1) Go into the Foreign Office and read ten Top Secret documents about UK collaboration with torture to refresh my memory. Hand back documents and my notes in a double sealed envelope (have just done this bit).
2) Immediately after reading Top Secret documents, go to see Julian Assange for a whisky in the Ecuador Embassy (am on my way).
3) Tomorrow morning, arrive at Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee to give evidence in secret session. Get handed hopefully still double sealed envelope with my notes to use during evidence. Hand back notes for destruction when finished.
4) Immediately after very secret evidence session, go for (hopefully boozy) lunch with Peter Oborne.
Sometimes I quite enjoy my life. If you can’t annoy the arrogant bastards who run the world for the 1%, what point is there in living?
UPDATE
I left Julian after midnight. He is fit, well, sharp and in good spirits. WikiLeaks never reveals or comments upon its sources, but as I published before a fortnight ago, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it is not any Russian state actor or proxy that gave the Democratic National Committee and Podesta material to WikiLeaks. The claim is nonsense. Journalists are also publishing that these were obtained by “hacking” with no evidence that this was the method used to obtain them.
The control of the Democratic party machinery deliberately to unfairly ensure Clinton’s victory over Bernie Sanders is a matter of great public interest. The attempt by the establishment from Obama down to divert attention from this by a completely spurious claim against Russia, repeated without investigation by a servile media, is a disgrace.
The over-close relationship between the probable future President and Wall Street is also very important. WikiLeaks has done a great public service by making this plain.
The attempts by the mainstream media to portray WikiLeaks as supporters of Trump and Putin because they publish some of Clinton’s darker secrets is completely illogical and untrue in fact. The idea we must pretend Clinton is a saint is emetic.
But the key point is that WikiLeaks is a publisher. It is a vehicle for publishing leaks, and is much more of a vehicle for whistleblowers than for hackers. It does not originate the material. I have often seen comments such as “Why has WikiLeaks not published material on Israel/Putin/Trump?” The answer is that they have not been given any. They publish good, verifiable material that they are given by whistleblowers. They are not protecting Israel, Putin, or Trump. Nobody has given them viable material.
Ecuador is keen to make plain that they are not interfering in the US election and wish to make plain material on the Presidential candidates is not being published from their facilities. Julian has no problem with the statement put out by Ecuador yesterday. It is worth noting that WikiLeaks is established in several countries and nothing has ever been published by WikiLeaks from any facility situated in the Ecuadorean Embassy.
Sikunder Burnes : Master of the Great Game – Book
Sikunder Burnes : Master of the Great Game
Craig Murray
Out of stock – More expected soon
Selling like Fuck
An honest man! #wearescotland proud of you Craig.
Keep safe
Can we have More RT Please… Like this –
https://www.rt.com/news/363363-white-helmets-funded-west/
Exactly why the government (sorry, RBS!) are giving them problems.
The last thing HMG want in the UK is a truthful media.
I’ll have the honour of listening to Vanessa Beeley in Bristol on 4th November, at a public meeting.
Great stuff Paul..Have you had a scan at Vanessa’s – the wall will fall Blog
Fred
. Fair enough .. hate is indeed a very powerful word. Stay well.
This post gives excellent insight into the cognitive dissonance of the Scottish Nationalist and how they seem to be able to hold two opposite viewpoints at the same time.
They can see themselves as poor wretched victims of the big bullying state while at the same time brag of how they are a thorn in the side of the British government.
Incredible.
Why do yoy Hate Your Neighbors Fred
What makes you think I hate anyone?
Not worshipping is not the same as hating.
It was a valid observation, ignore it if you must but don’t attribute it to hatred so you can square reality with what you want to believe.
Perhaps a better way of putting it would have been to ask you, ‘Why don’t you love your neighbor?’.
Go tell it to Gandhi.
The term phycisan heal thyself springs to mind here. It is perfectly realistic for someone to be bullied whilst at the same time trying to reciprocate in whatever ways or means available at any particular juncture.
