British democracy has lost its meaning. The political and economic system has come to serve the interests of a tiny elite, vastly wealthier than the run of the population, operating through corporate control. The state itself exists to serve the interests of these corporations, guided by a political class largely devoid of ideological belief and preoccupied with building their own careers and securing their own finances.
A bloated state sector is abused and mikled by a new class of massively overpaid public secotr managers in every area of public provision – university, school and hospital administration, all executive branches of local government, housing associations and other arms length bodies. All provide high six figure salaries to those at the top of a bloated bureaucratic establishment. The “left”, insofar as it exists, represents only these state sector vested interests.
These people decide where the cuts fall, and they will not fall where they should – on them. They will fall largely on the services ordinary people need.
Meanwhile we are not all in this together. The Vodafone saga only lifts the lid for the merest peek at the way the corporate sector avoids paying its share, hiding behind Luxembourg or Cayman tax loopholes and conflicts between international jurisdictions – with which our well provided politicians are very happy. The often excellent Sunny Hundal provides a calm analysis of the Vodafone case here:
Let me tell you something else about Vodafone. Vodafone took over Ghana Telecom three years ago. They paid an astonishingly low price for it – 1.2 billion dollars, which is less than the value of just the real estate GT owned. The value of the business was much higher than that, and there was a substantively higher opening bid from France Telecom.
The extraordinary thing was the enormous pressure which the British government put on Ghana to sell this valuable asset to Vodafone so cheaply. High Commissioner Nick Westcott and Deputy High Commissioner Menna Rawlings were both actively involved, with FCO minister Lord Malloch Brown pressurising President Kuffour directly, with all the weight of DFID’s substantial annual subvention to Ghana behind him.
What is the point of DFID giving taxpayer money to Ghana if we are costing the country money through participating in the commercial rape of its national assets?
And why exactly was it a major British interest that Vodafone – whose Board meets in Germany and which pays its meagre taxes in Luxembourg – should get Ghana Telecom, as opposed to France Telecom or another company? Was privatisation at this time the best thing for Ghana at all?
This Vodafone episode offers another little glimpse into the way that corporations like Vodafone twist politicians like Mark Malloch Brown around their little fingers. It mioght be interesting to look at his consultancies and commercial interests now he is out of office.
BAE is of course the example of this par excellence. Massive corruption and paying of bribes in Saudi Arabia, Tanzania end elsewhere, but prosecution was halted by Tony Blair “In the National Interest”. BAE of course was funnelling money straight into New Labour bagmen’s pockets, as well as offering positions to senior civil servants through the revolving door. Doubtless they are now doing the same for the Tories – perhaps even some Lib Dems.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/01/jack_straws_cor.html
It is therefore unsurprising the BAE were able to write themselves contracts for aircraft carriers which were impossible to cancel and that their New Labour acolytes were prepared to sign such contracts. It is, nonetheless, disgusting. Just as it is disgusting that there is no attempt whatever by the coaliton to query or remedy the situation. There is no contract in the UK which cannot be cancelled by primary legislation.
Meanwhile, bankers’ bonus season is upon us again and these facilitators of trade and manufacture are again set to award themselves tens of billions of pounds to swell the already huge bank accounts of a select few, whose lifestyle and continued employment is being subsidised by every single person in the UK with 8% of their income. This was because the system which rewards those bankers so vastly is fundamentally unsound and largely unnecessary. Money unlinked to trade or manufacture cannot create infinite value; that should have been known since the South Sea Bubble.
Yet even this most extreme example of government being used to serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone else, has not been enough to stir any substantial response from a stupoured, x-factored population, dreaming only of easy routes to personal riches, which they have a chance in a million of achieving.
Conventional politics appears to have become irretrievably part pf the malaise rather than offering any hope for a cure. But political activity outwith the mainstream is stifled by a bought media.
I see no hope.
“I’ll bet anyone on here one million pounds that the world will not end within the next five years.”
And if the world does end within five years, no one will collect by winning that bet.
