The Independent on Sunday have bitten the bullet and openly questioned what Matthew Gould was doing in all those meetings with Adam Werritty, and why Gus O’Donnell lied about them.
They have an interesting new line from an FCO spokesman:
“The FCO has total confidence that Matthew Gould has acted appropriately at all times and at no stage was he acting independently, or out of line with government policy,” a spokesman said yesterday.
So “British Ambassador Matthew Gould declared his commitment to Israel and the principles of Zionism on Thursday” – Jerusalem Post 29 May 2011 is therefore a statement of official British government policy. Good to know.
We have not only at last made the mainstream media, we have made the mainstream counter-media:
John Goss, do you think they are now finally bothering to go for the messengers? I think that Craigs phone is most likely compromised in one way or other, and it might be an idea for us to leave the phone at home when next going away, or have another phone and charger ready somewhere to pick up when one goes away. I’m so glad never have fallen for Blackberries or Iphone’s and I shall leave my phone at home if I go away.
Someone told me that your normal housephone can be used to pick up conversations in the room, a simple external trick to operate the microphone without having the need for an actual call, anyone heard of this.
Ingo, they’ve been able to listen to household conversations with the phone on the cradle since the eighties. They’ve been stopping touch buttons on my phone for months (yesterday was one such occasion) the last time before that was when my step-son’s motorcycle was stolen and whenever I received a phone call from inspector Roberts I could not answer it because the answer button was disabled. Of course when he paid me a visit and I pointed out my phone could not receive messages. Guess what, it worked. It’s a game for them. They have nothing to do. Yesterday I took my phone to show those in the shop where I bought it what the problem was. Guess what. It worked perfectly. What makes me so irate is that they have all this power over your phone yet you are paying for the “service”.
I’ve ‘phoned the Independent and apparently they only take comments for a couple of days for space reasons I’m told.
And Hague calls the decision made by Iranian MPs and gov. regrettable and “it shows that Iranian do not want to enter into dialogue” what a bloody hypocrite/idiot/ignorant/…..
http://www.presstv.com/detail/212791.html
hello craig and readers,
looks as though we are on the road to war with syria and iran, considering that sanctions according to international law are an act of war. the game gets played on many fronts just like the real thing. soon we will have our own calamity when the financial system collapses and the banks and atms are shut. folks take a look at marketoracle.co.uk, ritholtz.com for the truth about what may only be days away.
John Goss, don’t worry, just assume ‘they’ can get to know everything and you get on with what you’re doing anyway, don’t let it stop you. Don’t get caught up in it, just forge on, regardless. Whistleblowers and the politically active opposition have been and will always be the subject of such activity. If anyone else around the whistleblower/activist becomes the subject of ‘paranormal activity’, I would suggest that it is likely to be in relation to that, original, nexus.
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Rosebud.
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Wedding-cake.
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Dream police.
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Elephant.
Something’s Rotten in the Heart of Western Governments
Beware politicians cloaked in the American flag or diplomats sporting Union Jack kippahs…
by Stuart Littlewood
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http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/11/27/something’s-rotten-in-the-heart-of-western-governments/
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‘A red rag cover-up
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Meanwhile, on the British side of the Atlantic former ambassador Craig Murray has numerous well-placed informants and is busy blowing the lid off one of the slimiest intrigues ever exposed at Westminster.
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On his website Murray has penned a marvellous piece titled Gould-Werritty: A Real Conspiracy, Not a Theory. Gould is the British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould and Werritty is zionist stooge Adam Werrity, friend and “adviser” to disgraced defence secretary Liam Fox. {http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/11/gould-werritty-a-real-conspiracy-not-a-theory/}
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“There is a huge government cover-up in progress over the Werritty connection to Mossad and the role of British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, and their neo-con plan to start a war with Iran,” says Murray. He had made a Freedom of Information request for all communications between Gould and Werritty and was astonished to receive a midnight reply that his request was refused because it was “likely to exceed the cost limit”.’