Trying to present this as some kind of either/or scenario is symptomatic of limited binary thinking and demonstrates it’s own limited cognitive capacities.
Craig, would JA appreciate postcards from interesting places, or would they be annoying / unwelcome / ignored?
O/T. i see the cowardly IDF have murdered another Palestinian girl and put a knife in her dead hand in an unnatural death-pose. That whole murderous country has got some bad karma coming its way when the US falls.
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/10/19/489749/Israel-Palestine-west-bank-stabbing-attack
I believe they have made a very serious miscalculation in their ‘Yinon Plan’; the Yanks and it’s NATO poodles might be itching for WWIII, but the last thing Israel wants is a hostile nuclear force next door when the balloon goes up.
So it might be they use their ‘considerable’ influence in America to restrain the Hawks!
‘Armageddon’ is said to be in Syria, so, let’s not say we weren’t warned.
Megiddo, the ancient settlement from which Armageddon gets its name, is in northern Israel.
If Syria “joins in Union with mother Russia”
i.e. Syria becomes Russia, I suppose it will become legitimate for Syria/Russia to take back those bits of SRIA STOLEN by ISRAEl
and those parts of SYRIA STOLEN by TURKEY?
I’m actually a little envious. Assange and Oborne are two people I admire and like listening to–mainly for their intellectual honesty. What a pleasant day you must have had!
“The control of the Democratic party machinery deliberately to unfairly ensure Clinton’s victory over Bernie Sanders is a matter of great public interest.”
Undoubtedly. But that wasn’t the only or the main material picked up by the Trump campaign.And the release of material clearly hasn’t been timed to influence the Democratic party’s internal politics, but to impact on Clinton’s presidential bid. With the alternative being a racist demagogue with apparently no ethical constraints. You’re happy with how WikiLeaks has been effectively assisting Trump? Or you think it’s simply acted ‘neutrally’, ignoring the immediate political context in which information is released in the name of some kind of journalistic integrity? That needs a much better argument given the stakes involved in a Trump win.
Clinton gives talks to bankers? Disses the struggling masses in (what she thinks is) private? So what’s new? Not a peep out of Wikileaks about her slavish subservience to AIPAC…or Trump’s for that matter. Whether America chooses the rock or the hard place will make very little difference to the US’s foreign interests. But Clinton’s security is worse (and/or, as I suspect, Trump is computer-illiterate and doesn’t send emails at all).
Clinton is a liar, a thief and a warmonger. So far as I am aware Trump has no interest in starting wars and killing millions of people. Is it better to be a racist or a mass murderer?
The system is failing, and if the people do not act to stop an out of control system then the system will kill the people. The time has passed for conventional left/right politics. Now is the time for the people to support any entity or organization that may be capable of putting a spoke in the system.
Therefore people in the US should support Trump. People in the UK should support Corbyn. People in Spain Podemos, people in France the Front National, people in Italy the 5* Movement, and people in Germany the AfD.
All of these entities may fail, but it matters nothing. Millions of people have no possible hope and they will cast around for new avenues of hope. The next generation of demagogues will likely be much worse and more dangerous than the current wave. How do you think Hitler achieved power? The Germans were denied all hope and all reasonable people were frustrated and blocked at every turn.
The world is entering a dark period – denial and delusion will not be qualities valued in dealing with what lies ahead. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command and we will not be destroyed without at least trying to save ourselves.
“The next generation of demagogues will likely be much worse and more dangerous than the current wave.”
So you say support Trump? Or *any* entity capable of putting a spoke in system irrespective of its political leaning? Far right/KKK is OK? Because that’s Trump’s base political support now.
I agree it’s a potentially dangerous period. But more so when people start losing their head, enter into hysteria and start backing the nearest available mega-narcissist/demagogue to ‘shake things up.’ That’s how fascism becomes a reality. Literally. And you have absolutely no idea what Trump’s foreign policy would be – apart from a willingness to bomb ISIS into the ground, use nuclear weapons if necessary, encourage nuclear proliferation etc. Added to his disposition to find grievance anywhere and reject diplomacy at all costs, I wouldn’t count on him not starting any wars.
