Last night the BBC was reporting on the Conservative manifesto. This is a document whose most striking pledge is to fill in some of the potholes in roads that have proliferated due to massive cuts in local authority funding, and to give free hospital car parking to those visiting a terminally ill relative. Just think of the last one. How do you prove your relative is terminally ill? What if there is a chance they might get better? The administration of this system is going to require people to have some form of certificate or token that all hope is now lost. For the car park. The Tories are all heart.
As the News continued, Laura Kuenssberg told us that the battle lines between the parties are now clearly drawn, and the major division is over how much the government “should interfere in the economy”.
Interfere. Not intervene. Not regulate. Interfere. It is a very deliberate choice of word. Let me turn to the Oxford English Dictionary:
Interfere
1) Prevent from continuing or being carried out properly
2) Handle or adjust without permission
3) Become involved in something without being asked
4) Sexually molest
Words matter. Kuenssberg chose a word with powerful negative connotations and no possible positive meaning, to describe the alternative to the Tories. Kuenssberg talking of government interfering in, rather than intervening in, the economy is in itself a very strong and explicit declaration of Kuenssberg’s belief in an Ayn Rand, “Britannia unchained”, free market, ultra neo-liberal world view. To explicitly frame the choice in the election as between the Tories and “interfering” is just another example of the way the BBC slants their election coverage, permanently.
Now I started to draft an article three days ago, before that particular Kuenssberg propaganda masterclass.
Here is what I wrote as a draft three days ago:
“Maybe I am just unlucky. I have had television news bulletins transport me to hear vox-pops featuring former Labour voters in Dudley who now want to vote Conservative to GET BREXIT DONE. I have seen vox pops in fishing wharves in Peterhead and Grimsby, in dismal cafes in Hartlepool, in bingo halls in Yarmouth, in pubs back in Dudley, on high streets in Wakefield, in a shopping mall in Thurrock, in hardware stores back in bloody Dudley again. The country is full of people who want to GET BREXIT DONE, and who will NEVER VOTE LABOUR AGAIN.
The strange thing is that I have not seen a single vox pop from Richmond, featuring an educated woman who is switching from a lifetime of Tory voting because they have become a far right party and are going to crash the economy with hard Brexit. But there are many people like that in Richmond, and indeed all over London, and throughout much of southern England. They exist but are not worth vox-popping, apparently. Because they are not the broadcasters’ chosen “narrative”.
The BBC, ITN and Sky will doubtless defend the very obviously targeted demographic and destination of their “vox-pops” on the grounds that this is the “narrative” of the election. But that is a self-reinforcing prophecy. The public are relentlessly being told that what ordinary people want is to “GET BREXIT DONE” and to vote Tory. But that is actually only what about 40% of the people want. We just aren’t being shown the other 60% as the broadcasters focus relentlessly on areas with the highest leave vote, and on vox pop subjects with the least possible education.”
While that passage was atill on the stocks, last night, alongside the Kuenssberg analysis, the BBC gave us a vox pop from the Rother Valley that fitted perfectly the above description. It came from a Yorkshire Labour seat that voted Leave. It featured Labour voters who will now vote Conservative. The ladies interviewed were perfectly primed with precisely the main Tory slogans. A lady told us she wanted Boris so we could “get Brexit done and get on with domestic reforms”. Another ex-Labour voter told us she would vote for Boris because “he may not be trustworthy, but I like him”. Trust and likeability are two factors the pollsters regularly measure. It is important for the Tories that voters prioritise likeability over trust, because Johnson’s Trust numbers are appalling. How fortunate that the BBC happened to find a little old lady in the Rother Valley who could express this so succinctly!
Or maybe it is not so surprising. With the mainstream media as such a reliable echo chamber of public slogans, perhaps it is not surprising to find the public just echo them too, as they do in North Korea. The state media in the UK is of course not the only propaganda outlet. Billionaires control 87% of print news media by circulation, and are aggressively Tory for obvious reasons of self-interest.
This leads to the incredible circularity of the “Newspaper Reviews” that take up such a high proportion of broadcast news output. The broadcasters “review” the overwhelmingly right wing print media. And who do they invite to do the reviewing? Why the billionaire employed journalists of the overwhelmingly right wing print media, of course! So we have the surreal experience of watching journalists from the Times and the Spectator telling us how great an article in the Daily Mail is, about how Corbyn is a Russian spy and Scotland not really a country at all.
If that was not bad enough, we then get deluged by “commentators” from “think tanks” which are again billionaire funded, like the Institute of Economic Affairs and scores of others, sometimes with money thrown in from the security services, like the Quilliam Foundation and scores of others. It is a never-ending closed circular loop of propaganda.
The truth is that it largely works. Social media is overwhelmingly sceptical of the government narrative, but we still live in a society where the power of mass broadcasting and even print retains a remarkable amount of influence, particularly on the old and the poorly educated. It is no coincidence that it is precisely the old and the poorly educated that are the targets of Cummings’ “Brexit election” strategy. If it comes off, Kuenssberg and her fellow hacks will have proven that the power of the mainstream media is as yet unbroken.
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The London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, making a statement and answering inaudible questions. He is quite difficult to follow as he slurs one word into another.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/london-bridge-incident-police-news-a4300586.html
He has recently been involved in a spat about removing Uber’s licence.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/22/uber-licence-transport-for-london-tfl
I noticed that ACC Basu of the Met was wearing a red poppy pin on the lapel of his jacket. Didn’t Remembrance Sunday take place on the 10th?
The video of Craig speaking yesteday at Free the Truth for Julian is on:
https://youtu.be/9uayjFEjRk0
Mary
Cheers for the Video of Craig..I’ll pop over and watch it just now
I had a look to see if RT had Craig’s Full Talk.. Appears Not
.
But there is another shorter Rt clip with Craig..And Nils Melzer in on this one too..telling us we are on the inevitable road to Tyranny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaXEyoiMMXk
NATO/Trump still coming to London?
3td/4th December
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_169754.htm
I have heard mention of ISIS and Syria in the commentary.
trolls, possibly bots, going wild on social media with the one liners such as “must be one of Corbyn’s terrorist mates”, “Corbyn, you gunna lay a reef at his grave?”
Almost like these lines were written in advance, someone just needed to press play.
Most likely by MI5/6, CIA, Mossad etc.
Seriously: it is time for some very public executions of very senior criminals in the terrorist organisations masquerading as security services.
Should Andrew Parker and Richard Dearlove be shot through the back of the head in very public TV performances, maybe spooks will focus on law and order not global terrorist actions?
The man who removed the knife from the scene was wearing a pea jacket which sailors used to wear on duty when sailing in cold weather. Could he be a Royal Marine? If the dead man was a patsy, who better to disarm him than an elite soldier?
Almost as coincidental as the Porton Down chief nurse who just happened to be in the vicinity of the Skripals’ incident in the Salisbury park.
Have a look at the Daily Mail article images of the supposed terror attack. There is a big group of crisis actors standing in the middle of the right side pavement, opposite the “terrorist shooting side”. The crisis actors are waiting to be called to “action” to run away from the bridge, as shown on video footage on the BBC.