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Includes a nice photo of Craig plus a video of Alison Weir of If Americans Knew.
Had some guy wandering down my street taking photos of unremarkable bits of wall a couple of days ago. Mossad? Village idiot? Who knows.
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Ha! I’ve got one of those on the wall.
http://www.popartuk.com/g/l/lggn0527+keep-calm-carry-on-poster.jpg
Mary:
“Something’s Rotten in the Heart of Western Governments
Beware politicians cloaked in the American flag or diplomats sporting Union Jack kippahs…
by Stuart Littlewood
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http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/11/27/something’s-rotten-in-the-heart-of-western-governments/”
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I was disturbed by the tone of this article. E.g.
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“Many will feel it is intolerable for a Christian country like Britain to be represented by a Jew”
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Firstly, Britain is barely any longer a Christian country in any meaningful sense. Secondly, there is a long and, in some cases, honorourable tradition of Jews serving Britain politically.
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Zionism is not the central problem in the Middle East, it is just one pillar of the central problem. That central problem is the West’s all-out assault on the Middle East for its oil. Most of the people conducting this assault are not Zionists or indeed any kind of “ists” except opportunists.
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Zionism is a useful tool and excuse for the West’s activities in the Middle East, but their real motivation has nothing to do with religion.
(I don’t mean to imply that I am a supporter of Zionism, but it bothers me that the undertone of some comments here seems to be, “It’s all the Jews’ fault.” It isn’t: it’s our fault for basing our civilisation on fuel sources we knew were going to start running out in the early 21st Century.)
Franz, I share your concern at times, mainly because it’s so hard to shake off a charge of being an anti-semite, a catch-all to round up and disparage (not to say demonise) any critic of Israeli foreign policy. That includes Jews of course, who are “self-hating Jews” should they be in the large proportion of Jews who also don’t approve of Israel’s foreign policies. Try proving that you haven’t got a “chip on your shoulder” while black, should you have any legitimate dispute. But somehow that works in the opposite direction!
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This has nothing to do with Jews, apart from for some of our more occasionally fevered correspondents.
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I also share your concern at the UK being described as “a Christian country”. The average person who regularly attends church regularly, also lived through WW-II (given the average age of most church-goers). Most people who have any interest at all usually save it for other faiths. More fool them, obviously, but that’s besides the point.
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We’ve grown up enough not to need imaginary friends, one would hope. The problem would seem to be that there is, among the powerful and highly fortunate, a belief that their greed is divinely inspired. This Calvinist view appeals to an awful lot of rich, powerful people who want redemption.
This Calvinist view appeals to an awful lot of rich, powerful people who want redemption.
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Calvinism has no concept of redemption.
Good point, Angrysoba – a poor choice of words, I should have said sanction. Calvinism hold that the rich are rich because God has clearly favoured them. For redemption, we’d be looking at Blair’s example, where he’s converted to Catholicism because he can simply confess his sins and then gets clean away with it.
Hey, good news. I was listening radio while driving near Mountain View, CA, US and Richard Seymour was on Democracy Now radio commention on this Fox-Werrity Adam-Gould unholy trinity and the presenter actually knew about this and she talked a lot. You are mainstream now.
California
Glenn: Good point, Angrysoba – a poor choice of words, I should have said sanction. Calvinism hold that the rich are rich because God has clearly favoured them.
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Yes, I think Weber’s theory was that because Calvinists are predestined either to Heaven or Hell they have to find evidence that they are destined for Heaven and to do this they must convince themselves that God smiles on them. Weber thought that this was where the “Protestant work ethic” comes from – a psychological state of forcing oneself to be as industrious as possible. Weber’s evidence, as far as I understand, was that Calvinist parts of Germany and countries which tended to be more Protestant also tended to be more wealthy.
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I am very skeptical of the theory and I had imagined it had been long debunked. It seems more likely that the industrial revolution made certain countries wealthier meaning that most of the work was being carried out by the general working class operating machines rather than those running the mills who piously proclaimed that their wealth was a blessing from God. There seem to be all kinds of other holes such as some areas of Germany (Bavaria) and Austria also being wealthy at this time despite their Catholicism. Also I am not sure how Calvinism was to explain Japan’s own breakneck industrialization in the late nineteenth-century – no Calvinists there.