Looks like a variant of heads I win, tails you lose.
The photograph of the Edgware Road train, which was leaked to ABC News can also been found here:
http://77inquests.blogspot.com/2010/11/77-inquests-danny-biddle-rucksack-on.html
This photographic evidence of the blast is crucial to the theory that explosives (military grade) were placed UNDER the carriage involved in the Edgware Road incident.
I am searching for the source of this jpeg in the hope that a high definition original can be found for more detailed analysis.
angrysoba
‘It seems that’ * the entire Muslim population of the world understand from their own recorded history * ‘how imperial policy is designed to set neighbours at the throats of their neighbours’. * and * ‘they cut out the middle man and assume that it is the ‘Zionists’ themselves who take the machete off the wall.’
This is the realisation that kept Tony Blair awake at night. That people understand this mischievous collaboration of Western imperialism and Zionist Islamophobia through their own witnessed history and therefore understand what is going on at the present time.
This understanding could only be countered by the most comprehensive propaganda and false flag operation counter-activity. The West simply cannot survive in a competitive world unless the propaganda war is won.
The emperor has no clothes. Like the Soviet Union before it, the West is about to be completely unravelled. And the day of judgement may come soon, as well. I hope you’ve got a small corner of real estate in China to retire to, and sufficient, not-so-foolish-virgin oil for the big day!
Mark:
I did a search for a higher res version of the image you linked to, unfortunately it looks like 510px
angrysoba, Courtenay, thanks.
anno, Khair Mubarak!
“Based on my 0 experience with explosives the pic seems more consistent with an explosion from above rather than below.”
I agree – the floor has clearly been forced down, and I can’t see that any experience of explosives would make it look different.
I was puzzled by the comments on the J7 site claiming that the opposite is true and for a while I stared at the image, thinking it might be a trompe l’oeil like the wire-frame cube that can be perceived in different orientations, but that floor is definitely pushed down. Follow the line of junction between the wall of the coach and the floor from mid-left of the picture towards the centre and you can see the floor progressively displaced downward until it eventually detaches from the wall.
BTW Mark – 70 days and counting.
what a coincidence that Syhayl should bring up this:
It is clear that there has been recent pressure on/ oppression of some Christian communities living in majority Muslim countries. This is shameful. One remembers the Young Turks’ genocide of the Armenians and the continuing official denial in Turkey of that horrific event.
In preparation for the ConDem Government call to include Turkey into the EU, I’m currently reading a book about the Turkish mafia. In it the history of an, at first called, ‘illegal committee’ was founded in 1792 by Sultan Selim, a poet who is remembered for his progressiveness when it comes to establishing the ministries of today in Turkey.
That was the beginning of a secret service in Turkey, it included all sorts of professions, writers, butchers, a network that had ears and eyes. It evolved into the Teskilat-i- Mahsusa, a body that included major criminals, smugglers and other’honourable men’who helped Turkey with its protection of its sultans, but also carried out its clandestine, dirty work. Under Enver Pasha, beginning of the 20th century, this body was attached to the war ministry and here I quote verbatim form the book,
“The Teskilat-i Mahsusa played a role in the genocide of the Armenians in 1915 and 1916 and in other aggressions against religious minorities in the precedign years. Such a large organisation requirewd external financial support and that was provided by Germany. The special unit was set up for the Ministry of war partly with a secret budget of German money and gold.”
By the looks fo that quote the funding was received after the genocide.
pg.218, ‘the Turkish Mafia, a history of the heroin godfathers’by Frank Bovenkerk (Prof. in criminology) and Yuecel Yesiligoez.
The guist of the book make it clear that the Turkish state and its criminal underworld are in an extraordinary symbiotic relationship that has travelled through time and metamorphed into the most powerfull drug production/smuggling regime in the world.
Turkey’s assession is not necessarry its goods are already traded all over Europe, legal or illegal, both PKK and the Grey wolfs are well established throughout Europe and both are up to their eyeballs into arms drugs and human trafficking.