“Hoax explosive vest”. I had a good laugh about that one. “Hero” members of the public supposedly have attacker on ground and subdued, yet the police supposedly shoot him dead anyway. Dead men tell no tales. Same as the fabricated terror before at Westminster, where Tobias Elwood MP, was centre stage, and whom ironically was quoted on the BBC’s website today.
Laugh at it folks, and send goodwill and peace to your fellow people, rather than let the state backed fabricated terror spread fear and suspicion of perfectly good people. Use your vote tactically against this terrible government.
SIS
Casting by:
http://crisiscast.com/
I recall a conversation in the office, passing time, when there was talk about who we would pick for sex. To my surprise Dolly, not her real name, nominated one of the less conventionally good looking young men. When asked why, Dolly said ‘ because he would be grateful’. Listening to an obviously elderly working class lady, two coughs from a ward corridor trolley, on a BBC interview this morning who, although previously a labour supporter, was going to vote for Boris. Does the cheeky tousle headed manchild have a secret weapon?
The ‘mainstream’ coverage of the london bridge shooting is being highly managed. The original phone video shows what looks very much a US style shooting. The media story is lots of people on the bridge saying ‘thank you’ to the police for their bravery and saving lives. mm
Well if you were “two coughs from a ward corridor trolley” you’d want to work a bit of mischief too before you went!
2 members of the public killed apparently. Does that warrent a days suspension of campaigning? 48hrs of ‘candles’. Exactly as Labour start to close the polling gap. Exactly like last time. Just keep wearing us out with drama and darkness, thats all that matters.
Can you reference the polls which show Labour closing the polling gap? Ta.
Westminster voting intention:
CON: 42% (-)
LAB: 34% (+2)
LDEM: 13% (-1)
BREX: 4% (+1)
GRN: 3% (+1)
via
@PanelbaseMD, 27 – 28 Nov
https://mobile.twitter.com/britainelects/status/1200392208823836674
ICM Research 22-25 Nov 7% Tory Lead – down from 10% 5 days ago
Yougov 25-26 Nov 11% Tory Lead – down from 12% 5 days ago
SavantaComres 25-26 7% Tory Lead – down from 10% 5 days ago
Panelbase 27-28 Nov 8% Tory Lead – down from 10% 5 days ago
You can see first 3 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
Panalbase at https://www.drg.global/our-work/political-polls/panelbase-poll-28th-november-2019/
The Britain Elects Twitter feed is a good source for all of them. And all of them since Wednesday have shown the Tory lead coming down.
Bear in mind that anti-Tory voters who haven’t worked out how to vote tactically yet will be excluded as don’t knows, so all the polls are overstating the Tory position.
Bear in mind that all the pollsters apply assumptions as to turnout, when the raw data is showing things neck and neck.
Bear in mind almost 4 million new registrations, mainly of young people, who are going to be disproportionately Labour voters.
A Tory overall victory is starting to look unlikely, and if the trends continue, we will soon be into Jeremy Corbyn PM territory.
Stopped reading after ‘crash the economy with hard Brexit’ – Insane gibberish
Well tootle off to guido then. Bye.
Is Staines still a thing.
I mean, who cites Staines anymore.
Craig’s much bigger now.
“Nutjob”
Karma.
It looked fake to me, as the police seemed to appear on the scene in force rather quickly and from different directions, and unarmed members of the public seemed quite unafraid, while gun toting police waded in like Rambos. The people didn’t start fleeing until the police told them to, it appeared, there was quite a delay.
The police had been called to the venue at the Fishmongers’ Hall where two people had been stabbed and have since died. I should imagine that it wasn’t difficult for the police to run along the bridge after Khan and bring him to the ground. Why wasn’t he tasered and incapacitated rather than shot dead?
Another terrorist attack on London. Presumably in revenge for Western military action in Muslim countries. That’s what has motivated all the others. The British media will do anything but attach any responsibility to the likes of Boris Johnson. He voted for the invasion of Iraq, and just carries on regardless, becomes Prime Minister, like nothing happened. IBC count for total violent deaths in Iraq now 288,000.
Craig writes: “We just aren’t being shown the other 60% as the broadcasters focus relentlessly on areas with the highest leave vote, and on vox pop subjects with the least possible education.”
Craig lists my home town of Hartlepool, among others, in relation to his comment. Either myself (perhaps visiting) or my sister or my brother (both still living there) could have been interviewed in the vox pops Craig references. We each retain our north eastern accent. We each are degree level educated (my sister a PHD too). The assumption that those from leave voting towns are ill educated is as lazy as the assumption they are all racist bigots.
“Either myself (perhaps visiting) or my sister or my brother (both still living there) could have been interviewed in the vox pops Craig references.”
I’d be interested to know why you think that. Were you approached?
Because we look and sound like people from Hartlepool. I do not believe vox pop interviewers ask for CVs? The point is Craig appears to assume a lack of education by virtue of town and leave vote and ascribe it to the individuals interviewed. That is a lazy assumption.
“The point is Craig appears to assume a lack of education by virtue of town and leave vote”
No he doesn’t. “broadcasters focus relentlessly on areas with the highest leave vote, and on vox pop subjects with the least possible education.” means that they pick vox pop subjects who have the least possible education from areas with the highest leave vote, not that areas with the highest leave vote have the lowest education. That statement allows for the BBC et al to interview people like you and then not show the interview, because you are too educated or have too good a grasp of the realities of life to fit in with the impression they want to portray.
The point is you wouldn’t have been chosen because of your education, the location relates to the leave vote.
I assume that once the interviews have been collected and recorded they are culled by the Commisar who knows what he-and the editors- are looking and listening for. It wouldn’t matter if 90% of respondents voiced their eternal love for Labour and Corbyn, the selection would be made from the other 10%.
The trick is for people to realise that it is all propaganda by the few to keep that edge in wealth and power that makes them such a tiny sliver demographically speaking.
One doesn’t know what to think in regard to todays “terrorist” attack.
Footage seems just odd, perhaps the most oddest thing is the man who has the knife in his hand, afer the shot is fired can be seen running away from the incident shouting and disposes something from his jacket hurling it on the floor, that in itself is very odd, did he have stolen goods? did he steal someones wallet? what a very very very odd thing to do in what would be in reality an incredibly scary incident.
I didn’t hear any shouts directed towards that man to put the knife down and to get down on the floor?
Not saying, just saying.
The police order those restraining the guy to leave (instead of assisting them), pulling off the last one who’s holding the guy down – that leaves his arms free to detonate a bomb? And two policemen with rifles then have no means of controlling the suspect except by shooting him – which they do?
disposal is much cheaper
Also satisfies plod’s blood lust.
As soon as I first read about this incident I knew the paranoiacs around here would be wittering on about “false flags” and “crisis actors”.
As soon as I first read about this incident I knew Kempe would be around here feeding his huge superiority complex.
A couple of puzzles here.
A ( one ) stabbing at premises and stabbings elsewhere.
Where was the elsewhere where the other stabbings happened?
On the bridge?
Also what does the 4 ton truck ( the one surrounded by the police cars ) skewed across the road have to do with anything?
No screens up around the body when being photographed is strange.
Not usual practice I don’t think.
This is the first comment in this thread using BB and not using Billy Brexit surely abbreviations are ok ?
—
[ Mod: There are comments in this thread by ‘Billy Brexit !’ here and here, so when you added another using the name ‘BB’ with a different email address (and therefore a different gravatar image), it seemed like a different person.