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Yet, it seems to be one of those zombie theories that twitch back into life every now and again as can be seen from an episode of Niall Ferguson’s Civilization. Although he doesn’t even mention Calvinism, bizarrely enough, he claims that the reason for North America becoming prosperous despite its relative scarcity of precious metals compared to South America is that it had the “killer app” of the Protestant work ethic whereas South America was conquered by backward Papists. He says this despite the fact that in a previous episode he had already explained that North America prospered compared to South because of the “killer app” of property rights.
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Remarkably he goes on to suggest that the reason for China’s new found prosperity is the increasing number of Protestants there! (I kid you not!)
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This is on top of the fact that part of his source-gathering involves asking motivational-speaking evangelists such probing questions as, “Why do you think it is that having the protestant work ethic leads to prosperity?” and then giving the evangelist a free platform to spout his tried and tested nonsense. AND this is on top of the fact that in the same episode he calls Thomas Edison the “Alternating Current King”. (Anyone like to spot the glaring error?)
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On a side note, Ferguson is now involved with a major spat with another writer called Pankaj Mishra who reviewed his work unfavourably in the London Review of Books. It seems Ferguson is dangling the threat of a lawsuit. The thin-skinned Tory eejit!
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http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n21/pankaj-mishra/watch-this-man
For redemption, we’d be looking at Blair’s example, where he’s converted to Catholicism because he can simply confess his sins and then gets clean away with it.
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But as Anne Widdecombe pointed out Tony Blair is okay with abortion whereas the Church is not so St Peter might refuse entry on those grounds and send him to Hell all the same.
Never be afraid of fighting for justice, truth and freedom. True freedom. Not freedom to bloody shop. Britain will be both and just and free because that is it’s destiny. Period.
An interesting look at Calvinism, thank you. Nothing like a flattering psuedo-intellectual basis to justifies an extravagant amount of wealth with religious underpinnings. Every extra buck in your bank account, every expensive trinket in your possession, is further proof of God’s approval.
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I thought the “killer app” which got North America to prosper (at least, some of them) was genocide, as practiced against the native Americans. The next “killer app” was a free labour force in the form of slavery, and so on. I’d no idea it was in fact “Property rights”, unless we’re talking about slaves being “property” and declaring other people’s land as now being your property, of course!
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The same religious justification goes on today, with the awkward wrinkle that the historical Jesus was a bit of a socialist if truth be told. There are moves afoot to rectify this, by stripping out all the natural liberal bits from the Bible and replacing it with more of a free-marketeering, capitalistic Jesus (who’d heal the money- changers and throw the sick out of the temple, no doubt).
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Take a look:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project
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Perhaps we go go from this, Matthew 19:24 in the New International version of 1984:
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“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
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To this new, improved right-wing version:
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“Again I tell you, it is easier for … a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
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Those Calvinists were right all along!
In fact, many of those even in the Christian establishment seemed to have taken on Jesus’ ways of living. In particular Franciscan monks and other orders deliberately lived in poverty. While the Catholic Church may have established its cunning little racket of indulgences some of the reformers were downright austere, such as Wycliff and, I think Martin Luther was too. The problem is that even though they hated heirachy from a doctrinal point of view and hated the idea that people in general weren’t allowed, under Tridentine Catholic Mass, to even understand a bloody word, when it came to things such as the peasant revolts they urged for them to be crushed ruthlessly. Their justification was, according to them, from the Gospels (“render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s!”) Now, I feel like I’ve said all this before somehow. Hmmmm…
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As for Conservapedia I have looked at it a couple of times before but I still can’t work out if it is a spoof site.
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RE: Property rights, yes, unfortunately they did see slaves as their property and the land too as the Indians had been negligent in demarkating it beforehand and because John Locke said there was no one living there anyway.