Something to be considered before they are joining a crippled EU, just thought to flag it up.
Thanks for all thge 7/7 stuff Mark and somebody, wish I had all that time, my computer runs on steam…
Central to the disconnect between the US government and its restive population is the financial and moral cost of the alliance with Israel.
Here in the UK people still don’t get it. The extent of Zionist influence within the British ruling class which goes back centuries is little understood.
In fact for the Zionist-owned corporate media empire and its gatekeeper cyphers here it’s not even an issue.
Just how the British can be so arrogant re-how “stupid” their American cousins are is belied by blogs like vetstoday:
http://veteranstoday.com/2010/11/12/is-american-public-about-to-toss-Israel/
To take just one example check out just how many Zionist groups Churchill was linked with as he simultaneously embarked on his public campaign to make war with Germany seem a necessity:
Untermeyer’s NY-based Anti-Nazi Council which morphed into the Focus Group in Britain helped ensure Churchill’s financial and political survival. It was Untermeyer who instigated the trade boycott and declaration of war on Germany in 1933.
The Focus were financed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and rubbed shoulders with barons of munitions industries and chemical combines. Vice President of the BDBJ was Sir Robert Waley-Cohen,Zionist chairman of Shell. The JDF also bank-rolled Focus to the tune of £50,000.
By 1938 Hitler had secured a $17m oil barter deal with Mexico that totally bi-passed Shell and Rockefeller’s Standard oil interests. Whereas Hitler had already forged similar barter deals in Turkey and the Balkans that had put the City’s nose out of joint the extension of his barter deal schemes to S.America was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Naturally at this point significant sections of the British elite began to gravitate towards Herr Churchill and Gentile Zionist fellow-travellers like like the Mond brothers,and politicians like Lloyd George,Lord Cecil,Wickam Steed,Leo Amery,Bob Boothby,Hugh Dalton,Austen Chamberlain and Harold Nicolson all got aboard HMS Untermeyer!
Winnie’s son,Randolph,was in touch with his Dad’s great pal,Bernie Baruch in NY re-amalgamating Focus and the AJC. In 1937 when the US public was still overwhelmingly isolationist. It was the AJC that chose to distance itself from Churchill for fear “anti-semites” would label the AJC war-mongers of the Churchill ilk. Wickam Steed went to see the AJC in his stead.
According to Waley-Cohen biographer,Robert Henriques,Focus was actually set up to buy Churchill’s oratory and writing skills and redirect them away from India towards the Waley-Cohen financier group’s main enemy,Hitler’ Germany.
Clandestine Zionist Big Oil and finance ops like Focus are still hard at work today.
PC patrollers for Craig Murray will see to it that these comments are removed.
After all “antisemitic” and “Holocaust denier” sentiments are verboten on gatekeeper sites.
Shall I wait till he’s censored you out or shall we go into a little more detail on Churchill’s Zionist backers?
You guessed it:
http://www.savethemales.ca/001766.html
These guys are at the same level of cultural awareness as the beasts in the field. They think the Illuminati only come out at Diwali or Xmas!
LMAO
More on who controlled Churchill:
http://www.phumph.com/hiddenhands(a).html
Heh Mark Golding – how do you react to the fact that Craig Murray thinks you’re a “conspiraloon” for believing that 7/7 and 911 were inside jobs?
And how much money have you pocketed running your fake charity?
Craig Murray didn’t merely indicate his disagreement with you people – he called you conspiraloons!
“The political and economic system has come to serve the interests of a tiny elite,”
Of course you are right Craig, but how about some names?
Isn’t it time we started naming these faceless people?
As long as they can hide through anonymity will we ever shake them off?
where is the gatekeeper Craig anyhow ?, the loon from st louis seems to be unhampered even though he’s supposed to be banned!
