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.
peace be upon them
Yemeni ink bombs planted by CIA.
No lessons were learnt from 1939-45.
Israeli government documents show deliberate policy to keep Gazans at near-starvation levels
Saed Bannoura IMEMC, November 6, 2010
Documents whose existence were denied by the Israeli government for over a year have been released after a legal battle led by Israeli human rights group Gisha. The documents reveal a deliberate policy by the Israeli government in which the dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level. This documents the statement made by a number of Israeli officials that they are “putting the people of Gaza on a diet”.
/….
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m71591&hd=&size=1&l=e
The CPD reports to the CFR, the legitimate world facing American think tank.
So what priorities have the CFR set and how do they affect our world. A tough question to answer but some things are certain.
1. Pressure Britain to cut domestic spending regardless of suffering and unemployment to maintain its military strength.
2. Get the Republicans back into office and maintain funds and man-power permanently in Afghanistan.
3. Work to create the right government in Iraq to enable an accord to be signed that keeps 20,000 American troops in Iraq permanently.
4. Regime change in Iran.
5. More dollars to Pakistan while keeping their feet firmly close to the fire.
The CPD will be working behind the scenes to achieve these aims through terrorism, fear, subversion and deception.
I hate acronyms Mark.
CPD which one of these?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPD
and CFR?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations
Sorry ‘somebody’ CPD = The Committee on Present Danger
http://www.committeeonthepresentdanger.org
CFR – Council of Foreign Relations
http://www.cfr.org
Thanks for the ‘Gisha’ report very interesting.
re rave: one party goer also added ‘this is the sound of the government getting fucked by a kick drum’
🙂
CRAIG
(sorry for the attempt to grab your attention, which, by the way, I hope worked!)
I burdeon you with this task…
LEAD the TAX revolt that will cause the collapse the system so that it can be built anew.
Come on Craig. The time for this is now. We need someone who we can trust.
Please Craig…
LEAD THE TAX REVOLT.
(you know it makes sense. There is no other choice.)
@ Mark,
CFR – Council of Foreign Relations – surely not.
Courtenay Francis Raymond (CFR)- my first three names no less.
@ Larry,
By reference to Craig’s directive:-
“I find myself obliged to ban Larry from St Louis from commenting on this blog.” Craig Murray, July 8th 2010
I take it that by reference to that, these several months later you are finally willing to comply.
You have posed as a psychiatrist, so you might, if you keep posting have to decipher what “AA” means = Adult Abuser, for all that you have inflicted.
Should you return, then further diagnosis will be needed. For someone persistently trolling despite just about every geniuine blogger disapproval of your presence – then your return at any time will have to be termed, literally “self-abuse”.
Goodbye Larry and happy riddance.
Bet the powers that be are quaking in their boots at the thought that Craig Murray just worked out we’ve got something of a democratic deficit problem here in UK.
I mean the controlled opposition led by said,Murray,may even be on the point of a tax revolt!
This is the same air-headed tea-party controlled opposition they’ve got in the US!
The leader gets up on a soap-box one day and denounces Zionism as “bull-shit”!
The next day he’s denouncing anyone who challenges “Holocaust” fundamentalism as “anti-semitic”!
Yep,the central bankers must be just shitting themselves!
LMAO! You sad bunch of saps!
“But the Qur’an says that if they brought the whole world and as much again, to redeem themselves on the day of judgement, it will not be accepted from them. Or the Gospels, ‘What profit is it that a man should gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?'”
Trouble is, anno, that’s all terribly abstract. Gaining the whole world is definitely going to be fun, while losing your soul is maybe not something you’d notice. These guys want to be nice and comfortable now, in this life. The next life is a bridge they’ll cross if and when they get to it. However I wouldn’t be surprised if, looking around them, they didn’t see an awful lot of evidence that such gods as might exist must be unprincipled bastards like themselves, so they’ll probably be OK. Altogether now:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
Oh my lord. History repeats itself – first as tragedy then as comedy, etc. etc.. Here are the Lib Dems abolishing tuition fees *again* – promise me you’ll keep a straight face. You’ll still need to pay them of course, but they aren’t ‘fees’ anymore – it’s a ‘graduate contribution’.
