[Moderator’s note – sorry, comments are not working at present]
After the most intense bombardment of Tripoli yet, we are now deploying ground attack helicopters to intensify the fighting in Libya. Whether all this is really going to achieve the illegal objective of regime change is open to question. What is in no doubt is that it is killing people, and it is very expensive. In April 2011, UK net public sector borrowing exceeded £10 billion for the month – compared to £7.2 billion in April 2010 and a forecast of £6.5 billion. We are closing libraries and care for the disabled. Yet we still squander billions on neo-imperial folly.
The problem is that there is no opposition. The British political system has become an uncomplicated instrument of power for a united neo-conservative class. The Liberal Democrats have been neutered by Clegg and New Labour still seeks to attack from the populist right. Our established political system is not fit for purpose – it no longer provides a forum for the airing of views very widely held by disparate groups in society, and for the fair and agreed resolution of courses of action.
It has not always been like this. Even at the height of Britain’s formal Empire, major parts of one of Britain’s two main parties were actively and aggressively anti-Imperialist, and in the later Gladstonian period that included the leadership.
These aggressive wars are the most spectacular instance of the non-representation of important sections of public opinion. Involving less actual explosions and causing slower deaths, the banking bailout is a much deeper and more important example. No significant opposition was given to the lie that every single individual had to give tens of thousands of pounds to the banks to save us all from doom. As the payments are made over a lifetime – and multiplied many times in interest – the pain of realising that everyone was now vicariously paying off a very large mortgage on money somebody else has enjoyed, is only now starting to be felt. The vast mass of people did not realise what is happening, and did not do so because a united political class in the service of those taking the money from the people, conspired to mislead them and offered no alternative.
But the truth is that it will not last. A political system which has become as otiose as this one, which no longer reflects the interests of large masses of economically significant people, will eventually collpase. That process can take decades, and I am not sure how it will be replaced, nor that what replaces it will be better. But the current western liberal democratic model is looking bust. We need now to work on ideas which are both more libertarian and responsive to smaller communities which are closer to their people.
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@1789. It’s 2011 in the UK and this is who sat where and what they ate.
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8.21pm: At last, the lifting of embargo restrictions allows Julian Borger at Buckingham Palace to tell you what Obama and co have been dining on tonight, and who is there:
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President Obama is tonight being fed on Windsor lamb and English wine at the Buckingham Palace state banquet.
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The 170 guests under the chandeliers in the great ballroom are a transatlantic mix of aristocracy, raw state power, and celebrity.
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For example, Tom Hanks is sitting between Ffion Hague and Lady Phillips of Worth Matravers. Hanks’ wife, Rita Wilson, has been placed next to C, the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers. Boris Johnson is next to Helena Bonham-Carter, who has been invited along with her husband Tim Burton.
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Princess Michael of Kent is on the mayor’s other side. After their notable absence from the Royal Wedding last month, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and their wives, are back on the Buckingham Palace guest list.
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The menu is patriotically homegrown. Sole in crayfish sauce is followed by New Season Windsor lamb with basil, sauteed courgettes and radishes, green beans, potatoes and salad. Dessert is vanilla and cherry charlotte.
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Most strikingly, a Sussex vintage is at the top of the wine list, a 2004 Ridgeview Cuve(acute)e Merret Fitzrovia Rose (acute) – a breakthrough moment for British wine perhaps.
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Aux barricades mes frères!
“Or maybe the Taliban don’t really give a toss whether OBL was killed or not; have never given much of a damn about him; didn’t particularly want him in their jurisdiction in the years when he definitely was alive; and are now opportunistically expropriating the news of his death to suit their own purposes along the lines of my enemy’s enemy etc. I mean, is the word of a Taliban spokesman the best evidence we’ve got that the raid took place? If so, hand me my tinfoil deerstalker.”
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Yes, I agree they could just be making excuses. The raid on the military base could have been planned long before and the main thing they were angry about is the US being in Pakistan in the first place. This is all quite true.
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I think that the Pakistani Taliban are usually considered separate from the actual Taliban that previously ran Afghanistan, though. As far as I know there are various groups such as Hizb-e-Islam run by Hekmatyar, the Haqqani Network run by Jallaludin Haqqani and the old Taliban run by…who?…is Mullah Omar still around? Does David Ray Griffin or anyone have any opinion on him or even on Ayman al-Zawahiri?
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As for evidence that the raid took place there seems to be plenty of evidence for that. Pakistan says it has bin Laden’s wives in custody. I suppose you could doubt that too. But it also seems odd that while the government of Pakistan is now under scrutiny for its apparent security lapses it doesn’t simply say, “We can’t find any evidence he was ever here? The whole raid thing, including all the witnesses and the burnt-out helicopter in the yard seems to be completely made-up.”