The Loon from st Louis is hampered as ever by his own lack of wit, (deliberately?) failing to notice for nearly a year now that by opposing the ‘conspiraloons’, he is placing himself within the ‘truthers’. The original quote:
“sorry folks I just deleted the whole “truthers v conspiraloons” comment spat because I want to keep this one somewhere near its important topic”.
Posted by: Craig at January 19, 2010 7:53 PM
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/cadburys_demise.html
Thanks Vronsky – check and balance makes for thoroughness in any investigation. Great idea to construct a wire-frame model knowing the perspectives and camera angle/position – Autocad?. Time flies 😉
Thanks for looking CheebaCow – solid as ever – let me investigate further before I give you my thoughts.
I congratulate Prince William on his secret engagement. The announcement was in indeed timed perfectly…
“camera angle/position – Autocad?”
Funnily enough, I was in AutoCAD technical support for a while. It had crossed my mind that you can get that trick of flipping things upside down by moving a light source in a 3D model. Looking at any image, we unconsciously assume a direction of light source and so can be tricked.
“I congratulate Prince William on his secret engagement.”
Up here, we think the wedding will be timed to coincide with the elections to Holyrood. Sigh. The trouble with being a gloomy Scot is that we’re always fucking right.
Clever buggers, Clarke and Grieve. On the grounds that the legal cases were grinding on and likely to cost many tens of millions, the ConDems have paid over several millions to those who made charges of being tortured. Moazzam Begg’s case and those of the other detainees have been nicely fielded into the long grass and secrecy about what went on is assured.
Compensation has been paid with no admission of liability etc etc. Complete confidentiality is being given. The Gibson inquiry will follow as soon as the police proceedings are closed.
:::
16 November 2010
Government to compensate ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees
UK resident Binyam Mohamed had sought compensation following his release
UK TORTURE CLAIMSCameron announces torture inquiry
‘Publish terror guidelines’ call
MI6 ‘is not complicit’ in torture
Ministers deny torture collusion
Around a dozen men who accused British security forces of colluding in their transfer overseas are to get millions in compensation from the UK government.
Some of the men, who are all British citizens or residents, were detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
At least six of them alleged UK forces were complicit in their torture before they arrived at Guantanamo.
The Commons will debate the payout when Justice Secretary Ken Clarke makes a statement later on Tuesday.
The coalition government made clear in the summer that it wanted to avoid a massive court case which would also have put the British secret intelligence services under the spotlight. Prime Minister David Cameron offered to enter settlement talks with six men seeking damages, an offer that has now been accepted.
Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed and Martin Mubanga had led a High Court case against five government departments including MI5 and MI6.
They had claimed that officials in London were complicit in their transfer to Guantanamo Bay and should have prevented it and their ill-treatment.
In May, the Court of Appeal ruled that the government could not rely on secret evidence to defend itself against the six cases, saying allegations of wrongdoing had to be heard in public.
(Analysis – Dominic Casciani
BBC News home affairs correspondent
The government has resisted this legal claim tooth and nail. The court hearings became an exhausting battle of legal wits, as massed benches of government lawyers refused to give ground.
So why settle, given critics will inevitably accuse ministers of a cover-up? The decision should come as no surprise.
The Court of Appeal rejected ministers’ pleas to hear secret evidence in closed courts and the drip-drip of secret material from MI5 and MI6 vaults could have become a flood.
Settling the case therefore achieves the government’s greater aim.
It triggers the launch of a judge-led inquiry into complicity and rendition. That inquiry will now go about its business but the main accusers won’t be appearing in public demanding the exposure of a secret paper trail from Afghanistan to government offices in London.
Paying out millions looks bad, but ministers know that exposing state secrets is worse still. Since then, more than 60 government lawyers and officials have been sifting through some 500,000 documents at a secret location. The case was estimated to cost millions and could have lasted for at least another three years.
The BBC understands that both the Intelligence and Security Committee and the National Audit Office will be briefed in detail about the nature of the payments. But the settlement also paves the way for the government to launch an inquiry headed by former judge Sir Peter Gibson into the claims made against the intelligence and security agencies.