These tactics are used regularly by people whose main aim is to disrupt – though there doesn’t seem to be any underhand purpose in this case. All the same, it would be appreciated if you could abide by the conventions. Thanks. ]
It is now being reported in tomorrows papers that the man who is seen running with the knife after the attacker was shot dead, is a serving police officer, who can clearly be seen in one video of throwing something away from his left jacket pocket, getting rid of evidence or planting it?
https://twitter.com/CrimeLdn/status/1200422834427830273
Page down to the 2cd video of the incident, this fella can clearly be seen reaching into his pocket and throwing something away, now it appears this is a serving police officer, also the more one looks at this video the odder it appears, the man with the flat cap can be quite easily argued is giving a signal to his confederates, off course sometimes a cigar is just a cigar but the action of the guy with the knife makes this whole incident look bizzarre.
I think the officer we see throwing something is planting evidence,, not that we will ever know.
It’s something white. Perhaps a cloth or something wrapped in a cloth. Very strange indeed. Is this something somebody running away from a “suicide vest” would do? Reach into his coat pocket and throw his hanky away?
Did they really need to shoot the “terrorist”? He’d been grappling with “bystanders” for a while. If he had had a real suicide vest he would have blown himself up already. It looks very much as if they executed him. (That is, if even that part is real.)
It all has a strange staged look to it. But of course I know all about confirmation bias, so all I can do is put big question marks.
Strange time to pick for an attack. If you’re a terrorist you would pick one of the busiest times. If you wanted to stage something you’d want relatively few people around.
It looked like a hanky but it was heavier and fairly certain it can be heard hiting the ground, maybe the hanky was to conceal what was being thrown away or keep fingerprints of the actual item?
Very strange as is the man with the cap,but as said, the information bias is going to be such that we will never know?
Could even be as innocent as the police officer getting rid of the drugs he was going to sell to a local dealer?
Still, Boris got to look all important as he called his COBRA meeting and then went on with the right wing rhetoric of soft sentencing etc.
It’s also strange that they don’t hit the deck. If you think ball bearings are going to be shot all over the place surely someone would have lied flat. Instead they back away. One throws something from his pocket. Another lifts his cap.
In the summer i was in parliament sq and a couple were arguing with a homeless guy. A knife appeared and two members of the public intervened and managed to get the knife away from the arguing people who were now physically fighting. When the police turned up the people they trained their tasers on and order on the floor were the members of the public who had disarmed the arguing people and called the police, while amazingly the fisticuffs continued. Even after multiple bystanders told the police that they were the good guys they would not allow them off the floor until CCTV controllers had verified what had happened.
Went to a hustings last night in one of the top “key marginals”. BBC streamed it on Facebook.
There was the Conservative, the Lib Dem and the Labour, and an Independent.
The Independent was concerned about plans for the local area. Wonderful professional and forensic woman who knows what is coming through reading these plans in detail. Lib Dems on board, but pretending not to be.
Great to see a real human being against these machine politicians.
So sad, that she and we can never win.
It’s Conservative or Lib Dem.
As if that’s a choice.
More Independents, please.
A parliament of Independents.
I see we now have a fake terror event.
Just like clockwork.
I suppose there’s a kinda other point here.
If peeps are all talking about the latest news events. The latest wonders.
They’re not looking at policy.
They’re being led by the nose.
Maybe that’s the point.
Do people ever look at policy.
I see every election folk engaging in a bit of cap doffing and voting against their own interests, be honest, the electorate are as thick as shit.
The electorate are not thick as shit, in my opinion. I’d agree that they seem to be from the perspective of the political and intellectual junkie.
I’d probably want to argue that they’re much too easily distracted from what’s important globally, and further that the more comfy they are the more easily distracted.
Peeps are localists, and that’s not where the power is.
But still, you can see them bettering their local community, at least attempting to.
Love you local peeps.
I think it’s the people who think the electorate are thick are the ones being mugged off. Don’t expect the media to say, “No! They’re not buying it!” They need to try and convince the reader that while he’s smart enough not to fall for it everybody else is as thick as shit so his desire for change is a forlorn hope. People are a bit more sophisticated than that when it comes to weighing up whether or not they’re being took for mugs, and especially so when those they’re weighing up, the media and politicians, are famed for being lying scumbags.
When May was in trouble we has this laughable fake.
The bomb that caused a fireball, but did not even leave any smoke damage to the pristine white plastic next to it.
https://steemitimages.com/DQmUvXYgeRuLSDT3CgdQqizfVHmdATVtHmjLjkEBAQkSBji/screenshot-www.drudgereport.com-2017-09-15-20-03-41-718.jpeg
Also the poor woman with an awful toothache.
https://steemitimages.com/DQmPx5Tpmb7zGnsvfntvEwUjQ5tgn82p2EsrTjDcwFo2Q2f/screenshot-www.thesun.co.uk-2017-09-15-20-59-43-885.jpeg
BTW the copper is fake.
No name.
https://i.postimg.cc/Nj17xjp5/fake-copper-2.jpg
Real coppers have their name above the met logo.
Just a blank space.
@ different frank November 29, 2019 at 23:18
‘..BTW the copper is fake.
No name.
https://i.postimg.cc/Nj17xjp5/fake-copper-2.jpg
Real coppers have their name above the met logo.
Just a blank space.’
Possibly blanked out to prevent identification, like they often blank out number plates on cars involved in incidents.
Nope.
Fake, like the crisis actor next to her.
Not blanked out.
Just not there.
My instinct also is that today’s events are pretty suspect.
But this name badge stuff isn’t evidence of that.
MPS Dress Code Policy, section 4, contains clear exemptions from wearing name badge in today’s circumstances: https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/foi-media/metropolitan-police/disclosure_2017/october_2017/information-right-unit—regulations-or-instruction-in-relation-to-name-tags-on-uniforms
The document that you provided a link to does not support your assertion.
It specifically mentions a “receiving patch” – i.e. velcro is the usual choice – the officer’s uniform has no receiving patch. Also, there is a mention that for “pre-planned events” officers may be permitted to not wear the name badge.
No receiving patch suggests very strongly (to me – registered paranoid) that she isn’t regular police.
Cascadian, the velcro receiving patch is clearly visible above the tunic badge, behind the phone. If we are going to catch the spooks out in a public deception we need to notch down the paranoia, think clearly, and base our arguments on good evidence.
Hey, here’s Hillary Clinton on The Graham Norton Show.
How nice to see the woman who destroyed Libya plugging her new book.
Aye, but the real lesson here is that you can destroy Libya, and still get on The Graham Norton Show.
That’s the thing, you see.
Destroy Libya and then supply arms to Syrian head choppers through Benghazi.
Again?
Did Graham ask her about what her emails leaked by Seth Rich revealed?
The Guardian:
One witness said he spoke to one of the men who helped wrestle the knifeman to the ground after they were taken to the Salvation Army headquarters to be interviewed by police. He told the PA news agency:
“The guy who was on top of him said he [the attacker] had been in prison for terrorism, apparently. Some of the guys who were on top of him were ex-prisoners and they had all been in the Fishmongers’ Hall. The guy told me he was in prison with the attacker.”
