My last post did not signal a return to blogging but rather explained why I need a few days’ break. But I have to share with you my joy at the release of the Brazilian edition of Murder in Samarkand, translated from the US edition and entitled Diplomacia Suja.
This is the first foreign language edition and I am childishly excited to hold it in my hands. I was actually jumping up and down a few minutes ago. There seems something magical about seeing your work in a tongue which is mysterious to you. Many thanks to Companhia Das Letras and especially to the translator, Berilo Vargas, whom I am yet to meet.
http://www.companhiadasletras.com.br/detalhe.php?codigo=12648
Good progress is being made on a Turkish translation.
This really amused me on medialens this morning
Too good to miss
Posted by Badger on July 30, 2010, 10:30 am
From comments on the Guardian story about Gove’s lies concerning the number of schools wanting to be academies:
‘Goving’: the practise of making supposedly factually-based assertions, but without actual reference to the facts at hand.
‘Goverup’: the technique of revising previous inaccurate statements, by suggesting the initial ‘factual’ information has been misconstrued or misreported.
‘Government’: Any administration containing a useless imbecile with delusions of adequacy.
Abe Rene, at 4:29pm on July 29th 2010:
Abe, you didn’t really think that was me, did you? As I wrote subsequently, the post made at 11:50pm on July 27th 2010 was NOT written or posted by me.
The one at 6:23pm, eralier the same evening was written by me, but although mischievous and possibly lightly scurrilous (at the expense of the bargain basement troll-team who seem to derive jouissance from impersonating Craig and occasionally me, and possibly also at that of someone who links to a somewhat Messianic website), I don’t think one could describe it as “disgusting”. Whereas the fake post most certainly is disgusting, I entirely agree.
Just thought I’d make this clear.
The current troll team – Neil Barker, Ben Newsam and Craig Oldfield – are attempting to disrupt the site by such childish impersonations. I think there are probably also an assortment of ‘Larrys’ as well, doing the same thing, some ‘original’ trolls, others, ‘trolls-upon-trolls’. A witty and intelligent person passed on this vignette to some a couple of months ago: In the end, in East Germany, there were so many spies, one spy would not know who the other spies were and so most of the information the Stasi got consisted of spies reporting on one another’s activities.
Thanks again for your always thoughtful comments. Best wishes.
By “someone”, of course, I meant Mr Solomon Adeleye, not ‘the blogger called ‘somebody’!
Hatari,
An excellent link that unveils the stark reality of American manipulation and regulation of the markets.
Clark reminded us recently, the money changers have moved from the temple market place behind closed doors. Gold standard is becoming de rigeur as trillions of now worthless dollars have been burnt and destroyed in the mechanisms of war and death. Friendship destroyed by greed. The good families of America and Britain are left turning inwards to protect their own needs while future generations scramble to retain what they can now in a vision of a world left with limited resources, deception and cut-throat monopolies.
somebody,
Nice piece, interesting and well researched – thank-you.
I opened Milton Keynes very first Internet Cafe in 1996 and many hours burning the mid-night oil has instilled in me the reality that via message boards, blogs, alternate news, obscure ‘deep web’ sites and other surprising web-places, one can find truth from those behind the sources of power and manipulation.
The ‘errand boys’ as I call them, despite regular security sweeps of the web manage to reveal the inside track, the ‘top secret’ the ‘real deal’ and the sinister, such as the genetic manipulation of deadly viruses as one example in hundreds. Revealed in answers to questions, articles, comments and stories the truth can most times be pieced together. Like the ‘old lady’ peering through a crack in the curtains, every event has a witness in one form or another. The web therefore is our salvation, our realisation that nothing is what it seems at first glance. This exposure of evil deception, means that we must forever ensure the Web’s open survival despite serious attempts (Wikileaks) to control and redact.
There is nothing of consequence in the opague, boring memoirs of George W. Bush’s former political strategist, Karl Rove. All I read was the lie that he did not expose CIA operative, Valerie Plame and his support for torture.
The book like the man is plainly empty, uncandid, unthoughtful and sleep-inducing.
Karl Rove is man of war, a yesterday, condemned only to whine and winge about lack of support for the ‘righteous’ attempt to bring western democracy to Afghanistan and cleanse it of mythical al-Qaeda terrorists hell bent on the destruction of the West.
You are a fraud Rove and a murderer; I’ll say that to your face.
I meant to add this to my 3.05pm post (NB)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/28/AR2010072806141.html
Mark, that’s fascinating, as often is the case with your posts. What do you mean by ‘deep web’ sites? Are there different levels of the internet? I mean, beyond the password-protected, intranet sites that are legion.
I sometimes come across material which then, a few days or weeks later, seems impossible find again. This used to happen in the late 1990s when I began to explore the web.
Does it still occur – even more so now, perhaps? I’m not a particularly expert cybernaut!
Furthermore, are you saying that Wikileaks is a ‘gatekeeping’, coralling exercise of information control, or do you mean that the attempt to muzzle Wikileaks is an illustration of the forces that would wihs to exert such control?