If voting Clinton is too much, other candidates beside Trump are available. Though I agree with Sanders on the need to prevent his presidency overrides most other issues. You’d see mass deportation, racist and xenophobic discriminatory policies, and political suppression on a huge scale within a very short time span.
Other candidates? Johnson and Stein?
A pyrrhic election…
There are no perfect solutions – perhaps there are no solutions. None of this is helped by the fact that the people have been denied access to information and are subject to routine barrages of false information.
Yes Trump wants to bomb ISIS into the ground, as do the Russians. This is because substantially everyone agrees that ISIS are an irredeemable death cult who must be destroyed. How strange then that actual current US policy is to support ISIS.
Other candidates are available – for example Jill Stein the Green Party Candidate. As may be expected Ms Stein ticks all the right boxes for the liberal left. As also may be expected Jill Stein has zero chance of becoming President. She has however opined that she finds Clinton’s foreign policy to to be far “scarier” than Trump/s. As she is a candidate she obviously cannot endorse another candidate, but it is clear that she is less afraid of Trump than she is of Clinton.
The problems surrounding illegal immigration have less to do with racism or xenophobia and more to do with the rule of law. What are the available alternative? You could pass laws to allow anyone from anywhere to settle anywhere they choose so that all immigration becomes legal. Alternatively you fail to apply the law in which case why stop there – why not abandon any law that someone does not like? You could grant an amnesty, but that is akin to rewarding lawbreakers and acts as an incentive to encourage more law breaking. The final alternative is to apply the law and punish people that break the law – in this case illegal immigrants. Deporting them would appear to be a rational and proportionate response to their crime.
Are you really trying to argue that, leaving aside all other remarks, someone who’s called for a ban on all Muslims entering the US isn’t a racist xenophobe? You’re OK with that?
Some of the left (no idea whether that includes you) seem to be indulging the idea that Trump would be a better or no worse prospect than Clinton. It’s completely nonsensical at any level, socially, politically, geopolitically, economically. Here’s Chomsky on the topic:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/noam-chomskys-8-point-rationale-voting-lesser-evil-presidential-candidate
So someone calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the US is a racist and a xenophobe, but someone who makes untold numbers of people traverse the Med in un-seaworthy vessels prior to offering them refuge is a humanitarian.
Is it more disreputable to ban immigrants or to send armed men and materiel thousands of miles from home to slaughter uncounted millions of people.
Look at Africa – its population is rising by 80 million per year. If just this “new” population were admitted to the EU/US then in less than 10 years the EU and US would be majority African states, and the population of Africa would still be rising by 80 million per year. Are you OK with this?
How many people are to be admitted? All of them, some of them, or none of them? Who should decide?
Immigration is related to both foreign policy and rising population, Rising population is linked to the exponential function. They are serious issues. I do not have answers, but I do know that attempting to deal with mathematical problems by the application of emotion will not work.
I’m afraid that you have been grossly mislead by the agendy heavy, restrictively controlled and state approved talking points of the left leaning and owned US main stream media outlets. Each side, of course, has it’s own lunatic fringe of supporters. However, the overwhelming majority of Trump supporters are no more racist KKK members than the majority of Clinton supporters are radical marxists. Most of Trump’s supporters are fiscal conservatives with centrist social leanings. I do find it interesting that you embrace such a vehemently negative overview of the opposing side without actually taking the time to actually know of what you speak. Furthermore, you have painted yourself in the all too familiar picture nowadays of one who decries that a Trump presidency is a descent into fascism when, in reality, it is the Clinton campaign that clearly represents a closer ideology.