Good to see Craig Murray’s finally caught up with the BNP agenda: Out of Europe, out of NATO, out of Afghanistan, out of Libya, and an end to mass immigration which even the Labor Government’s own research demonstrated was harmful to the interests of British workers, and end to outsourcing and a start to a national industrial policy that will rebuilt British industry and restore British technical and engineering competence.
What’s needed, of course, is to get rid of that Cambridge-trained, Masonic clown, Nick Griffin (an MI6 operative, surely) and his ilk whose function it is to associate every populist policy with thuggish, fascistic, racist antics so that the public dare not express their support either for the party or, more importantly, the policies that that party pretends to espouse.
“What’s needed, of course, is to get rid of that Cambridge-trained, Masonic clown, Nick Griffin (an MI6 operative, surely) and his ilk whose function it is to associate every populist policy with thuggish, fascistic, racist antics so that the public dare not express their support either for the party or, more importantly, the policies that that party pretends to espouse.”
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So CanSpeccy has again appeared to cheer for the BNP. Remember it is only the fascist party’s policies that he supports!
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And of course Nick Griffin can’t be a genuine fascist and must be secret services because blustering clowns have never been known to head fascist parties. You can look through history in vain searching for buffoonish leaders of fascist parties.
Angry
I said before, you are a twit. What you say is clearly false. Or is it that you are are a liar not a twit? In any case, if anyone doubts what I say, they can read more here.
Ditto: Australia.The Labour party and the Liberals are essentially having a ferocious dinner party argument between the right, and the hard-right. And a swift look at the Green party manifesto makes me wonder, not for the first time, and quite seriously, if they have been infiltrated by state-elements. Orthodoxy just isn’t challenged in any Rupy paper, and we are left with internecine gossip about, well, who gets to be leader of the party of the poor – or is it party of the rich?
That’s the only narrative allowed: who gets to be leader. And who, really, gives a flying about that?
Also, interesting comments about Nick Griffin. I too am suspicious about his connections and motivations, have been since the banking crisis, when his party was wheeled out to frighten the horses. But who really knows?
“I said before, you are a twit. What you say is clearly false. Or is it that you are are a liar not a twit?”
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We never got a straight answer before whenever anyone asked you whether you supported the BNP. All you did was waffle on grandiloquently and with Olympian disdain for straightforwardness.
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Do you support the BNP? It’s yes or no, not “You’re a twit” or “Anyone who has read my magna opera would have clearly become acquainted with what surely must be quite plain and obvious to all but the most disingenuous or less perspicacious.”
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Why is it so hard for conspiracy theorist types to come out and say what they think and give straight answers?
“Why is it so hard for conspiracy theorist types..”
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CanSpeccy has a limited vocabulary in debate? Let he who is without sin…
I think you’ve put it as perfectly as it can be said. The actions are of course nothing new for empires – the key point is indeed the fact that opposition is next to zero in mainstream politics or media.
Did you see Adam Curtis’s “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” the other night? Another essential piece of film making and he remains one of the few good reasons for having a TV. Beautiful and resonating, it feels like the pieces of a huge and confusing jigsaw puzzle are put in place.
An excellent zeitgeist article Craig, depicting the pomposity of party politics riddled with dogma and vested interests, with no credible alternative, bar those who emulate the grey parties by centralising their own in order tyo become ‘respectable’ and pleasing to the media, acceptable in the case of the Greens.
Add to the political the economic crisis unchallenged. Those in the know bank off-shore and become non doms, whilst the general public gets fleeced some more.
And then there is the almost complete lack of accountability towards future generations and needs. The young are kept disinterested by a consumerismn bar none, gizmotronics has them spell bound, and wadda ya know, the festival season has started, bliss, sun and rockn’roll. Off course they do have the i Phone ready, even on the Big Green Gathering, now no more so it seems, corporatism and terror laws have destroyed it, but the information provided by these gizmo’s does not raise consciousness beyond the touch screen, an all knowing, impotent crowd. Just as in Pompeji, they knew, they heard the runmbl;ing and they parties like the world would never end.
Todays society are fodder for a the corporate market orientated fascism. We must appeal to all those high earning rock tarts strutting the stages this summer, ‘WAKE THEM UP! make them aware that their cheesy complexion gathered in hours worth of internet testiculations will not guarantee their future and is no match for physical work and getting involved.
I’m afraid that Britains sleepy young, educated in all things internet, are not using these new fangled inventions for what it could be used and in ten years time organising might be much harder to contemplate via electronic means, for them the pleasure of chatting about ‘this is essex’ seems the highlight of the day.