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But the point is that this happened in both North and South so why did this happen in the North but not the South?
Very unclear and contradictory:
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But the point is that this happened in both North and South so why did this happen in the North but not the South?
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I meant to say why did the North become prosperous while the South wasn’t given that in both cases there was a sudden capture of a lot of land and in which slave labour was practiced.
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Also, slavery may not have been the “killer app” anyway given that over time it was the slave-holding states which were generally the poorer states.
An interesting look at Calvinism, thank you. Nothing like a flattering psuedo-intellectual basis to justify an extravagant amount of wealth with religious underpinnings. Every extra buck in your bank account, every expensive trinket in your possession, is further proof of God’s approval.
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I thought the “killer app” which got North America to prosper (at least, some of them) was genocide, as practiced against the native Americans. The next “killer app” was a free labour force in the form of slavery, and so on. I’d no idea it was in fact “Property rights”, unless we’re talking about slaves being “property” and declaring other people’s land as now being your property, of course!
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The same religious justification goes on today, with the awkward wrinkle that the historical Jesus was a bit of a socialist if truth be told. There are moves afoot to rectify this, by stripping out all the natural liberal bits from the Bible and replacing it with more of a free-marketeering, capitalistic Jesus (who’d heal the money- changers and throw the sick out of the temple, no doubt).
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Take a look:
www (dot) conservapedia (dot) com/Conservative_Bible_Project
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Perhaps we go go from this, Matthew 19:24 in the New International version of 1984:
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“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
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To this new, improved right-wing version:
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“Again I tell you, it is easier for … a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
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Those Calvinists were right all along!
Ah, it did finally show three times now (sorry!) – my re-write was not necessary. Perhaps a mod could delete the redundant posts?
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Taking a vow of poverty due to one’s religious devotion is worthy of respect, imho – they are actually practicing what they claim to believe. What beats me is why the rest of the distinctly profit-making bunch conduct all their business tax free. In fact, it’s worse – they can claim back the tax _you_ pay on donations to them. They take up prime real-estate in every city in the world, and contribute nothing of any value at all.
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It wasn’t just Locke claiming it was an empty land, it’s a surprisingly common claim even today. Earlier this year a copy of USA today (it came free in the hotel I stayed at, didn’t buy it – honest!) showed a graph of US population from 1492 or thereabouts to the present day. It might have been when the population hit 300M. The graph – I kid you not – started at zero.
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Coincidentally, the notion of “A land without people for a people without a land” was used as a slogan for Israel to pretend that Palestine was empty (at least, according to Edward Said). Maybe that’s one reason the US and Israel have such a bond.
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That conservapedia thing is no joke by all accounts, some teabaggers were enthusing about it quite regularly on Fox with the authors. On second thought, being on Fox makes it less than likely to be true.
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I’d imagined the North was more prosperous compared with the South, because they’d generally practiced more progressive policies. Just for one anecdote to illustrate, several southern states have been pursuing highly anti-immigrant policies known as the “Papers, please!” laws, notably in Arizona and Georgia, which has had the effect of driving migrant workers away in fear. Loss of taxes has been noticeable, tourism has suffered quite significantly, and – to the horror of farmers – crops have been left to rot in the field, all the migrant fruit pickers being nowhere to be found.
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One more, if you’ll indulge me. Alabama is extremely suspicious of foreigners too, so an enterprising cop arrested an executive of Mercedes because he only had a German driver’s licence on him.
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thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/11/21/373334/german-mercedes-benz-executive-arrested-under-alabamas-immigration-law
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Mercedes were wondering if this is the best place to put their factories.
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They have a long inglorious history of this sort of thing, it’s bound to hurt them economically over the long run.
Glenn: In fact, it’s worse – they can claim back the tax _you_ pay on donations to them. They take up prime real-estate in every city in the world, and contribute nothing of any value at all.