Suhayl Saadi,
(1) I regard Wikileaks as a true whistle-blower’s tool.
(2) If you find interesting stuff, save a copy against its possible disappearance.
(3) Here is a Guardian article about the ‘Deep Web’:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet
All interesting posts today. Thanks.
and sorry Abe Rene for calling you Abu Rene again. I really don’t know why I do that. Not meant to be insulting. Just something to do with the name of Abu Ghraib which has obviously stuck in my subconscious.
I have just received a threatening email.
To the anonymous sender: you are bargain basement. You can’t disrupt me or Craig’s magnificent bog.
And it will be clear to all our genuine posters that “my” last post was not mine.
Suhayl: thanks for the clarification. I should have read the message with your disclaimer more carefully – my apologies.
Somebody at 4.47 pm – that’s OK, actually, being shortsighted I hadn’t noticed it this time. One advantage of myopia maybe.
My pleasure, Abe. Thanks, Clark, will do.
So why hasn’t Wikileaks exposed the 911 conspiracy that you nutjobs believe in?
Governments have a major problem with whistleblowers and their ability to release a lot of information fast on the internet. Governments also need sensitive information from their enemies. If I were such a government, I’d set up a facilty to draw the whistleblowers and leakers in so that I could filter their information.
Icelandic MPs and Wikileaks propose to turn Iceland into a ‘journalism haven’.
I’ve found it exceedingly odd that WikiLeaks sent information to three mainstream papers giving the papers time to choose what they wanted published which has resulted in ‘Pakistan and Iran being politically damaged’ and Al Qaeda being given further substance ‘while the Obama administration has a new pretext to escalate and intensify its continuing resource war'(taken from Larry Chin’s article ‘The political spinning of the WikiLeaks expose: Antiwar whistle-blowing or war propaganda?’ at
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6171.shtml)
Ruth, that’s an excellent article, thanks for posting the link. Yes, I’d noticed that mainstream journalist stooges had begun to sing from the same hymn-sheet in relation to Pakistan. Of course, they’ve been harmonising about Iran for some years now.
Who’s doing the terrorist bombings in Pakistani cities? Who’s instigating terrorist bombings in Iranian cities?
Is also goes to the heart of my persistent question over a number of years, namely, who is funding and supplying the Taliban?
Are they a vehicle for maintaining the region in a state of perpetual destabilisation and an excuse for US forces to remain in the area and indeed to expand their remit? A question to which I think Mark replied a little while ago.
Yes, as the writer of the piece says, the Pakistani ISI has always been a subdivision of the CIA. During the 1980s, the CIA was crawling all over Pakistan and the Northwest Frontier Provinces, directing everything. People in Pakistan over the past two years have said that “the Americans are back in full force”, in the cities, in corporate entities, in civil society, in everything.
Inexorably, one is compelled to accede that the answer to the question of who is funding and supplying the Taliban seems to be: The USA.
So, the ‘Deep State’ appears to be global. Secrecy itself is the problem. What did we expect? If you create dark corners, or permit them to remain unlit, Power moves in and makes full use. The paradigm of ‘state vs. state’ is outdated.
(Warning: the following is a joke).
Let’s consider the possible origins for ISI:
1. A CIA plot.
2. A Communist plot.
3. An Israeli plot.
4. A Masonic plot.
5. A Catholic plot.
6. A feminist plot.
7. An Al-Qaeda plot.
8. A Sufi plot.
9. An arm of the Pakistani government.
Some of these are contradictory; 1. won’t go with 2., 4. won’t go with 5., and any of 3. and 6. and 8. with 7.
The opposites, being equally believable if one is credulous enough, cancel each other out, leaving 9. So the ISI is simply an arm of the Pakistani government. Q.E.D.
Yes, that’s right, Clark. The parallel with the ‘deep web’ – great article, btw, thanks for sharing it – is intriguing. How does one become a deep web cybernaut? Perhaps, if one were to enter a virtual bathyscaphe, follow it down to its very own Marianas Trench, one might find that in the deepest part of the web, early Fortran has mutated into a mathematical monster that sleeps under a silicon mountain waiting to be awoken by the Doomsday trumpet…
It’s much more than that, Abe. The USA could have crushed it long ago if it had been that simple and if they’d wanted to. The ISI would not be able to supply the Taliban with the amounts of weaponry required a superpower alliance with access to the most advanced technologies in history. The ISI acts to a large extent independently of the Pakistani government and even of the Pakistani Army. It is the agency of the USA within the Pakistani state. That is why Pakistan remains a colony.
“required to fight” that should read.
Secret Quilliam Memo to government.
More begging for tax payers hard earned money:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/34834977/Secret-Quilliam-Memo-to-government
Ruth,
Interestingly in my download of the Wikileaks database was this record:
wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/event/2006/11/AFG20061105n433.html
All part of the interesting psychological warfare perfected in Iraq and now applied to Afghanistan.