Well written Craig, but what now? Going Doune the rabbit hole, talking to some bunnies? 🙂
I knew this was coming
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/internet-rules-on-agenda-at-g8-in-wake-of-giggs-row-1.1103338
Craig. Off topic but you have told us in the past the way the MSM treats you regardsing interviews etc. You are not alone… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MGb8SmqiVU
Fancy being served a burger cooked by SamCam and Michelle !! served by their husbands? Pop down to No 10 right now.
Sorry but you have to have been part of the USUK killing machine to qualify.
Anon – the initiative was Sarkozeeee’s I believe.
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/french-internet-regulation-needed-president-sarkozy-tells-tech-bosses-30088
“CanSpeccy has a limited vocabulary in debate? Let he who is without sin…”
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No, I’m not complaining of CanSpeccy’s limited vocabulary except to say that the words “yes” and “no” seem to fail him when asked direct questions.
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Please respond with another unimaginatively used hackneyed Bible quote, Vronsky.
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🙂
Mary – ‘Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and their wives, are back on the Buckingham Palace guest list.’
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/8534400/Barack-Obama-State-visit-Royal-Family-invites-Tony-Blair-and-Gordon-Brown-to-banquet.html
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We can now conclude the Chilcot inquiry –
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http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/
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*will* be a whitewash.
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Buckingham palace has called the shots. War crimes, false-flag (SAS with truck bombs dressed as Arabs), torture, genocide, massacre in Fallujah –
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah,_The_Hidden_Massacre
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– murder and mutilation of children have been ring-fenced by the Crown. A sad case of ‘two fingers’ to the opinions of the British people we must protect the ‘special relationship’ at all costs.
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A very lugubrious, mournful and depressive day. The demise of Britain continues and my fight continues…
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[Mod – this is presumably the “Black Hole” comment Mark_Golding refers to later. The software put it in the moderation queue because it contains more than one URL.]
Angry
‘Pakistan says it has bin Laden’s wives in custody. I suppose you could doubt that too. But it also seems odd…’
Yes, fair point Angry. Thing is, though, have I been asleep or is this the first time in ten years anyone mentioned he was married?
Show me the marriage certificate, then I’ll believe 🙂
“The problem is that there is no opposition.” – Craig
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So you have noticed then. The following are not my words but seem appropriate: “…the British Government is unique in basing its whole philosophy on prevarication and mendacity. Like the long-lived Government of Margaret Thatcher it is sustained not by its own worth, but by the complete absence of a credible alternative.” (John Brignell, 2001) Others have independently come to the same conclusion with regard to their own “representative” governments that are based on the party-politics mechanism.
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This outcome is systemic. Credible alternatives are disallowed at all levels – through education (indoctrination), in agenda-setting media, through a rigged political process, and when necessary also by brutal means. This is a powerful selection mechanism and it produces the result that you describe, always and without fail. (But just to be clear – it needn’t be a conspiracy in the literal sense.)
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Your belief that British politics used to be nicer is quaint, but it is contradicted by fact. Mark Curtis makes this crystal clear in his investigation of modern British history. What has changed is the ability of those who question to find answers, quickly. People nowadays can much more readily find out about the wrongs committed in their name, but here is the crux – finding out the truth is still comparatively hard work, so the majority remain ignorant or at best confused. Most of the people I meet are in that category, sadly. By virtue of your unusual circumstances you have ended up being one of the few who have gone too far down the questioning path to turn back. You have taken the red pill, so to speak. This may be why British politics looks bleaker to you now than it did in the past.
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Other things may be different, too. The world has changed to a more or less unipolar configuration so the aims of the owner-class can be pursued with more impunity. Perhaps the 3rd world is also putting up more resistance than before, having developed mechanisms to cope with subversion techniques of the imperial powers. As a result, overt military involvement is more frequently required to keep the upper hand, in addition to covert operations. I have high hopes of Venezuela’s ability to follow an independent development path from now on, because its government has incorporated elements of direct democracy and this ought to make it more resilient to future subversion attempts.
HRIMark,
I believe America used cluster bombs in Libya and the weapons trail seems to suggest that. Obviously Clinton denies it:
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-04/22/c_13840207.htm
“Even at the height of Britain’s formal Empire, major parts of one of Britain’s two main parties were actively and aggressively anti-Imperialist, and in the later Gladstonian period that included the leadership. ”
That’s as may be, but it obviously did nothing to stay the Empire’s bloody hand. Or are you suggesting that untold millions of lives were spared due to this alleged anti-Imperialism?
I see the odious Kieth Schilling is now the subject of a well deserved media kicking. The arrogant fart has now had his ugly mug plastered over various internet news sites and is bieng set up as the face behind superinjunctions. Maybe Craig, time to contact a few journo friends and remind them that you were also a victim of this little shit over Murder in Samarkand…sure to get you a few press lines methinks.
“Yes, fair point Angry. Thing is, though, have I been asleep or is this the first time in ten years anyone mentioned he was married?”
