a lot. But it does give one a ‘Heads Up’ to sources otherwise ‘missed’ because they are not current, popular or otherwise obvious.

Sometimes I have noted false flags of sites being dangerous related to really good sources. But I suspect my system has been trashed at least once because of where I was ‘nosing around.’ Obviously those are mostly ‘edited out’ – though there are no guarantees. I take care – and recommend you do the same.

Original statement of what I thought my objectives were, etc. is at my.opera.com/oldephartte/about

Or Search Opit’s LinkFest! if things are kludgey. Both have the same name. RSS reports from My Opera reposted under RSS SnapShot! give one a sample of how Personal Search can be augmented by other means than random search – and a chronological record of results regardless of the fact that they will have been replaced by more current data.