Elucidate, Craig, please. This is getting more abstruse than anno’s theology. Hey, that makes me think – why can’t fees be deferred until the Afterlife? I bet all yer squeaky clean, loftily spiritual Lib Dems believe all that stuff. Must be some management accountant reading this who’d love to to start figuring discounted cash flows with net present values based on eternity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/07/scrap-tuition-fees-we-have
The Guardian?
Are you fucking serious,pal?
Go fly one!
“The “left”, insofar as it exists, represents only these state sector vested interests.”
Sorry, that’s utter bollocks – and the second time you’ve tried that one on. Before you make any pronouncements about the left in this country, you should probably reacquaint yourself with it.
Vronsky. My theology is not abstruse. Every hotel room in the UK is equipped with a copy of the Gospels if you haven’t got one at home. Politicians do not seem to have left the religious baby-milk stage. One would have thought that before they entered into a war on terror against Islam, they might have checked up on their own beliefs and those of the Muslims.
Or do we just take all our information from Zionist Terror Experts like Dr Peter Neumann of Kings College London on File on Four about Somalia this evening?
Religious information is sub-contracted to Jews? All information not given by official Jewish commentators to the world media is by definition abstruse?
oh, no anno. Please go and play with apostatesteelback if you’re going to start on that one – it is banned for anti-semitism, by the way.
So we have explosives intended to explode in air, according to our prime minister, in the holds of our passenger planes. And when we seek expert advice about such terrorist threats, we consult Jewish experts. We are not even allowed to consider that scenario as biassed, without standing accused of anti-semitism. You anti-religionists are weird.
i am perfectly fine with religion: I don’t bother it and it doesn’t bother me. You reveal your own bias, anno.
try ‘israeli government experts’, for example.
okay, these semi-religious prime ministers are weird, because they pretend that a pathetically transparent false-flag piece of media fluff is a major attack against civilisation, and do not condemn the outpourings of tripe that flow out of the BBC, trying to hype up the non-incident into a justification for further attacks on sovereign Muslim nations.
They place the World Service into the hands of these trusted nutters? Craig’s right, there is no hope at all, if this is the state of UK politics. By the way I’m not against the Zionist experts for anything other than their offence of lying. I am anti-lying. That is my bias, I agree.
Moshe Yaalon has said, “Terrorism is the main tool of Jihadists, claiming to defeat the West and its culture.
There is no way to negotiate with Jihadists, but to defeat them. This is the case with the Iranian Shia Revolutionary regime, as well as the Sunni Wahabbi ‘Al Qaeda’, or the Sunni Moslem Brotherhood Hamas.
These regimes and organizations should be defeated politically, economically, militarily and more important ideologically.
It should be a decisive victory, although it is not going to be a swift one. Western democracies have no choice but to win this 3rd World War.”
There is no other pretext – these words are the raison d’etre for the ‘War on Terror, but reason is disguise. Yaalon is the Emporer of deception, the infiltration unit or the invisible ‘Team C’ – the dark side, working in the shadows to manipulate what I call the ‘living dead’ – the ‘anti-Muslims’ – reality distorted from unnatural soperifics, perversion and debauchery; they are the actors of Islamic terrorism. They are the quintessential ‘patsies’ – who do and die.
Yaalon reports to the Committee on Present Danger with a ‘blueprint’ an individual plan, never tribal, totalitarian, that must be followed implicitly without the knowledge of its constructs which are never ever disclosed. The threat is advanced by a ‘Team B’ within the CPR, while ‘Team A’ within the CIA/SIS struggle to ‘unravel’ the details using the media and it’s tools, always after the event and public facing.
No mortal can fight an ‘invisible’ threat therefore my fight is focused on ‘Team B’ who report to the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) – it is deadly, unnerving and now they will confront me in ways most subtle; only your support, your knowing will help save me – the tide is turning and the ‘stew of corruption’ has boiled over, it’s ingredients exposed.
A thought for the time of year that’s in it.
I was very upset to learn, on Michael Palin’s programme on WWI, that some generals sent their troops into combat and death as late as 15 minutes before the armistice, which they knew was going to come into effect, and after which the same troops could have walked unharmed into the disputed territory.
Madness and obsession in this sphere are not recent inventions.
Dehumanise the enemy and anything is possible. But not forgivable.
Lest we forget.
Holy shit!
This site is getting far too “antisemitic”. What with people denouncing Jewish terror experts-it can’t be right!
Whatever next?