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I’m afraid you’ve been asleep ole bean. I could quote you plenty of excerpts from books on bin Laden/Al Qaeda etc… which mention his marriages. In particular his marriage to Sadah, a Yemeni wife.
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Similarly, bin Laden’s sons have been in the news a fair bit. I will actually have to go and find some material on post-2001 bin Laden. It is of course pretty sketchy but probably can be found.
In fact, remember the famous Benazir Bhutto video in which she talked of Hamza bin Laden – the son of OBL – being after her. What’s interesting is he could only have been of about 15 at the time.
James Quartermaine, a solicitor in the sports and media team at the law firm Charles Russell, says the Giggs case has been an unusual – but not unprecedented – blow to the reputation of Schillings.
“It may be that Giggs has been poorly advised and shouldn’t have gone on to take action against Twitter users,” said Quartermaine, who has appeared against Schillings’ lawyers in other privacy injunction cases. “But once you are committed to a course of action, the red mist descends to a certain extent.
“It may well be that Giggs himself was ferociously angry. His legal costs by now are probably between ++ £150,000 and £200,000.++
“To the extent that [Schillings] was the go-to firm for celebrities, this is clearly a damaging moment. The John Terry [case] was damaging because the judge criticised the whole process for being a shambles … And now another one has unravelled in the glare of the public eye.
“To the extent that their appeal is to celebrities who want to remain out of the news, this has got … to be toxic.
“But are Schillings a busted flush? No. They will recover. They will still be in the game. They are an efficient and well-oiled machine normally.
“Schillings is a tough operator. It has a reputation for being very slick and very aggressive, an attack-dog reputation … But that reputation for aggression may have chased down one too many hares.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/may/24/injunction-publicity-backfires-law-firm
Strange – my post ‘disappeared’ down a black hole?
What was is that you said??
The moment passed Mary – Blair was at the palace (first choke) and then I was choking on the hypocrisy of Obama’s hollow platitudes. So I’m having a bad day so best I keep quiet.
CanSpeccy,
I said before, you are a twit. What you say is clearly false. Or is it that you are are a liar not a twit?
‘Now you live in a world of hate and fear’
I am warmed by Craig’s very good piece and the calibre of the analyses and writing which follow.
As with Mark Golding, I have mourned today. The psychopaths have celebrated their power with total arrogance. I now avoid all ZBC and other broadcast and print media. I hear the vortex sucking ever louder with no human hand to quiet it. Such web sites assure us there are sentient decent beings in our world but how can they impinge on mushroom clouds of evil?
I quote Milton Mayer often. In describing the German people 1938-45, he describes the British and the ‘American’ now, as well as other ‘whitey’ populations.
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‘They Thought They Were Free’ by Milton Mayer, The Germans, 1938-45
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
“What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider…..the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think….for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about…..and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated…..by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us…..
“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’…..must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing…..Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.
“You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone…..you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.
“That’s the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
“You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father…..could never have imagined.”
On the subject of the BNP – I also find myself in agreement with many of its stated policies, along with many Britons as CanSpeccy points out. For example, quoting from BNP England local manifesto 2011: “We believe authority should be devolved to the lowest practical local level. We also believe local referenda, called by popular demand, should bind local authorities. Our councillors will press for such measures.” From BNP general election 2010 manifesto: “The BNP will introduce citizens’ initiative referenda to force government to adhere to the will of the voters on specific subjects. The BNP will introduce a new Bill of Rights which will guarantee certain basic civil liberties. The BNP will enact legislation which will hold journalists and their media outlets criminally liable for knowingly publishing falsehoods. The BNP will create a media complaints body which will have the power to grant slandered persons or institutions the right of reply with equal prominence plus financial compensation in serious cases.” Right there is a series of statements that are more progressive and democratic than anything I have seen emanate from the main three political parties. My logic is this – whatever repulsive ideas this party may harbour, in the same breath they promise to let the people collectively have the last (binding) word, if the people so wish. THIS IS THE ESSENCE OF DEMOCRACY.
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Supporting many of BNP’s policies is not equivalent to supporting the BNP in elections. That said I am sanguine about a few BNP candidates winning seats in Parliament. The difficulty for me is in trusting the BNP not to sacrifice the progressive parts of their manifesto to their overriding desire to halt immigration – should they ever be in a position to engage in political horse-trading. I am not convinced that they hold democracy and freedom of the press as dear as their belief that immigration is the root cause of our society’s problems.. However, if a BNP candidate were standing against a Lab-Con-Lib clone I would have to think hard about which of these is the least bad choice – the one that would promote the status quo that results in deaths of foreign innocents by the million, or the ones that are actively opposed to it and merely (by comparison) wish to stop further immigration into the UK. I hope this makes it clear that the situation is not so black and white.