One witness, a 24-year-old maintenance worker from Croydon, said he was driving his van across the bridge when he saw four men tackle the attacker. He told PA News Agency:
As I got on the bridge armed police pulled in front of me. There were already four pedestrians on top of the guy on the floor.
One of them [pedestrians] was shouting ‘shoot him in the f***ing head’. I’m still in my van at this point, trying to turn around. Then the police say ‘get out of the van’, so I had to leave it there. I then saw them [police] shoot him three or four times. I was in shock. I wanted to get away. Everyone was shouting run because he had something across his chest. It was crazy.
Fitting that they had been in the ‘Fishmongers’ Hall”, because this whole thing is very fishy indeed. How stupefyingly convenient, when in pushing the Labour antisemitism smears, the MSM found itself forced to face the visceral cornucopia of Tory bigotry, that such an event should transpire. One hardly needs the services of a carnival tasseographer, to see how this is going to be spun. It will take the vice of their discrimination and hatred for the Muslim community, and seek to make a virtue of it. Old commie Corbyn is too well disposed towards these shady foreign types, you see. Altogether too willing to treat them as equals, in fact, that terrorist is a avid Corbyn supporter, so you see folks, we’re not saying Jeremy is responsible for this, but in a very real sense, it is as if he actually killed those people.
As a pysop, it’s a master stroke; just look at the elements at play here.
1. Evil terrorist stopped by bulldog spirit of plucky Brits
2. Our enemy is evil, but also fundamentally incompetent (the suicide vest merely fancy dress)
3. The redemptive arc. Child murdered turned ‘hero’
4. The resolute state. No nanby-panby nonsense like arrest and questioning (like that terrorist enabler Corbyn would support), just summary execution
What comes next? An escalation of the fear. It will be claimed that this attack is part of a larger plot to bring murder and mayhem to our elections, there could be crazy Muslim extremists just waiting to kill you if you go to vote. So best that folks stay home, and we’ll let those nice safe postal votes sort this election out, you know, the ones processed and counted by a private company, with links to the Conservative party.
As to the victims, we generally have names by now. So far, not a peep. Oh, and here is what appears to be out terrorist, just shrugging off a few point blank gunshot wounds, presumably to see if the catering truck is still serving food.
https://twitter.com/SmdMichelle/status/1200593153113370625
” The redemptive arc. Child murdered turned ‘hero’ ”
Ford’s victim was 21 so hardly a child.
He was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in 2004 which it looks like he’s served.
At leat the police did something this time instead of locking themselves in their cars.
For the record, she apparently had the mental age of a 15 year old and Ford has never explained why he killed her (slit her throat). The police revealed to her family that Ford was involved in the London Bridge incident (they hadn’t told them previously that he was out on licence) but assured them that he had emerged as a “hero”. They weren’t impressed.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10454425/london-bridge-attack-convicted-murderer/
“Old commie Corbyn”
They have to juggle that with “Nazi Corbyn”. But then again, consistency was never an issue. And in any case, I’m sure we’ll have our pop psychologists to give us the old “extreme right meets extreme left” mantra.
That’s all very well, but none of that worked in 2017, so why should it work this time?
When has that ever bothered politicians? “If at first you don’t succeed, try try and try again” is their mantra. Much better than admitting you were wrong.
I get “sorry this page does not exist” for this
https://twitter.com/SmdMichelle/status/1200593153113370625
Me too.
JC,
Just found it on OffGuardian’s Twitter. Sorry, I’m not sufficiently proficient to provide a specific link.
I don’t know what went on and, like so many incidents past and present, I don’t think we ever will whilst the security services and government succeed in convincing much of the population that conflict and war is the only way.
The aspect of the situation that gives me most cause for thought though, is the police action. In my time in the military, everybody was issued a Green Card, this was a document that laid down the regulations when you were armed and with live ammunition on when you can shoot, who you can shoot, where you can shoot, the “rules of minimum force”, people throwing, planting or detonating an explosice divice. Every incident that may involve you discharging your weapon was covered. If I had done what the police did, I would have had my weapon confiscated and would have been arrested, because I did not follow the regs. laid down. According to the rule of minimum force, the target had been subdued and was already classed as a prisoner and my next action would be to further incapacitate, a rifle butt to the noggin to knock him out maybe, or add to the scrum already on him and bind him up even more so he can’t move until support arrives. If I had done waht the police did I would have been arrrsted for murder because I had executed a prisoner in cold blood.
I know the arguement that he had a suicide vest and the police could take no chances will be used, but if it was me as a military man who had not followed my Green Card the military would drop my like a hot rock and not defend me in court and the prosecutions arguement would go along the lines:-
Pros: “so the suspect had been disarmed of the knife and was being subdued by 4 members of the public”
me: “yes sir”
Pros: “you say the people holding the suspect told you he had a suicide vest on”
me: “yes sir”
Pros: ” why didn’t he detonate when the four people were subdueing the suspect? I mean, he’d been caught and for a suicide bomber, a guaranteed four lives would be a statement”
me: “I don’t know sir”
Pros: “Could it be that the civilians binding him had inadvertently already stopped him from detonating the bomb?”
me: “yes It’s a valid explanation sir”
Pros: “you then told the civilians to get away before you had secured the suspect yourself, allowing him to free his hands?”
me: “err……yes sir”
Pros: “So, you have the suspect disarmed of his primary weapon, disabled so he can’t run, and incapacitated enough that he can’t detonate his secondary weapon, and you thought the best course of action was to release him and shoot him in the head?
me: “Errrr………”
See how it works?
The police killed a man without trial or conviction (of which he would have been certainly found guilty of murder) because they were afaid he had a bomb. These are worrying times when all the police have to do is say is “suicide vest” and it gives them carte blanche to put a few 9mm into somebodies head.
If the belief was he had a suicide vest, why the close quartering? Such IED’s are routinely packed with ball bearings, and other projectile media, which travel at ballistic speeds after detonation. Given they had no idea what the triggering mechanism was, (a device in the hand, a shoe, a remote detonation) the logical course of action is to keep a distance. Same goes for the public, I mean I get that everyone gets all mushy about apparent acts of heroism, but these actions hardly seem consistent with what we generally observe in such situations. If someone shouts ‘he has a bomb’, nobody is making a beeline to confront the wouldbe bomber, and certainly not a whole group of people. I mean, it’s quite statistically aberrant, that a handful of the bravest people in the country, just all happened to be at the same place, at the same time, and all galvanised by a will to act, in the face of what would likely be the death of all of them.
Nothing that you have stated dismisses in any way what Huw Manoid has stated.
I was also in the military (Army) and I agree with Huw. Do you remember Northern Ireland? The frustration of the troops deployed there was that they could fire on someone only after that someone had fired on them!
But in practice were free to open fire on unarmed people with impunity — Ballymurphy, Bloody Sunday, etc.
I’m afaraid this is simply untrue, yes, there have been aberations and crimes commited by the British military in Northern Ireland, but to suggest the entire military was given a free pass to kill whoever and whenever they like is incorrect.
In fact when you went to N.I. you were also issued a White Card as well as the Green Card, which removed things like being allowed to shoot someone throwing a petrol bomb, because this was such a common occurrence in N.I. that if the regulations contained in the Green Card (which did allow you to shoot someone throwing a petrol bomb) had not been tightened when serving in N.I., there would have been a bloodbath on the streets every time there was a protest, and not just the incidents that you highlight. You malign an awful lot people who served as best they could and without commiting crimes.