Here is an insight into this great game by veteran psyops Sergeant Major Friedman. Remember the falling statue of Saddam – a psyops operation that was rehearsed and directed like a FILM SET all to deceive and subvert.
http://www.psywarrior.com/Herbafghan02.html
Germany calling..Germany calling..this is not a drill..
Suhayl: I can believe that the Pakistani government does not have complete control of ISI, but not because it is an American tool. My own view is that it has people sympathetic to the Taleban within, both because of religion and because of Pashtun tribal interests connected with the hydrocarbon resources of the region. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mumbai terrorists got some help from that quarter.
It’s interesting, but everyone I ask seems to have different depiction of the ISI, from unified and very dark military intelligence organ to International Rent-An-Assassin to fragmented, factional entity with factions pro-US, pro-Taliban, pro-Money (well, I guess they’re all pro-Money), pro-drugs, pro-Army, pro-whatever, all vying for dominance. It seems to depend on whom one asks. I mean, I don’t know anyone in it or even remotely linked to it – not that I know of, anyway. Does anyone know? Or is it like the deep web? Is there, then, no ninth layer, no finity to the darkness of this earthly Hell?
Mark,
thanks for the psyops link. Weird stuff, and all a bit sad and desperate. They keep offering 25 million dollars, but get no takers, it seems, so they change tack a bit:
“Get wealth and power beyond your dreams ?” help the anti-Taliban force to rid Afghanistan of murderers and terrorists”.
Text on the back is:
“You can receive millions of dollars for helping the anti-Taliban force catch al-Qaida and Taliban murderers. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life ?” pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people”.
______
Yes, I’ll never forget the pulling down of Saddam’s statue. I was in a hospital in Hull, watching on one of those rip-off ‘Patientline’ TVs, visiting my friend Martyn, who died of cancer shortly afterwards.
The words didn’t match the pictures. The commentary kept on about the thronging, spontaneous and ecstatic crowds, “ordinary Iraqis celebrating their freedom”, but the crowd was rather thin, subdued, and predominantly (entirely?) male, and there were lots of soldiers about.
Ruth at 7:25 PM,
I still trust Wikileaks. What were the alternatives? Wikileaks could just publish on the ‘net, but it wouldn’t get as much coverage. Giving it to the papers forces the papers to do something, and makes it impossible to marginalise.
I guess that the three weeks grace was negotiated; the papers got to filter the material so they could cover themselves and thus avoid accusations of irresponsibility and possible government legal action. They each agreed not to ‘scoop’ the others by publishing before the agreed date.
But this IS the corporate media, they (generally) approve and encourage (or at least legitimise) war, so it’s no surprise that they chose to highlight Pakistani and Iranian wrongdoing.
But Wikileaks did right, I think. Those papers will have to publish anti-NATO/US stuff too, or their bias will be obvious as independent researchers start trawling through the data.
Clark,
Sorry for your loss of a friend – but I know you will hold great memories of him.
Hood,
I reminded myself of Quilliam and Craig’s thoughts by doing the following site search:
quilliam:craigmurray.org.uk
a useful search script that can be used to jog a dimming memory. The results are indeed a stark reminder of this ‘spooky’ group that are in fact putting pressure on the present coalition government into ‘modifying’ the useless ‘Prevent’ program conceived by the Blair government and now pursued by the Quilliam Foundation after the launch of ‘Contest 2’ an update to the government’s counter-terrorist strategy.
A number of links are relevant and I present them here for any kind person to commit to an analysis in detail on the state of violent extremism in Britain.
We learned from our own security services, the Iraq and now Afghanistan ‘wars’ have increased the threat of terrorism and in fact, the SIS are now monitoring 3000 possible ignition activities. In reality I believe, this paranoid thinking relates only to the anger in varying degrees of knowing that wedding parties, children, women and innocent bystanders are being murdered to fuel a need for myopic glory and false honour, resources, strategy, dominance, hegemony and imperialistic greed.
telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/4638987/growing-number-of-british-men-joining-islamic-radicals-in-somalia.html
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7215081.stm
timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6295795.ece
conservatives.com/news/speeches/2008/03/daivid_cameron_speech_to_the_community_security_trust.aspx
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4179698.stm
prevent contest 2
muslim brotherhood; amaat-e-islami
anas al-tikriti
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/prevent.pdf
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090318/text/90318w0009.htm
centres.exeter.ac.uk/emrc/board.php
bernama.com/bernama/v3/news_lite.php?id=205496
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4206800.stm
guardian.co.uk/2008/jul/25/uksecurity.terrorism
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4689556.stm
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8139076.stm
news.stv.tv/scotland/175518-labour-holds-glasgow-central
aivd.nl/aspx/download.aspx?file=/contents/pages/90126/theradicaldawaintransition.pdf
tna.europarchive.org/20100419081706/http//security.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/our-structure/about-ricu/
guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/05/list-of-people-banned-from-uk
conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2010/05/ten-tips-for-the-new-government-on-integration-cohesion-relations-with-islam-and-prevent.html
timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7140235.ece
Clark, there’s no fool like an old fool and there are nuggets at the bottom of the sweet jar in the nursery. No more posts tonight from me!