Wonderful bit of balanced reporting from the BBC’s Frank Gardner. He said of Bahrain at 5.42pm on BBC News:

“The Shiite majority does suffer discrimination, but the rest of the population is getting fed up with the continual disruption and demonstrations.”

I remember similar arguments during apartheid:

“The black majority does suffer discrimination, but the rest of the population is getting fed up with the continual disruption and demonstrations.”

Doesn’t sound so good, does it? Anyway, here is to the BBC and keeping the interests of those troublemaking majorities firmly in the context of the much more important comfort of their oppressors.

He then explained that the oppression of opposition in Bahrain could not in the least be compared to the oppression of opposition in Syria, because in Bahrain the government had promised reform.

I was the answer to a question on University Challenge yesterday! Thanks to all who sent me messages to let me know. If anyone remembers the actual question I should be interested to hear. Apparently none of the students had ever heard of me.

From surprising mentions to surprising non-mentions. The Guardian wrote an excellent editorial on the continuing hypocrisy of the West’s relationship with Uzbekistan. Despite specifically covering the time I was there, and being about torture and rhe West’s reliance on Uzbekistan for supply to Afghanistan, resulting in a willingness to placate the Karimov regime, there is no mention of the British sacking their Ambassador for opposing this policy. It is not, I think, vainglorious to find it a strange omission.

I have mentioned before the Guardian consistently and completely writing me out of their reports about extraordinary rendition and UK complicity in torture. I am reminded of the fact that the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee asked seven different witnesses, including Jack Straw, specifically about me by name and my actions, but refused to allow me to give evidence on my own account.

When you are a whistleblower you become a non-person, simply written out of existence by the various organs of the Establishment, including those which pretend to constitute a form of opposition. Every now and then you get a reminder of your existence, reduced to a curiosity like the subject of a quiz question. But the official narrative closes over you and the truths you revealed, smoothly, like a Jack Straw speech or a Guardian editorial.