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I pretty much agree with you on religion and its tax-exempt status. In my opinion it should simply rely on donations from the flock. But on the other hand, if the Devil has the best tunes, God does tend to have some of the best buildings. I wouldn’t want to live in a world which was so puritanical that St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, the churches of Nicholas Hawksmoore etc… were bull-dozed and replaced with revenue-spinning shopping malls.
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It wasn’t just Locke claiming it was an empty land, it’s a surprisingly common claim even today. Earlier this year a copy of USA today (it came free in the hotel I stayed at, didn’t buy it – honest!) showed a graph of US population from 1492 or thereabouts to the present day. It might have been when the population hit 300M. The graph – I kid you not – started at zero.
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Yes, but I would attribute that to idiotic journalism and wouldn’t expect much less from USA Today. I would be immensely surprised if the average reader looked at that and concluded from the graph that nobody lived in MesoAmerica prior to Columbus and Cabot etc… turning up on its shores. I would have assumed a better place to start would have been 1776 or whenever it was that the Declaration of Independence was signed otherwise how would you judge what constitutes the population of the United States? Would you include those in Canada? Would it include those in Western states not even explored yet? Would it include those in the Mexican states, the French states, etc…?
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Locke’s idea, on the other hand, was a statement that became official policy to treat the US as an unpopulated land, something which is surely not official US policy today – in fact, I would guess there have been a number of acts passed in the House of Representatives to have such things recognized, though this is purely a guess.
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Coincidentally, the notion of “A land without people for a people without a land” was used as a slogan for Israel to pretend that Palestine was empty (at least, according to Edward Said).
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I’d be interested to know specifically who was making such a claim. I am currently reading a book by Conor Cruise O’Brien about the history of Zionism and of Israel in which it seems most of the early Zionists were more than well aware that the Jews represented only a tiny minority in Ottoman-ruled Palestine. Theodor Herzl even made personal visits to the Sultan to see if he would give his blessing to National Home for the Jews in Palestine (and was very disparaging of the Sultan). Of course, the book went down like a lead balloon with the anti-Zionist left who rebranded him “Conor Cruise O’Zion”.
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http://www.lrb.co.uk/v08/n11/david-gilmour/conor-cruise-ozion
I should say that my use of the word “puritanical” probably looks a bit strange there. Maybe I meant to say “sterile”.
Or “philistinistic”
Angrysoba: I understand and rather agree about the fine buildings. Even while writing the previous message, some fine English Churches sprang to mind – particularly throughout the Cotswolds (where I used to live), in which they almost appear to be the natural landscape now. More standardised retail outlets for Chinese goods would probably not be the best replacement for the city Churches, either.
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Perhaps you’re too kind to the average reader of the likes of USA Today, it’s quite likely they _did_ think it started at zero. A Fox viewer would almost certainly hold such a view. (Did you see the study which found regular Fox viewers knew less than people who watched no TV news at all?)
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Note that the diplomatic historian Thomas Bailey described how, after independence, state power was used to take the land from its inhabitants, while Americans “concentrated on the task of felling trees and Indians, and rounding out their natural boundaries”.
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You are right that there were efforts to recognise rights for the indigenous people, but they were pretty much slapped down. Chief justice John Marshall declared, “discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian right of occupancy, either by purchase or by conquest”.
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The review you referenced seems to highlight the emphasis the book places on the bunker mentality of Israel. If accurate, it would seem that O’Brien has ‘gone native’ as it were. Any religious justification for acts are utterly worthless, particularly as there is real (if under-reported) dispute among Jews about the strength of that justification, even within the religion itself.
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This is why religion is so dangerous and easily corrupted, imho – it can be used to pretty much justify anything at all, nudged in the direction of personal aims, you can claim the divine will of the creator of the universe to be on your side – and that’s a tough act to follow. It makes “the other” so less important, almost irrelevant, certainly not deserving anything like equal consideration.
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Zionism seems rare in that it calls for a racial basis before one is allowed to be a full member of that religion, which makes it doubly separatist. Anyway, it was a good chat – I certainly prefer it to our former manner of discourse. Much appreciated.