I have been foolish sometimes, but I will never, ever write anything as stupid as this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/dec/30/michael-white-politicians-decade-harriet-harman
White is of course no ordinary fool, but one of the very nastiest reptiles on the nexus of political power and media control of the people. He is fully complicit in New Labour’s war crimes and assaults on civil liberties. This piece of pathetic hagiography exposes him to deserved ridicule.
I often wonder to what extent, if any, people like White believe what they write and to what extent, if any, their readers believe them. Guardian commentators, pretty well all of them, depict a curious parallel world like Plato’s shadows on the cave wall, with no easily discernible connection to reality. Puzzling. Orwell’s question: are the British ruling class wicked, or merely stupid? – keeps coming to mind.
Harriet Harman is a gimp that wields no power whatsoever.
Baffling. In this short, supposed puff piece for Harriet Harman, Michael White manages to fit in that she…
a) lasted less than a year in her first cabinet role.
b) accepted a political appointement to Solicitor General despite not having the correct legal credentials
c) was then involved in unethical behaviour in helping her sister (a solicitor) in the family court
d) was then moved to the DCA, although she soon found herself unable to do her job properly there because her husband fell under investigation for arranging “irregular loans” to the labour party
g) paid for her own polling (probably with our money) in the run up to the deputy leader elections, which she lost
f) drives irresponsibly and has amassed several speeding fines
g) lacks trade union support
h) was involved in serious breaches of electoral law
i) wore a stab vest when walking around Herne Hill
So I’m not sure Michael White really wanted to do what Alan Rusbridger asked him to. Still, he shouldn’t have bloody done it at all.
“When he is absent Harman takes prime minister’s questions and scored a notable early success over William Hague in the task.”
The closest that parvenue ever got to Hague in PMQT was in scrabble letter scores: 21 all.
One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the pre-eminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:
“There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
“There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty_four hours my occupation would be gone.
“The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
“We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
Some things never change!
Unpaid bloggers, of course, are an entirely different breed – fearless, forthright, honest, never grinding axes or smearing those who differ from them.
Ha, Ha!
As I won’t be spending so much time on blogs next year, I wish Craig and his studio audience all the very best for 2010. We need much more of the principled and sometimes passionate debate which he sparks off as an alternative to what John Pilger so aptly terms the “terminally gormless” ‘war on terror’ propaganda peddled by the MSM.
Thank you Craig Murray for your insight into UK politics. What moved me to comment, is the post by JimmyGiro concerning John Swinton. You have a well informed readership. All the best in 2010. From Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
“As I won’t be spending so much time on blogs next year”
I hope that’s not because of illness, anticant. I always enjoyed reading you.
Thanks, dreoilin. I’m 82, have limited energy due to leukaemia and other chronic health constraints, and have decided to concentrate during 2010 on getting some longer pieces of writing into shape for possible publication – including my thoughts on the current state of the world! Blogging is seductive, often fascinating, sometimes irritating, so perhaps best not to get too addicted to it….
Alfred Bonke, it was I who posted the Swinton quote – culled shamelessly from that invaluable (and cash-strapped) daily source of heterodox news and views, ‘Information Clearing House’, which I commend to everyone here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
Brought in by a phoney election, it was George W Bush who damaged American credibility, sacrificed his people and put up for sale the soul of American. The Western elite have engineered the minds of the American people to back the pursuit of empire, sustained by wiping out the wealth and assets of the poor people of the world, while spilling the blood of their children.
Shock & awe was planned in the vaults below Dimona, the completeness of nine (9) and the symbol of the towers (11) combined as a synonym for the shock of planes roaring into the World Trade Complex and awe, as the buildings collapsed in a spectacular display of destruction.
Osama Bin Laden was to be the face behind evil, dying of kidney failure and controlled by the CIA, he would represent the necessity for invasions and occupations in a new ‘war on terror’, an endless 21st century crusade that would disguise the real Empire wars and shatter the framework of democracy.
America had the platform for this crusade with 750 bases in over 100 sovereign nations that started with a brief incursion into Afghanistan that would establish a ‘good and necessary war’ and oil the wheels of the American military complex before diverting men and machines into Iraq, the prize of an imperial adventure that both the American neo-con hawks and the liberal hawks fully backed.
It was to be a monumental failure in judgement, an insult to the collective will of the world people. Besides the damage to US credibility, and not just to the Muslim world, the Iraq adventure empowered Iran, turned the quest for oil into a mirage, brushed out the military command’s hope of a base for future operations, murdered 1.3 million people, displaced 4 million more and bought torture into the American psyche.
The US had little choice but to get out of Iraq. Lost and dejected the US military machine knew Afghanistan was the only hope to rebuild American pride, so, despite crippling debt, America regrouped and rebuilt the psyops of defeating al-Qaeda, building democracy, stopping heroin, fighting terrorism and liberating Afghan women. Having lost the Iraq oil reserves (that would crash the banking system), the fight now would be to secure Central Asian oil and gas and the crucial transit corridor of Afghanistan, bypassing Iran, Washington’s key geopolitical objective.