In fascism, state control is the stranglehold over it’s citizens. Under a Clinton presidency, the bigger government the better. Clinton has a proven track record of being a warhawk. As we speak, tensions with Russia are escalating and Trump is the only one calling for dialogue whereas Hillary is content to continue on Obama’s path of provoking an aggression in area where their exceedingly ill advised foreign policy has already created a vacuum of chaos. She would also have quite in depth knowledge of demagogue leaders considering she helped install more than one herself. As far as her diplomatic disposition being superior to Trump’s, her own State Department staff acknowledge that during her tenure as SOS, she often ran afoul of her hosts, on several occasions exhibiting rude and offensive behavior towards them. She has a long documented history of belittling and abusing her subordinates. As for any elevated levels of propriety regarding the US nuclear program, it might have been better had she not revealed the top secret US nuclear response time to the entire world during the debate last night. You don’t count on Trump not starting any wars, and I counter that with him, at least there is a chance. Hillary is on a projected path to take us directly into one.
Her health care proposal is a thinly veiled single pay system where the American people lose what little choice and control they retained after being broadsided with the humorless and inappropriately named Affordable Care Act. Her jobs proposal is a slightly reworked outline of a similar plan that she used to woo the voters of upstate New York during her bid for Senate with the promise of creating of 200,00 jobs that actually resulted in a loss of 25,000. The US cannot afford a drop of that magnitude on a national level. As far as mass deportations, if you had ever bothered to take the time to actually read Trump’s plan, you would learned that his first goal is to stop the mass flooding of illegal immigrants into the US in the first place. These are laws that already exist on the books. He is not attempting to implement new laws for his own amusement. The current US immigration policy is simply not being followed at the moment. The US is also under no obligation to take any immigrants at all and has, on several occasions in the past, completely halted immigration. That being said, he does have a clearly defined multi-layered plan to address stricter vetting processes and enforcement of legitimate documentation. There is also no “mass deportation” planned except as it relates to the deportation of undocumented and violent offenders.
I’m also not even going to waste my energy on the claims of racism and xenophobia. Hillary, like all Democrat politicians, only has use for the minorities in America when it’s time to come to the polls. You only have to look at the absolute degradation and decay of Chicago, Obama and Hillary’s hometown, to see exactly how little support and restoration these urban centers are given. As far as political suppression? Please. Look at the overtly biased media lathering themselves up into a frenzy to vilify Trump and whitewash Hillary’s sins. It was Trump supporters who had their signs stolen, their cars vandalized, their children accosted at rallies by paid operatives working on behalf of Hillary’s campaign. The same paid agitators that have been identified at the sources of the Chicago riot where several people, including law enforcement, were injured, and the freeway blockade in Arizona. So again, a little information goes a long way. Support Hillary, if that is your choice, but be careful of the rhetoric you pass along if you are not intimately familiar with the subject matter.
Is this some lengthy tract from the Trump campaign or something?
If there’s just a single point you’d like to discuss, kindly make it – everything you’ve written above is a slanted half-truth at best, but mostly one sided “reporting” if I’m being generous (mostly unsupported slurs and lies, if we’re being honest) which has to come from a partisan hack.
If anyone’s got all the stigmata of an incipient demagogue, Trump has. Perhaps his appeal for you lies in his loud, random ranting and constant self-contradiction. And he whines. And his rhetoric is pretty shit too. Are you Trump?
Tou don’t seem to understand constant self contradiction. Here is Dmitry Orlov setting out how it all works
http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/furious-sheep.html
Of course he is a Russian and so it remains permissible to speak about Russians in the most patronizing and condescending terms. Your masters will let you know when the 2 minutes of Hate against the Russians has come to an end.
Hey Ba’al Here is someone else that understands the benefits of constant self contradiction
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/20/philippines-president-rodrigo-duterte-announces-his-separation-f/
I suspect your phrase was meant as an insult rather than as a demonstration of your understanding of the dynamics in play. May I suggest that you spend some time in analyzing the works of the current Nobel laureate in Literature – It may offer some guidance.
So you buy the cover story and reject the notion that Kerry threatened Ecuador with ‘dire consequences’ if they didn’t shut Assange up?