The information you get is the stuff you’re stuck with and we’ve got so used to your simply regurgitating it ad infinitum it makes us very suspicious that some of you are now gainsaying it with impunity.
Have you guys finally broken free of your Franfurt School PC programming?
The Israeli Lobby and its neo-con allies initiated the “War on Terror” and have been telling us what an evil warlike religion Islam is for decades.
Isn’t it about time some of you guys started to look carefully at the Talmud or the Zohar for evidence of deceit and genocide in abundance?
Sorry to be so “antisemitic” as to even suggest such a course but I don’t think the people who are causing all the problems in the world right now are “semites” at all anyway.
Nor are the most powerful Jewish people in the world at all sympathetic to Judaism,especially in its Orthodox manifestations.
These are just the lies you believe and will therefore never be able to do anything whatever about.
What’s it like having all the cultural awareness of the beasts of the fucking field?
Craig
quote ” I see no hope”
As long as there’s guys like you around there is hope. Not a lot but still hope.
Keep yer pekkker up, and start taking it a LOT EASIER.
Clydebuilt
Abuse of Iraqi detainees by British troops
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/world/europe/06britain.html?_r=1&ref=john_f_burns
If anyone thinks I have gone totally nuts then look and listen to Russ Baker, a good investigative journalist who has exposed in his book ‘Family of Secrets’ a number of deceptions carried out by ‘players’ or operatives working for a group of power brokers (multi-billionaires)who have designs on shaping the world to their end.
Russ’s book has exposed the ‘elimination’ (his word) of John F Kennedy and the ‘Watergate plot’ to ‘drive Nixon out of office’ firmly pointing a finger at George HW Bush whose association with the CIA goes back to 1953. He uses the term ‘rolling coup d’etat’ to describe eliminating the annoyances and problems caused by democratically leaders ‘who do not comply.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5APMGiTbNCk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5FcXbeoRj4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKFtfy0vYmw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_zJhWr8v9M
While Russ targets individual players, I am targeting the group’s connection to ‘Team C’ that resides within the Israeli secret services and is funded indirectly by the Saudis which to anyone sounds absurd unless you are aware of a limited cooperation between the two countries as demonstrated earlier this year when Israeli military equipment was unloaded to a new base just over 8km outside the northwestern city of Tabuk, the closest Saudi city to Israel, located just south of Jordan.
‘The Left in so far as it exists, represents only these state sector interests.’
Are these highly paid bureaucrats in fact technocrats? Is this Craig’s Liberalism frowning on professionalism in politics? To have a command of 1/ politics, 2/ social sciences, 3/ economics and 4/ technical service provision sciences, would command a high salary, in my opinion.
What I object to with tuition fees is that only the seriously wealthy whose families have learnt to be good little Thatcher-Tory, motivated-only-by-money capitalists will now be able to risk going to university. And another group who will be able to afford to go to university will be those whose families belong to the swindling, financial classes. There they can acquire the patina of education to combine with their agenda of cheating and lying, to become the political professionals of the future.
David Cameron has started to carve into the fat rump of John Prescott’s over-regulated Britain, with its multiple layers of jobs for the boys experts, all of them totally ignored by the actual tradesmen who go out and screw things onto ceilings. It seems that David Cameron wants to shape this country into his own mould. A fanatically pro-banking, pro-Israel, pro-stitute of Zionism.
I have to agree with Apostate that this has been going on for quite a long time. I survived the last batch of rancid Toryism, much purged and chastened, and entered Islam. I can’t say that without the rennet of Thatcher’s sado-monetarism, I would have arrived at the same destination. All I wanted to do was make things. Then, when I arrived in Islam, all I wanted to do was read the Qur’an. Without Blair’s sado-Zionism, I would never have become radicalised into commenting on politics.
I hope that the disenfranchised students of this country will become radicalised. ‘They plan and Allah plans, and Allah is the best of planners.’ Amen.
We occasionally like to end on a consensual note. My recommendation for the week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uOxOgm5jQ4
“The Guardian?
Are you fucking serious,pal?
Go fly one!”
Continuing the consensus: absolutely spot-on, steelback. The Grauniad is the most reactionary of them all as far as I can see, all the worse for posing as ‘liberal’.
But I was drawing attention to one particularly awful piece of nonsense, especially infuriating as the same lie was told in Scotland some years ago.
Maybe old lies are the best. Are there archetytpal lies, like archetypal stories? Suhayl?