Once again, I agree with Huw.
I spent the time from late ’76 through to late ’77 on an upgrading course in Catterick. Even though I and my colleagues were supposed to concentrate our minds on the technical side of what we had to learn, we were also being subjected to extra curricular (i.e. in our own time) courses on weapons, tactics, fieldcraft, urban warfare and the obstacles we might face if deployed to Northern Island. Thankfully, I never went there, but I know some who did. Rules of engagement was one of the things that was drummed into us, so I am as confused as Huw regarding the behaviour of the armed police officers (who, in my opinion, should be subjected to even stricter rules of engagement than the military) who shot an ostensibly unarmed man. And not only that, in our military weapons training we were taught techniques of marksmanship to the extent that at a range of 400 yards I could reliably put a bullet through an enemy combatants chest – think about what that means in terms of a marksman’s ability to target a non-lethal, but disabling, part of a target’s body at 10 feet. If you can reliably put a bullet through the target’s head at that range you can also do the same for the target’s shoulder. IMHO it was an execution, and as such the police officers, if they were such, involved should be brought up on criminal charges.
It wasn’t supposed to.
What a total farce on London bridge today. The wonk in charge, David Cummings, has a crisis on his hands.
I don’t know if clones have sexes, but he is outwardly configured a male one, with the physiognomy of a toad.
Yes the crisis is that a very large section of the economy in a post industrial Britain is paid to spies and think-tanks which pretend that Britain has an economy rather than a treadmill of well-paid drones who support the Tory neo-con policy of demolishing the Muslim world.
The 20% tax on everything that is sold and the 20% income and corporation taxes are more than enough to run Britain without us having to make anything ourselves. In this way we can, in the brain we keep in a saucer of saline solution by our bedside. imagine that the vast footprint of fossil fuels for everything to be made in China is not ours. In the same way , and with equal disconnect we pretend that the terrorists our security services arm , fund and train to destroy Muslim countries in preparation for being re-colonised is being done by the other , and we incur no blame for the carnage, wreckage and human damage.
The evil Dominic Cummings will have promised the beneficiaries of funds, the terrorists and their non-participating supporters, more lashings of preferential treatment and incentives if they vote Tory.
I know for a fact that the imam of the mosque behind my house used to tell my neighbours to vote Labour in the Blair days. But now that Russia has kiboshed the Syrian holocaust, and humiliated NATO with superior weaponry and diplomacy skills, Cummings will have pulled out every stop to win over the formerly Labour leaning Muslim ghettoes to the Oaf’s losing side.
I wouldn’t be surprised therefore if my long-standing warlord MP Liam Byrne didn’t lose his seat this time because it is absolutely essential for the insane intelligence services of this country that Jeremy Corbyn never sees the evidence of the Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan British genocides. Most of the Muslim population of this corner of Birmingham run faily unprofitable small businesses topped up by dollops of Family Credit.
Cummings will have incentivised these would-be enterpreneurs with commercial breaks if they support Bois Johnson’s funding of Al Qaida in all its many forms and Priti Patel’s use of British humanitarian aid for Al Qaida’s proxy fighting for Israel in the Golan.
These terrorists are the lowest of the low, selling themselves for the destruction of their fellow Muslims while raking it in from the evil neocon Tories. Without a fairly broad base of popular support through the jihadist mosques, and a few patsies getting bags of fake blood on their clothes , to make the general public believe the opposite of the truth, the neo-colonial wars would be hard to justify and sustain. Corbyn was right to say there had been no just war since 1948. The truth is that Boris Johnson stood up in the House of Commons and praised Al Qaida for its crimes. No wonder politicians are despised.
It was all a fake opp; nobody got killed; it didn’t even happen; the Zionists planned this; no Islamophobia; the perp was just disturbed; he was under aged, give him a break; knives are harmless; the MET are murderers; the dog ate my home work etc.
What a site / sight!!
That’s right Ant – it’s all so complicated. Who can figure it out? Oh well – back to the soaps.
The downgrading of the terror threat level earlier this month meant a stop to bag searches on entry to some buildings in London, such as the British Library. It what? That is crazy!
Especially after all those Daesh escaped from YPG detention camps. And a Daesh leader had been operating unhindered in Kiev.
Article by Mark Di Stefano at Buzzfeed about the Reddit account in the name of “Gregoriator” that surfaced the 451 page “flog the NHS to US interests” document.
I really regret clicking on that link. It is the biggest case of “so what?” I have ever read.
Good discussion of BBC anti-Labour bias during this election with Ronan Burtenshaw.
https://novaramedia.com/2019/11/28/media-impartiality-its-scone/
This is revealing too:
https://novaramedia.com/2019/11/28/who-gets-to-speak-for-british-jews-how-the-myth-of-the-jewish-community-marginalises-dissent/
I love the Stephen Pollard comment:
“Please, broadcasters, when you cover the Chief Rabbi story and Labour antisemitism, stop going to JVL for a ‘counter’ voice as two sides of a debate. It’s like covering an attack on homophobic politicians and then going to a spokesman for a group of homophobes for ‘balance’”
No doubt Pollard would object to the recent BBC coverage of the Rabbi Mirvis attack on Corbyn where we get 6 seconds of “concern” over Tory Islamophobia and 10 minutes of “Corbyn! The Horror! The Horror!” I daresay Pollard would fume at 6 seconds of time wasted that could have contained more Corbie bashing.
And whilst perusing SP’s illuminating Twitter page, I see this:
“My regular reminder that if you seek to excuse Labour or Corbyn’s racism, if you use the word ‘smear’ or if you in any way downplay the issue, I will immediately block you – no engagement, no argument, just a block”
In short: Don’t smear the smear!
I think people calling this latest attack False Flag should be careful. I think the idea that it was all fake and staged is far fetched, and given that #FalseFlag was being pushed immediately and not by lefties, less far fetched is the idea that it is being used to label lefties as loony.
There are all sorts of possibilities, from some radicalised mug being activated by some infiltrated cell, to a bunch of thugs spotting fellow ex-inmate who they knew was in on terrorism charges, jumped him, gaffa-taped something to his chest with the aim of getting him shot in the head.
Conspiracy theories are inevitable and very reasonable when you suspect you are being conspired against! But be careful not to let the left be labelled as loonie lefties.
I’m sure at the very least it is clear and reasonable that it is fishy timing and fishy circumstances whatever your political persuasion.
I think one always has to have an open mind. It might have been a genuine attack handled badly. It might have been an attack that was allowed to happen. It might have been an attack that was encouraged. It might have been staged. I have no idea.
I think it is important to ask questions. It is clear we are being manipulated and lied to. This may not always be the case, but it’s happened often enough that we need to question official narratives.
i’m not too worried about the “loony lefty” label. A lot of the conspiracy theorists are actually alt-right.