I don’t think anyone is portraying hillary as a saint….
I am gratified that your subject matter strayed from the routine.
Watched all three debates without an expectation except maybe Trump would expand on shallow slogans.
Nothing in the first two.
Finally in the third he made some words deeper than a puddle.
It’s going to be a lot closer than the polls indicate. If it comes down to the wire like 2000 and SCOTUS is needed we will have a 4-4 split (Scalia not replaced as of now). That will be almost as interesting as a Trump POTUS
If there’s a 4-4 split in SCOTUS, that will mean that whatever the court below whose decision is appealed to SCOTUS ruled continues to be the law. In Bush v. Gore in 2000, that would have meant that the decision of the Florida Supreme Court that the vote-counting in Florida should have continued would have been upheld instead of being reversed.
So, if this year’s election ends up being equally close, then what will matter will be the makeup of the state supreme court in the state on whose electoral votes the result of the election will ride.
Of course you are right about the mechanics of the Law, but imagine sTrumpettes accepting as final, a lower court ruling against their candidate.
When facts take a back seat, the Law is in the trunk (boot).
As Black Agenda Report put it: if you are looking for the fascist candidate go to the tent in which Wall St and all the big corporate interests are rallying, go to the sound of the war drums.
In this election it is the Clinton campaign which big business is backing and every warmonger in America is joining in the hope that she will establish that full spectrum domination which will allow them to the milk the whole globe.
Mike Whitney made the same sort of points in yesterday’s Counterpunch. There is no need to speculate over what Clinton will turn out to be: for quarter of a century she has led the push for war, fought against welfare claimants and for mass incarceration and built a personal fortune by influence peddling on a massive scale.
Trump is a vulgar grifter. Clinton is a threat to the human race.
Why would Russia try to interfere with her election as President; the Clinton’s are the gifts that keep giving.
It was the Clinton’s they bribed to get control of 20% or the US uranium. It was Hillary that traveled to Russia, several times with an insecure iPhone, Blackberry, iPad, (take your choice though she said “only one”) giving them access to real useful intelligence.
In the blackmail game, why would the Russians burn this “gold” material on trying to keep her from getting elected? Wouldn’t it be more valuable to them with her in office?
They’re embarrassed, as they should be, and are throwing out BS for their cult members to suck on along wth their thumbs.
Meanwhile I’m pretty disappointed with Michael Moore and his bigging up of Hillary Clinton, whilst attacking Donald Trump. I’m no fan of Trump, but I’m even less of a fan of Clinton, who if elected will continue to invade, regime change, and instigate wars all over the planet, at the behest of her handlers.
Come on Michael, you can do better.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/movies/review-michael-moore-in-trumpland.html?_r=0
I can’t think of anything that turns my stomach more than a conspiracy to set up a false accusation of “online grooming” and “sexual molestation” of an 8 year old girl against Julian Assange, to smear an innocent man for this vile crime purely of discredit publication of truthful documents revealing your own Party’s political corruption.
The ‘Assange PedoPlot’, as it’s now called, was instigated by a mysterious front company “Todd and Clare” but it’s been traced back to a US data intelligence company on whose board sits Larry Summers and which is linked to a SuperPAC set up by John Podesta.
The founder of T&C Network Solutions / Premise Data Corporation, David Soloff, was recently photographed in Clinton’s office and tweeted he’d also spent time with Tim Kaine.
Link to documentary evidence: https://www.wikileaks.org/Background-and-Documents-on-Attempts-to-Frame-Assange-as-a-Pedophile-and.html
The sleuthing: https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/587lbg/i_have_been_looking_into_the_san_fransisco/
“Why has WikiLeaks not published material on Israel/Putin/Trump?” The answer is that they have not been given any.
Back in 2012 Julian boasted that Wikileaks possessed over a million leaked documents that would affect every country in world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wxNJ71us0
So where’s the dirt on Israel and Russia? There must be shed loads of it.