Binyam Mohamed’s solicitor, Sapna Malik, said: “I can’t confirm any details about the settlement package. All I can say is that the claims have been settled and the terms are confidential.
“Our client was horrendously treated over a period of almost seven years, with a significant degree of collusion from the security services in the UK.”
The UK security services have always denied any claims that they have used or condoned the use of torture.
Last month, the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, described torture as “illegal and abhorrent” and defended the service’s need for secrecy.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said of the payments: “It’s not very palatable but there is a price to be paid for lawlessness and torture in freedom’s name. There are torture victims who were entitled to expect protection from their country.
Binyam Mohamed’s solicitor, Sapna Malik said her client deserved compensation for what he had endured
“The government now accepts that torture is never justified and we were all let down – let’s learn all the lessons and move on.”
Mr Mohamed, from west London, was held in Pakistan in 2002 before US agencies moved him to Morocco, where he was tortured, before he was sent on to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, via Afghanistan.
During court hearings, it emerged that a British intelligence officer visited him in detention in Pakistan and that his interrogators in Morroco asked him questions supplied by MI5. Around a dozen men who accused British security forces of colluding in their rendition overseas are to get millions in compensation from the UK government.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11762636
Well, I was thinking of taking up torture as a hobby, but it looks too expensive for the likes of me. Still, a lottery jackpot might put it within my reach.
I think it’s all been totally fixed including the appeal judges, who as in other sensitive cases bring in verdicts to coincide with state interests. The demand by the judges that the intelligence services should make disclosure ultimately gives the services an excuse to hide behind.
And how contrived making public the agreement on the same day as Prince William’s engagement.
Le’s hope somebody leaks the details of the cases.
“I find myself obliged to ban Larry from St Louis from commenting on this blog.” Craig Murray, July 8th 2010
Vronsky, aye, I know, you’re right, sadly: “doomed, we’re aw doomed”. Btw, what’s this about “70 days” – I must’ve missed something. 70 days to what?
Happy eid to those who celebrate it.
What an extraordinary use of the legal system by Kenneth Clarke, it must have taken a lot of bending.
The taxpayer pays out, but is not entitled to hear what for or why.
I know that we all have to live, but hyperthetically speaking, what if the detainees refuse the payout and demand to have their day in public? what if they demand openly accountable evidence by those two officers accused?
Sorry for Larry’s appearance on here, he is enthralled by moire, he’s such an insatiable little gimp.
It gives a whole new meaning to the politicians’ cliche ‘ put up or shut up’.
“70 days to what?”
20 days ago, Mark told us that within 90 days there would be a revelation in Wikileaks about 9/11. You might recollect some talk of hats being eaten should such a thing eventuate. I’m just being very irritating by reminding him. Bet angrylarry has the date in its diary – expect some haw-hawing around the 26th of January.
Eating hats can give one indigestion. I have a number of hats in a variety of styles and would not dream of consuming them. Words, now that’s a different proposition. Eating words can be deeply therapeutic.
Eating hats can give one indigestion. I have a number of hats in a variety of styles and would not dream of consuming them. Words, now that’s a different proposition. Eating words can be deeply therapeutic.
“Eating words can be deeply therapeutic.”
Any interesting recipes? We know of Humble Pie, and Revenge (best served cold) – what else could there be? Think now.
“”I find myself obliged to ban Larry from St Louis from commenting on this blog.” Craig Murray, July 8th 2010
Well for God’s sake do it.
“20 days ago, Mark told us that within 90 days there would be a revelation in Wikileaks about 9/11. You might recollect some talk of hats being eaten should such a thing eventuate. I’m just being very irritating by reminding him. Bet angrylarry has the date in its diary – expect some haw-hawing around the 26th of January.”
Nope, this actually wasn’t on my radar – in a strong field of stupidity on this conspiracy blog, that claim probably didn’t matter to me.
Assange has already noted how annoying you idiots are – he’s not a truther, if only because there are no secret documents that confirm trutherism.