The escalation of the war in Afghanistan would establish permanent bases right on the borders of geopolitical competitors China and Russia.
The war in Afghanistan quickly became the AfPak war, an escalation to secure the nuclear weapons of neighbouring Pakistan and set the stage for the invasion of Iran.
But it is all an illusion, a desperate effort to survive. The Iraq war destroyed the far reaching plan. The insult of this war cannot be airbrushed out; its post war incompetence was dazzling. The world witnessed the destruction of society reducing humans to their basic instincts. America had created killing fields on a vast scale. People watched in horror on the BBC as American imperialism destroyed or undermined religions, culture, communal solidarity and meaning to people’s lives.
This failure has given a potent gift, a way for ordinary folk to stop this madness. We can challenge effectively by supporting the development of a spiritual and religious renewal that will deepen ones awe and wonder of the universe, increase the sensitivity to the needs of the environment, empower women who witnessed many children die. We will validate individual freedoms with a commitment to a community that affirms the humanity of others in different spiritual and religious traditions. This community will be built on Facebook, this is our plan, this is our war, and this is our salvation.
A new year research project on the subject of Ms Harriet Harman (something I think the Postie would have excelled at).
John Masterson, a 56-year-old Scotsman who had spent 17 years in jail, & who had boasted of his friendship with the Kray twins, was subject to Sensory deprivation/mind control experiments whilst in Wakefield Prison. (see http://tinyurl.com/vmou5)
Harman first met Mr Masterson in Wakefield prison in the late 1970s while working as a lawyer with the National Council for Civil Liberties. Masterson was eventually charged with making threats to kill Harman (a case involving Leonard [Lenny] Harper – he of the recent Jersey ‘Haut de la Garenne’ ‘investigation’), but the case was dropped & Masterson was awarded £3000 compensation, (which he then never received).
Harriet Harman had just become legal officer of the NCCL – National Council for Civil Liberties and took over a case brought by Masterson and another prisoner alleging that the Home Office had breached their human rights. (The other 2 inmates in the special unit were Michael Williams & Michael McMullen).
See the Guardian article of September 1999 – http://tinyurl.com/ydxkcza ) – Masterson believed that Harman deliberately jeopardised his & William’s civil case against the Home Office to further her political career (- in october 1982 Harman was elected Member of Parliament for the constituency of Camberwell and Peckham….. (where john Masterson subequently moved to after being released from prison)
A High Court Ruling by Justice Tudor Evans in May 1980 ruled that legal aid was not available to assist Michael Williams case.
anticant
I fiercely oppose something(s) that are dear to your view on life, and we’ve had our spats, but overall, you have what I regard as a very fine and just mind. I’ve agreed with many things you have said so I will miss your worthy contributions. Sorry to hear about your health concers. I’d be interested to read yor writings should you wish to share them (even if I know there’ll be a few I strongly disagree with)
Thanks for that, lwc247. My health situation is just an ongoing process of ageing, complicated by chronic illnesses which erupted in 2005 and require tediously frequent hospital visits and medication. I began blogging the following year, and have found it a great antidote to physical feebleness and increasingly restricted mobility.
But I do deplore the angry voices and the propensity to demonise those who disagree which mar too many blog comments. If we want to achieve a more peaceful world, we all need to make a positive effort to feel more friendly towards one another, whatever our nationality, race, or religion, and whatever our differences. In the end, all humanity is going to sink or swim together in this new century, and it’s high time we made more strenuous efforts to swim creatively. It’s no use saying “my holocaust is bigger than yours” – as John Donne said, “Any man’s death diminishes me. Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
I’m leaving Anticant’s Arena online, so do please browse through my archive and, I hope, form a better opinion of me than you’ve sometimes expressed!
http://antarena.blogspot.com/
All the very best for 2010
Anticant
Zealotry can cloud common cause. Preventing it is difficult even at the best of times and I think most of us have experiencd this. It’s probably because we have take time to form our views of life and believe in them passionately. There are days when we feel we must respond to what we see and then we take up the fray.
I have said to you you before lets work together on the things that unite is, and as I indicate that ground is actally pretty big.
For what it’s worth, you have my respect for most of the things you argue well for. I Hope you’ll still post here now and then.
anticant
I’m sorry to hear about your ill health. I know a little about restricted mobility and how useful/interesting the internet can be for those who are unwell. Best Wishes for 2010 and may you enjoy your writing + any future publication. Happy New Year to you.
All the best to you anticant.
@Anticant
Always enjoy your considered contributions. Hope you’ll manage time for some more in 2010.
All the best.
The real sadness is that clowns like Harriet Halfwit are but a signature on the death of our politics.