I agree with this about the need for caution in interpreting this event, which I think, as usual, will turn out to be more cock up than conspiracy. My take on it is that the University of Cambridge organised a conference on rehabilitating offenders at the Fishmongers Hall to which were invited some ex-prisoners to take part in the proceedings, which is why they have appeared as witnesses on the scene and able to recognise the perpetrator. He might or might not have been invited but would know of the event and used the opportunity to show that prison had done nothing to shake his beliefs. We do not know who as yet were the victims, but if they were connected with the conference event it would support the theory. I have also read somewhere that someone convicted of murder had tried to intervene in the attack, so he was probably there for the same reason – possibly an example of successful rehabilitation!
It is possible that armed police were around for risk management purposes, but we do not know that. Obviously the shooting itself will be subject to inquiry but will probably seen as lawful. There will be questions asked of the conference organisers about their holding of such an event at this location and time and what risk assessments they carried out. And of course how the tagged perpetrator still serving his sentence was allowed to be anywhere near there, coming as he did from his home in the midlands.
What may be seen as mere coincidence can just as easily be organised as part of a conspiracy, because conspirators try to ensure as much coincidence as possible. But I don’t see why a released prisoner from the Midlands would know about an ex-prisoner meeting in London.
For what it is worth, it has been since reported that he was invited, though he could well have learned about the event from the grapevine. It was also reported that he was wearing his fake suicide vest at the event.
Can’t see any reason why ‘they’ should and I’ve seen no plausible explanation how ‘they’ could.
In fact it’s more likey the other way around. Coincidence (especially atounding coincidence) is an indicator of co-ordinated action and to be avoided. And, sneer or not, coincidence also seems to be a feature of such events quite naturally, pointing toward the nature of reality.
postal votes arriving with signed Boris party political begging letter in marginals.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/fury-postal-votes-arrive-alongside-20980057
Have we had the incongruously discarded shoe shot yet?
https://lightonconspiracies.com/shoes-in-staged-deceptions-as-both-calling-cards-and-black-magik/
I was thinking similarly. The trouble is the authorities or news manipulators are like the boy who cried wolf. By the time any real wolf comes along they will be totally unprepared for it having kicked off the “shoes that were their mother’s” and relaxed in the glow of their inventiveness.
What struck my mind was the timing of it just before the General Election. Distraction? Provoking fear? I wondered if it had anything to do with Craig’s Royal teaser but have not yet seen the Prince Char(ming)les’ presentation of the silver slipper “that was his mother’s”.
We’re almost two weeks away from the election. Now if I was going to provide a false flag, I’d put it much nearer – although with a bit of time to let it sink in. Say, a few days before. But if there is another incident, it may look suspicious. Then again, I couldn’t believe (and still can’t) the attempt to turn Corbyn into Hitler. So who knows?
Nato summit. Remember Blair flanked with the backdrop of G8 leaders from Bush to Putin?
an understandable sin of omission, the hate that has no name – Usman Khan, bringing it all back home
Oh well, that didn’t take long.
‘Sky News is reporting that the attacker was “a student and personal friend” of the radical preacher Anjem Choudary’
It will be entirely Corbyns fault within hours.
If you hadn’t told me, I’d never have known…
Haha! But It’s interesting to see how each piece of anti Corbyn propaganda, be it anti-semitism, terrorist sympathies or economic ineptitude, is carefully aimed at a different demographic, each with its own set of ‘buttons’.
And also laying the groundwork for some things to come perhaps. Todays outrage is all about how ‘our useless judiciary’ thus various changes to the justice system will naturally be required. It is all rather insidious and pre-planned I think.
Daily Mail lead article headline:
“Al Qaeda-inspired Islamist London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan was AUTOMATICALLY freed after seven years – less than HALF his 16-year sentence – for plotting Mumbai-style terror attack on London and assassination of Boris Johnson”
Sounds like a meeting of ex cons in Fishmongers Hall.
Was this bloke invited all the way from Stafford?
If he was – who invited him?
Were the killed and injured ex cons and Probation Officers?
a strange tal indeed.
Whilst you were all busy discussing that terrorist incident stuff, I took some time to think about the forthcoming election and I’ve decided to downgrade the threat level from “critical” to “severe”, meaning a Tory victory is likely but not certain. My optimism here stems from evidence in the polls which are starting to show movement in favour of Labour.
If Labour can get to around 35% vote share, a hung parliament is just about a certainty. They were the biggest party in 2010 with around 35%. I suspect their plan to put more emphasis on respecting Brexit will backfire but they will find out quite quickly if it does and be able to switch re-calibrate.
But let’s be clear on a few things. The vast majority of ordinary people in this country are highly supportive of increasing the minimum wage, nationalising rail, water, power, etc., building more houses, and ending austerity. The media aren’t expressing any of that but general support for these policies has consistently been north of 60% for years.
For the first time ever, as far as I know, media and bbc bias is also a major issue in an election and that can only be a vote winner for Labour. The right wing MSM and newspapers have gone too far and I think they know it. Don’t be surprised if they try to rescue the situation by having a day of impartiality.
A recent study by University of Loughborough on media bias, picked up by The Independent last week, suggests that levels of bias in this election are at totalitarian levels. People should Google and read about that — it’s rewarding to see your suspicions confirmed so resoundingly by science and its findings mean that nobody can accuse us of indulging in paranoia or conspiracy theories on this issue.
[ Figure 5.2: Overall newspaper evaluations Weeks 1 – 3 (weighted by circulation) ]
Corbyn and McDonnell need to take a back seat for a few days and where the hell is Keir Starmer? He’s a vote winner and he’s nowhere to be seen.
You don’t need studies from a university to see the bias in the media. And who’s going to read these studies anyway? They are certainly not going to be broadcast by the media.
One example: a recent BBC 6 O’clock news report following the Rabbi Mirvis’s attack on Corbyn kicked off an article on both party’s “racism” issues. We got about 6 seconds on the Conservative Party’s Islamophobia and about 10 minutes on Labour anti-Semitism. (Feel free to insert scare quotes.) The coverage of the Labour issue featured a trick that has been constant all the way along: maximum scare-mongering outrage (“the poison in our society”, “we are on the verge of a precipice” etc.) and zero examples of actual anti-Semitism.
To repeat: You don’t need a university investigation to see the scam involved there. But – and here’s the real pisser – many DON’T see it. And if they don’t see it, no amount of peer reviewed research is going to make the slightest difference.
“People should Google and read about that” – yes, they should. But if they’ve already swallowed the crap, they won’t. I live in a traditionally Tory area where even the “Left” are Right. It’s rural South West Scotland. Farmers, don’t you just love them? No surprise if they think Corbyn is Hitler. They wouldn’t vote for him anyway. But the most depressing thing I heard was when visiting an old and definitely NON-Tory friend in the urban central belt and he casually mentioned in passing that Corbyn was racist. The mainstream media is like a big teat oozing poison that many absorb without any awareness of what they’ve just swallowed. In short: I’m not hopeful.
Interesting that you want to attach importance to anecdotes, just as the media wants us to believe the vox pops, rather than reason and science.
People tend to focus on particular snippets of information/disinformation when they discuss media bias but one of the things that has been missed by academics in this area — as well as people like Chomsky and Craig Murray who have demonstrated a good understanding of media bias over the years — is the neurological depatterning work the media does.
In laymen’s terms, we could say they simply want us to be pessimistic, and that’s clearly what comes across in your comment, but it’s much more structured and scientific than that.
So, what is it to depattern and how does it work?
One of the things people in the mind control industry realised in the 1960s was that propaganda faced a huge problem. It was more than an elephant in the room. That problem has been called a few different things but in the context of politics it’s best understood as a natural tendency amongst human beings to think constructively and positively when faced with problems.
If you think about it, you’re more or less hard-wired as a human being to do this. As a colleague of mine put it in the 1990s, it’s why we do jigsaw puzzles. If a friend or family member comes to you with a problem, I’ll wager that your natural reaction is to think of a solution. When you boil it down, we as a species do that with every problem we encounter. So far, so simple.
Of course, one man’s problem may be another man’s solution. When it comes to politics, economics,, and social issues, it isn’t necessarily desirable that people think naturally and constructively about solutions.
Imagine a room of 100 people who are starving and one person is in possession of more than enough food to feed everybody. Your normal neurological pattern of thought would be to solve the problem with the obvious solution — sharing — but the guy with the food is thinking more selfishly about his future and the possibility that he might starve some day if he shares it.
This is essentially the problem that propagandists face. It’s essentially the problem that we all face in this election. It isn’t enough in propaganda terms to fill people’s heads with information and disinformation— what’s required is that you change their thought patterns so that rather than thinking naturally and logically about solutions, they think pessimistically and accept that nothing can be done.
It isn’t easy to do this, btw. In fact, when you get into the nuts and bolts of doing it, there’s really only one way. You basically need to systematically inject negative messages, and things that make people pessimistic, and accepting, into heads at regular intervals throughout the day and throughout their lives, like a course of antibiotics or medicine (take one three times per day forever).
The way they do this is through what we call “the news”. The news is designed to depattern people and get them away from normal neurological thought patterns of constructive thinking when it comes to society, politics, and economics. Funnily enough, the truthfulness of the “facts” in “the news” isn’t that important — what’s important is that you stop thinking like a human being.
Do this enough and you break the normal thought processes and turn people into passive, if miserable, slaves. And the longer you do this to someone, the more passive and miserable they’ll get. This is why people tend to get more conservative as they get older. It’s also why the news is very deliberately full of unpleasant and depressing things, and stuff that reenforces the idea that you’re essentially irrelevant.
“Interesting that you want to attach importance to anecdotes, just as the media wants us to believe the vox pops, rather than reason and science.”
“Anecdotes” Oh – you mean actual life, you know – going out and meeting actual people? And I would take my actual meetings with actual people to be a better guide than the “vox pops” since I know the media can skew things any way they want.
As for this “reason and science” – well, where am I supposed to find it? I presume it lies in the rest of your post giving some kind of detached anthropological essay on conditioning as if observed under laboratory conditions. Good luck with that. However – the actual election is going to be held out here in the actual world. And as I said, you don’t need this psychobabble gobbledegook to understand what’s happening. Everyone starts with a childlike acceptance of the media. Some then realise that it’s biased and are aware of the various mechanisms being used. In my (merely anecdotal?) experience the people around me (i.e. the only people I know face to face) have never reached this realisation and have shown themselves to be depressingly gullible. Even the ones I thought were intelligent. Arguing with them doesn’t make a difference other than to create tension and the possibility of losing friends.
The media know perfectly well that the only thing that matters is this election. Which means swaying as many people away from Corbyn as possible. And they have shown themselves to be totally shameless in their methods of manipulation. And unfortunately these methods work with the people I know. But perhaps at the last moment, Messrs Reason and Science can leap to the rescue?
In short, you’ve been depatterned and instead of thinking constructively towards finding solutions, as you’re naturally inclined to in every other walk of life, you’ve given up and think meaningful remedies when it comes to politics and society are an impossibility.
That’s exactly what the very institutions and people you blame for the mess we are in want you to think.
But you’d struggle to explain the fact that the polls show support for Labour is growing steadily and the gap is closing. And the brexit vote itself to a large extent is an example of people defying the diktats and scaremongering of the MSM and state.
My advice to you is to stop watching TV news. If you’re in England, which I suspect you are, then you should be out in that real world that you speak so fondly of, making the case for change instead of wasting time on here.
For the first time in 40 years, real and meaningful change is being offered in this election. The gap between Labour and the Tories is about 8%, and that’s with the most formidable propaganda machine in the world pitted against them. You should be excited about that, not pessimistic, and you should do something to help.
I gave up the TV watching habit in 1986 when, for the first time, I lived alone and found I didn’t need it. It was a fascinating experience – like coming off a drug and, whenever I did dip into TV, I understood how it worked i.e. by self-reference where programmes would refer to other programmes rather than the outside world.
As for the mainstream news, my personal revelation came when George Dubya started up his noise about attacking Iraq. After that I was on a very steep learning curve. Nowadays I always go to the internet.
I don’t live in England but South West Scotland – which, granted, is almost England both in terms of its attitude and the fact that a very large percentage of the population are in fact English. Labour are a lost cause here so I always vote SNP. (Well apart from one sad time when I voted Liberal for what I thought was a tactical move and when Clegg joined up with Cameron and I realised that I effectively voted Tory, I couldn’t spend long enough in a scalding hot shower to try and feel clean!)
I don’t “speak fondly” for “that real world”. I am only saying that, ultimately, everyone’s real world is the world they live in face-to-face. And the world I live in is Tory farmer land. But my negativity has less to do with that than the aforementioned reaction from an old urban friend in the aforementioned anecdote. I did have a long discussion with my him and it went OK but I doubt if I made an impression on his voting habits whatever they might be.
Admittedly I have experienced a massive increase in negativity because I did actually tune in to BBC iPlayer for that news edition stemming from the Rabbi Mirvis attack and could not believe how bias it was. It is certainly true that mainstream news is purest poison.
As for “doing my bit”, I contribute to various progressive internet sites and projects and will continue to do so. I have heard that hope is the one thing that is most dangerous to the powers that be.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this matter of patterning – although I prefer the word programming – and I think you are right. The media – television in particular – programmes people. A work colleague came in om morning in a state of maximum anxiety over some news story and I could tell by the look of her face that there would have been no point in challenging her. Her mind was like an ocean liner that had been directed down a certain channel and there was no stopping it.
The “Labour anti-Semitism” scam is of the same nature. It is a seed that has been planted and nurtured and it has grown into a monstrous carnivore. And if you were to say that there is no evidence for any for this, the ones who have been “implanted” would stare at you as if you were crazy.
Ironically this device is the same thing the Nazis themselves used in their anti-Semitic propaganda.
I should have pointed out that the matter my colleague was getting wound up about was the scaremongering over the US withdrawal from Syria.
Your traumatised work colleague sounds very familiar. Most people who watch too much TV are sort of institutionalised, though. With TV generally it’s more regular propaganda, concerning values and how to behave in public, manners, how to wear your hair, how to be “well liked”. The News is different.
Our normal thought patterns are addressed directly and confounded by The News. Typically there’s a journey in movies, soap operas, and marketing (in particular), and life, from discovering a problem to at least attempting to find a solution. With the News it’s different, there’s no journey — the plot is something like “look at this harrowing stuff, you can’t do a thing about it, you’re an irrelevant piece of shit, go and die…”
Of course, they lie and bend all the facts too, they always did, but in the digital age they understand people are going to find out stuff and so they need to up their game. That’s why depatterning is more obvious today and necessary than ever.
Depatterning isn’t my word, btw — the “de” part is important because they are trying to deconstruct normal and natural patterns of thought. Regaular propaganda is basically the same as marketing and in both cases they play into natural patterns of thought, i.e.problem/solution stuff.
What they do with the news is totally at odds with normal practices in marketing and propaganda because there’s no attempt to sell you a solution.
Anyway, this election is very interesting.
Interesting. Hence, perhaps, the Guardian’s plethora of defeatist, despressing articles over the years. I remember just before the 2017 election, the narrative was almost unanimous across their columnists – “you’re going to lose, May is the next Thatcher, get ready for a landslide”. It has been a similar story in the same newspaper over recent months, slyly ‘bigging up’ Johnson and Farage with articles that pose as being from a left-wing viewpoint, but actually hyping up the electoral chances of right-wingers, and saving their real vitriol for Corbyn. Then, when their journalists go out to canvas opinion, they invariably seem to find hordes of unpleasant types preparing to vote Tory. It’s the same message – ‘you decent, leftish folk might as well give up’.
That’s exactly the message. In the old days they used to discuss potential solutions and provide answers. Answers and solutions are out today and the news is that the world is screwed, you’re screwed, you cant do anything about it, the environment, war, poverty, etc., all uncontrollable forces of nature, and you’re completely irrelevant.
The role of printed news right now is really interesting. Most newspapers aren’t profitable today but they are still there. I think I heard the Times was profitable but I haven’t had time to look. The rest are all but dead. One of the reasons they’re still there is because TV News networks have effectively plugged them into life support machines.
Note how TV news puts more emphasis than ever on printed news, with reviews and references at regular intervals. It’s symbiotic. For the BBC it means they can pretend that their right wing dogma is in line with mainstream public opinion, as defined by the right wing press.
The BBC starts and ends the day with a review of the newspapers, setting the agenda for the day ahead, and 99% of the newspapers are basically to the right of Oswald Mosley. For the newspapers it’s free advertising. It’s hilarious on a certain level; they have people like Tom Dunn, political editor of The Sun, reviewing the news as if he is some sort of voice of reason and impartiality. Nobody skips a beat.
The last time I looked, newspapers sales were about 30% of what they were in 2000. And if it wasn’t for ‘white van man’s’ requirement to read about football and drool at women with fake breasts, it’d probably be a lot lower.
The only incongruous element of the London Bridge attack that I can see is that the attack started (and effectively ended) indoors. That is unusual. SOP for these attacks is to conduct them outside to facilitate the “full glare of publicity” (which after all why they are (superficially) conducted).
Considering Muslims of my generation, both sexes did well in school, progressed to University and on to the professions. These days from what I see, the girls excel academically while many of the boys drift into gangs and drugs. The end result is an arranged marriage where the bride is a GP or lawyer while the groom drives a mini-cab or works in a kebab shop.
Finding themselves in positions of low self esteem in a society where the husband is traditionally the bread winner and voice of authority in the household, these “pathetic loosers” connive with their fellow deadbeats and derive a shortcut to being the “big man” the “honourable man” by lashing out in an entirely disingenuous jihad. The pathetic piece of shit that murdered Asad Shah in my native Glasgow (I won’t name him ’cause that’s what he would want) was a mini-cab driver from Bradford. The pathetic piece of shit now has an online fan club, case in point.
Back to yesterday’s events and the significance of the attack starting indoors. The attacker was a pathetic, Walter Mitty character looking for “respect” from the self defining society he inhabited. After 11 months release “on the tag” with every passing day forcing his true status as a pathetic looser to the fore the piece of shit broke and hatched an “honourable” way out. By launching the attack indoors and deviating from the SOP, the attack was as much a suicide bid as it was a terrorist attack.
Re the “bridge ” attack, I see the same white lorry was used to block of one end of the street as was used in the Woolwich event and possibly the smuggled Veitnamese victims of a more recent event.
I think one of the problems our security forces have when producing a false flag event is that while their operatives train in many different fields from languages to signals, law, high-speed driving etc, none are trained in the production and direction of films or TV. That’s why they so often fluff up and it looks unreal, contrived.
I think this was the problem with the fake moon landings – I believed it was real as a kid when I watched the Apollo program on TV – but as a reasoning adult I don’t believe it. I think NASA wanted to keep it in-house or at least within the services, and maybe the best-qualified to be given charge of filming was some general who liked to film family events on a hand-held camera. He may even have argued, “…but there isn’t even any sound on my camera!” To which he was advised, “Don’t worry. There isn’t any sound on the moon, either.”
Some of these people are well educated, good jobs, families. You’d ask – why would someone like that be a suicide attacker? Especially the ones with a wife and a child?
There’s a simple narrative played out in the media today as before – the British are heroic victims of terrorism. Not racist-colonialist perpetrators and supporters of violence in which hundreds of thousands of people have died. The terrorists are cowards and we’re the victims. They’re all loosers and loonies: that’s so convenient and easy. And Boris Johnson and others who voted for the invasion of Iraq and so on just carry on regardless. Its not even on the agenda in the election – the enormous toll of human misery this country has caused. Not even with this attack.
An excellent understanding Vivian, however this is in his local paper.
https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2019/11/30/london-bridge-killer-named-as-convicted-terrorist-usman-khan/
Rather more involved than we had first thought and almost certainly not a put up job by a political party.
This man’s family owned land in Pakistanti held Kashmir, his group had been collecting money to set up a Madrassa, on his family held land in Kashmir.
The purpose of which was to train terrorists, Khan himself was to attend this Madrassa.
seems to be little sensible news other than that trans-atlantic “emotion” packaged as news – one sensible sort on LBC did correctly refer tearler o the severe shortage of community policing which has long been recognised worldwide as the best deterrent to terrrrzm. the fact that May, Cameron, Clegg disbanded 20K plod is prima facie evidence of a long term decline in terrrr…
digging through the wider online sources – an excellent & accurate analysis of the Boris Johnson situation from a London University Professor is here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/30/boris-teflon-johnson-rise-confirms-ruling-classes-not-fit-purpose
Establishment seem to want ABC “anyone but Jeremy Corbyn”
wider still finds some journalists still digging away, looking at news stories that are memory holed in UK. Hapler, Steele, Dearlove, Trump for example https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/christopher-steele-meeting-mi6-chief-revealed-new-fusion-gps-book-99292
the source of funding for Halper is referred to in this journalism, https://www.theepochtimes.com/court-filing-obama-holdover-heading-office-under-investigation-for-illegally-leaked-classified-document_3157447.html
The Pentagon’s current inspector general has sadly mislaid the floppy disk with the accurate & embarassing info on it, and so we will likely not read much more about the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG) and the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA)
back to US journalism on our likely ABC PM, where the WaPo talk about Boris Johnson’s inability to answer simple questions – allegations from Arcuri that FIVE is the magic number of offspring, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/11/29/how-many-children-does-boris-johnson-have-british-prime-minister-wont-say/
allegations are adults Lara, Milo, Cassie, Theodore, and (injuncted?/distanced) ten-year old Stephanie Macintyre are somehow related to him; in case that is any way relevant – start with simple questions & simple answers then maybe we can shortly have some fuller and more accurate news on the deep agencies and their deeply complicated plots of the past few years.